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.
There are many other poxviruses such as volepox. There is even one endemic to the USA: skunkpox. You Americans just have to inject yourself with pus from a poxy skunk if you are worried.
Sounds like something congressmen are at risk for. Personally I'm much more
scared by nerve gasses. No time to prepare, no practical precautionary measures anyway.
Carry an autoinjector. (Officer, this is *not* 'parephenalia') Start cultivating Jimsonweed. Raise canaries outdoors. Carry bleach in a perfume bottle. Stay away from concentrations of people. And upwind of them. (Shit now I sound like Payne from N.M.)
Ken Brown (who is a microbiologist when he has his lab coat on)
You know about the researchers who put two mild mouse bugs together (working on a fertility project I think) and got a hybrid that killed a large number quickly? What a jokester, the Author of the Genome.