Bio-attack 'could kill a million'

BBC ^ | Monday, 29 April, 2002, 15:43 GMT

[Corin Stormhands]

Oh well, I needed something to keep me awake tonight anyway...

[sheik yerbouty]

Why are we still so complacent regarding the jihadists murderous intent for America?

[Brett66]

If an airborne type of ebola has been hatched in some lab and used, then it could be several billion.

[dighton]

How badly might they want a B61 or two?

[McGavin999]

Letting loose a biological weapon in the US could spread throughout the entire world in no time at all. It would reach the Chinese mainland almost overnight due to the amount of trade between the two countries. Once there, there would be no stopping it. The way that people from the US travel throughout the world, any biological weapon would quickly spread even in the country of the originator. At least here we would have modern medicine, if it reached the middle-east it would be an overwhelming disaster.

Do I think they are stupid enough to do it anyway? Of course I do. America, with it's wide open spaces, modern medical facilities, sanitation etc. would recover. That wouldn't be the case in most places on this earth where people live practically on top of each other.

[gg188]

Why are we still so complacent regarding the jihadists murderous intent for America?

That is exactly what I wonder all the time. Instead most people are more worried about hurting the feelings Arabs and the French and hate Jews worse than Osama.

One million deaths would entail monetary costs in the TRILLIONS----totally unimaginable---destabilizing the entire world economy, sending the world into a global depression like it has never known, leading to a second dark age and the end of Western civilization as we know it.

[The Great Satan]

Letting loose a biological weapon in the US could spread throughout the entire world in no time at all.

That's why anthrax is the weapon-of-choice for Saddam Hussein. It's non-infectious. Casualties from a major dispersal of the "Daschle brand" anthrax would be in the tens of thousands to millions; economic damage in the trillions -- but the effects would still be limited to a small area. It's like a nuke, but it can easily be delivered by hand, has an indefinite shelf-life, and is completely undetectable prior to use.

[Lion's Cub]

If we wanted to get serious about preparing for bioterrorism, the most effective thing we could do would be to get the government out of healthcare and turn free enterprise loose.

[XLurk]

The marxist elitists at the Brookings Institution issue another threat.
Yawn.
Better tow the line, and surrender all of your rights and freedoms NOW, sheeple - or they just may carry it out.

[Mark17]

The solution is so simple - but do we have the gonads to do it?

No, too much PC here, and unfortunately, PC wins every time.

[Mitchell]

I do not think that a highly infectious disease like smallpox or Ebola is a major worry. Those diseases would spread to the third world, where the effects would be far more severe than in the U.S. or Europe, which have much better medical systems and can afford much better treatment. An attack with an infectious disease would backfire terribly, and so it will not be carried out. (The only possibility is for the blame to be falsely placed on the U.S., to engender extreme hostility to us. Even so, it seems very unlikely.)

Anthrax is different. Since it's not infectious, it could be used on U.S. cities without fear of it spreading to the rest of the world. This is precisely why anthrax is the biological weapon to worry most about.

Remember, however, that we're already living with countries that have arsenals of hydrogen bombs. The solution to an anthrax threat is the same as the solution to a nuclear threat: the certainty of massive retaliation. Ultimately, this is the only solution.

This is the main reason that the U.S. cannot acknowledge that the anthrax mailings were from a foreign military power. We do not want to respond with nuclear weapons to an action that killed a few people only. But once it's determined that we won't respond to small biological attacks with nuclear retaliation, the certainty of retaliation has disappeared.

With nuclear weapons, the dividing line was clear: "Was the attack nuclear or non-nuclear?" Our policy was that we would respond to any nuclear attack with nuclear retaliation.

But if the policy is that we will respond only to "large" biological attacks with nuclear retaliation, there's no sharp dividing line any more. The other side can ratchet things up, staging bigger and bigger attacks, slowly but surely. The certainty of retaliation is gone.

The answer is to maintain a policy of responding to any biological attack with nuclear retaliation, but to pretend that an attack didn't take place if it's judged too small to warrant a response.

In fact, the same problem can occur with nuclear weapons. What if somebody sets off a nuclear weapon, but it's a dud, and it kills no one or very few people? Would we really destroy the entire civilian population of a city with a nuclear weapon over an incident like this? I don't think so, but this is definitely a hard-to-solve problem.

[Yellow Rose of Texas]

It was the Black Plague that made Western Civilization as we know it. Serfs were freed to go to the cities and get better jobs as 1/3 of of the population died and workers were in great demand, at their asking wage.

[sheik yerbouty]

Then it is evident that jihadist syphillisation should be forced back to the Cenezoic..

[antidisestablishment]

For the reasons listed above, anthrax straddles the border between conventional and WMDs. A large-scale attack would definitely be cause for nuclear retaliation, but small attacks with limited deaths hardly suffice. However, with this enemy, only one deterrent will work: massive retaliation.

But, the real question remains: where do we strike? Even if Iraq supplied the anthrax, Saudi Arabia will remain the largest sponsor of OBL.

[The Great Satan]

But, the real question remains: where do we strike? Even if Iraq supplied the anthrax, Saudi Arabia will remain the largest sponsor of OBL.

Why not hit both?

[bonesmccoy]

As a practicing physician, I substantiate and support the summary statements in the original posting of this thread. While I am pleased with the Bush Administration's leadership, there is much work to do. The Office of Homeland Security should be empowered to coordinate federal response planning between FEMA, FDA, and local medical jurisdictions.

[aristeides]

Iraq or whoever could immunize its population against anthrax or smallpox.