Crop dusting / bioweapons

[SysOpt]

I just heard on CNN that crop dusting manuals were found in some of the hijackers dwellings. Anyone have links to articles about that? I'm sure you know what they could do with a crop duster... Not good. Edit-- Found a story:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,175951,00.html

From the Johns Hopkins Center for Biodefense Studies (http://www.hopkins-biodefense.org/):

Given appropriate weather and wind conditions, 50 kilograms of anthrax released from an aircraft along a 2 kilometer line could create a lethal cloud of anthrax spores that would extend beyond 20 kilometers downwind. The aerosol cloud would be colorless, odorless and invisible following its release. Given the small size of the spores, people indoors would receive the same amount of exposure as people on the street.

A 1970 analysis by the World Health Organization concluded that the release of aerosolized anthrax upwind of a population of 5,000,000 could lead to an estimated 250,000 casualties, of whom as many as 100,000 could be expected to die.

A later analysis, by the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress, estimated that 130,000 to 3 million deaths could occur following the release of 100 kilograms of aerosolized anthrax over Washington D.C., making such an attack as lethal as a hydrogen bomb. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that such a bioterrorist attack would carry an economic burden of $26.2 billion per 100,000 people exposed to the spores...

....The U.S. has a sterile protein-based human anthrax vaccine that was licensed in 1970 and has been mandated for use in all U.S. military personnel. In studies with monkeys, inoculation with this vaccine at 0 and 2 weeks was completely protective against infection from an aerosol challenge at 8 and 38 weeks, and 88% effective at 100 weeks.

However, U.S. vaccine supplies are limited and U.S. production capacity is modest. There is no vaccine available for civilian use.
Iraq has Anthrax. The hijackers were likely working with Iraq. We won't have enough Anthrax vaccine for the civilian population for several years at best.

[surrealchereal]

Not good at all :( and poisons could possibly go unnoticed if it was just put on crops and not towns.

[SysOpt]

That could be true surreal but see my edit - I was referring to bioweapons.

[surrealchereal]

I thought you were, but then I was thinking of this,,
back in the 70's there was a chemical (used in photo processing) that you treated your pot plants with to make them produce more THC. According to the whole earth catalog it worked..
Caveat? Don't smoke the first generation of treated plants it was highly poisonous. consider that (some type of chemical) introduced into the food chain, no one would ever notice the plane(s) to pay attention to them dusting the fields of large production farms. Then the irrigation would contaminate water supplies.
OK nevermind my imagination is a bit out there ;)
Covert doesn't seem to be a route...

[Ed_S]

I was thinking about bio weapons earlier, a potentially horrible thought occured -

What if something of this nature had been aboard the planes last week??
In the hijacker's luggage, or for that matter in the hijacker's themselves who knew they were to die anyway...

Spread with the debris, or lying in the rubble to infect the rescuers who (predictably) rushed in from all over the country???

And who will be going home to well-deserved hero's "welcome home" functions in every state?!!


Scary thought, but sure seems like one heck of an effective distribution system!!

[SysOpt]

Yeah I thought about that too. But my GF suggested that the organism/toxin would have been burned up by the crash (?). Anthrax isn't contagious to my knowledge, but some of the others are (plague, smallpox, etc).

[SysOpt]

Here we go:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,175951,00.html

[M_Six]

Saddam would have to really be off his rocker to do something like that. Bioweapons are considered "weapons of mass destruction" and would cause the US to respond in kind. It would meet the US's criteria for nuclear weapons release. I can't believe he'd risk total annihilation.

[pickel]

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=84422

[Warthog]

I don't believe any country or rogue terrorist group would do something like that unless they wanted to insure their own annialation.

Warthog

[Ed_S]

Yeah, Wart - but prior to 9/11, wouldn't most of us have said that same thing about flying a passenger plane into a building??


And at this point, any terrorist group knows they are marked for extermination as soon as they're located. They have even less to loose now than before!!

I don't think we can rule out anything based on their fearing retaliation.

[Andy_L]

The Anthrax they are talking about is highly modified, with a lot shorter incubation time. Normally Anthrax is not a threat to people, only animals. The modified Anthrax is a serious concern for the US military, enough to develope and forcefully administer a vaccine for it.

[SysOpt]

http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/23/inv.crop.dusters/index.html

[RADAR1797]

Anthrax is an issue. I received my first three injections, but I am waiting for three more. Unfortunately, Anthrax can take different forms, meaning the vaccine may be useless. Nonetheless, it is time to get these f***ers.

-RADAR

[BFlurie]

This site (http://www.newsmax.com/) has some interesting links/articles.

[SysOpt]

Vaccines being made: quick enough?
http://oxygen.thriveonline.oxygen.com/news/wires/2001_0920_19.html

[krusty the klown]

All it would take to introduce a chemical / biological agent into a large population would be for a car or truck to be modified to release the agent via a fake tailpipe.

Not as effective as flying a plane over, but who would know what was happening until people started dying??

Hundreds of thousands could be exposed just by driving around the city all day... if someone wanted to release these agents, they could do so easily... and I can't see how it could be prevented if the terrorists ever gained access to / managed to smuggle the agents inside the 'target' country.

[omeyehead]

If anyone out there has read "The White Plague" by Frank Herbert, then remember that the virus created in the book was transmitted via several hundred dollar bills sent to unsuspecting recipients. The water supply would be an excellent target. I used to walk my dogs down by the dam here near town. Last week the Corp of Engineers put up no parking stickers along the roadside and closed off the scenic overlook. Coincidence maybe, but Lake Belton does supply water for several towns around here as well as Ft. Hood. Dams would make a pretty good target as their purpose is twofold.

[Raist]

I saw this thread and my heart dropped... One of my greatest fears for my countrymen and especially my family is that we will come under a biological/chemical attack... I am a network administrator by day but I have a great interest in Bio-Weapons... I became interested along time ago when I read Michael Chritons book The Andromodea Strain. Since I am also prior military I have a soldiers perspective as well... If something like a Chem\Bio attack occurs I pray it is chemical. A biological attack would be more far-reaching and disastrous than a chemical attack would be. Chemicals can be washed of and eventually would dissipate. Biological agents can be released and then communicated from one person to another. Depending on what agent we were to be hit with… Well, we could be in a lot of trouble. Take the Ebola virus… Statistics show that it kills upwards of 90% of those it infects. It has been thought to only be transmissible through direct contact or through fluid transfer… However, in today’s scientific world it would not be to hard to genetically modify it by adding genes from another virus.. You add genes which would transform it into a flu-like organism and you will have created something truly terrible.. I know I’m sounding like an alarmist but if you release a good amount of an agent like what I’ve mentioned in a couple of our major cities… Well, 80% of 250 million Americans is a horrific number to contemplate.. Every night I pray to God, Yahweh, Allah or whoever is out there to save us from such a catastrophe.. Sorry to be so doom and gloom everyone but it is something we could possibly face.

[Raist]

Oh yeah, todays my birthday... the big 26... past the quarter century mark now and going up the hill even faster now... <sigh> :(

[RobRich]

While Anthtrax certainly is something to be worried about, the chemcial gas serin is many time more lethal per measured amount in comparison. A simple aresol can filled with this gas could be administered by a car driving down the street. The effecitve kill radius could be several blocks, as the gas is heavy, thus it stays low to the ground. The murder rate for such an attack could be in the tens of thousands for a large city with a high population density.

Worse yet, chemical agents are easier to produce and deliver than biological weapons. For example, nearly all college chemistry labs have the needed components to produce nerve gas, so how hard would it be to secure the base chemicals in the public market?

Where can a person learn how to manufactuer this stuff? Such information was once only available through black-market books or underground Internet sites. Now we have news agencies like CNN spreading this information to the masses! And the FBI wonders how people can build these weapons with such ease?

Robert Richmond