Stratfor brings reality into the anthrax-as-weapon discussion. Says Stratfor: It ain't as easy as sci-fi thrillers make it sound. For example:
The [Aum terrorist] group sprayed thousands of gallons of aerosolized liquid anthrax in Tokyo. This time, Aum not only employed its fleet of sprayer trucks but also used aerosol sprayers mounted on the roof of their headquarters to disperse a cloud of aerosolized anthrax over the city. Again, the attacks produced no results and were not even noticed.Oooh, I'm so scared of anthrax!
Reality is that terrorists go with what gets them the most bang for the buck. A single suicide bombing in Iraq typically kills more people than have been killed in all the anthrax attacks in known history -- combined. And it takes less than a hundred bucks worth of explosives, not a massive R&D laboratory and fancy equipment and shit. The humble truck bomb that blew up the Oklahoma City federal courthouse is what we should be concerned about insofar as terrorism is concerned. Some bug that even the most highly weaponized version, out of our own weapons lab, can't manage to kill more than a dozen people total despite multiple attacks... uhm, yeah. About those truck bombs...
-- Badtux the Practical Penguin
Were people really afraid of anthrax? I never was, even though I was living in Florida when the attax occurred. (And let's not forget it was the Florida tabloid photographer Robert Stevens who was the first one killed.) I figured right off that it was a relatively isolated, mail-related phenomenon, like the Unabomber. Was I supposed to be terrified that every one of Ammurika's 300 million citizens was going to receive Spores-by-Mail? Damn, I didn't get the memo. Maybe it got lost in the post.
ReplyDeleteWell, only in Zimbabwe on a reserve was it a danger.
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