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Bio-Terror Printable Version PRINTABLE VERSION
by Finn Cheshire, New Zealand Oct 16, 2001
Peace & Conflict   Opinions

  

We are afraid. This has come as a nasty shock for those living in ‘western nations’ who already had their bubble of security smashed by the September the 11th attacks on New York and Washington. They have now been introduced to a possibly more horrific world of weapons of mass destruction, more exactly Biological warfare.

Anthrax colonies sent by mail have become the terrorists revenge for strikes against their bases, and their security. The colonies and released into the atmosphere and onto the surrounding people when the packages are opened do not have a wide effect but they are very very deadly. Using simple sealed packages to transfer the colonies has proved a horrifying fact, while it is hard to turn an anthrax colony into a effective arm through the use of a effective wide area deployment, a simple envelope will bypass all of this. Further more no one should be fooled into believing it is hard to get hold of deadly bacteria’s, Anthrax is available through mail order, from the USA.

Biological arms are perhaps the deadliest arms known to man, they are also the unknown factor, far less known to the general public than nuclear or chemical arms biological weapons are silent, invisible, uncontrollable, and they have the ability to wipe out every single person on earth.

Biological warfare is not new, the first recorded instance being Alexander the Great using catapults to throw bodies of plague victims into a city he was besieging. However until now humanity was yet to see the use of modern biological arms, the reason being, as with nuclear weapons the theory of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’, MAD, has stopped anyone from employing such arms due to fear of equal reprisals upon their population, fortunately terrorist groups are not governments, they do not represent populations and are under no obligation to protect them, in fact using populations as shields is a common terrorist tactic.
The reality of what the world today faces is frightening to the general public, during the cold war the world learnt to live with the threat of nuclear apocalypse, however that was an enemy we could see, this time, like with everything in this conflict the enemy and the threat is invisible. The unknown scares people, and as more and more reports of colonies being found in envelopes filter in from around the world the panic is rising. The fact is we don’t really know what these weapons can do and we don’t know how large the enemies stock piles are.

Here in France, the French government is playing its usual self with two faces, on one hand they are playing down the situation but on the other hand the effects they are putting into place seems to contradict their very clams of no apparent threats. A new office has been created simply to deal with biological threats, and like the rest of the world is busy creating antidotes for anthrax. The effect of this frenzy on the part of the government is not to create calm, but more panic, are we soon going to see people keeping away from the population centres? Evacuation of the cities for fear of a spread of the spores? Where will it end?

The general feeling of fear that is sweeping not only France but the rest of the world is not so much caused by these recent biological attacks but for of the fact that so much is unknown, everyone is wondering what will happen next. Without facts on Anthrax the public is beginning to be filled with stories and false facts, both underestimating and overestimating the effect and ability of the attacks.

Every time someone decides not to do something because of the threat of an attack of some kind the terrorist win just that little bit more, the biological attacks are terrible but luckily there have been few victims, even so we are afraid. Those attacks were not intended to create mass victims, but mass panic, and they have sadly achieved their objective. They may not have the technology to lunch a huge biological attack but they don’t need it, they can cause huge amounts of fear without it.

Right now it is down to us, every single person, we must no be afraid, we must stand up for our ways of life and our freedom, we must continue to live without fear. We must show them that their way will never work, that we will pull through, that to live without violence is to live a better life.





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Comments


Good coverage!
Olawuyi Olusola Akanbi | Jun 19th, 2003
We in Africa feel your pain too. I pray these terrorists do not turn Africa into another kind of "911 victim" God bless mother Earth.



Terrorist attacks
Veronika Jegailova | Feb 12th, 2012
Unfortunately, terrorists are unlikely to stop harming people. And I agree that biological warfare is very dangerous, and maybe, even more dangerous than weapons to our society's health. One of the reasons is that bacterial colonies that are sent around can be contagious or even deadly. Biological attacks are one of the examples of our very far-reaching medicine progress, which as we can see, has negative sides, too.

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