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I agree that the attack on Daschle's office was an advertisement. The terrorists told us they have the real stuff.

It gets worse. DOD ran an exercise in which they assumed terrorists scattered a pound of pure spores of the right size, and aerolsolized (i.e., same as that used on Daschle), off the top of the Empire State Building. They estimated that would kill perhaps a million people. There's no way treatment could save more than a handful. And most of Manhatten plus some parts of the rest of New York City were deemed contaminated for years. I read a summary of the results of this exercise in a link from the Freep, I think, and recently.

So the question is how much anthrax the terrorists in the US have. I read someplace else that the xUSSR had produced either twenty pounds or twenty tons of equivalent aerolsolized spores in its history (I forget which). I sure hope it was just twenty pounds.

The only possible way to stop this from happening over and over, if the terrorists in this country have several pounds of Daschle-grade anthrax powder, would be to round up _every_ possible suspect, i.e., anyone who looks like they might possibly be a male aged 15-50 of Middle Eastern extraction. That not only means some of my friends and their sons who were born here, but millions of Hispanic males.

But when the alternative is millions of dead Americans, we won't have any choice.

And the best defense is a good offense.

Here's another thought I just had about this. My working hypothesis so far has been that Saddam's operatives have been using a antiobiotic-susceptible strain because he wants to be able to keep agents in the field indefinitely, without risking an accidental death giving away the terror network. I further thought it likely that they would switch to an antibiotic-resistant strain for the real attacks or, if for some reason they only have the susceptible strain, they would just go with that and simply accept that only perhaps the 10% of victims at the front of the Bell curve would actually be killed. On reflection, it seems to me that the use of an antiobiotic-susceptible strain could act as a force multiplier in the case of a massive dispersal. If one of these Middle Eastern gentleman were to tip out a jar of anthrax from the top of the Empire State building, as in the scenario you outlined, you'd basically have a situation where everybody on Manhattan Island--I think that's about four million people--could reasonably expect to die without treatment. In that situation, it seems likely that our health care delivery system would be saturated, especially if other Middle Eastern gentlemen carried out analogous attacks on other metro areas at the same time. In such an eventuality, treatment would probably only make a dent in the overall casualty figure. Moreover, the fact that the treatment option exists but would have to be rationed would probably lead to a social breakdown, which would be the force multiplier effect I mentioned.

If this analysis is correct, Bush may not have any choice but to blink. I do think it might be an idea to declare a national emergency and intern Middle Eastern aliens, but it seems the general feeling is this would be a hate crime, and we should all just sit tight and hope for the best.

"I read someplace else that the xUSSR had produced either twenty pounds or twenty tons of equivalent aerolsolized spores in its history (I forget which). I sure hope it was just twenty pounds.

Worse. According to a graph in a recent book Germs, by Judith Miller et al, the USSR made 4000 TONS of anthrax.

True, much of what they made was resistant to some antibiotics, but think about it. The Russians made the really nasty strains to put into ICBM's and launch as a doomsday weapon, I think.

For using anthrax as a more subtle weapon, no reason to use an antibiotic resistant strain! Why? If you are unknowingly exposed to a lethal load of anthrax spores it doesn't matter if it is an antibiotic resistant strain, because by the time you get symptoms, you are effectively dead and it doesn't matter what antibiotic you receive. Inhalational anthrax has up to 90% mortality by report...maybe it is a bit less, but it is still very high.

From a military planning standpoint, you don't want to kill everyone anyway...sick people tie up resources.

The fact that this anthrax was prepared to be 1-3 micron in size...and that doesn't necessarily require mechanical milling, but freeze drying and coating with the proper substance, means this was done by someone with access to information held by state sponsored biowar labs. Could have been a rogue Russian microbiologist, or Iraq. But this was weaponized anthrax, make no mistake about it. And the most likely source was Islamic terrorists.

How much do they have, and was this postal delivery just a trial run? Probably, and that's what is scary. The worst may still be yet to come...in fact, it may have already happened, but we won't know until 7-10 days later.