Escaping the Plague

[Tim May]

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