Posted on 02/22/2014 10:33:53 AM PST by BenLurkin
There are four major infectious agents that officials fear terrorists will turn into potent bioweapons. The first three you know — smallpox, anthrax, and the plague. The fourth....
...tularemia is a serious disease. Humans can contract...through the bites of ticks and flies or handling the corpses of infected bunnies. Failure to cook said bunnies thoroughly will also make you sick. And that's not all....15 residents of Martha's Vineyard came down with "rabbit fever" in a single season — an outbreak thought to have started when someone ran over an infected rabbit with a lawnmower.
...Russia, and Japan have all been experimenting with tularemia's use as a bioweapon since at least World War II. That's why researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) are peering into the bacterium's inner workings to learn how we might fight such an outbreak....finding tularemia to be a rather sneaky microbe.
As an epidemiologist with the CDC's Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, Kiersten Kugeler says tularemia is a cause for concern because it's both highly infectious and widely available in nature.... "And just last week the CDC announced a cooperative effort with other federal agencies, international organizations, and foreign governments to launch the Global Health Security Agenda[???], which Kugeler said is designed to "standardize and unify response to disease outbreaks and close gaps in surveillance and response."[???]
Kugeler says terrorists would require technology of "substantial sophistication" to weaponize rabbit fever on a large scale.
Then again, sometimes the simplest methods work best. There's some evidence to suggest that the Hittites used rabbit fever against their enemies over 3,300 years ago — making it the first known instance of bioterrorism. The Hittites' method? Leaving infected rams along the roads traveled by their enemies. After all, who can resist a free ram?
With the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch
I have no idea, but I sure as hell wouldn’t be asking that question around here. It’s just asking the NSA sic the FBI and DHS on you.
The DNR introduced tularemia into the rabbit population where I used to live a long time ago to control the rabbit population. If you know a nickel's worth of biology, you figured out already that the susceptible rabbits died off, and the rest are now carriers. I was always told if you shoot a rabbit to eat, wash your hands carefully and be sure you cook it thoroughly. Not sure you could weaponize something that's already thoroughly infested into our rabbit population.
wow
Reminds me a bit of “Watership Down”
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Run for your life, girl!!
They might look innocent but they actually gangsters in disguise
Does that rifle have a hare-trigger?
rabbits smabbits everyone knows how to deal with the hordes
gather a bunch of friends together
take a casual stroll through the brush
round them up
and beat them to death with clubs
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