Bet 9
By 2020, bioterror or bioerror will lead to one million casualties in a single event.
Prediction 9
Duration 18 years (02002-02020)
Predictor
Martin Rees
Challenger
TBA
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Biotechnology is plainly advancing rapidly, and by 2020 there will be thousands-even millions-of people with the capability to cause a catastrophic biological disaster. My concern is not only organized terrorist groups, but individual wierdos with the mindset of the people who now design computer viruses. Even if all nations impose effective regulations on potentially dangerous technologies, the cyhance of an active enforcement seems to me as small as in the case of the drug laws.
By "bioerror", I mean something which has the same effect as a terror attack, but rises from inadvertance rather than evil intent.
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By 2020, bioterror or bioerror will lead to one million casualties in a single event.
Sir Martin is a hero of mine for his courageous and gifted insights into anthropic evidence and the multiverse (read his excellent *Just Six Numbers* and *Our Cosmic Habitat*), but I disagree with his assessment of the bioterror and bioerror threats to human civilization. Mine is a very unpopular position to take, as it could be misconstrued that I am advocating complacency or somehow contributing to the risk of the event by arguing against its occurrence. But the counterargument needs to be made.
Biopathogens are *incredibly* computationally simple, and due to the constraints of their small size must use a *very* limited number of survival tools. The average bacterial genome has only 2,000 genes. Viruses have from one to 200 genes. It is true that these pathogens form one interdependent computational community, capable of passing genes back and forth within the system. Thus as we win the war in one set of genes with present antibiotics and antivirals we will temporarily select for resistance in the remaining combinations. But Garrett's *The Coming Plague* substantially overplays the human danger of this process. While simple pathogenic systems are fast *evolvers* (e.g., capable of combining and recombining a limited number of genes ad infinitum) their *developmental* options are sharply constrained. The way lasting defenses are gained in a world of accelerating complexity is not by a process of evolution, which is random and contingent, but by a process of evolutionary *development,* just now being described by complexity theorists and developmental biologists, a process still misunderstood by most classical, neo-Darwinian biologists. The accelerating complexity occurring on this planet is, ultimately, not explainable by evolution, but by evolution in service to *developmental emergence,* subject to the physical laws and boundary conditions of this particular universe. Every catastrophe that you can name, on any scale, has only catalyzed, never threatened, the average distributed complexity of local intelligence (see more on this at my website, if you disagree). So don't look to the neo-Darwinists to supply the necessary insights into this strange developmental stability and continual acceleration of the average leading edge of the most complex local forms. Look instead to the new evolutionary developmental biologists (e.g., Wallace Arthur, Rudolph Raff, Jack Cohen), complexity theorists, and computational astrobiologists. When we talk about development rates and capacity, intelligent systems hold all the cards.
Bacteria, viruses, and other simple parasites have long been exploring a very limited computational phase space of interaction with their human hosts. Due to their necessary genomic simplicity, they just cannot evolve complex new offensive and defensive strategies, and so must repeat themselves in many simple combinations. Meanwhile, metazoan immune systems are both complex and simple, and redundant in multiple independent ways. They have long overcomputed and overdefended against these stable and simple invaders, in ways we still don't fully understand. For one, it appears that benign forms of any bug will rapidly gain a selective survival advantage in human hosts, because both they and their more lethal cousins trigger an increasing immune response against the invaders. But that rising immunity is utilized most strongly against the more lethal, more replicative varieties. Thus there are many examples, from malaria to the pox virus, where the milder form of the pathogen immunizes powerfully against the globally rarer lethal varieties. We use numerous similar defensive strategies that have yet to be uncovered by our systems biologists. To bacteria and viruses, humanity represents six billion separate targets, due to single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that make each of us molecularly unique. Occasional chinks in our collective armor appear, but as we will discuss shortly, they are increasingly fewer as our defensive strategies (biological, cultural, and technological) exponentiate.
The technological strategies are of course the most dramatic of the lot. Moore's law is today driving an explosion of genomic, proteomic, biochemical, and immunological progress. Gene chips, pharacogenomics, combinatorial drug discovery, and bioinformatics permanently change the landscape. Pathogens will be sequenced, and their metabolomes simulated in hours, for a few dollars apiece, well before mid century. We learned a *tremendous* amount about immunology when we produced the anti-AIDS cocktail, locking HIV into a high-fidelity replication mode that allows the immune system to zero in on the viral coat and then reduce titers to virtually undetectable levels in the infected host. We'll be able to recreate such efforts ever more cheaply and quickly every year as we progress into our accelerating future.
We've known for years just how rare it is to find species-threatening pathogens?they select themselves out of the environment. The data that parasitism turns into commensalism over time, that evolutionary development slides toward mutually beneficial interaction in all systems (biological, social, technological), is overwhelming, regardless of what a few neo-Darwinian revisionists have argued. William H. McNeill (*Plagues and Peoples,* *The Global Condition*) is beginning to explore the causes of infectious disease with his restricted adaptation hypothesis, which proposes that evolution to benignness will generally occur between a pathogen and its primary host (e.g., arthropod vector or host human). The pathogen symbiotically optimizes to the host most responsible for its survival, which is generally the vector. So though malaria or rickettsia bugs may manipulate mosquitos and ticks in interesting ways, they are overall quite benign to these arthropods, but may then have a negative effect on a new or intermittent secondary host (e.g., humans). This negative externality continues *until* the secondary host also starts selecting against the negative interaction by minimizing transmission of the worst forms (mosquito netting, avoidance, eradication) while preferentially facilitating transmission of the more benign and immunizing variants. This general paradigm, while still containing explanatory limitations, is a powerful early understanding of the way commensalism emerges in all parasites over time. As McNeill argues, it can also be usefully generalized, as a computational systems theory. An overly oppressive government is as much a parasite as a destructive virus, and as much subject to universal game theoretic and reciprocity constraints.
Today's pathogens are entering their last stand, rapidly running out of options to invade the most intelligent local hosts (humanity), in the same way that humanity's computational complexity will be entirely outmoded by self-improving machine intelligence well before this century is out. The continued double exponential growth in technological complexity is a natural outgrowth of our own history of accelerating biological intelligence. I suggest we should not think of these processes as threatening, but rather as part of normal evolutionary development of an accelerating and (amazingly) ever more *self-stabilizing* local computational complexity.
At the same time, mini-catastrophes do have a tremendous way of galvanizing our progress on the defensive front as well. All it took was Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Tokaimura, and global growth in the nuclear power industry was halted and will certainly stay in this near-stasis until better remediation, security, and design technologies emerge. Consider this: if we managed to do *that* even with the tremendous lure of all that cheap power still dangling in front of us, what would stop modern civilization from mounting a Manhattan Project to counter the few existing biopathogenic threats to humanity, in the wake of a small biocatastrophe?
And small these catastrophes would definitely be, at least at first. Pathological fanaticism is statistically quite rare. The human psyche is, statistically, amazingly self-balancing. Furthermore, pathological fanaticism, intelligence, and wealth, the three factors needed for a really destructive bioterror scenario, rarely co-segregate. Social and technological development has led us to an era of "Networks and Netwars" (see Arquila and Ronfeldt's excellent book of this name), but, thankfully, the unusually high level of preparation observed in the Al Quaeda network is not the norm in the terror cohort. The next attacks we can expect might be analogous to 1995's Aun Shinrikyo cult in Japan (they had fanaticism and money but settled on nerve gas because bioterror was a *lot* harder than they expected), or the 2001 anthrax letters in the U.S. The difficulty of finding the truly rare lethal pathogens, the difficulty of trying to utilize them, the rarity of occurrence of enabling factors, and perhaps most definitively, the global power law function (e.g., Zipf) for catastrophic events virtually ensures we'll see a lot more of the small and mostly ineffective fanatical activities first. It will be a good while still before we see incidents in bioterror capable of harming thousands of people, much less a thousand thousand, and meanwhile, time is running out for this destructive option as computation and immunological science accelerate. But most importantly, with just a few more of these smaller events, civilized nations would spend tens of billions hastening the development of a permanent solution. We already are spending billions today, and often in ways not obvious to the average citizen.
What we do presently know is that all the really dangerous stuff, like Ebola and Marburg, always comes packaged in poorly efficient vectors that can be rapidly defended against, by public health and other measures. For reasons still to be fully explained, these kinds of pathogens either minimize their virulence or select themselves out of the population. I should note that I'm using selection here not simply as natural selection, as evolutionists might occasionally object to, but also as *self-selection,* a still poorly understood computational *developmental* term. Just look back at the incontrovertible data. Yellow fever, smallpox, plague, typhus, cholera, diptheria, whooping cough, measles, flu, an almost endless list of infectious disease has been declining over human history and is now in full-scale retreat. For reasons still to be fully explained, we live in a tremendously complexity-friendly universe. Lethal genes just have no long-term adaptive value given the constraint of parasitic dependence on the hosts, primary, secondary, and otherwise.
As mentioned earlier, the classic prescription for large-scale biopathogen damage to the host arises from the *unintentional lethality* that emerges, for a brief time, whenever the virus, bacteria, or some of its genes jump over to a new host. But the more all humans and all animals become one interconnected system in the modern world, the less such opportunities for surprise present themselves. Due to modern transportation, we are rapidly becoming a single system of immunologically-equilibrated biomass.
The rare cases where we have seen major catastrophes, such as plagues, have been precipitated by crossover that was fueled by large numbers of humans entering a new phase space. For the black plague, the new conditions involved cramming novel densities of human beings into medieval slums with no sanitation. A large percentage of people died in entering that phase space, to be sure, but it was still a negligible fraction of the total population on the planet, and the ones that died quickly conferred their immunity on the survivors. The pattern did not repeat itself. The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic (estimated 20 million casualties worldwide), the worst of all flu pandemics, was facilitated by the first large-scale movement of humans in the first modern world war. Again, a lasting immunity has been conferred. Advances in our ability to identify the virus, to immunize, to quarantine, and other rapid social reaction, including identifying and eliminating the animal reservoirs, has massively reduced the severity of subsequent outbreaks. The 1957 Asian Flu virus killed 70,000 in the U.S. The 1968 Hong Kong flu virus killed less than half that number of Americans. Since then, we've had flu scares, but no pandemics. The 1998 Hong Kong Avian flu killed six people. The 20th century pattern of flu epidemic extinction has been a triumph of science, civilization, and public health, not a fluke. There are a lot of very motivated scientists and public servants working to make conditions things stay this way.
There are nevertheless several ways technology could be used to increase lethality. One is the molecular biological approach. We all fear what might happen if something fast and lethal, like Ebola, were grafted onto some hardy vector, such as an air-carried protein coat like the flu virus. But remember there are very few such potential biological threats in nature that might be hijacked by malevolent intelligence. And this process is far more difficult than one might first imagine. I'd bet money our national and international intelligence community is engaged in anticipating them, and that we've got a range of potential antidotes and counterstrategies on tap. There are a number of ways, including pharmaceutical, therapeutic, behavioral, and technologic interventions, to make the human host a very inhospitable place for these simple organisms. Those antidotes and countermeasures, and our ability to deploy them will get rapidly more effective every year. There are also other lethalness enhancement strategies that I choose not to reveal here. Very soon we'll be able to talk about them openly, after they become impossible to implement, no longer credible threats due to our new immunological competencies. Don't expect that to take much longer. For each one that I can envision, I see overwhelming technological countermeasures, either in place or rapidly becoming so. Post 9/11, counterterrorism has become the big business it has long deserved to be.
If an epidemic does break out, global communication systems now alert people within hours of the first mass symptoms. Want to see self-quarantining in action? Self interest and mass communications would ensure most people would absolutely minimize their contact with other people until the infectivity rates died off. Paul Ewald (*Evolution of Infectious Disease*) notes that when we use an evolutionary strategy like quarantining, we should rapidly select for benign variants of the pathogen, as we greatly raise the fitness cost, to the pathogen, of immobilizing the patient. And with increasing ability to do home work, better home and hospital sanitation, and the coming insta-diagnostics for the type and duration of sickness, we'll be seeing more people staying home when sick, pushing all of our bugs into far more benign forms. Finally, we can see ahead to a collective computational cure for even the common cold. Now that's progress I can get behind.
Unfortunately, today even smart folk like Ewald underestimate the protectiveness of immune systems and overestimate the power of pathogens, assuming that just because these simple systems can evolve quickly, and even that some of them can evolve sexually (e.g., plasmodium in malaria), this implies they have significant potential to create mass lethality, even in our modern, culturally and technologically immune world. I disagree. Such pathogens may quickly change their protein coat, but they can't use such evolutionary survival strategies to *develop* significant new offensive capacity. They are far too computationally constrained. Malaria's sexual reproduction does allow it to resist extermination via our fusillades of antimalarials better than other bugs that are now in full-scale retreat, but it won't stand much longer against our combined technological, medical, immunological, and public health efforts.
Still, it is true that if someone with a lot of funding were today able to overcome formidable odds and engineer a really nasty bug, and then release it at multiple points in one of the few remaining locations on Earth with poor communications infrastructure, we could certainly have millions of casualties. So there's no doubt Sir Martin's proposal is at least theoretically possible. But every year hence this threat will rapidly decrease.
God forbid this should happen. But if it did, my intuition is that it could never happen again. Complex systems as a general rule are just too complex, too powerfully responsive, and have too many redundant and overlapping, complex *and* simple defense mechanisms, to be threatened for long by simple pathogens. Twenty-first century human beings can be easily eliminated individually, but not collectively. Certainly not in the millions. We're just too closely tied together now, too wonderfully interdependent and collectively intelligent. I think it is even becoming clear that we aren't going to see humans killing humans in the millions any more before our machines wake up. I think that this latter issue, also known as the technological singularity, will be the overwhelming scientific, social, philosophical, and spiritual development of our generation.
In conclusion, human immune systems are vastly better protected from simple invaders than most of us understand. We remain immunologically permeable to these organisms not because we couldn't shut them out entirely?complex systems easily could do so, if one consider the statistical and computational arguments?but because there has been a *long-term adaptive value* from remaining semipermeable to their invasion. Retroviral insertion of genes in metazoan evolution, symbiotic coexistence with gut bacteria, and endosymbiosis of bacteria as cellular organelles are all good evidence of the value of remaining accessible to a mostly well-behaved parasitic community. The hidden story of complexity is that immune systems, interdependence and intelligence all exponentially increase with time in the most complex local systems.
We've all noted the accelerating emergence of human intelligence in recent centuries. Some of us have also noted the accelerating interdependence that has come with modern culture. But as a species, we're still only just beginning to realize the power and extent of the biological, cultural, and technological immune systems that serve to protect local complexity.
John Smart
http://www.SingularityWatch.com
Understanding Accelerating Change
Looks like you got your argument ready. Are you tempted to take the bet?
Just to be clear: The 'event' will occur by 2020 or all 1 million will have died by 2020?
Biotechnology is advancing and it can be used as a potent weapon to kill millions of people in a single event. But I don't think it will.
Bio-agents are not analogous to computer viruses. The hacker community will never endorse bioterror -- destruction of human life is against a hacker's ethics code. Every computer virus was developed with the help of the institutional knowledge of thousands of hackers beforehand who collaborated on code. Community and collaboration are highly unlikely to occur in developing malicious bio-agents.
And though organized bioterror is certainly a possible, it is actually really hard to do and bio-weapons plants can often be easy to spot. And even terrorists have a limit on evil. Remember -- no one has ever tried to poison or make-toxic the Jordan River (which would be catastrophic for Israel).
As for "bioerror," it is certainly possible, but also unlikely. Bio-agents have extremely safe procedures and storage systems.
And while both large scale bioterror and bioerror are possible, anticipating these attacks and developing antidotes are also possible. So don't head for the hills just yet.
Unfortunately, I fear that large scale disease and epidemics (like hunger, hepatitis, AIDS, Ebola, etc.) will continue to kill millions of people and decimate nations.
In the past, plagues usually follow famine...this is according to my brother who is currently doing his medical residency.
The reason for this is because famine reduces the human body's immunity to disease. Only then to millions of people die from disease.
Right now, the American population is well fed. So long as things stay this way, I doubt a bio agent will be able to wipe millions of us out.
I think the recent anthrax attack supports this hypothesis. The common thread between all the victims who died were that they were old people with compromised immune systems.
Firstly, I fully agree with John Smart's arguments for why a biodisaster is unlikely to kill a million people. I would like to add my arguments for why it won't happen.
The key premise is that ultra-virulent bugs of the sort that would kill a million people are an extremely stupid option relative to nuclear (or possibly chemical) weapons, whether for a state seeking WMD capability or for a terrorist.
This is true for five main reasons:
1) Effectiveness
Nuclear weapons remain the most destructive weapons known to man. A 50-megatonne H-bomb in a major city would kill 5 to 10 million people, destroy a large amount of industry, and render a 50-mile radius uninhabitable for tens of thousands of years. A bioweapon is never going to do all this.
2) Terror
I believe that the general public is more afraid of nuclear than biological weapons. This is largely based on popular culture - nuclear terrorism figures far more prominently than bio-terror in films, for examps. This means that a terrorist will provoke more fear with a nuclear threat than a bio-threat. Similarly, nuclear weapons have more deterrent value in government arsenals.
3) Safety to users
With a nuclear weapon, premature detonation is extremely unlikely. The likely dose from a (far more likely) leak is small and therfore a manageable risk. With a high-end biological weapon a leak will kill everyone in the area.
4) Cost and feaability
Nuclear weapons are a mature technology and most of the necessary knowledge has leaked into the public domain, and would certainly be accessible to an enterprising terrorist. There is also a thriving black market in uranium. Bioweapons are still an area where substantial research is needed to build a working weapon. On top of this, there is not much biological material available for a terrorist without their own lab. Anyone building WMD on a budget (particularly a terrorist) would therefore be more likely to go for the nuclear option.
5) Treaty systems
Biological weapons are banned by international treaty. Everyone, not just the US, would ostracise a country that built the. Nuclear weapons are not - notice that India and Pakistan were able to publicly admit to having them without becoming rogue states.
If both WMD states and terrorists prefer nuclear weapons to biological ones then
1) bioterror will not happen
2) there will be no stockpiles of deliberately engineered highly virulent bugs, reducing the risks of bioerror. John Smart has already explained why a non-engineered bug will probably not kill a million people even if it was acidentally released.
I would be happy to take up this bet, but I can only really spare $500. Would Mr Smart be interested in taking up the other half?
Could someone from Long Bets please confirm the rules on joint betting?
"1) Effectiveness
Nuclear weapons remain the most destructive weapons known to man. [...] A bioweapon is never going to do all this."
The Black Death killed some large percentage of the then population of the world, and that was a natural disease.
It is theoretically possible to develop a disease that would do much worse.
Characteristics would include ...
1. Long incubation period before death.
2. Easily transmitted
3. Very high mortality rate
4. Vacine possible to develop [If terrorists want to live].
Diseases exist that have all of these characteristics, but (luckily) not all in the same disease. Essentially, you might not know you are under attack until it is already too late.
Not that I agree with the bet, but I disagree with your reasoning.
"Could someone from Long Bets please confirm the rules on joint betting? "...
Joint betting is welcome and encouraged. The joint bettors might write separately authored arguments for their side, if they wish. The multiple names would be published as the bettors.
What needs to be unitary is the payment and the charity to receive the winnings. One bettor makes the joint payment. The multiple bettors agree on a single designated charity.
"[...] I would like to add my arguments for why it won't happen.
2) Terror
I believe that the general public is more afraid of nuclear than biological weapons. This is largely based on popular culture - nuclear terrorism figures far more prominently than bio-terror in films, for examps. This means that a terrorist will provoke more fear with a nuclear threat than a bio-threat. Similarly, nuclear weapons have more deterrent value in government arsenals."
Nuclear weapons provoke more fear than conventional explosives, therefore terrorists will not use conventional explosives. Nuclear weapons have more detterent value than conventional weapons, therefore governments will not sustain high levels of conventional forces.
Even given the premise, your conclusion does not follow.
"3) Safety to users
With a nuclear weapon, premature detonation is extremely unlikely. The likely dose from a (far more likely) leak is small and therfore a manageable risk. With a high-end biological weapon a leak will kill everyone in the area."
1. Terrorists aren't noted for their health care and long lives.
2. There is no vacine for radiation[*]
3. There is a _wide_ range of adverse happenings between detonation and 'small leak'. Try banging together two subcritical masses to keep warm some time ^^
[*] Although there are various things you can do depending on the type and extent of exposure.
" 4) Cost and feaability
Nuclear weapons are a mature technology and most of the necessary knowledge has leaked into the public domain"
While that is somewhat true, a lot of the documents available are jokes / highly dangerous / difficult to attempt.
"and would certainly be accessible to an enterprising terrorist."
Given that even a small state doesn't find it _that_ easy [see. Saddam Hussein] he would have to be a very 'enterprising' terrorist indeed.
"There is also a thriving black market in uranium. Bioweapons are still an area where substantial research is needed to build a working weapon. On top of this, there is not much biological material available for a terrorist without their own lab."
Why shouldn't terrorists have access to labs? Note that the Anthrax letter incidents have been fairly conclusively tracked back to 'somebody working at a military biolab' from the techniques used and strain of Anthrax.
See also http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992539
and http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992555
"5) Treaty systems
Biological weapons are banned by international treaty."
Poorly monitored international treaties to which the US has not signed up.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991076
"Everyone, not just the US, would ostracise a country that built them."
And exactly how does that affect countries that already are ostracised or terrorists for that matter?
For the purpose of this bet, do we need to refine/restrict the definition of 'bioterror?' Would a nanotechologically-created, artificial pathogen built with intelligence, be considered 'bioterror?'
"Would a nanotechologically-created, artificial pathogen built with intelligence, be considered 'bioterror?'"
I don't see why not as it would certainly scare me. Given the target date of '2020' however, even the more enthusiastic nano-tech proponents are unlikely to expect intelligent nano-life by then.
Id agree that whilst its possible to develop a pathogen deadly enough, the time constraints on this bet make it unlikely.
But one thing to consider...an agent being released in the US, or Europe, Japan, etc, is completely different to releasing an agent (deliberately or accidentally) in an area where the government may be unable to cope. India has several cities of over 10 million people. Tehran is 10m, al-Quahira 15, Jakarta 17.
It might take some time for the respective governments of these countries to be able to bring the required resources to bear on the situation. Infrastructure might not be able to cope with huge numbers of civilians in a packed city trying to flee to the surrounding countryside. Would it be possible to set up an isolation zone quick enough to prevent the spread of disease to the surrounding areas? Maybe not, given that releasing a pathogen in a slum area would increase the chances of disease taking hold in the general population before the government is properly aware of the situation.
If the target was simple terror ("look what we can do" as opposed to harming one nation specifically) then I'd not be looking at the richest nations to attack, but the poorest. I wouldn't be choosing New York I'd be choosing New Mexico.
I hope it doesnt happen, and I dont think it will, but the idea still scares the hell out of me.
I think the most likely next 'major' (but probably not bet-winning) event is likely to be by an American who works in an U.S. lab.
Purely from the lack of success in catching Mr. Anthrax Letter, and the amount of relevant classified work going on in the U.S.
Mr. Rees tells about an error on manipulating D.N.A. but life can be changed in many other ways. I´d like to say that an error so "bio" as that Mr. Rees talks on is that of the damage environment is receiving from us. In my opinion, this damage will provoke much more pain than Rees', and in much less time.
It's possible to argue, as Edward Hooper has done in his book "The River", that exactly this type of event has already happened. There seems to be evidence to suggest that it is at very least possible (if not more probable than existing, more popular theories) that the origin of the HIV epidemic in humans is a result of work done in Africa in the 1950's during the development and administration of oral Polio vaccines.
While this would certainly qualify as a catastrophic "bioerror" if it were indeed true, it does bring up another interesting question considering the countless lives that the Polio vaccine ended up saving.
For the purposes of this discussion, I don't think there's really ample evidence to apply it to the conclusion of this bet, but I thought that some of you might find this book interesting.
I have to agree with Professor Rees, if only because we've already made one "bioerror" that could kill a million people easily - failing to detect the Soviet Biopreparat bioweapons program in time to prevent them from developing and publishing research on how best to create "super bugs."
While Soviet doctors toiled alongside their colleagues from across the world to eradicate smallpox in Africa and Asia, Soviet doctors and microbiologists at home made tons of smallpox and plague for use against the United States and toiled to create "chimeras" - organisms with genetic material and pathogenicity from two or more naturally-occuring organisms that cause disease.
Dr. Sergei Popov, a former Biopreparat researcher who now works for the US Department of Defense, related on the PBS television series NOVA how, while working in Russia, he was able to insert genes for myelin in the DNA of legionella (which causes Legionnaire's Disease), creating a hybrid organism that (in test animals) caused a transient legionella infection, which in turn caused the victim's own immune system to attack its own myelin - the fatty substance that coats nerves. Death soon followed in the test animals.
It's naive to suppose that the defections of a few key Russian bioweaponeers to Britain and the US will keep knowledge of how to create horrors like this off of the world weapons market. The simple need to feed and clothe one's family will force some Russian researchers who are now out of work to take whatever employment they can get - and in some cases, this may be with a rogue state or even an organized crime syndicate which desires to have or sell bioweapons.
If you include inadequate disease containment precautions in the category of "bioerror," we live every day with the possibility that an unusually hardy strain of Ebola or Marburg might find its way into the confines of an airliner, or on a load of exotic animals bound for North America or Europe.
Other posters' comments about the fragility of Ebola don't seem to take into account the Reston, Virginia incident, in which a strain of Ebola (Ebola reston) which kills monkeys and not man wiped out an entire primate holding facility - dozens of monkeys. Ebola reston spread from room to room in this facility in a matter of days.
While it's possible that poor animal hygiene - reuse of hypodermic needles from animal to animal - may have killed some monkeys, when Ebola spread from one room to another at the Hazelton Research facility in Reston it could well have done so through the air.
Since then, three other incidents of this nature occurred in the United States - monkeys with Ebola reston entering the country and wiping out the other monkeys in facilities in Texas and the Northeast, and once again in Reston.
I mention these incidents because there is evidence that the Ebola reston strain spread through the air in what one researcher termed "an Ebola cold," a respiratory infection which also caused the internal organ necrosis which kills Ebola victims.
The monkeys' symptoms in the second Ebola incident at Reston differed subtly from those of the first, leading some researchers at the US Army's USAMRIID biological defense facility in Fort Detrick, Maryland - the people who had to eventually haul out the dead monkeys and euthanize the surviving (but presumably infected) ones - to wonder if the Ebola reston virus hadn't mutated into a form which had characteristics of the common cold.
If we can accidentally discover an Ebola reston strain that attacks monkeys and not humans, and can spread through the air, will the next strain of Ebola, or Lassa fever, or Marburg or any of a long list of other viruses that kill quickly by causing massive bleeding be the "slate wiper" that spreads from person to person in coughs and sneezes as it kills?
The "bioerror" that destroys a million or more people may well be our species' intrusion into parts of the world where deadly viruses lie in wait, to be carried out into a world of hapless human and animal hosts.
The worldwide outbreak of SARS shows how fast and wide a virus can spread, hitching a ride in air travelers' bodies from continent to continent, crossing oceans in hours and circling the world in days. In the case of SARS, the "bioerror" was the Chinese bureaucracy's mania for secrecy, allowing the disease to spread across China and from there across the world when elementary public health measures could have contained its spread.
Fortunately, SARS is less deadly than measles, but what about the next virus, or the one after that?
"Fortunately, SARS is less deadly than measles, but what about the next virus, or the one after that?"
True, but as Mr. Smart explains, the fact that SARS spread so well and the fact that it is not that lethal are related. Look how quickly a notsolethal disease lost it's effect when people were informed about it. If the disease was any more lethal, there would be a larger response and less spread. I think SARS is a very clear example of what Mr. Smart talks about in terms of global communication being preventative to disease.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I think you're really stretching the definition of "bioerror." Especially in the claim that "inadequate disease containment precautions" is such. If so, then every viral outbreak ever has been "bioerror." I believe Mr. Rees definitely implies that "bioerror" refers to causing a biological catastrophy, not merely failing to prevent one.
I know it was posted a long time ago, but I hate to let a bad argument go by. The argument that Monroe made against bioweapons was set out by outlining the reasons a terrorist might choose to use bioweapons. The idea in each catagory is to show that if all other variables are the same, a terrorist would choose nuclear over bio. Your (Blay's) argument against the terror catagory is not valid. Monroe meant that if nukes and bioweapons were similarly priced and available, then nukes would be prefered due to the terror factor. Your argument that conventional weapons are used over nukes is true, but not because of the terror factor but because conventional weapons are much easier to get.
(Although, for the record, your other arguments against Monroes discussion are convincing.)
In any case, arguments like these depend upon the reliability of terrorists to perform good economic analyses -- ie, to rationally weigh the costs and benefits of a given weapon.
Whereas, historically, very few terrorists show much aptitude and/or willingness to perform such an analysis. Instead, they tend to be tactical 'fetishists', preferring an attack method based on psychological, cultural, and/or historical factors, rather than, say, efficacy.
A human bomb is not nearly as efficient as a human bomber, who can plant many bombs as opposed to simply exploding once -- yet human bombs remain very popular in the Middle East, whereas planted bombs have been more popular in most of Europe.
Right now, terrorists, in general, have not shown any great preference for biological weapons, but tastes do change over time. If bio weapons become 'sexy', then we can expect more terrorists to pursue them.
However, it's worth noting that prior to 9-11, the most serious terrorist attack on the US itself was a biological attack: the salmonella poisonings in the northwest in the 80s by the followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (or followers of his director of operations, depending on how you look at it). About 750 people were injured by that attack.
I've seen some good arguments (particularly John Smart)against the idea of terrorists causing a massive epidemic. OK, fine, if not a big bang, what about a slow burn? If they can't spritz tens of thousands of subway riders, what about packing a payload onto a mosquito?
West Nile Virus has spread throughout North America in just a couple of years bouncing between birds and mosquitos. Where did it come from in the first place? Some speculate that it first appeared in this country near the UN compound at the same time it showed up in Israel - perhaps West Nile Virus is, in fact, a biological weapon. There are already about 400 dead and quite a bit of effort and money has gone into combatting this now permanent problem. If someone wanted to mess with us, I think they are succeeding.
Also, in support of the possibility of a big bang attack - since the US and USSR made huge investments for decades in bio warefare, I'm going to go out on a limb and say they came up with effective bugs and effective delivery methods. I'd further say that if they can do it, so can someone else, given the finances and willingness. Even if Osama and his merry band of mujahadeen couldn't make it, they could buy it. Maybe the Russian mob would sell plundered weapons, or Kim il Jong would kick some peasants off their little farm and grow the stuff as a cash crop, or China would find a way to put the goods into the right hands to make a deniable attack on the industrialized democracies.
I'd also suggest that clever people (some of whom are blood thirsty Al Queda) come up with clever solutions to difficult problems. If there's a way to do it and a crack in our armor, I'm sure the bad guys will very likely find it. In the words of a sage, "It ain't whatcha don't know that kills ya - it's whatcha do know that ain't so." - complacency in the face of reasonable arguments could be a deadly mistake.
vsimilitude wrote:
"as Mr. Smart explains, the fact that SARS spread so well and the fact that it is not that lethal are related. Look how quickly a notsolethal (sic) disease lost it's effect when people were informed about it. If the disease was any more lethal, there would be a larger response and less spread. I think SARS is a very clear example of what Mr. Smart talks about in terms of global communication being preventative to disease."
Let's say we were dealing with a disease with an asymptomatic incubation period of a week or so (such as plague), and which was extremely communicable by inhalation. The air supply on airliners assures that if one person has such a disease, most of the other passengers will also be exposed at the end of a two-hour flight.
Even if only one or two people so infected are global travelers, or even just ride between (say) Denver and Seattle on a plane ultimately bound for Hong Kong and Beijing, such an airborne infection will have crossed the Earth before the first inkling of a problem arises.
The infectivity and lethality of a virus are unrelated. They may combine to make spread of the virus unlikely if the exposed persons are limited to foot travel and die before they infect very many people. However, (as happened with the first known outbreak of Marburg virus and nearly happened in an Ebola outbreak in the 1970s) the same virus might ride with its host on an aircraft and spread across the world in hours, where it might infect, and infect, and infect. And if it is as virulent as plague, smallpox, Ebola, et cetera, it would kill, and kill, and kill.
Curiously, having said that public health measures such as those which effectively limited the spread of SARS would either prevent or limit the scope of a bioerror below Professor Rees' threshold of a million victims, vsimilitude goes on to say the opposite:
"On a somewhat unrelated note, I think you're really stretching the definition of "bioerror." Especially in the claim that "inadequate disease containment precautions" is such. If so, then every viral outbreak ever has been "bioerror." I believe Mr. Rees definitely implies that "bioerror" refers to causing a biological catastrophy, not merely failing to prevent one. "
Since the sanitarian movement of the Nineteenth Century and Koch's Postulate have given us tools to prevent contagion, failing to prevent a biological catastrophe DOES qualify as a "bioerror."
The change came about with our increased understanding of the cause and prevention of disease, and the concomitant responsibility on our part to limit its spread when possible. Physicians before Lister and Semmelweiss who did not wash their hands before surgery or attending childbirths definitely committed bioerrors by spreading childbed fever and other diseases with their hands. They just were unaware of the fact (or in Semmelweiss' case, in denial).
Since the 1970s the human race has been on notice that the primeval areas of the world harbor diseases capable of killing us in great swaths. If we choose to disregard that fact and fail to act accordingly, that would be a bioerror, the dimensions of which would be limited only by the infectivity and virulence of the organisms involved.
Richard Preston makes a good point in his book "The Hot Zone" - the construction of the Kinshasa Highway through the Congo may well have been the bioerror responsible for the appearance of AIDS and ultimately the death of many millions - in which case, Professor Rees may already have won his bet.
I think the best way for Americans to protect themselves agains bio-terror is a change in foreign policy.
Fight the causes of terror, not the symptoms.
Very simple, but requires courage.
shonagon53 makes a good point, but neglects people such as the white supremacist microbiologist here in the US a few years ago who nearly got his hands on some nasty bugs from the American Type Culture Collection (who also sold Saddam Hussein's BW effort seed stock).
Domestic bioterrorism is in many ways more liable to happen than bioterror from foreigners. Hatred and other emotional diseases are just as apt to happen in those people with the intellectual tools to develop bioweapons as they are in mentally average and less well-functioning people.
Someone else pointed out that the followers of the Baghwan Rajneesh in Oregon carried out what we think is the first mass biological attack in the United States - salmonella droppered on salad bars and buffets intended to disable a large part of the county's populace so the Rajneeshis could carry a local election and make their farm a municipal government.
It's unwise to think that more domestic attacks won't follow.
However, I do agree with shonagon53 in that we need to go after the causes of terror - including attacking its financial sponsors where they live, if their host governments refuse to stop them sponsoring terror.
It's long past time to take the party home to those who pay the caterers.
Discussing five reasons advanced by jmonroe why a million-plus death bioerror will not occur within Prof. Rees' time frame:
1) Effectiveness
ˆNuclear weapons remain the most destructive weapons known to man. A 50-megatonne H-bomb in a major city would kill 5 to 10 million people, destroy a large amount of industry, and render a 50-mile radius uninhabitable for tens of thousands of years. A bioweapon is never going to do all this."
I can think of one way right offhand - an engineered organism that produces dioxin as a metabolic by-product. Not only would a huge number of people sicken and die, but the dioxin would linger where they lived and died and make those areas uninhabitable for a long time.
Apart from that, jmonroe's assessment of the weapons effects of a 50MT nuclear device is exaggerated greatly.
Reference Glasstone and Dolan's "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, " US Government Printing Office, for details. Just one point - the blast area would be habitable in ten or twenty years. Most of the nuclear testing sites in the Pacific are now habitable with reasonable precautions.
2) Terror
"I believe that the general public is more afraid of nuclear than biological weapons. This is largely based on popular culture - nuclear terrorism figures far more prominently than bio-terror in films, for examps. This means that a terrorist will provoke more fear with a nuclear threat than a bio-threat. Similarly, nuclear weapons have more deterrent value in government arsenals. "
This would have been a true statement before late 2001 and the anthrax attacks. Now, the public is more attuned to the dangers of bioterrorism and biodisasters, so much so that the theme has occurred in movies such as "29 Days" (and before 2001, in movies such as "12 Monkeys"), and that a rash of hoax anthrax letters were used to evacuate schools and abortion clinics.
3) Safety to users
"With a nuclear weapon, premature detonation is extremely unlikely. The likely dose from a (far more likely) leak is small and therfore a manageable risk."
Wrong. The likely radiation dose from an IMPROVISED nuclear weapons is actually quite high, because the people making it won't likely have access to critical mass summaries compiled at great cost - including the lives of Los Alamos physicists Slotin and Daghlian, both of whom perished trying to gather that information and who accidentally created critical masses, then died of the resulting radiation.
There's also the risk involved in processes such as processing plutonium into usable form for a weapon, placing tampers and reflectors... enough risk in general that would-be nuclear terrorists would probably be sacrificing their lives just building the weapon, regardless of whether it goes off or not.
"With a high-end biological weapon a leak will kill everyone in the area."
Actually, if the leak were detected, standard biohazard management techniques would suffice to contain the threat and reduce casualties to a minimum.
In general, the problem with bioweapons isn't leaks, it's being able to spread the stuff properly - "weaponization"
4) Cost and feasibility
"Nuclear weapons are a mature technology and most of the necessary knowledge has leaked into the public domain, and would certainly be accessible to an enterprising terrorist."
Not as much as you'd think. Enough of the necessary knowledge has leaked out for production of crude weapons, weapons which are just subcritical (thus creating significant neutron and gamma radiation) enough not to fizzle or explode but are seething with enough radiation to kill their owners.
"There is also a thriving black market in uranium."
However, this uranium is NOT weapons-grade.
"Bioweapons are still an area where substantial research is needed to build a working weapon."
And this research has been done, and to a large extent, publicized.
"On top of this, there is not much biological material available for a terrorist without their own lab. Anyone building WMD on a budget (particularly a terrorist) would therefore be more likely to go for the nuclear option. "
Wrong. In Project BUPKIS (spelling?) the US Government decided to see what sort of usable BW could be developed with off-the-shelf lab equipment, making weaponized simulants with no real potential for harm, but which required the same manufacturing techniques as real biological weapons. They used about $10,000 - $15,000 of equipment to make a fully weaponized simulated agent.
So we've established a price tag similar to most estimates of the cost of making a usable nuclear weapon. If I had my druthers, I'd rather use biotechnology, which I understand better and which would be less likely to kill me while I'm using it - but that's just me.
I'd like to add, though, that the number of competent microbiologists in the world is larger than the number of competent nuclear engineers.
5) Treaty systems
"Biological weapons are banned by international treaty. Everyone, not just the US, would ostracise a country that built the. Nuclear weapons are not - notice that India and Pakistan were able to publicly admit to having them without becoming rogue states."
Depends on your definition of "rogue state."
But regardless, evidence is excellent that the Russians are continuing research on biological entities whose only purpose would be to kill people - and we haven't slapped their wrists for that, have we?
Whether a given country is ostracized for creating a given type of special weapon is not a good indicator of how useful that weapon might be in the hands of non-state actors such as terrorists.
pblay wrote:
"I think the most likely next 'major' (but probably not bet-winning) event is likely to be by an American who works in an U.S. lab.
Purely from the lack of success in catching Mr. Anthrax Letter, and the amount of relevant classified work going on in the U.S. "
First, the FBI's lack of success in catching the person/people who sent the anthrax letters tells us NOTHING about the nationality of the culprits.
Second, there's a lot of NON-classified work being done in Russia, published and everything, on pathogens which have been modified to incorporate virulence factors from other organisms, or to target specific organ systems such as nerve tissue.
In contrast, when researchers at Fort Detrick, the US Army's biological defense labs, noticed that Ebola may have accidentally spread through the air in one of their Level 4 biocontainment labs, they did not follow up with experiments designed to confirm or deny the fact - specifically because they didn't want to appear to be conducting weapons work with Ebola.
If you're looking for an area where sanctioned lab work is liable to result in a major bioerror, try outside the United States, say Russia or Iran, where we know such work is going on.
First, the FBI's lack of success in catching the person/people who sent the anthrax letters tells us NOTHING about the nationality of the culprits.
You're right. It's a whole bunch of other stuff that tells us that - not the fact that the FBI hasn't been able to catch him(/her/them).
I said:
First, the FBI's lack of success in catching the person/people who sent the anthrax letters tells us NOTHING about the nationality of the culprits.
Paul Blay replied:
"You're right. It's a whole bunch of other stuff that tells us that - not the fact that the FBI hasn't been able to catch him(/her/them). "
Just out of curiosity, what other stuff would that be?
There's a lot of talk in Long Bets about "classified research" on weapons systems which the United States has agreed in treaties not to develop, but no one can offer concrete proof of what is a very serious accusation.
By contrast, Coalition troops found many drums full of organophosphate pesticides (which are chemically similar to nerve gas and sometimes, as in the case of methyl parathion, almost as toxic, and which Serbian troops used to kill prisoners during the recent Balkans wars) buried in a military compound near an-Nasiriya. Despite spending a lot of time near cotton and soybean fields where these insecticides are used often, I have never seen anyone bury the stuff before the drums were empty, nor have I seen OUR military work with these pesticides at all.
Later, American forces found several prefab trailer-type laboratories equipped for working with pathogenic bacteria, also buried. Despite working in the health field most of my life, I've never seen that happen here, either.
Is it just me, or are the press and the political hacks (i.e., the Democratic party leadership and Presidential candidates) who have a strong incentive to discredit the President on the weapons of mass destruction issue cutting Iraq a LOT more slack than the posters here are giving the US on who's making WMD? Just wondering.
A couple factors mitigate against a massive successful bioterror attack or accident. Most importantly, successful bioterror attacks are more difficult than commonly supposed; effective distribution of a pathogen is harder than common doomday scenarios suppose (e.g. anthrax in the subway). Second, blowback (unintentional consequence on parties sympathetic to the perpetrators) is likely in any bioterror event.
Before any attack is likely to kill 1,000,000 or more, failed (or lesser) attacks and their blowback are likely to convince would-be perpetrators that bioterror is not worth the effort.
A successful massive bioteror attack would require a sudden, dramatic leap in capability by a terrorist organization. The case of a successful attack is unlikely; far more likely is an attack of lesser fatalities, which would attract determined and extreme opposition before more potent abilities are deveoped.
An accident is more likely, but it would require a terrorist organization to surge to the edge of technological capabilities, and as of yet, no such organization has demonstrated the abiliy to deploy novel technology, never mind invent it; novel uses of existing technology are common, but could not generate a bioterror attack by any forseeable pathway. While the potential does exist, lesser incidents (or accidents) provide a negative feedback that makes a high casualty bio-attack unlikely.
All of this assumes that bioterror does not include pure chemical terror, e.g. a non-fission radiological bomb; also that the technology to design pathogens targeted to specific, ethnically-distinguishable genes does not become commonplace. While this technology could exist in the next 10 years, there is currently no evidence that the genetic makeup of individuals can be accurately and uniquely correlated with specific groups defined by politics, geography, nationality, ethnicity, or religion. That again indicates that "blowback" provides sufficient negative feedback to prevent a massive bioterror incident.
Undoubtedly we will see an expansive definition of "Bioerror" that makes this bet's success inevitable. When an error such as Bhophal caused 25,000+ immediate deaths, and the world's population becoming more densely oncentrated in cities, accordingly, bioerror could be as simple as a water chlorinating system failing and something such as Cholera killing a large number of people.
I voted "no"...though I think there is close to a 50/50 chance of bioterror causing close to a million deaths in one incident.
I think it's far more unlikely that bioerror will cause such a large number of deaths.
We have existing systemic deaths of greater than one megadeath per year from preventable causes.
Coal pollution kills over 1 million per year.
Long-lived radioactive waste from a modern 1000-MW electrical coal plant:
Coal heat content = 33649 kJ/kg
Tons of coal burned per year = 2.46 million
Carbon fraction = 81.9%
Ash fraction = 7.8%
Sulfur fraction = 0.8%
Fly ash emitted per year = 957 tons
Uranium emitted per year = 950 kg
Fraction of uranium in fly ash = 25%
Fraction of uranium in bottom ash = 75%
Of course the uranium is almost entirely U-238, with a half-life of 4.51 billion years. that uranium is accompanied by the entire decay chain of daughter radionuclides, including Radium, Polonium, Bismuth, Radon gas, etc. similar amounts of radioactive thorium as well in the coal.
Other per plant waste: 100 lbs of mercury, arsenic, toxic metals, NOx, SOx, etc...
Breakdown of other emissions.
Outdoor Air pollution which includes coal pollution 3 million per year.
Car accidents 1.2 million per year
The World Health organization lists that 24% of disease are from environmental causes
The report estimates that more than 13 million deaths annually are due to preventable environmental causes. Unsanitary water, indoor air pollution.
Preventing terrorism is important but there is systemic and certain problems that should be addressed. 13 megadeaths per year from preventable causes.
The Manhattan project should be to fix these because we can definitely save lives when we have solved it.
In the short to mid-term, we must recognize that the coal problem is the biggest problem and that nuclear power and all other power sources are far safer. 50 deaths from Chernobyl and 4000 made sick and may eventually die. The 50 deaths are less than one hour of coal deaths. It is less than one week of coal miner deaths (6000-10000 per year).
Mass production of nuclear power, ramping up conservation, cellulose biofuels, wind, solar etc... A compehensive energy plan. The arguments for global warming are fairly convincing but even without them, we know that we are using 6 billion tons of coal it is 40% of rail freight. 40% of the rail maintenance costs and deaths are coal related.
We can handle the nuclear waste and proliferation issues. the waste is sitting in vats. The longest lived waste are partially burned nuclear fuel. Molten salt reactors can be made to use the "waste" for power generation.
We should address the other preventable deaths. We might be able to find a way to save a million of the 13 million each of the next years. Find a way to save them all in the 13 years leading up to 2020.
Maybe a bioterror event will happen by 2020. You know that if we do nothing another 13 million will needlessly die this year and next year.
If the single event is negligence and mismanagement that it keeps happening every year.
I don't think it's going to be people, but rather the earth itself that thins the population, thereby reducing green house gases. There is a Very Real Pandemic on the Global Horizon, that is growing organicly. Put World Health Organization into a search engin, then read the facts. CDC feels the same & is working on preparedness now. The problem is overpopulation, & I think that Earth will take care of it's own problems. (Originally a thought from: George Carlin..) Still, it's a valid arguement.
The Average Person in the US Population, thinks this is not possibly a real threat. The Average Health Care Provider, Gov't Virology Investigators & the Leaders of the Countries in the World, Know this is a Massive Disater & we are close. The most densely populated areas will be hit the worst & no Country in the World @ this time is prepared Medically for a Crisis of this Magnatude.
I live in another Country, other than the US & we recieve programing that is not shown in North America. I believe there was a Model of the Projection of this Pandemic on National Geograph TV, or Discovery TV. I failed to find a reference for it on Geograph TV. Purhaps Discovery. In brief-This Pandemic would move so fast that w/in 5 wks, it would be around the globe. Transportation would be sorely curtailed, including food & medicine. It wasn't predicted to last long, 3 mos.
We spend so much time thinking about how the bad guys are some how going to poison, bomb or kill us in some other hideous way. The reason their Leader have the ability to manipulate these people is because they are impoverish & have nothing to loose. They can't get jobs & they really don't care if they live. Would you? If people have hope, plans, ideas, something to work for & something to loose...Usually they don't want to find a cause to destroy a system they feel they have an opportunity to win in. This is in large part caused by too many humans & not enough resources. All of these major problem areas suffer from the same illness-POVERTY. I think that the inequitable distribution of resouces, due to the general bad luck of where you were born, has alot to do w/the problem.
The 4 Horsemen are Riding in every corner of the world, when they are done there will be fewer people. If you or I are part of the remaining specimens, I hope that we discourage constant breeding, or it will happen again...
Back to Bioweapons: There are so many remarkable human engineered viral possibilities that exist today. Would any Gov't in their right mind release these? Survival, Profit & Resources are a Huge motivation. Back pack Nukes exist & there is Plenty of Plutonium missing from Georgia. Still, I think the planet will take care of it's woes. I've seen how people live in squallor, disease, chemical pollution, bad water & bad food. The Incredible Disasters that have happened in the past 10 yrs are nothing, compared to Pandemic, it is the Monster. It's 100% Natural!
Your Arguement is good, mine is just different.
The major diseases with a high enough infection rate and mortality rate are either too delicate to survive in the most likely bioterror targets, or are already treatable. Bubonic plague is deadly, but treatable. It might get thousands, but not a million. Ebola is deadly, but too delicate to survive in many places other than warm moist jungle, which is too sparsely inhabited to kill enough people for this prediction.
The military definition of casualties includes injured, dead, and sometimes missing, captured etc.
Please be specific in your prediction. Are you including sick?
Sorry, I know everybody likes to get their hysteria up about bioweapons or the big scary threat of bird flu, but I gotta take issue with someone saying "prior to 9-11, the most serious terrorist attack on the US itself was a biological attack: the salmonella poisonings in the northwest in the 80s by the followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh "
Uh, there were NO FATALITIES in that attack, and about 45 people were hospitalized.
Pardon me if that doesn't make me run home to build a backyard bomb shelter.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the OKC bombing claimed 168 lives and injured hundreds.
Biotech was abandoned by the US/USSR not because of ethical niceties but because it just doesn't work very well.
Given that biological agents have to have a host to survive on, there's very little adaptive value to really lethal genes.
Even in the 1918 flu, the worst ever seen, only about 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 of those who CONTRACTED it died. And a lot of them were wounded soldiers who would likely have weak immune systems for various reasons. And a 20-30% mortality rate is on a par with malaria. A problem, but not something that kills millions in a single exposure.
Given that there's a non-zero number of those who were exposed, but not infected (no real way to tell), an "educated guess" of between 1 in 5 and 1 in 10 people EXPOSED to it died sounds fair.
That's not the kind of numbers that produces even six-figure deaths, let alone a million.
Only way somebody's gonna kill a million people in "an attack" is if you come up with something more like AIDS, that might (for various reasons, most of them preventable) eventually over years or decades accumulate a death toll of a million people.
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