BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
The terrorist attacks of September 11 played a crucial role in awakeningthe world to the possibility of advanced warfare. Before this tragedy, theworld could hardly imagine that our good old airplanes could actually beused as missiles to kill ten of hundreds of unsuspecting souls. ButSeptember 11, proved that terrorists were far ahead of the intelligenceagencies and the general public when it came to designing and deployingsophisticated war tactics. War for a terrorist need not involve themilitary or military tactics of any nature; it is simply a conflict wherethe side with best strategies and most unique weaponry stands a betterchance of emerging victorious. It appears that United States and the entireworld was largely unaware of this perspective on war and thusunderestimated the intelligence of terrorist groups since they merelyfocused on conventional ways of securing the nation that had little or noprotection to offer against advanced terrorist tactics and strategies.However September 11 was a big eye opener, not only did it divert theattention of the public and government to the horrific nature of newterrorist strategies, it also opened their eyes to the possibility of
However it waslater found that some countries, specifically Russia had never stopped itsbiological weapons program as a White House report said, "The Russianoffensive biological warfare program, inherited from the Soviet Union,violated the Biological Weapons Convention through at least March 1992. Let us take anthrax for example, the one biological agent we are allfamiliar with and which has been touted as extremely fatal. Biological agents are more fragile, andthe process of converting them into weapons is the primary delay inpreparation. There are certain other drawbacks to anthrax as aweapon. To prevent a catastrophe, it is important to instruct thepublic to get vaccinated while at the same time, government should try toaccurately assess the situation and take required measures to containaccess to biological agents. We shall then focus on the other side of the so-called reality andput the biological weapon debate into the right perspective. What we don't know about biological weapons ishighly important information. Biological weapons are a serious threat to national security andpublic health because of some specific reasons. An example ischikungunya, which exists in Africa and Southeast Asia. The number of spores that must be delivered to the lungs to producethe disease is quite high compared with some other infectious agents--ithas been estimated that certain viruses and rickettsiae may communicatedisease with just a single particle. Biological material is usually available at affordable price, andsince they easily reproduce, only a small quantity is initially required. The toxins aremainly what we know as food poisoning, since they are acquired by ingestionof food or water.
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