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I thought that ever since the beginning of the anthrax cases, the US decided that it was NOT going to get caught with its collective pants down in the event of a smallpox bioattack. Even if we DID bomb the offending country into glass, we'd still have to deal with the potential serious consequences of a smallpox epidemic.

There are good reasons to increase the # of doses. The vaccine is relatively cheap and it probably doesn't double the cost to double the # of doses.

First off, not all people "take" (i.e. get immunity) with the first dose. If the vaccine is anything like the old ones we had (pre 1970), then at least some people are going to have to get revaccinated.

Second, there's always a chance of losing some stock due to accident, power failure, sabotage, etc.

Finally, having excess stock of vaccine can serve as a powerful inducement to either the offending country to surrender, or to other countries to join us if they themselves do not have the vaccine. We can also use excess vaccine stock to supply our allies (Great Britain? Turkey?)

Keep in mind that any smallpox bioattack will hurt the 3rd world/Muslim countries FAR worse than it will hurt us, even without immunization. It's also possible that those of us who were immunized prior to 1970 might have some residual immunity - which many in the 3rd world do not have. The thinking here might be "Better safe than sorry."

I've told everyone who would listen for thirty years that stopping smallpox vaccination was nuts, because of course it will be used as a weapon if people aren't vaccinated. All I ever got was "Huh?" or "the CDC says..." and now here we are.

A nearby thread is about the quarantine plans in place here in the USA. The post had an hysterical tone, but made one good point. If whole neighborhoods of cities, or whole cities, are to be quarantined in the case of smallpox outbreak - and cities are where this would occur, if it were to - then the quarantined people will try to escape what they see as, and is, death for them and their children. It will be neccessary to stop them. Do we have troops willing to machine gun the crowds trying to escape?

**Even if we DID bomb the offending country into glass, we'd still have to deal with the potential serious consequences of a smallpox epidemic.**

These would be, from what i can imagine, the collapse of the u.s. and world economies (as the disease is spread worldwide by airplane travellers by the time they catch on), poverty in the u.s. on a scale certainly not seen since the depression and possibly much worse, with the civil unrest the goes along, the collapse of the major world financial markets with the associated 'issues' that would bring along, including possibly the insolvency of most major u.s clearing firms and banks(when your large customers are instantly wiped out and then quite a bit, you go under. Long Term Capital could have taken a major clearing firm under if the fed had not intervened), presumably banks might not open at all, even though the feds wont have to ban gold coin (an asset that survives governments) and certificates since they are not in ready circulation anymore. If smallpox was put out there in any of the not hard-to-imagine ways that cause it to be all over the country/world in a very short period of time, i firmly believe our way of life will be gone to a degree i find almost unimaginable.

I would assume the extra hundreds of millions of doses of smallpox are for either redundancy in storage inthe u.s. OR to be able to give to bordering allies so they dont invade (mexico) when faced with a catastrophic epidemic and no medicine.