Hi. I hope you don't mind me butting in but bio-warfare is a subject that
really interests me and I have been following your conversation.
There are many viruses that fulfil most of the criteria for being a
doomsday virus. Diseases such as certain strains of Ebola and Marlbro (sp?)
have a mortality rate of 90-100%, an incubation period of about 72 hours and
it wouldn't take long for a strain to mutate and become airborne.
>We are capable of rapidly imposing controls measures
>against contagion, as well. It is not really a new art,
>either. The borders of entire nations can be closed off in
>case of emergency; of course, smaller areas can also be
>interdicted.
Most countries admit that they are not cabable of controlling a bio-warfare
attack (especially Europe) and there is no police force in the world that is
trained to react against a germ-warfare bomb. Also although countries might
try to seal their borders there are still people who own their own boats or
planes that could go any where they want.
>With some five (six?) billion people kicking around, somebody is >bound to
be immune to whatever is whipped up, even should >everyone be exposed.
But what if the virus mutates? Considering the number of individual viruses
created per host and the number of hosts that they might go through before
reaching the person, the virus would have amble chance to mutate to a strain
that would be deadly to someone otherwise immune.
>Offence is the best defence only then the enemy is interested in
>defending itself
Don't you mean WHEN instead of THEN. Sorry but this makes a lot of
difference. Also how could a country or city defend itself against a
biological attack? People can't walk around in bio-hazard suits. In America
there are people buying their own bio-ware fare protection kits, but most of
this are not good enough at filtering for an airborne virus.
Hope you don't mind me adding my 2 cents.
Deano.
