Posted on 01/20/2009 4:44:31 PM PST by tobyhill
An Al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria closed a base earlier this month after an experiment with unconventional weapons went awry, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Monday.
The official, who spoke on the condition he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said he could not confirm press reports that the accident killed at least 40 Al Qaeda operatives, but he said the mishap led the militant group to shut down a base in the mountains of Tizi Ouzou province in eastern Algeria.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Antibiotic resistance can be accomplished without engineering: just expose the bacteria to insufficient courses of antibiotics repeatedly (the reason we have antibiotic resistant strains of staph, TB, etc., but done intentionally).
In the case of plague it can be done in the rats until you have a strain that kills them in spite of antibiotics.
bttt
Did AQ just weaponize the Black Death....and is that even possible?
We can deal with the Plague. It’s The Gay-Gene Mutation bomb technology that terrifies me.
At this point, even a natural outbreak can’t be ruled out.
The usual form of the plague, carried by insect vectors, is rarely fatal and easily treated (bubonic plague). However, when arasolized (pneumonic plague) it is almost uniformly fatal, even with modern ICU and antibiotic therapies. On any given day in our city, hospital beds are at a premium, ICU beds even more so. Just 100 people in a city needing an ICU bed all at once would swamp the system. Now imagine a few thousand needing an ICU bed. I’m sorry, in an attack like this one almost everyone infected would die, modern medicine or no.
Yes, the pneumonic form would be much worse, but if infected flea infested rats are introduced to a densely populated slum, for example, the results would not quite significant. If victims are not given the correct ABs very quickly, they will die.
I mangled that last. The results would be quite significant.
Yes, and they probably will get better at dealing with it.
But take comfort, we have O to keep us safe.
Is that the message here?
A bunch of terrorists killed themselves while apparently trying to make an "unconventional weapon."
End of story.
I hear you
Either way, I was more replying to the folks who think this is no big deal, that plague can be easily cured with abx. I hope this is not where we are headed with the terrorists, but it looks like they are at least playing with it. Time to renew my stock of doxycycline!
We have been very lucky that the terrorists have not pulled down the many easy “low hangning fruit” that don’t need much infrastructure, tech. etc. Y. Pestis is an easy example, or lighting western mega fires etc. It’s just right there. These are just 2 examples.
Perhaps you should do a little research into the actual amounts of material needed to cause casualties . The amounts are actually quite small since this was a experimental lab odds are ( GOD I hope & PRAY) they were not in possession of a more than a few ounces of the agent . In WWII the Brits detonated a small ie roughly 1 liter sized bomblet filled with anthrax on Grunard Island off the coast of Scotland.
This was a crude device filled with liquid growth media & anthrax, it was so succesful that the island was contaminated for the next 50+ years in spite of repeated attempts to decon it with bleach spray & repeated burning with napalm. The fact that the wierd beards are in fact working with bioweapons & are to the point were they are in possession of a workable amount of an agent were they can have a mass casualty “work related accident” seems to me that it is indeed an excellent weapon just that they got fumble fingered in their handling of it . HOPEFULLY this accident killed those with the most technical education as that would set the enemy back even farther .
I would have to disagree with your assessment , the ability of the pharacutical industry to “surge “ the production of antibiotics is limited . Large scale outbreaks in several locations have the very real potential to exhaust the drug companies production capabilities.
bttt
Yep. And Black Plague has a loooong history of being used as a weapon - it used to be custom, to infect a goat with it, and turn it loose in the enemy’s herd.
Interesting new details way down in an IBD editorial....
___
___
Al-Qaida’s Threat Is Still With Us
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 1/20/2009
[snip]
From the sound of it, they were likely killed by a strain of the bubonic plague — the deadly rat-borne bacterial disease that ravaged much of the world in the 13th and 14th century, wiping out fully a third of Europe’s population. An airborne version, pneumonic plague, is equally deadly.
The details are horrific. The Algerian victims were said to be afflicted with horrible boils in different parts of their bodies, dying in excruciating pain after just a few hours. It’s an awful way to die.
[snip]
(excerpt — rest at link http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=317348148353832
Funny thing about the middle east - rules like “STAY OUT - CONTAMINATED AREA” are unversally ignored.
It is a cultural thing - only a peon would obey such a rule.
” afflicted with horrible boils in different parts of their bodies, dying in excruciating pain after just a few hours “
‘Just a few hours’ sounds somewhat more virulent than the y. pestis I’ve read about......
Just sayin’.....
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