A recent report assembled at the behest of Congress concludes that a biological terror attack is quite likely by 2013. This conclusion seems quite reasonable.
Biological weapons have been used for centuries. Early forms were fairly crude: dumping dead animals in wells, flinging diseased corpses over city walls during sieges, and similar such activities. Later on, the art of biological warfare was refined a bit. One excellent example is the use of blankets infected with small pox as weapons against the indigenous people of America. During the World Wars and Cold War, biological warfare was further enhanced as natural diseases were intentionally enhanced and new strains were created. This research continues to this day; mostly under the guise of developing defenses against biological weapons.
It is easy enough to imagine how terrorists could gain access to biological weapons. Lax security, bribery, and so forth can allow them access to military grade weapons. Naturally, terrorist groups that are supported by states could simply be given such weapons.
Terrorists could also create their own. While they will typically lack the facilities of a nation, cultivating deadly disease agents is relatively easy to do. They are readily available (after all, people are naturally infected) and usually the challenge is to keep them from spreading rather than spreading them. While the terrorists will most likely lack the ability to create weapons on par with those made by nations, the naturally occurring diseases are often quite dangerous enough.
The main challenge that the terrorists face are infecting a population in an effective manner and getting the disease to spread enough to do serious damage. Of course, even if they were only able to affect a limited population, this would certainly help to create significant terror. After all, “conventional” terrorists attacks tend to kill relatively few people and create relatively little destruction compared with something like an actual battle. As such, the terrorists do not need to duplicate the military grade biological weapons of mass destruction or even the battlefield versions. They just need a biological weapon that can infect a relatively small number of people. Of course, if they use a natural disease and only infect a small number of people, there will be doubts as to whether or not such an attack is really an attack or not. After all, if a terrorist group claimed credit for the winter flu season, then they would obviously not be taken seriously.
So far terrorist groups have not employed such weapons. One reason might be that they lack access to an effective biological weapon that would serve their purposes (that is, one that would be clearly recognized as a weapon and not a natural breakout). Another reason might be that the biological weapon threshold is one that even the terrorists are reluctant to cross. A third reason is that there are practical concerns about such weapons that are holding terrorists back. For example, there might be greater backlash against the deployment of such a weapon. After all, biological weapons tend to be regarded as being far worse than conventional weapons. As another example, such weapons tend to be too indiscriminate and could spread too far-even for the purposes of terrorism. There are probably other reasons as well.
If the terrorist are able to get past or around these obstacles, then biological weapons will probably be used. For example, the history of terrorism is a history of crossing ever more evil thresholds. So, it is probably just a matter of time before terrorists cross the biological threshold in a large scale attack.
Chemical weapons have been used by terrorists, such as the Sarin gas attacks in the tokyo subway, 1995. The attack was commenced by the Aum Shinrikyo cult. 12 people died.
Of course, there’s the instance of the US Anthrax letters also. This was not a terrorist group; it now appears to have been one man who has access to weapons-grade Anthrax.
To tell the truth, under current conditions, it’s probably a more efficiant use of the terrorist’s time and assets to conduct operations like those that occured recently in Mumbai and in 2002 and 2004 in Moscow and Beslan: Simply walk into a place with lots of militans and start shooting up the place/ taking hostages.
As the term insinuates, terrorism is a mind-war. The military has the capability to spread bio and chem weapons over huge areas, with relatively little exertion. Terrorists need to go to large extents to do so. And even terrifying bio weapons like smallpox only have a 30% lethality, though of course it’s extremely communicable.
Nukes, another WMD, are a whole other issue, and do present a significant risk.
They could give Rosy O’Donnell her own show again. I think that would do the trick. I think they would, with one fell swoop, change the word terrorisn to horrorism.
Some horrors the world should not see…again.
Some people don’t think terrorism is any problem at all.
http://magus71.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/my-letter-to-the-la-times/
Some people have false beliefs. While terror is overblown by the politicians and media, it is still a problem. After all, terrorists murder people and that is, obviously enough, a problem.
Good post, but somehow it just seems to feed into the doctrine of fear in this country. Can we vaccinate against bioterror? Would it even prevent anything? Aren’t there smarter ways to spend the little bit of cash that we actually have at this particular moment in history? To me, it just seems to be another entry in Bush’s war on terror (read: money poorly spent).
I saw a multimedia article in FLYP this past week with interviews with tons of experts about this point, basically saying that all of the millions and millions of dollars we’ve poured into research facilities to produce these vaccines and “study” the pathogens have actually made us LESS safe. Check it out: http://www.flypmedia.com/issues/18/#1/1
What “doctrine of fear”, sarah. I don’t feel afraid and it’s BECAUSE of the institutions and laws and in place–not in spite of them. As George Orwell said: “We sleep safely in our beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf.”
If someone breaking someone else’s window is reason enough to call the police and to HAVE police in the first place, I guess we need to spend a little cash to fight terrorism.
The question is, sarah, what do you think the world would be like if we didn’t do ANYTHING. If we just did whatever the terrorists demanded and there was no ways and means to hunt them, kill them or prosecute them.
All I can say is, were that the case, make sure you’re wearing a veil when you go out.
Fire (spark) is reaction, produced by friction of two substances in negative and positive (opposite) directions. Fire seeks help of substance for its extension. It is the substance that helps fire to become furious. So intensity of fire depends on power of substances. Revolution (spark) is creation of reaction from Governments and the living citizens. Intensity of revolution depends on the strength of despressed people. Revolution may be classified in two categories (1) Peaceful as organized by Anna Hazare and Ram Dev in India during August 2011 or Gandhi or Nelson. Though requires lot of sacrifice can sympathetic attention of entire world. This revolution is to melt heart of opposite side that caused pain to citizens. Most effective method that pulls mob to address the strength to opposite side (2) violent revolution organized by some sects to hurt opposite side to give pain, after sometimes people too become opposite to revolution. The opposite side reacts strongly to foil by using stronger force gains momentum from own and world population. This type of revolution mainly results due to anger, as recently we experienced in many parts of Europe. Where young boiled blood experience mistreated due to unemployment, escalated living cost, poverty, racial discrimination, and etc.
Each Government must understand the responsibility towards own population. Old age systems have changed; Present violence is indication of despondency. Now they want elected members to be in touch with them understand their pain and issues. World over crisis are worsening and may explode any time. World young is stressed and getting violent as experienced in UK and Spain or other parts. Change old age decayed constitutions to match present population. Always keep in touch with who voted, seek their views so can solve, this way feel they are involved would minimize despondency among its population.
http://www.sadashivan.com/negativepositivefactorsandwe/id9.html