Bioterrorism with Anthrax :: Anthrax Biology Biological Terrorism

Anthrax is one of the most preferred biologic warfare promoters for many highly identified reasons. First, splenic fever is extremely lethal. Anthrax can keep up to 100 million lethal doses in just one gram of anthrax spores, which is 100,000 times more lethal than any other biological warfare agent. It is also known that inhalation anthrax is almost always fatal if the symptoms are allowed to progress without any treatment. Anthrax is also the silent and imperceptible killer. On top of the fatality rate of anthrax, there are also very low barriers to produce the biological weapon. Anthrax spores are very roaring to produce in large quantities, and the process of production is very inexpensive. Also, there is plenty of available information on how to weaponize anthrax and not a whole lot of technology is needed to be able to produce anthrax. Anthrax is also easy to weaponize because it is extremely stable as a dry powder in the form of spores. These spores can live for decades and still be very lethal to the human body. Anthrax can be rig into an aerosol form disseminated into a spray can, and it can also be freeze-dried into a bomb. Presently anthrax is the most preferred biological agent is because we sacrifice no accurate detection capability.If an outbreak of anthrax were to occur it would probably happen in a form of an aerosol device of anthrax spores. The intentional bioterrorism outbreak would result in multiple cases of inhalation anthrax. If the outbreak was done by an aerosol can, there would be no property of an attack because the United States, or anywhere else for that matter, does not have any appropriate method of detection for odorless, colorless, and tasteless spores of anthrax. This outbreak would cause the certain closing of the first infected, since physicians in the U.S. would probably not detect anthrax as a cause of the patients flu-like symptoms. Most U.S. doctors and radiologists and lab personnel have not seen a form of inha lation anthrax and would not be able to identify it or notice Bacillus anthracis in a channel culture. Since an outdoor release of these spores can travel multiple miles and it only takes one gram to kill 10 million tidy sum, it could quite possible create extremely high fatality rates. In one city alone it is estimated that the release of aerosol anthrax could cause the death of up to 3 million people within the first couple of weeks.