Smallpox?

[David Honig]

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.