From the very conception of modern technology, humanity has encountered the choice of bettering the world or heralding destruction upon society—whether in the name of superiority, religion, or further technological advancement. As the marriage of science and technology has been a mostly happy and fruitful one, it has also launched toxic inventions and discoveries unprecedented to date. Terrorism in the 21st century has taken a turn for the exponentially more evil and more effective means of destruction through the coupling of terror and biochemical warfare. This new brand of terrorism, termed bioterrorism, is far more relevant to science fiction novels than it is to what we think of as traditional terror. However, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta has just recently stated that bioterrorism is now considered one of the top 5 health threats of 2014, providing this new threat with a real sense of relevance.
According to the CDC, bioterrorism is defined as terrorism involving the “deliberate release of viruses, bacteria, toxins, or other harmful agents used to cause illness or death in people, animals, or plants.” While these agents are typically found in nature, laboratories can ‘enhance’ them to increase their resistance to vaccinations or to increase their ability to spread farther, and through novel media– such as through air, water, and food. The lure of using biological weapons as opposed to head-on attacks is bioweapons’ stealth ability to avoid detection and the significant delay in the onset of the illness after the pathogen has been administered. In addition, these weapons can be easily obtained and are relatively inexpensive.
Due to its advantages, it is no surprise that bioterror has actually existed in many primitive forms for centuries, with the first recorded attack in the 6th century when the Assyrians used various poisons derived from fungus to infect their enemy’s wells to cause delirium, or even death.
A more commonly known biochemical agent is anthrax, derived from a bacterium that causes a disease affecting the skin and lungs. Allegedly, German agents in World War I used anthrax spores cultivated in covert laboratories around the world to infect their enemies’ war animals by planting them in sugar cubes. When fed to thousands of cattle, horses, and mules belonging to the enemy country, artillery movement and supply convoys, heavily dependent on horses and mules; were severely incapacitated. Glanders, or Burkholderia mallei, another pathogen similar to anthrax, was used to accomplish the same goal with Russian, American, and Argentinian animals. In addition, the Japanese used glanders to deliberately infect Chinese horses and even prisoners of war and civilians during World War II.
More recently, two male college students belonging to a terrorist organization plotted to poison Chicago’s water supply by introducing typhoid germs into the drinking water reserves in 1972. Though their plans were successfully thwarted, one of the biggest biochemical attacks since the Second World War that went unstopped was in 1984, when 751 individuals in Oregon were killed through the deliberate contamination of restaurant salad bars with Salmonella. The motive behind this massively tragic attack was a political one, in hopes to incapacitate a large segment of the voting population in order to sway the vote in favor of the organization’s leader.
However, it wasn’t until 2001, one week after the attacks of September 11, that bioterror has skyrocketed into the awareness of governments worldwide. When letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and US senators, ultimately killing five and injuring 17, biosafety labs began to work incessantly on developing vaccinations for these kinds of pathogens.
Currently, one of the biggest bioterror frights is the possible advent of a smallpox attack. Smallpox, considered the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, has killed more people throughout history than any other infectious disease, including the bubonic plague. Throughout the eighteenth century alone, small pox was responsible for killing 200,000 to 600,000 people each year. However, the disease was successfully eradicated in 1980 globally, with the only surviving strains locked safely away in the CDC and in Russia.
Though there has been talk about the possibility of destroying the smallpox stockpiles in the US and Russia, the US government recently bought 463 million dollars’ worth of new smallpox medicine to treat two million people in an effort to prepare for a possible bioterrorism attack. Even if both countries destroyed all traces of the virus, it is nevertheless possible nowadays to artificially sequence its genome in labs without a pre-existing model. Therefore, as the ability of researchers to manipulate pathogens increases, so does the danger of a possible bioterror attack. It is chilling to think that terror in the 21st century is changing tactics; where mere bombs are not enough, the sophisticated, yet unpredictable vagaries of the science laboratory are the new way to procure the most lethal of weapons.