» Why
might anthrax be used as a weapon?
» Is
it easy to turn anthrax into a weapon?
» How
much anthrax would be needed to cause mass casualties?
» Why
might anthrax be used as a weapon? There are a few reasons that anthrax is considered an effective biological
weapon. Its spores would be odorless, colorless and invisible if aerosolized.
It would be difficult to detect anthrax until after people started getting
ill. Also, since the size of the spores would be very small, people indoors
would receive the same amount of exposure as people on the street.
» Is
it easy to turn anthrax into a weapon?
Most experts agree that making a lethal anthrax aerosol is beyond the
ability of individuals or groups without access to advanced biotechnology.
However, autonomous groups with substantial funding and contacts may be
able to acquire the required materials for a successful attack. However,
as with any biological agent, although they can be effective killing machines,
in general they make poor weapons. The effects of use are not immediate,
the resulting epidemic may affect the enemy as well as the target, and
third, the effect of biological aerosols is unreliable, dependent on chance
fluctuations of wind and weather.
» How
much anthrax would be needed to cause mass casualties? If you use the Soviet outbreak at Sverdlovsk, U.S.S.R., as an example,
an estimated 10 kilograms of military-grade anthrax wafted out in a plume
over a city of 1.2 million. The end result was 64 fatalities. By this example,
an extremely large quantity of anthrax would have to be manufactured to
be an effective weapon of mass destruction. However, a recent National
Academy of Sciences report suggested that based on the U.S.’s current
state of preparedness a large-scale anthrax attack on a major US city could
cause 123,000 deaths. This figure stemmed from the findings of a mathematical
model, which describes an attack involving one kilogram of anthrax spores
released from a height of 328 feet in a city of more than 10 million people .
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