The media is a target for a very specific reason. This prevents the government from covering up the details. This is why they went after the sensationalist media and why they went after a major broadcast network. The delivery system is designed not to maximize death, but to make us "anthrax aware"
This is solid. Media is a good target for a subtle attack because media love being part of the story, it's a sickness they have that will cause this story to develop a lot more "legs" than it deserves thus spreading more panic than the threat warrants.
Reportedly, the anthrax was mailed in a white powder. Along with the actual cases, we are finding cases of white powder mailings with no anthrax. Many have speculated that the white powder is done by sick pranksters. I think this is an impossibility. Let me explain...
We learned about the white powder on Monday evening (via Newsweek). Tuesday, we saw several packages and envelopes with white powder show up. It is nearly impossible for a prankster to gather themselves quickly enough to do it.
This I heavily disagree with. What's so "quickly" about it. The hardest part in this is getting the anthrax, if you've scored that already I could prepare this, by myself with no help, in 2 days tops. Between the websites and the mastheads of the media organizations the addresses and worker names are easy to get, other than that it's just envelop stuffing. My wife and I prepped 150 wedding invitations in one night, and she had to write all the addresses (my handwriting is notorious for getting mail sent to "dead letter"). After that it's just a matter of dropping them in a corner box. Anybody that could get the anthrax for this "prank" on friday could have everything else done and in the mail monday morning with no extra tool more exciting than a computer.
There is a plan in action:
Part A:) mail out packages with anthrax contained in a white powder.
Part B:) mail out packages without anthrax, but with the white powder.
There's a lot of possibilities here on how to stage it if you actually want to stage it in phases. I would just put the "real" envelopes in a corner box, and put the "fake" envelopes in an appartment drop slot (you know those ones with 1 outgoing and a bunch of incomings where the resident needs a key, in Tucson you find these actually on the road in front of small apartment complexes). Corner boxes get much faster delivery (1 or 2 days less) than residential boxes especially if you get your stuff in before the 8 AMish pickup, some people actually got our wedding invitations the same day we mailed them. This would allow your deliveries to phase in without the risk of running drops on multiple days. Or you could hold onto the safe envelopes, it's pretty easy to mail a lot of stuff anonymously in this country, just gotta get downtown where the corner boxes are.
What does this do?
CDC has to investigate each of these powder instances. This will strecth thier resources. If enough actual anthrax envelopes are sent out, the US mail will be severly slowed or stop al together. This will have a massive effect on our psyche, our economy and our Law Enforcement community.
The CDC stretching is what most people would think, and they'd be wrong. CDC actually works very oddly, there are doctors all over the country that are actually part of CDC but only do CDC related stuff if something bad happens in their area (that's why they're so fast to respond to stuff), and they work through FEMA and other emergency organization. Minor outbreaks (or threatened outbreaks) all over the country won't stretch their resources at all. As for slowing down the mail, could happen, probably wouldn't affect commercial mail (if the bad guy has infiltrated Amazon.com we're in bigger trouble than we thought), in the end wouldn't do that much to us. 10 years ago before all this internet junk it would have really hurt, since then most mail in this country get's thrown out before entering the house.
What they will do is play the Anthrax Russian Roulette with these packages until the fed decides to start issuing massive amounts of antibiotics to the populace...therfore reducing our supply.
Could be there plan but won't work. The drug industry in this country makes so damn many pills it's obscene. Scattered cases, even giving supplies to 700 people per building won't seriously dent the supplies. Not with the speed they can be made in. It would probably take an hour to replace all the antibiotics handed out to AMI employees earlier in the week.
Now, with antibiotics increasingly rare and the CDC and other departments stretched to thier limit...the terrorists are free to strike a full scale bio-attack and us unable to treat those infected.
This is the real threat, with or without the "hoped for" effects. A major hit would beat us up bad with or without CDC or antibiotics. If you an manage to "dose" a couple million people at once we're in trouble. Of course we'll nuke your ass pretty quick afters, but we'll still hurt bad.
Overall I think this is either the work of loan buttheads (never rule out the possibility of more than one guy getting the same idea, happens in the gaming industry all the time), or a rather small time terrorist org trying to look big time. More than likely I don't see that much of a threat of major biological attack. Bio-agents are a big pain in the butt to store safely and deliver effectively, they go bad and have to be replaced, grow out of control and kill your workers, just annoying. My bigger concern in chemical. Chemical is easy, especially with obl's resources. All you need is an insecticide plant and a couple of vats mixed stronger than usual (which isn't hard, look at the active ingredients percentage on your can of Raid, those things are mixed REALLY weak). Dump this crap in the water supply, or the ever popular crop duster angle and we've got issues, and chemicals are a lot easier to work with than bio-agents. If you're people are patient you don't even need the whole plant, just buy a few cases of Raid, dump the contents and mixout the inert ingredients. A couple of gallons of "pure" bug spray can wreak a lot of havoc.