1: Bioterrorism- Biological War Against US Cities Bioterrorism : Secrets for Survival By Duncan Long (co-authored by S. Spencer Jones) Chapter 1: Biological Warfare Against U.S. Cities ~ the Genesis of the Coming Crisis "The consensus of people in the law enforcement and intelligence communities is that it's not a matter of IF it's going to happen, it's WHEN. We are very, very concerned. " -- Robert Blitzer, head of the FBI's Anti-Terrorism Division, U.S. News & World Report, November 17, 1997. Today American citizens are in grave danger. The danger comes from hi-tech terrorists who may soon claim the lives of not hundreds or even thousands but millions of innocent men, women and children in the US and elsewhere around the world. The first hints of such a danger surfaced on Monday, March 20, 1995, in the Tokyo subway system. In restrooms and on subway trains, odd packages started spewing a mysterious gas that made those around the lethal boxes suddenly, violently ill. In the end Japan was held hostage for weeks until the terrorists that had planted the boxes filled with nerve gas were captured. Few civilians actually died in the attacks; had the terrorists been truly skilled at what they were doing, the fatalities could easily have been thousands of times worse. The important point was that the attack marked a new age of terrorism, when something besides crude bombs and guns could be employed to "make a statement" to governments and the populations they controlled. As Kyle Olson of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute in Alexandria, VA put it, "Terrorists have taken that step across the threshold into the use of weapons of mass destruction. " The Tokyo attacks were hardly more than a dress rehearsal for what a professional terrorist group might easily accomplish. Surprisingly this wasn't the first such attack on civilians by weapons that once were called "unthinkable" because it was assumed they were too awful to ever be used. In fact, a successful biological weapons attack was mounted a little over ten years earlier. And it occurred in the US. The attack took place in September 1984, in Oregon. As with the Japanese subway attack, this one was mounted by a religious cult, the Rajneeshi, who were trying to take over the local political system of the town where they had set up their headquarters. To swing the election that they hoped would vote into office members of the sect, the group cultivated salmonella bacteria in an underground lab. They then filled small vials of water laced with the bacteria and spread out over town, surreptitiously pouring the deadly liquid over lettuce in salad bars, produce in grocery stores, and so forth. The goal of this reckless act was to make enough townspeople ill that they wouldn't go to the voting booths, thereby allowing the Rajneeshi to swing the election in their favor. ' The attack eventually made 751 people sick, including babies; in all, nearly a tenth of the town was laid low with the intense illness. One frightening aspect of this story is that the attack went undetected. No one ever connected the cult to the strange illness that swept through the tiny town. It was only later, when a former member came forward and told the authorities, that the attack was discovered. Such attacks can be mounted with only rudimentary knowledge of laboratory methods, and such assaults may not only go undetected but may even remain a mystery. This makes biological weapons revolting to good people. And attractive to terrorists. Which is why many experts on terrorism worry that the next attack against US citizens may be made with biological weapons. Virtually all are certain such an attack will occur sometime in the near future. It isn't a question of whether it will happen, but rather when and where it will take place in the U.S., and how much death and devastation will be caused. The Beginning of the Age of BioTerrorism Although the US government has created special teams to deal with the threat of biological and other terrorist weapons that may soon be unleashed on US citizens within the borders of America, many feel the government's efforts are too little too late. This isn't surprising. The US government has been behind the curve with biological weapons defense since the 1960s. At that time the US had become bogged down in the Vietnam war and was looking for ways to look less militaristic. The solution appeared to be available in the form of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention between the US and the USSR. US intelligence thought America had little to lose in signing this agreement. In 1969 J. Edgar Hoover supplied President Nixon with information from two trusted spies (known by the code names of"Fedora" and "Top Hat''); these spies claimed the Soviets were far behind the US in the development of chemical and biological weapons but were about to launch a crash development program to catch up. President Nixon reasoned that if he could get the Soviets to agree to a freeze on the production of biological weapons. the US could remain ahead in this arms race. Had the US been more on the ball, they might have suspected something when the Soviets were only too happy to agree to the Convention. Only after signing the treaty did US Intelligence discover that they were victims of Russian disinformation and that Top Hat and Fedora were double agents, feeding the FBI false information. In fact, the Soviets were far ahead of the US in the creation of such weapons and the treaty made certain they would keep their lead. Despite being hoodwinked, .US leaders tried to reassure themselves that the right thing had been done. After all the Soviets were at least locked in place, unable to continue any programs. But this, too, was an erroneous assumption. The USSR didn't live up to the treaty, despite the fact that US diplomats and liberals in Washington insisted time and again that the USSR would keep up its end of the bargain. Eventually it became apparent that at least 5 -- and perhaps as many as 50 -- plants were still producing chemical and biological weapons to place in the Soviet arsenals, and that the Russians had only dispersed their laboratories into more secretive locations, allowing them to continue their biological warfare research and development programs. Little by little the US realized its mistake. Following the Yom Kippur War, Western intelligence was allowed to inspect the Soviet-supplied Arab tanks. What they found shocked them: the Soviet tanks were equipped to operate in heavily contaminated environments where biological or chemical weapons were in use. Not only that, the vehicles had decontamination equipment superior to that issued by the West. This discovery was followed by the explosion of a Soviet biological warfare plant in Sverdlovsk in April of 1979. Downwind of the explosion there were from 200 to 1,000 cases of pulmonary anthrax, a disease that was rare naturally -- but was one of the prime candidates for use as a biological weapon. (The supposition that these cases were caused by bacteria being developed for weapons was confirmed following the end of the Cold War.) In 1979 Washington ordered the US Chemical Warfare Service School at Ft. McClellan reopened, after being closed in 1973 when the US discontinued its chemical warfare buildup. However the US appears never to have re-started its research into biological weapons (or, if it did so, worked on a very small scale so the fact that the treaty was broken would remain hidden). This has left the US far behind not only in the production of such weapons but, more importantly, in discovering ways to protect soldiers and citizens from modem biological weapons. America: Last Place in the Race for Survival How far behind the US had become in the race to develop biological weapons became apparent in 1992 when Ken Alibek (also know as Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov) defected to the US. This scientist had been the first deputy chief of research and production for the Soviet biological-weapons program, working in the Biopreparat. The size of the Biopreparat demonstrated how intent the Russians were in developing biological weapons. The unit oversaw thirty-two thousand scientists and staff with laboratories hidden across the USSR. Alibek told his American debriefers that the Biopreparat had been created in 1973, just a year after the Soviet Union signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention along with 140 nations, banning the development and stockpiling of biological weapons. So much for the "safety" offered by the treaty. During the waning years of the Soviet Union, researchers had developed a sophisticated ICBM delivery system for biological weapons, employing a cooling system to keep spores ready for release when the warheads from each missile re-entered the atmosphere. Inside a variety of biological agents could be used. Alibek claimed that most of the warheads would be a mixture of Smallpox, Plague and Anthrax, creating three plagues at once to overwhelm civilian medical facilities. Each of these warheads was designed to parachute over a city, hanging in place while dispensing a hundred or more "bomblets" about 6 inches in diameter. These would release deadly spores that would drift downward to create their deadly havoc on the people below. But that wasn't all. His story got worse. Super Diseases Had these biological agents simply been the standard Smallpox, Plague and Anthrax, that would have been frightening enough. But Alibek, who has a Doctor of Sciences degree, claims that these were engineered for added lethality as well as resistance to all known antibiotics that might be employed to treat them. According to Alibek, the Russians altered the Smallpox genome, introducing foreign genetic material to make it more virulent. Among the first changes were the splicing of portions of Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis (a brain virus) into Smallpox, to create "Smallpox-VEE" or "Veepox." Alibek also claimed that the Soviet researchers were working toward a variant of Smallpox that contained Ebola DNA. Whether this was perfected or not is uncertain; Alibek believes that the Russians probably succeeded in creating "Blackpox" or "Ebolapox" from their work. This would become a highly contagious disease that would create hemorrhaging and a very high mortality rate. While American experts remain skeptical about whether an Ebola/Smallpox chimera could be produced, most agree that an Encephalitis/Smallpox disease would be possible. Few doubt that the Russians have succeeded in creating such a weapon. And Alibek claimed the Veepox strains were perfected in 1989 before he defected. When Alibek first started telling his story to CIA debriefers, the intelligence community dismissed much of it as exaggerations or lies. However. that changed when Vladimir Pasechnik, another top Biopreparat scientist who had defected to the UK in 1989 started talking to British debriefers. When the two intelligence agencies compared their notes, they found both men were telling the same story. And Pasechnik had one chilling addition. The Marburg Virus Pasechnik revealed that late in the 1980s, Soviet scientists started working with the Marburg virus. One researcher in this work died from a pinprick from an instrument with this virus on it. Taking advantage of his misfortune, Russian scientists removed the liver, spleen, and blood from his corpse, employing the virus they contained to create the virulent "Variant U" (named after Ustinov, the scientist that had died from it). According to Pasechnik, the airborne Marburg proved to be 1,000 times as deadly as Anthrax spores. In 1991 when the Soviet Union was crumbling, Variant U was set to go into production as needed for possible use as a strategic weapon, to be manufactured in large quantities should the situation between the East and West deteriorate. Whether this new strain of disease was produced and stockpiled in the Russian inventory is unknown. But many believe it has been. Other confirmation that the stories coming from Russian defectors were most likely true has recently surfaced in the West. Early in 1998, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) revealed that it had learned of a "designer disease" the Soviet Union had created by manipulating Anthrax bacteria through genetic engineering, basically using the same techniques Alibek had described shortly before the Soviet collapse. Oddly enough, the fact was made public by Russian scientists (perhaps inadvertently) when they reported on some of their work with microbes and vaccines in the British scientific journal Vaccine. The catch was that "the evidence that they presented suggested that it could be resistant to our vaccine, " Colonel Arthur Friedlander, chief of USAMRIID's bacteriology division later said. Normally scientists don't alter diseases to be more resistant to antibiotics. The altered Anthrax contained two added genes, making it resistant to some types of vaccines used to treat Anthrax -- a modification that is insane for anyone intent on keeping such a disease in check. But it makes plenty of sense if it is being modified for use as a weapon. Friedlander said of the altered bacteria, "This is a Trojan horse. This is coming in as anthrax, but it 's got other bullets in it - different bullets. " Bullets that the US medical community might not be able to deal with and which the Anthrax shots now being given to American GI's might not protect against. The question was: If the Russians would admit to doing such things in international scientific journals, what else might they doing behind closed doors? And who else might be doing it as well? With the Russian government unable to pay workers, many were rumored to have taken to selling material and secrets to foreign governments. Had biological weapons and technology been sold? After seeing the article describing the Russian's work, Paul Jackson, a molecular biologist who has worked with Anthrax at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said, "The Russians have demonstrated that they can do it. Clearly, any competent laboratory in the world could do this too. The question then is not can such biological weapons be created, but rather who might be fabricating such terror devices and how soon they might use them. Transferring Germ Warfare Know-How to Terrorists With the downfall of the Soviet Union, it appears that much of this technology may have been "transferred" from the Russians to other nations, in part by scientists attempting to make a few bucks through selling what they had learned. While Yeltsin promised to terminate all offensive biological weapons research, in 1992, in fact he didn't totally close the program down. Military biological programs still have 50 percent of the personnel they enjoyed during the height of the Cold War, and funding has only been reduced by 30 percent. Russia claims that this work is all defensive in nature. But some of these same leaders claimed they were doing no work at all in the USSR. when in fact they were working full tilt to produce new and lethal biological weapons. Even if no actual production of biological weapons is currently going on in Russia, the capacity to rapidly go into full-scale production remains. Kazakhstan, for example, is believed to have the capacity to produce 96 pounds of freeze-dried Plague spore per week should the Russians decide to commence such an operation. And should that happen, it would be very hard for the US to detect. Ditto for production in Pakistan, China, North Korea, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria, or anywhere else Russian scientists have gone, lured by the promise of money. The technological know-how might easily have been transferred anywhere. Iraq, for example, has been under closer scrutiny than these other nations -- and what has been going on there doesn't bode well for the US as far as the possible use of biological agents by terrorist nations. Following the Gulf War in 1991, an Iraqi defector who worked as a microbiologist for the Iraqi government told reporters that in 1983 Iraqi scientists had launched a program to test and develop biological agents including many strains of botulism, salmonella, and anthrax. He claimed that the government workers had discovered a way to make anthrax more toxic. One can only speculate what progress toward such ends other countries as well as Iraq may have made since then. This technology may be available for anyone wanting to pay for it. With many former military workers strapped for money in Russia, the temptation to make some quick cash to pay the bills might easily overcome moral qualms about what the technology might be used for. Scientists who worked in the most sensitive Soviet biological weapons programs might already have sold such technology to any number of rogue states. Even more alarming is the fact that such technology may be in the hands of the Russian Mafia. In March, 1998, Marshal Igor Sergeyev, the Defense Minister of the Russian Army, told reporters that funding was so poor that there was "a real danger of organized crime penetrating military units. " Should that happen, Sergeyev said, they would easily gain access to a variety of weapons. Those could include not just rocket launchers and machine guns but nuclear and biological weapons as well. Since the Russian Mafia is concerned about making money any way it can, there would be few if any moral constraints of selling such weapons to fellow criminals or third-world countries. Biological weapons may soon appear as tools for blackmail or assassination, a way to "rub out" competitors, whether they be competing corporations or nations whose policies are getting in the way. (In fairness, it should be noted that not all the "biological sins" of the world can be laid at the feet of third-world dictators and Russian scientists. From 1985 to 1 989 the US government permitted American companies to export samples of anthrax, botulism. typhoid, tetanus, and gas gangrene to Iraq. The reason: To help keep Iran in check. Experts now believe such folly is soon very likely to come back to haunt the American people.) The Genie Has Escaped At one time, we might have hoped that the technology to create such deadly weapons as those described by Alibek and Pasechnik would be suppressed and discontinued, hidden away with the fall of the Soviet Empire. But this does not seem to be the case. Even if nationalists in Russia don't revive the production of these weapons. rogue nations like Iraq, North Korea, and Libya will. In fact there is every indication that they already have plants producing these weapons. The terrifying truth is that it's possible that terrorists from these or other countries have already brought such materials into our nation, biding their time until the time is right to strike. Many lawmakers and federal law enforcement officers in Washington, as well as terrorist and biological weapons experts, believe it is entirely possible that this has already happened; that small "cells" of fanatic foreign terrorist saboteurs are biding their time for a signal from the homeland. Once that signal is given, the terrorists will activate the sample spores smuggled into the US, grow large amounts of the pathogens in homemade labs, and then disperse the plagues throughout our country. This idea isn't farfetched. How hard would it be to smuggle a few pounds of anthrax spores into the US? We already fail to keep tons of illegal drugs from entering our borders. How many pounds -- which dogs and equipment at airports aren't trained to find -- may have already been slipped in? All that is needed is a tiny quantity of spores to serve as the "stock", to breed more such material within US borders. The quantity need not be more than might be packed into a dummy radio -- or even an ink pen. Little wonder that so many terrorist experts are horrified about the growing potential for an attack against U.S. cities with biological weapons. As Army Colonel David Franz has told Diane Sawyer and Sam Donaldson on ABC's PrimeTime, "The likelihood of a biological attack in the U.S. is fairly high, probably in the next few years." And Dr. Michael Osterholm, chief of disease epidemiology at the Minnesota Department of Public Health also told Prime Time, "It is not a matter of if this will occur.. It is a matter of when it occurs, and how much panic and death are we willing to accept at the lime it occurs... Worse yet, there has nor been a single government alert put out to the public health system in this country. No letters, no phone calls, no suggestions about how to coordinate this frightening situation. " The Terrorist Scenario The U.S. got its first warning of what the consequences of such an attack would be in March, 1998 from one of the men who had worked to eradicate Smallpox from the face of the earth. The warning, which was virtually ignored by the US press, was delivered by former World Health Organization (WHO) scientist D.A. Henderson who spoke to fellow scientists from around the world, many of whom are concerned about the imminent threat presented by biological weapons. As Henderson noted, an attack with biological agents would result in disastrous consequences due to our total inability to contain it from spreading once unleashed. He warned, "A chemical release or major explosion is far more manageable than a biological attack. " The reason? Biological weapons are self replicating, and the delay between the time people become contagious and begin spreading the disease and the time health workers discover the fact could be weeks -- enough time for millions of fatalities to result. Henderson told listeners that if Smallpox or Anthrax were dispersed by terrorists, the number of victims would increase exponentially; today's culture, unlike those of the recent past, have almost no immunity to these long-dormant diseases The scientist also warned that the Soviet Vector base in Siberia, where Smallpox and other pathogens had been kept and carefully guarded during the Cold War, was now vulnerable to being raided by criminals. The pathogens stored there might easily be stolen by guerrilla groups and governments who were intent on producing biological weapons. The scientist told listeners that disease samples were "once protected by well-armed guards and barbed wire fences, hut the barbed wire is gone now and the guards, who haven 't been paid in months, can be persuaded with a little vodka. "" Even if it weren't re-engineered for added lethality, a disease like Smallpox would be devastating in the US. " The only people vaccinated over the next eight years were workers in hospitals and laboratories, but by and large few people have been vaccinated since 1972 and I would suspect only 10 to 15 percent of the U.S. population has any antibodies to the disease. " Henderson said. The rest would easily succumb to the illness. with large numbers -- likely millions of innocent victims -- becoming fatalities. Henderson also noted that Anthrax was under development as a weapon by Iraq and that terrorist groups like the Aum Shinri Kyo which released nerve gas on Japan's subway system in 1995, also had been working to mass-produce the bacteria. The scientist noted that, " Their particular interest is because anthrax is so easily acquired and so easily mass-produced.... There are nations and dissident groups that have both access to the biological agents and people intelligent enough to know the means of deploying them... Even small groups can wreak considerable havoc. and they are prepared to do so. " Worse yet, former CIA microbiologist Larry Harris, who has been working feverishly for several years now to warn the American public how quickly and easily such an attack could take place, and how devastating it will be, claims that religious fanaticism of some terrorist groups virtually guarantees a concerted biological warfare attack against U.S. cities. In his latest interviews (see brief interview elsewhere in this manual) he has carefully explained the frightening facts the federal government is afraid to tell you. He warns that radical militant terrorist splinter groups from Iraq, Iran, Libya and other countries are now operating under the frightening religious notion that the advent of the year 2000 -- the beginning of the next millennium -- signals a final grand opportunity for them to fulfill their sacred moral duty to destroy the United States, which they consider to he "the Great Satan. " And as silly as this erroneous notion may sound to you and me, Harris warns that it is an ABSOLUTE REALITY to these terrorists! They even believe they will obtain a special place in heaven if they annihilate enough American citizens! No wonder the federal government is afraid to go public with this horrifying information! For his hard work and service in warning the American people of the germ warfare plagues to come, the Clinton administration had Harris arrested on trumped up charges, and thrown into prison in February of 1998. Why? Many experts speculate that the core of Larry's message is what angered government officials the most: he was letting the American public know that the federal government had absolutely no intention of warning them of the biological attacks to come, nor have they made any efforts to teach the American public how to protect themselves -- and survive -- a biological warfare attack on U.S. cities. Harris' message was " Virtually every civilized government on the face of the earth has provided it citizens with solid information on how to survive biological terrorism -- with the sad exception of the United Stares government. "If you 're going to survive, don 't count on the federal government to help you." It was a message that landed him in jail. But research conducted for this manual showed Larry Harris to be right on target, as you'll discover in the next section... Non-Existent Protection for U.S. Citizens Since the US is a prime target for bioterrorism, one might think that like Israel and much of Europe, our government would be intent on protecting its people. In many countries citizens have their own gas masks and other protective equipment, as well as instructions on how to use them in the event of such an attack -- all issued by the government. Such equipment acts as a deterrent to attack since it would reduce casualties, thereby thwarting the hopes of terrorists to make a "statement" that would demonstrate their powers. Shamefully, our government leaders stand in sharp contrast to those of such countries. Our leaders have taken steps to protect some of us -- those in office, for the most part. Clinton's secret presidential directive, PDD 39, apparently directed government agencies to take steps to deal with a biological attack. And the 1998 State of the Union address was the very first that had Army personnel trained at dealing with a biological attack standing by in case they were needed -- a sure sign the federal government is taking terrorist biological warfare threats against U.S. cities seriously. Under the same directive, the FBI, US Marines. and others have created rapid response teams for dealing with the deadly aftermath of biological terrorism. In March, 1998, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen announced that these teams would be augmented by ten teams each comprised of 22 full-time members from the US Army who would be backed up by 22 members from National Guard units. While the $49 million dollars spent to create these teams may seem like a lot of money (and it is), the measure is stop-gap at best since the added teams were only to be trained to assess dangers, not actually deal with them. In fact exactly who would deal with a large-scale terrorist biological warfare attack on U.S. cities, and where the resources would come from, remain murky under current national plans. At best the US plans tend to be of a "clean up the mess after an attack" sort, rather than plans that would actually protect individuals during an attack. That could make a big difference to those who were the target of terrorism. The difference is one of life and death. There is some question how well US teams would perform, even in their limited roll. And even if they performed perfectly, experts quietly warn there is little doubt they would be overwhelmed by the magnitude of casualties produced by a concerted attack in several cities -- or even a successful attack in just one. The US Army's team, for example, is set up to treat a total of your people who were highly contagious bioterrorism victims.'" Considering that tens of thousands of victims might be exposed to a pathogen during a single bioterrorism incident, and tens or even hundreds of thousands more in the ensuing weeks, the current preparation levels are woefully inadequate -- the equivalent of expecting a surgeon to reattach a limb by using a Band-Aid. Furthermore, these federal teams aren't going to be the ones first on the scene. Rather the people who respond first will be inexperienced police units or fire departments. These are the people that are called when a "strange package" or other Suspicious device is found. While many departments train police and fire department workers, such training is superficial at best. And might be forgotten or ignored during an actual emergency involving biological agents. This lack of proper response by those first on the scene of a potential attack was demonstrated in our nation's capital in 1997. Just a few blocks from the White House. at the headquarters of the B'nai B'rith, a package was delivered. It was oozing red liquid; workers at B'nai B'rith called the police. The emergency response team arrived and rather than isolating the package and workers who had been exposed to the liquid, proceeded to open the package. Inside they discovered an open container that was simply labeled "Anthrax."" Fortunately for all involved, it was a hoax. Had it been real, the improper response of the team would have easily caused hundreds of deaths. And had it been real and a terrorist had rigged spores with a small charge of explosives, a deadly cloud would have been released into the area. Thousands of lives might have been lost with a plague possibly gaining a foothold in our nation's capital, thereby creating thousands or perhaps millions of additional casualties depending upon how effectively the contagion spread. The federal government gives city and state police and firemen a brief course on how to deal with suspicious packages and materials that might be biological weapons. But as the Washington, DC responders proved, such training isn't currently adequate. But it gets worse. Medical personnel in US cities have no training in dealing with victims of biological weapons. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. In fact, they might not even recognize that people coming into emergency rooms have been infected with a highly contagious but seldom seen disease that has been employed as a weapon. By the time they realize what they are dealing with, medical workers could easily be exposed to the deadly pathogenic microorganisms and fall victim to them -- along with other hospital patients who would be exposed to the unrecognized contagion as it spread. Except for the minor actions of forming a handful of response teams and giving superficial training to state and local workers, the US federal government has actually done little to protect its citizens. There is no protective equipment being issued to citizens, there have been no instructions to citizens as to what to do in the event of an attack, and the medical workers that would be our last line of defense have not been warned or taught how to deal with such a disaster. There are no stockpiles of antibiotics, no special facilities, no real plans on how to control an outbreak so it can be contained. (In May 1998 President Clinton unveiled a new plan that would direct major U.S. cities to stockpile antibiotics in anticipation of a terrorist biological attack. Unfortunately, as former CIA microbiologist Larry Harris has pointed out, a single terrorist germ warfare attack in a single large U.S. city would cause enough infection to require the use of all known antibiotic stocks in the entire U.S. And most of the unfortunate individuals caught in such an attack would likely still die -- even if they received antibiotics -- because in most cases the antibiotics would not be given soon enough to halt the spread of the deadly microorganisms as they multiplied throughout the bloodstream and tissues. In other words, the new Clinton plan, which has yet to be implemented at this writing, is nothing more than window dressing. It is abundantly clear the U.S. government needs to develop a realistic and comprehensive plan for American citizens that includes a massive public awareness campaign to teach the public simple, effective contamination-proofing and decontamination secrets such as those revealed in this manual. Every Israeli citizen is given detailed instructions for surviving a terrorist germ warfare attack. Yet in America. even under direct threat of terrorist attack, there still no protective measures disseminated to the general public.) In essence, all our government has done is create a few rapid response teams and clean-up crew which would only go into action after a bioterrorism act has been committed. By then thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people could be infected with an agent that has almost 100 percent lethality. Our government might catch the perpetrators, but would fail to protect the populace from the initial danger. The truth of the matter is that our government has left US citizens in the position of being sitting ducks in a pond. We're surrounded by hunters armed with cannons filled with deadly pathogens. These terrorist hunters are in it for a quick and massive kill, and could care less about the rules of engagement.