Needlenose

Lost in the still unreconstructed Needlenose ‘middle years’ archive is a rant of mine about the ridiculous wrong-wing fear mongering about 3rd world terrorists using bioweapons and germ warfare – I consider it very unlikely because any such weapon would require high-technology and be very expensive to produce, and would have a disasterous ‘blow back’ on whatever hell-hole the terrorist and his family hailed from.

What we should be worried is the all-natural, all-organic kind of germ warfare – from Mother Nature!  Case in point – the recent outbreak of a ‘killer’ swine flu in Mexico. Obama and the Euroweenie leaders need to return to the Status Quo Ante where developed nations lead (and finance) the charge to aggressively combat infectious diseases in the developing world because viruses don’t respect national boundaries – and we are getting dangerously close to “The Big One” of killer pandemics.  This is the real and present danger presented by disease.

*Update* Speaking of stoopid wrong wingers, guess who stripped out dollars allocated for pandemic preparadness from the stimulus package?  Yep, the same assholes who criticized money allocated for volcano monitoring on the eve of a major eruption near a populated area.  Dumbasses.

*Update*  See it spread on Google Earth

Only really stupid terrorists would unleash germs on an enemy – and terrorists are usually crazy, not stupid.The as-yet-unexplained anthrax spore attacks following September 11th had an effect missing from the twin towers event – they struck terror in the heart of Main Street U.S.A. The Al Qaeda attacks, horrific as they were, seemed isolated, freakish, and…obvious. The anthrax attacks were spread across several states, with seemingly random casualties. But how seriously should we take the threat of germ-based bioterror?

Don’t be ridiculous, we can’t take it seriously at all.  Bioweapons are games for superpowers.   But even if a motley gang of terrorists were given something like a souped-up weaponized smallpox, why would they use it?  Sure, they’d give the Great Satan a black eye, killing a few hundred thousand or even a million people - but the West has groups like the CDC and modern infrastructure.

The major die-off would be in the third-world – in those failed or failing states where the terrorists and their extended families live.  In the earliest moments of a super plague, people would be jumping on planes and spreading the pathogen across the globe.

Terrorists may be crazy, but I wouldn’t call them stupid.