Re: Quality & quantity of weapons (was: I was wrong...)

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Sun Nov 25 2001 - 12:00:38 MST


Spike Jones wrote:
> Bioweapons are the terrorists dream come true however;
> they are cheap and perfect for accomplishing the clearly
> stated goal of the terrorists, i.e. to slay as many people as
> humanly possible, and keep doing so until all infidels and
> unbelievers are dead.
>
> Oppie realized that the nuke would give the U.S. a short
> term advantage, but in the long run would actually be
> disadvantageous, since it would tend to neutralize the
> edge we had enjoyed for so long, isolation by oceans
> and a political infrastructure that encourages people to get
> out and go to work every day, resulting in a superior
> manufacturing environment. All those same arguments
> apply even more to bioweapons.

Yes, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle. What, instead, can
we do to neutralize the efficacy of bioweapons? Vaccinations are an
obvious answer. I think that it's just abominable that we've stopped
vaccinating for smallpox since 1980. Anthrax and other likely bioweapon
diseases should also have vaccines widely available in community civil
defense kits.

DNA sensor chip technologies are also another way to go: inexpensive
devices that are constantly sniffing for various pathogens, built into
your wristwatch. It doesn't matter if each device takes as much as an
hour to evaluate one sample. If everybody's watch is equipped, and each
is scanning randomly for any pathogen, when one watch in an area detects
a pathogen, it can signal other people's watches to test for that
pathogen as well to determine the area of exposure rather quickly. This
could also be done for chemical weapons as well as for radiological
weapons.



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