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Biohazard 56

Posted by timothy from the please-be-careful dept.
Reader Haaz contributed this review of Biohazard. Since my typical airport reading consists of lurid thrillers about either medical examiners in murder-prone counties or terrorists with nasty bioweapons stolen from secret labs in Uzbekistan, this sounds like it might be a bit too scary. In the case of bioagents, being forewarned is only partly the same as being forearmed.

Biohazard
author Ken Alibek with Stephen Handelman
pages 336
publisher Random House
rating 8
reviewer haaz
ISBN 0375502319
summary A fascinating and chilling account of the Soviet Union's bio-weapons program, by the man who ran it.

Biological warfare has usually been a nightmare constrained to the realm of theory and bad dreams. If you have read The Hot Zone, which documents people who work with the world's most deadly viruses, such as Ebola, you know how frightening even a small outbreak of a deadly disease can be. But imagine a nation carefully researching, stockpiling, and preparing to use these nightmarish weapons in a major war.

From the middle of World War II -- and possibly to the present day -- the Soviet Union (now Russia) did just that. In a super-secret military program, the country developed, stockpiled and prepared to use biological weapons in an expected ultimate war with the West. Among their tools: bacterial weapons including anthrax and tumerlia, and weaponized viruses. Enhanced smallpox was being prepared as a weapon, as were a whole host of hemmoragic fever viruses, including the famous Ebola and Marbug viruses.

Ken Alibek's Biography

Mr. Alibek was a unique person in the Soviet system. As the grandson of a Kazhakstanian kahn, he was one of the few non-white Russians to achieve high ranking within the Soviet military and society. After graduating from the Tomsk Medical Institute in 1975, he joined Biopreparat, a secret Soviet military program that fronted as a pharmaceutical research organization. Their actual mission: develop the most deadly conceivable biological weapons probably meant to be used in a war with the United States.

How did a physician, originally dedicated to healing and treating illness, become one of the top researchers in harnessing infectious diseases as weapons? Mr. Alibek himself seems to be unsure of this, or at least chooses not to talk about it. He documents his entry into the Biopreparat weapons program, and gradual rise to the position of head researcher for the program, but never addresses this question.

Mr. Alibek defected to the United States in 1992 after an official visit, during which he saw how much better life in the United States was as compared to Soviet life. What he is doing now is a very good question. The cover of the book simply states that "he is now working in biodefense," but nothing is stated beyond that.

The Book

Biohazard is a very easy read for anyone with the slightest medical or technical background. A great deal of time is spent describing life within the Soviet system and the secret weapons program. The book's lack of technical information and its relatively brief length make it fairly easy to read, but the continuing parade of names and people within the system does get tedious.

You may want to have a notepad handy to keep track of the long Russian names, not to mention the myriad installations for researching and preparing the agents. The authors have a tendency to jump back in time to describe an episode or sequence of events; something may start in the 1970s and end in the 1980s. This semi-constant contextual leaping can be a bit distracting. The book's details of the Soviet systems will be quite fascinating for some people. One of the first pages in the book is a two-page map of the former Soviet Union, showing the locations and functions of about forty bioweapons installations, ranging from stockpiles to testing grounds and laboratories. Several of them, including a lonely Siberian outpost, the infamous Rebirth Island, and the Sverdlosk manufacturing plant are described in detail.

Perhaps the most intriguing story is about the time an anthrax contamination in a city, and the government's official response to this. Most interesting of all: the mayor of the town was none other than Boris Yeltsin, the future president of Russia.

In summation, as long as you can deal with the relatively minor flaws, Biohazard is not difficult to read. What can be difficult to deal with is the possibility of biological warfare. It is very disturbing to read about what happened to the animals exposed to these diseases, and then to imagine the same things happening to people in a city. Let's hope that Mr. Alibek's prediction of a terrorist biological attack never happens.

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.
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Biohazard

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  • If you guys enjoyed this book, you might check out a book called Contamination by the same author...... GOOD READING!
  • But a biological weapon is something that can be easily concealed, and were a country or group to use it without claiming responsibility there's not really any way to trace it...

    Besides which, if a small terrorist group located in, say, Afghanistan were to attack us in such a manner I'm remarkably sure that while we'd make every attempt to make them pay for such an atrocity we sure as heck wouldn't drop a nuclear bomb in an area surrounded by civilian targets. It's called trying to be "the good guys", and it limits our options (thank goodness). It's the reason terrorists like to put their headquarters in populated areas.

    So what's the real deterrent for people who aren't afraid to die for their cause? Nuclear weapons just aren't a realistic option for countering terrorist attacks, they're too hard to control.
  • After reading through the article and checking out the links, the question comes to mind, "So if it's so easy... why hasn't it happened yet?"

    Obviously the possibility exists that it happens all the time and we just chalk it up to a freak outbreak of a disease. But if that's not it, what's up?

    According to all the available info, loads of countries and groups have the potential for using these weapons. I'm guessing that if a group or country doesn't mind using bombs on people, they wouldn't flinch at using biological weapons.

    I've read about anthrax scares where someone's mailed an envelope with some vague powder and a note in it to the local abortion clinic... it's never turned out to actually be anthrax though. The Aum attack is the only confirmed recent biological weapon attack I've heard of.

    So what is the deal? It sounds ludicrously simple, but something seems to keep people from using biological weapons.
  • Why start from China? Terrorists could easily get into the US legally, acquire bio-agents, and attack a major city.
  • A kinder, better ebola - made in the USA.

    Could be. Severe anticontamination restrictions make working with ebola and other level 4 biohazards extremely difficult. On the other hand, a "kinder" form of ebola - one that was far less deadly, but still produced the same reaction in a host - would probably be very useful when trying to study the course of the disease, identify transmission vectors, determine what treatments and/or vaccinations are possible, etc.

  • I read this a year or so ago. Excellent book, and quite frightening.

    There's a creepy, hilarious moment where two guys are interviewing with a job at Alibek's plant. One of them hurls a jesting insult at the other, and the insulted guy blushes with shame. Alibek can't understand the intensity of his reaction. "Don't you know who he is?" the joker asks. "He's the guy who was responsible for Sverdlovsk." Seems the poor slob was the one who'd forgotten to replace the air filters after removing an old set that had become clogged. For hours, the anthrax-saturated air inside the plant was pumped into the surrounding neighborhood with deadly results. And the same guy was still trying to get employment at a germ warfare plant. Utterly creeped me out.

  • Check out the newscientist interview with Mr. Alibek here. [newscientist.com]

    with my favourite quote:-
    "One of the biggest problems is that we don't know whether or not we have had such attacks. We are just ignorant. We cannot distinguish between naturally occurring epidemics and ones we create. I'm not saying that foot and mouth disease is [the result of a biological attack] because I don't know. But if you see something this size in the 21st century, it is getting very suspicious. To imagine that we have had nothing for the past few decades and then suddenly such a huge, uncontrollable epidemic of foot and mouth disease--it raises many questions."

    If you've ever thought "it could never happen here" then the fact that one of the worlds experts isn't so sure must certainly be something to think about...

    bil

  • Assume that the US (or Russia or China) founds a colony on Mars/the Moon. They will be in enclosed areas. Now think about the spread of a biohazardous agent in those areas.

    We all know that agents like TB thrive in areas with a relatively high humidty and warmth (the lungs are a classic location) and we also know that there is a high occurence of TB among parts of society that live "in each other's pockets" including "down and outs". You have to assume that a space colony will have the latest in air recycling, but the fact that it will retain a lot of heat and moisture compared with Earth and the fact that there will be a lot of people living in a very small enclosed area with a lot of social interaction and you have a scenario where even the smallest bacterial/viral infection could cause a catastrophe.

    In many ways it will be worse that on Earth because there will be no place to run to away from the infection. It will be like being stranded in Iowa with a plague victim. Physically able to run, but handcuffed to the infected person. Considering that only the US (and Europe and Japan to a lesser degree) have the finances to build on the moon, but that a lot more countries _very nearly_ have launch capability/technology, most of them with a grudge against the US and you have a scenario that I don't want to think about and I studied this sort of thing at university for four years.

    Personally, I'd rather wait until world peace was at the door knocking, than set up a moonbase before I could defend it against _everything_.

    Hachiman
  • I thought they were talking about the flipping robot BioHazard [battlebots.com] at first. And that was before I saw the slashdot story on battlebots.
  • Of course, for a long time, any space colonies will actually be more vulnerable to bio-attack -- think about closed air-recirculation systems, small and relatively homogenous populations, limited access to medical resources ... In the long run, this may be a partial solution, but for the short term, what we mainly need is better methods for identifying and counteracting infectious outbreaks, be they natural or man-made, wherever they occur.

    Sheer stupidity, such as the baseless and wholly unscientific hysteria about anthrax vaccine in the military, sure doesn't help. I'm just old enough that when I joined the Army, we were still vaccinated against smallpox. This was in 1987; I think they stopped smallpox vaccinations, except for personnel assigned to certain high-risk areas, just a couple of years later. I know I didn't get the vaccination when I switched to the Air Force in 1989. That was a rather unpleasant vaccination, with some potentially nasty side-effects ... but I would a million times rather have to deal with the vaccination than with the disease itself. Similarly, when we deployed for Desert Storm, I was more than happy to let them punch me full of holes for vaccinations against every bio-agent the Iraqis might possibly have had. Similarly, any parents who refuse to get their kids vaccinated because of something some wacko says on TV are guilty of child abuse, as far as I'm concerned -- and they're potentially abusing not only their own children, but their whole communities' children.

    Given the rapid pace of biotech advances, I'm reasonably hopeful that within the next few years, it may be possible to develop disease-specific (and maybe even patient-specific) antibiotics and antivirals in a matter of weeks or days, rather than the years it currently takes. But we're not there yet.
  • The US and most Western nations have a strongly worded policy that basically says that biological weapons are weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This means that we would feel free to retaliate against a biological attack with our nuclear capability (also WMD).

    This is called deterrence - it gave us relative peace for over 50 years and counting ("relative peace" = no direct conflict between major powers - fek the little wars and their victims).

    Certainly in a world where we do not go in and impose our own military rule until democracy can be germinated (e.g., Germany, Japan, post WW-II) at least deterence provides some safety from countries like Iraq and their religious fanatic friends.

    Thank god I can live in a free country like the US and not be ruled by narrow-minded religious fanatics (ooops).

  • This book was reviewed by Ken Alibek and Stephen Handelman for the New York Review of Books in April 2001.

    http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/WWWarchdisplay.cgi?20 000413044R [nybooks.com] is a link to the review
  • Rather, the book *by* Alibek was *reviewed* by M.F. Perutz. Please excuse the careless copy/pasting.
  • Why are airport reads always thrillers?
  • Bcos you want somewhere to park your brain in idle for 8 hours on a trans-Atlantic flight. Or somewhere to park your brain while you fry on a beach. Very few of us read textbooks to relax...

    OTOH, Britain at least has a nice range of top-shelf sex-books in all bookshops, including the ones in airport terminals. That makes the flight a little more enjoyable, even if it may result in some hard-to-explain stains at the end. ;-)

    Although not all things claimed to be thrillers are actually thrilling. Don't bother with "Rainbow Six", a couple-of-years-old book by Tom Clancy - it's merely stomach-churning. The man's a sick individual in need of help. The book's a sensitive paean to how good it is to shoot ppl, and how criminals and anyone the US doesn't agree with should be shot on sight, even if they pose no actual threat to you. The "victory" is when 3 dozen civilians (who've picked up pistols and guns bcos they're scared the soldiers are going to attack) are massacred at night by a dozen well-armed and well-trained soldiers with IR gear, sniper rifles, silenced weapons, etc. The surviving half-dozen are left to starve in the jungle without food or equipment. I used to enjoy TC books, but he's got so right-wing now that it's stopped being funny. Next TC book, I'm sure Jack Ryan is going to launch a holy war on all countries which don't agree to America's divine right to rule, and become World President or something.

    Grab.
  • I beg your forgiveness oh mighty one. I am but a lowly peasant.

    True.

    When I went to google and typed in rebirth island I foolishly omitted the quotes.

    Which was, as you say, foolish.

    It brings me great shame that I wasted the time of an intellect so vast as your own.

    As it should.

    Perhaps now that I have been duly reprimanded you will be able to spend you nigh-priceless time correcting other slashdot posters with your rapier wit. (Or at least correcting spelling)

    Let's hope so.

    BTW, you can't spell "details" either.
  • I read this book back in January. I found it interesting how the Soviet program was started and detailed, but everything in the book is just described matter-of-factly. Besides sheer quantities of bioweapons described, there's not much in this book to scare you. You have to sit back and scare yourself using the data provided. The one exception is an interesting description of how some workers got an accidental taste of their own product.
  • Nice thing about a nuke is that it vaporizes a relatively small area and has a known or predictable fallout area. Bad thing about a bio weapon is that it you don't know how large of an area it will harm. Guess a warning flag would be a country sealing off its borders from any travel.
  • No good reason, just a thought...
    You could just as easily start from the UK, hop to Iceland, on up to Labrador, then down to the east coast of the US.
  • Vozrozhdeniye [Renaissance or Rebirth] Island is considered one of the most polluted places on this earth, to include the lovely Bio Warfare remains there. I've read books and other material on this. Sources escape me at the moment. But this is this of the Bogey Man is made out of. I know enough about this place, that it scares the spit outta me, if you ever wanted to find Hell on earth, you've came to the right place. Now with the Aral Sea shrinking, we all have worry about terrorist walking across to the Island, and getting ahold some of the anthrax or other lovely cocktails brewing on the island. Now I am going to have nightmares when I go to bed in a few.
  • In WWII America and Britain had a stockpile of pulmonary anthrax bombs sitting in England ready to go if Hitler tried anything. Interestingly enough, he didn't, reportedly because he feared the retaliatory response. Japan of course had the infamous Unit 731.

    Here are some links for those who are more curious about the history-

    http://www.hs.state.az.us/phs/edc/edrp/es/bthist or 2.htm

    http://www.wood.army.mil/CHBULLETIN/Jan99/Biowar fa re.htm

    http://www.sonic.net/~west/biorefs.htm

  • And I thought they were talking about a novel about an unmanned ship illegally carrying biowar weapons and poised to spread them all over New York City. One man in a jet stops it, and I forget how. Ah, the schlock you find at second-hand stores!
  • 'Balance of Terror' only works if the nation 1) Has something to lose in a war; and 2) Has a leader that cares if his/her people get bombed to hell. Iraq might fit the first one, but not the second. Ditto for Iran. But Serbia fits neither. Now that Milosevic is out, Serbia might no longer be a threat. Now that Milosevic is out, Serbia might be our worst threat. After all, we kidnapped their leader and turned their homeland into rubble. So what, exactly, will stop Serbia, or the Kurds (angry that we never helped them fight Saddam), or Saddam's crazy son, or one of a few other nations and/or states from launching an ICBM at New York, or San Francisco, or, or ... this place (comic relief)! Nothing. That's why we need an ABM system in place, to stop it once the missile has been launched but before the missile can kill thousands or millions of Americans. Retaliaion can come without Americans being nuked.
  • You know, people like you are on the verge of convincing me. After all, a small Cessna with a nuke and a pilot on a suicide mission (whether the pilot knows it at the time or not) could give as effective an airburst as an ICBM could provide. And the ship in the harbor example is classic (someone suggested it before Hiroshima, in fact) and is still very feasble. But if someone does launch an ICBM at us, we ought to have some way of defending ourselves. Maybe being better able to detect radiation from space is the better plan. If we could see the radiation coming off of fissile materials from satellite altitudes, we could stop bombs (and track potential prerequistie materials) no matter how the delivery system works. I'll have to think on this.
  • Dr Alibeks's congressional testimony makes for chilling reading, more so than any thriller. As the reviewer mentioned, it would be interesting to know precisely what Dr Alibek has been doing in "biodefense." He doesn't seem to have defected to assuage his conscience.
    Mr. Alibek defected to the United States in 1992 after an official visit, during which he saw how much better life in the United States was as compared to Soviet life.
    He now gets paid more for doing the same work? A kinder, better ebola - made in the USA.
  • I read this book quite a few years ago just after it was release. Ken Alibek has some damn interesting things to say about how bio and chem warfare agents are produced and kept in check... and how you hide the factories.

    All in all, pretty scary book that'll make you think (especially think about where all the seed viruses and see bacteria went after the USSR went flop). Great book a must read for any science minded conspiracy theorist
  • ... when I gonna see the book abot gemfare development in US with the map of all the sites and description of accidents? ;-)
  • Eh, he had a point. A bit of elaboration would have been nice. It's not that infamous after all.
  • A much scarier novel, which was very entertaining as well as technically solid, was The Cobra Event by Richard Preston.
  • Didn't Nancy Kress write a book like that?
  • I beg your forgiveness oh mighty one. I am but a lowly peasant. When I went to google and typed in rebirth island I foolishly omitted the quotes. [google.com]

    It brings me great shame that I wasted the time of an intellect so vast as your own. Perhaps now that I have been duly reprimanded you will be able to spend you nigh-priceless time correcting other slashdot posters with your rapier wit. (Or at least correcting spelling) [slashdot.org]

    Once again, I beg your forgiveness.

  • > the infamous Rebirth Island, Whats so infamous about rebirth island?
  • Sorry I don't know any "Rebirth Island". It is Vozrozhdeniye Island!!!!!

    It is serious stuff and the area is considered to be hazardous. The only people allowed opn the island are the specialists and US consultants involved in the risk assesment. However, the area nearby remains relatively accessible.

    I only worked in Uzbekistan for a while. I didn't work anywhere that part of the country and would not go there. I do know people who have though.

  • All you need is infect someone with kamikaze style. Or failing that, smuggle some smallpox infected blankets over... It's been done!
  • How is that going to solve Homo sapiens trigger happy approach to killing people?? No, what you really need is to put a large bubble around all the problematic areas (Kosovo, George Bush, Indonesia, George Bush, Iran, George Bush, Croatia, George Bush...) That way if they DO get itchy trigger fingers, then the problem is contained!
  • ... And then George Bush accidentally sent it to that place near India. (What's it called again?)
  • This and Nuclear issues are reasons we really need to establish a self-sustained colony on the moon/Mars...
  • Am I the only one that thought they'd done a novelization of the old PS game series, until reading further? (Biohazard(jp) == Resident Evil(us))

    ::grin::
  • Depending on the agent, all you need is access to a few aircraft in foreign cities. Or the airport concourse.
  • I'd also like to mention Ed Regis's The Biology of Doom [amazon.com]

    Ed Regis also wrote "Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition" (yes really!) and "Nano", fantastic popular accounts of transhumanism and nanotechnology, respectively - he was also one of the better writers for Wired magazine (back in the days before it went bland and businesslike). In case anyone is too lazy to click on that link, here is a sample review from a microbiologist:

    [4 of 5 stars] The Biology of Doom - aaaaarrrgh!, January 29, 2001
    Reviewer: Ed Rybicki (see more about me) from Cape Town, Western Cape South Africa
    I was fascinated from this book from the moment I picked it up: Ed Regis has the knack of being able to immerse his reader so deeply in the moment that it is a wrench to put it down. I am a practising microbiologist with a morbid fascination with biological weaponry and nasty zoonoses; this book certainly informed me perhaps better than I needed to be about things I had only previously read about at third- or fourth-hand, or heard as apocryphal anecdotes.

    The only things I could fault in this book are that a) it is too short; b) it does not cover some of the more interesting recent biowar developments, such as Iraq's and South Africa's ventures into the field (but see a).

    Apart from this, it is a fascinating, detailed and scholarly account of one of the darker areas of recent scientific history. It sits happily on my shelf next to his "Virus Ground Zero : Stalking the Killer Viruses With the Center for Disease Control", which I consider a masterwork (but then, I love Ebola...). --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

    --- end quote ---

    Disclaimer: I haven't personally read this yet, but based on the Amazon reviews and Regis' past writings, I think it's a good bet.

  • This sort of reminds me of a book I read a few years back about some guy who had his testicles stolen because infertility became rampant in the US.

    It was pretty interesting, and was all about bio-engineering and the like. Anyone know the name of this book?
  • Strange to find that some people still can't be bothered to head to Google [google.com] and type in "Rebirth Island" [google.com] before wasting our time, innit?
  • A modified smallpox could wipe the US off the map without so much as an ICBM in sight.

    All to true, and quite scary by itself. Thing is, with a missile defense system in place you force the hand of someone wishing to attack you to actually have to deliver the payload personally. You have to manage to smuggle whatever weapon we're talking about across the border, provide for transportation to the target, and do all this without raising any suspicions.

    No, missile defense is not a catch all, stop all kinds of nasties. It does make things more difficult for a North Korea or Iraq to just lob a missile at the US with no more than a few minutes warning, and no defense for it. The attacker is forced to get up close and personal, on US turf.

    Hopefully we don't get any "smart" terrorists with money behind them. Like folks who would be smart enough to make sure the get away car had a license plate, or wouldn't go back to get the deposit on his Ryder truck rental.
  • I didn't mean crash the plane to disperse the agent, rather drop several small containers that would break on impact. Drop half-a-dozen glass coffee jars from 2,000 feet, get a good spread, then crash the plane (you don't want the now disease-ridden pilot coming back to you...)
    You could possibly improvise a fogger like the exhaust smoke generators for aerobatics, but again, the temperature might kill the bugs.
  • ... brew up a few kilo's of some nasty disease, get a Cessna 172 with long-range tanks, add one suicide pilot, and strike the the west coast of the US from China.
    Don't believe me? Go find out the tank range of a light aircraft, find out what a "back seat" tank adds to it, then see how far you can go.
    All you'd need is to drop a couple of coffee-jars of something nasty in a busy place, and let human traffic do the work.
  • All you need is infect someone with kamikaze style. Or failing that, smuggle some smallpox infected blankets over... It's been done!

    [Cranky Old Tinfoil-Hat Wearer]
    And that's why the Giverment stopped issuing smallpox vaccines! The know we'll be helpless when the smallpox virus is spread by the black helicopters, and we'll come running to FEMA (also known as the FPMA (Federal Population Management Agency)), Aristotle Onassis' secret gang of Illuminatus that runs the Grays' whole organization from behind the scenes! GIVE ME MY SMALLPOX VACCINE! GIVE ME MY SMALLPOX VACCINE! GIVE ME MY ... Ooooh, a bright, shiny tinfoil hat! Gimme!
    [/Cranky Old Tinfoil-Hat Wearer]
    :-)
  • Because the nature of an ABM system does not eliminate the threat entirely, just the most expensive method of delivering it. The Kurds are never going to launch a missile at anyone because they'll never have a missile to launch. ICBMs require infrastructure. Nations launch these things, perhaps an unususaly well established and entrenched terrorist group. Not disorganized disidents. Point being that an ABM system forces your enemy to rely on a method of delivery that is thousands of times more difficult to track. If someone fires an ICBM at us we know who did it and can retaliate. If they know we have an ABM system they won't fire that ICBM, they'll truck it into the country or detonate the nuke in a major harbor. Same result to us, but no retaliation is possible as we have no idea where it came from.

    Point being, and ABM system is a waste of money. It will not remove a threat from a "rogue nation" simply force them to use a more underhanded system of delivery. ABM systems are only usefull if they can stop a large scale attack, simply because missiles are the only practical solution to the problem of how to bombard an enemy with nukes on a vast scale. ABM systems are ineffective for stoping nuclear terrorism because one bomb is just as easily delivered by boat as it is by missile, perhaps more easily.

    This has been another useless post from....
  • No, missile defense is not a catch all, stop all kinds of nasties. It does make things more difficult for a North Korea or Iraq to just lob a missile at the US with no more than a few minutes warning, and no defense for it. The attacker is forced to get up close and personal, on US turf.

    Yea... but: One major advantage/disadvantage of a missile based attack is accountability. The United States maintains an extensive network of launch detection satelites to identify and track incoming ICBMs. Thus, a missile attack on the US, while rather unfortunate for those in the targeted city, is a clear act of war. It is detered by the fact that we're going to reduce your entire nation to a smokeing hole in the ground.

    With a anti-ballistic missle shield in place missile attacks (at least small ones) become a thing of the past. The attacker must smuggle the weapon into range. Now, there's tons of ways to do this. If you want to carry the damn thing (low tech solution) you have to land it on part of the thousands of miles of undefended coast land in the US and Canada and then truck it to your destination, possibly crossing the Canadian boarder (which incidently is the longest undefended boarder in the world). Of course, simply putting a nuke on a passanger liner and sailing it into NY harbor would work about a million times better. To say nothing of a short range missile delivery system fired from a boat in international waters.

    The fundamental fact of it is that a ABM system makes the world LESS stable rather than more stable. Weapons technology has progressed to the point that a suitcase full of small pox can cause just as much havoc as the "Nuclear Trump Card." The international mindset still seems to rate nukes as the best suit to hold though, and ICBMs as the best way to deliver them. As long as that mindset prevails the ballance of mutual terror keeps the world a safe place to live. ABMs threaten that order, an order the United States has happily dominated for 50 years. The addage holds, if it ain't broke....



    This has been another useless post from....
  • Is it just me, or is my impression of the term 'bioagents' forever tainted by 'Osmosis Jones'? Next time there is a threat of viral warfare, I'll be too distracted by Bill Murray to care...

  • Depending on the agent, all you need is access to a few aircraft in foreign cities. Or the airport concourse.

    Don't worry, Bruce Willis will come back from the future and save us from that. I think.

    Anyhow, my favorite book on the history of biotoxic warfare is A Higher Form of Killing [mediaone.net] by Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman. It covers weapons development by the US, Britain, and USSR, as well as Germany and Japan during both world wars. Parts of it read like black comedy, but most is just black. It's out of print, but copies can still be had.
  • First of all, the disease vector has to survive the explosion. Second of all, the problem with this sort of ground attack is that it would either kill the people closest to the impact point, or send them straight to the hospital with injuries sustained in the blast. Thus, your potential "patient zeroes" are either killed or isolated, and unable to spread the disease. Because of this, you need the Cessna crash to release an aerosol of the bioagent which can remain in the air for a good length of time, infecting people far from the crash site. Is it hard to create such as aerosol? Not really, but having it released from a cessna crash is not the best way to do it - there's just too much risk of you bioagent container not being penetrated, or the bioagent being destroyed in the crash. Also, if any trace of the bioagent container is found that looks suspicious, or if the inital outbreak is concentrated within close proximity to the crash site, it could tip off health-care professionals that an attack has taken place. One of the biggest advantages of bioweapons is their subtlety. An airplane crashing into Times Square is not, by any strech of the imagination, subtle.

  • Anthrax in Sverdlosk (Score:3)

    by Jonathan ( 5011 ) on Sunday July 15, 2001 @05:50AM (#84270) Homepage
    If you are interested in the subject, another book, Anthrax: The investigation of a deadly outbreak [ala.org] by Jeanne Guillemin is also of interest. This is far more detailed and includes interviews with people directly involved.

    Alibek's book is good for learning about Biopreparat activities, but he knew only about Sverdlosk second hand, as the anthrax plant was not run by Biopreparat.
  • I searched bn.com, amazon, google, and the library of congress online catalog. I can find no indication that Ken Alibek ever wrote a book titled "Contamination". Can you give more information ?

  • Re:Deatils please (Score:4)

    by Jonathan ( 5011 ) on Sunday July 15, 2001 @06:03AM (#84272) Homepage
    It was the Soviet biological warfare testing site. They would chain chimpanzees there to poles and see how long it would take them to die from various agents.

  • Wakeup Call (Score:5)

    by anto ( 41846 ) <ajw@poboxBALDWIN.com minus author> on Sunday July 15, 2001 @06:09AM (#84273) Homepage Journal
    If nothing else the descriptions of just how powerful & easy to deploy some of the agents discussed makes an absolute joke of technology such as a glabal missile defence. A modified smallpox could wipe the US off the map without so much as an ICBM in sight.

  • Dr. Alibek's Writings Available On The Web (Score:5)

    by cybrpnk ( 94636 ) on Sunday July 15, 2001 @06:31AM (#84274)
    This is one scary book that everybody should read. The Russian author, Ken Alibek, moved to Alabama (where I live) where he was a consultant after his defection to the US Army Chemical/Biological Warfare Group at Fort McClellan in Anniston, so I have actually followed this story fairly closely. Dr. Alibek is basically the guy behind the drive to vaccinate the US Army against anthrax, which has caused quite a furor [cnn.com] over the past few years. A slide show he gave/gives fairly frequently is here [ucla.edu] and his Congressional testimony is here [house.gov]... it's VERY interesting reading. If Dr. Alibek's writings don't induce a rising sense of worry in the back of your mind, just keep reading here [sonic.net].

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