2013-01-26, 03:50 AM
Thanks for adding another book to my reading list [MENTION=4235]KhainiWest[/MENTION].
Like [MENTION=2258]Moonlapse[/MENTION] I also read Richard Preston's The Demon in the Freezer, and think it's a great text for anyone curious about bioterrorism. That book also details people like who you mentioned, Dustin, like defected Russian scientists who worked on weaponizing disease during the late 80s/early 90s amidst Cold War insanity. I'll never forget the statistic that proof was found or anecdotally recorded from said scientists about Russia making something like 20 tons of weaponized smallpox with a strain so virulent and lethal it took a single airborne particle to kill a person. Doing the math, Preston notes there was enough smallpox in that quantity, not counting the later production of virions in infected hosts that would initiate secondary infections, to kill the world like a couple million times over?
And all 20 tons are missing, with no evidence that they were destroyed. So yeah, people are insane.
However, plague doesn't worry me as much as smallpox or influenza, even though it is a Category A Bioterrorism Agent. I think the scariest would be Ebola if its transmission aspects were modified making it more resistant to environmental pressures, and, obviously, airborne.
Like [MENTION=2258]Moonlapse[/MENTION] I also read Richard Preston's The Demon in the Freezer, and think it's a great text for anyone curious about bioterrorism. That book also details people like who you mentioned, Dustin, like defected Russian scientists who worked on weaponizing disease during the late 80s/early 90s amidst Cold War insanity. I'll never forget the statistic that proof was found or anecdotally recorded from said scientists about Russia making something like 20 tons of weaponized smallpox with a strain so virulent and lethal it took a single airborne particle to kill a person. Doing the math, Preston notes there was enough smallpox in that quantity, not counting the later production of virions in infected hosts that would initiate secondary infections, to kill the world like a couple million times over?
And all 20 tons are missing, with no evidence that they were destroyed. So yeah, people are insane.
However, plague doesn't worry me as much as smallpox or influenza, even though it is a Category A Bioterrorism Agent. I think the scariest would be Ebola if its transmission aspects were modified making it more resistant to environmental pressures, and, obviously, airborne.