ZKEA
World Outbreak Update
BioWatch, DetectionBiological warfare agents have unique properties. Two of the most pertinent are their invisibility and the built-in delay between the actual attack and the first visibility of symptoms. In these respects biological agents are fundamentally different from chemical and radiological weapons. Nerve gas and tactical nuclear weapons are noisy and quite overt. The killing clouds of vapor, or the radiation and the signature mushroom cloud, are indisputable signatures. If a nuclear warhead goes off in your neighborhood one sunny day, you'll have little doubt what happened.Biological attacks, in contrast, are silent and subtle. After an agent is deployed it may take many days before the first people begin to become ill. By this time it is too late. Those who are ill could be beyond saving. Even worse, if the agent is infectious, the seeds of a runaway epidemic have then already been planted. Of course, it is these very attributes (silent dissemination plus follow-on epidemic) that make biological weapons so attractive in the first place. Therefore it is imperative that biological attack be detected quickly, well before its physical manifestations become apparent. To this end there is a furious effort going on worldwide to enhance existing devices, as well as accelerate the development and deployment of new technology. Not surprisingly, the United States is leading this effort. Although all nations are at risk from biological terrorism, the United States obviously constitutes the #1 target. And since 9/11 few believe that terrorists - particularly those who have God on their side - will hesitate to use whatever weapons are handy. In terms of inflicting mass terror and mass casualties, no weapons can rival a biological one. Therefore this threat is a prime civil-defense focus. Tests have shown that the first 12 hours of a biological attack are the most critical. For instance, in one simulation a few pounds of anthrax were tossed from the roof of a city skyscraper. If this attack were detected within 12 hours, most of the people who were exposed were located and treated. Also, further infections were containable. If caught beyond this window, however, then the casualties from such an attack scenario quickly spiraled out of control. Indeed, other attack scenarios have reinforced the absolute necessity of quick-response. For this to happen, the right sensor technology has to be both available and broadly deployed. The first biological sensors were deployed with U.S. troops during Gulf War 1. It was known that Iraq had an anthrax capability and it was felt that this would be the most likely bioweapon. Thus - beyond being vaccinated against anthrax - U.S. troops also carried anthrax detectors. These were bulky devices with limited efficiency. They were not fast nor were they reliable. They also had a tendency to give a false positive, that is, signal that anthrax was present when in fact it was not. Detectors that cry "wolf" too often are worse than useless. Thus, after this war, these devices were slowly improved. However, there was no particular urgency to this effort. And it was strictly focused on the military. In 1995 the Japanese Aum cult famously attacked the Tokyo subway system with nerve gas. Less famously, this same cult had previously tried to attack cities with botulism and anthrax. Fortunately, the cult scientists were incompetent. Neither agent was formulated correctly. Even so, this event led some people to seriously consider the risks of biological attacks on civilian targets. Still, most policy-makers ignored this issue. Who would be crazy enough to want to kill millions of people for no rational reason? It was impossible. After 9/11 , the definition of impossibility shifted. Concurrent with this, research into biological detection devices went into warp drive. Now portable DNA devices are available that can reliably detect a pathogen within 30 minutes. These devices are already available to military forces. But, for the first time, these devices are also increasingly standard equipment for civilian defense and health authorities. In 2001 the United States instituted the BioWatch program. As of 2004 this was a network of 500 sensors in 31 cities, representing about half the US population. The technology used in this network is, for obvious reasons, not public. However it is believed that it relatively low-tech and relies on daily collection of samples from sensor stations. These samples are couriered to labs, where they are analyzed. Apparently these labs can detect a wide range of agents, including smallpox, anthrax, tularemia (rabbit fever) and plague. The system has never given a false positive and, in fact, has once given a true positive: in 2003 sensors in Houston detected tularemia in the air. As it turned out, this was a modest natural outbreak, insufficient to pose any human health risk. But the fact that it was detected certainly is a boost to confidence in the system. Biowatch is no panacea. However, it is an excellent first step in addressing the present danger of biological weapons.
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Government Provides Details of Bioterror Sensors in Cities
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The Complete Guide To Biological Weapons
by U.S. Department of Defense |
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The Coming Plague
by Laurie Garret |
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The Demon In The Freezer
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The Collapse Of Public Health
by Laurie Garret |
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The Menace of Emerging Infections
by Madeline Drexler |
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The Hot Zone
by Richard Preston |
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BioHazard
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Plague Wars
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The Biology of Doom
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Living Terrors: Survive The Bioterrorist Catastrophe
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Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox
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Virus X: Tracking The New Killer Plagues
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Virus Hunter
by C.J. Peters |
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Ebola: Through The Eyes of The People
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The Cobra Event
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Germs: America's Secret War
by Judith Miller |
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Man & Microbes: Plagues Throughout History
by Arno Karlen |