I don't want to belabor the point, but it's not that you can't spread these agents by hand, it's just that you can't cover a whole city or even a large part of one in a reasonable time. How do you get lots of people to walk down a street spreading Ebola when they will be the first one infected? Unlike anthrax (caused by a bacteria) Ebola is a virus. Viruses have a very short survival time outside of a host, are fragile and generally don't make good weapons. Developing a reliable delivery system for viruses isn't easy. The much tougher bacteria and toxins are better as weapons. There are time tested measures available to stop epidemics once a country realized it was under attack, anthrax has an effective treatment and a vaccine, etc,etc. A determined attack of this nature would be horrible, but the casualties would more likely number in the 3 or 4 figure range, mostly civilians. Our ability to completely destroy a country from remote bases, aircraft carriers, and submarines would remain intact. Furthermore, could an enemy really be sure we have destroyed our chemical - biological abilities? In other words these are untested systems guaranteed to bring a devastating response, so it doesn't seem too likely that a nation would use them against us.
Terrorists willing to die and not caring about any country are the most likely users of these weapons. They aren't worried about our retaliation since we don't know who they are or where to find them
.We should be stockpiling vaccines ,masks, and treatments for these agents and spending more to develop new vaccines. All of this involves technology that is known and has been used in the past to stop polio etc. We should also be putting more effort into anti ICBM defense. You can add our lack of preparation to the long list of offenses that lead directly to Mr. Clinton. |
