Posted on 12/03/2001 10:11:56 AM PST by Starmaker
A few days before the anthrax attacks, I wrote a very controversial piece about the next terror attacks. In “It´s Time To Panic: The Kitchen Bioterrorist,” written on 9/20/01, I outlined how easy it would be for a terrorist working alone to create havoc and death. I also predicted that such an attack was likely in the very near future. The anthrax attacks a few days later proved me right in all my predictions except for the disease used. (I said botulism.) Now I have another prediction - far, far worse. And I sincerely hope I´m wrong.
As with the last piece, I have thought long and hard before writing this and airing it to the public. However, as has become obvious, whatever ideas I may have are nothing new to the terrorists. They spend 24/7/365 thinking up new ways to commit atrocities on an unsuspecting public. I am giving them no new information. However, if we are to combat terrorism, we must first be aware of what may be in store for us so as to take appropriate measures to stop it. That old saw, ‘forewarned is forearmed´ comes to mind.
But before I tell you my prediction, let me explain how I arrived at it. I have been observing not merely the methods, but the psychology and ideology behind the recent rash of terrorist attacks. Today´s terrorists are, for the most part, very different from those before the 1960s. For one thing, the majority of them are radical Islamists who want to die for their cause. They commit acts of terror from a warped pseudo-politico/religious belief system.
I call this belief system ‘pseudo´ because it goes against the very teachings of the religion they purport to uphold. Mohammed never said that innocent civilians should be targeted. And renaming innocent civilians as legitimate enemies, as these religious zealots have done, does not abrogate that fact. Then there is the bit about suicide. According to the Koran, suicide is forbidden. But the zealots have renamed it death while fighting the infidels. From a religious standpoint, they have given themselves Allah´s blessing to carry out their murderous acts.
So now we have a bunch of religious maniacs who think that killing themselves while killing and maiming innocent people will get them into heaven and give them 72 virgins to boot. To put it another way, dying for their cause is one of their goals.
The next factor I considered was their methodology and available weaponry. Their methodology involves using themselves as the delivery system of whatever horror they have planned. It also involves something that is common, unnoticeable, and cost-effective.
As to weaponry, our ‘War On Terrorism´ has put a crimp in the weapons available to the terrorists. We have also been hitting them in the pocketbook and confounding their communications. Our vigilance in trying to detect conventional weapons such as bombs and guns has forced them to become creative. Couple that with the recent anthrax attacks and the fact that at least one of the 9-11 terrorists was checking out crop dusters. It is obvious that the terrorists are thinking in terms of bioweapons.
There is also one more factor to consider. Recently, terror groups across the globe have been quietly rounded up. They are no longer free to plan and operate large-scale operations with anonymity and impunity. Whatever attack is coming next will probably be done by an individual or small group without too much preparation involved.
When you add up all the aspects I outlined above, the answer becomes obvious. Or perhaps I should say, the proper question becomes obvious. Here´s the question: What can a single terrorist do to kill or injure as many people as possible, while causing panic and interrupting government, using a biological weapon and his own body as a delivery system?
My first thoughts were as a carrier of some horrific disease. The scenario is laughingly simple and undetectable. Some heaven-bent terrorist infects himself with a devastating disease such as Ebola, Smallpox, or Bubonic Plague. Then he boards a plane for New York City, gets off and walks around coughing on everybody in as many terminals as he can access. Suddenly, you have thousands of infected carriers leaving for points all over the country, spreading the infection as they travel.
In fact, the recent outbreak of Dengue Fever in Hawaii, a place not known for such outbreaks, and geographically isolated, may have been a dry run or a first attempt. Or perhaps the West Nile Virus outbreak in New York City two years ago was a test case. I only know that we must be prepared to identify and stop these people before they can inflict a biological nightmare on the world.
Misconception here: Mass inoculation is not necessary to contain a smallpox outbreak. Isolating the cases and contacts, then inoculating the immediate circle should do just fine.
Just like inhalation anthrax, people who begin exhibiting symptoms of pneumonic plague have a very poor prognosis, even with vigorous treatment. It's thought that the prognosis for survival is much worse than inhalation anthrax. Most of the information I've found states that the mortality rate is 100% if not treated within the first 24 hours. Pneumonic plague is highly transmissible person-to-person and can spread quite rapidly thoughout a population. It is spread by uncontrollable coughing, which serves to spread the bacillus in tiny sputum droplets through the air. When plague bacillus is inhaled into the lungs through bioterrorism, it becomes systemic and affects the lungs and other vital body organs. Pneumonic plague symptoms include cough, bloody sputum, chest pain and difficulty breathing. It has an incubation period of 1-7 days.
All in all, inhalation anthrax is a cakewalk compared to what pneumonic plague would be. We're talking about 3 to 4 weeks of strict quarantine after a person is diagnosed. If nothing else, it would be a nightmare in terms of our public health care systems' ability to respond to any outbreak that would occur.
The good news is that since the symptoms are very similar to inhalation anthrax, physicians and nurses are now much more likely to become suspicious of anything that resembles anthrax. Hopefully, our frontline medical workers would spot the disease early enough to stop the death rate from becoming very high. Like the anthrax, people who've been exposed can begin prompt prophylactic treatment with antibiotics (Streptomycin, if I remember correctly.)
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