On Friday, September 28, 2001, at 10:48 AM, David Honig wrote:
At 04:57 PM 9/28/01 +0100, Ken Brown wrote:
Smallpox isn't likely to be a war-winning weapon, though it could cause a great deal of terror. It spreads slowly enough so that any country whose pharmaceutical factories haven't been blown up by cruise missiles could probably tool up in time to prevent an epidemic, helped by some sensible quarantines.
Sounds like a cobalt 'doomsday nuke' that you trigger just before your suicide in a bunker.
I was reading Tucker's new book "Scourge" yesterday, and he outlined the reasons for militarizing smallpox. The Sov rationale was for a laydown _after_ an all-out nuclear war, to clean up any remnants. Those on the Soviet side, also nuked, would be in bunkers and would have ample opportunity to be vaccinated. Also, smallpox is not airborne in any widespread sense, that is, it is not carried aloft in the jetstream. Thus, it would not drift from the U.S. or even Europe into Russia. Tucker's book is too heavy on the drama of "chasing down the last smallpox in the wild" and announcing the Official Eradication and is too light on the Biopreparat/Vector/India-1967 stuff. Alibek's book is maybe more germane (cough cough). I haven't yet seen Judith Miller's new "Germs" book. A piece of triva. Tucker is part of the Monterey Instititue for International Studies, though he located on the east coast. I expect ties to the anti-terrorism program at the adjacent Naval Postgraduate School (where infrequent list contributor Kristin Tsolis is based, involved in AUM cult and bioterrorism issues....I assume she's in overdrive right now). Another piece of trivia. Author Laurie Garrett, who wrote "The Coming Plague," is a UCSC graduate.
Personally I'm much more
scared by nerve gasses. No time to prepare, no practical precautionary measures anyway.
Tucker's book has an interesting description of how the U.S. helped the U.S.S.R. "spin their wheels" on "worthless" biological and chemical warfare work, to distract them from nuclear work. Some U.S. agents, the subjects of recent books (don't recall the names, but I glanced at them a couple of years ago, and Tucker cites them as sources), dropped hints to the Soviets that the U.S. had made major strides in CBW. This was designed to distract the Soviets, to get them to spend money on dead ends. Well, besides spending a lot of money on smallpox and nerve gases, the Soviets apparently had a breakthrough: the developed a nerve gas much more potent than VX (which kills quickly with just a microscopic droplet). We hadn't counted on that.
Stay away from concentrations of people. And upwind of them. (Shit now I sound like Payne from N.M.)
I've got this one covered. Nothing but the Pacific Ocean west of me. Some back roads, some beach houses, but nothing that's in the top 10,000 target list. South of me is the aforementioned complex of Defense Language Institute, Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Undersea Warfare Center branch office, Monterey Institute, and the main West Coast satellite downlink site in a radio-quiet zone back in the hills behind Big Sur. Given the prevailing winds, no real risk to me. Moving and panicked crowds would be a bigger risk, but I expect most of them would think to head north out of the SF Bay Area, or maybe east into the Sierras. Not a lot would try to make it over a mountain pass to my section, unless they had a specific place to go. If this be paranoia, let us make the most of it. And paranoia can be so much _fun_. On a completely serious note, experience from many past scourges and plagues has shown the wisdom of "going to the country." Or at least not hanging out in schools, shopping centers, and, worst of all, "relocation centers." Sleeping in a gymnasium with 300 other refugees is just about the worst possible scenario. Though I think such an attack is only slightly likely (and then probably semi-botched and "only" killing a few hundred or a few thousand), it takes little effort to "think about the unthinkable" and make minimum preparations. For example, think about a relative in the country you could visit, have a "bug out bag" in the garage or car, have enough cash and stored food to last a few weeks, and so on. There is much written about this topic. --Tim May