Scenarios




There are multiple considerable scenarios, how terrorists might employ biological agents. In 2000, tests conducted by various US agencies showed that indoor attacks in densely populated spaces are much more serious than outdoor attacks. Such enclosed spaces are large buildings, trains, indoor arenas, theaters, malls, tunnels and similar. Contra-measures against such scenarios are building architecture and ventilation systems engineering. In 1993, sewage was spilled out into a river, subsequently drawn into the water system and affected 400,000 people in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The disease-causing organism was cryptosporidium parvum. This man-made disaster can be a template for a terrorist scenario. Nevertheless, terrorist scenarios are considered more likely near the points of delivery than at the water sources before the water treatment. Release of biological agents is more likely for a single building or a neighborhood. Contra-measures against this scenario is the further limitation of access to the water supply systems, tunnels, and infrastructure. Agricultural crop-duster flights might be misused as delivery devices for biological agents as well. Contra-measures against this scenario are background checks of employees of crop-dusting companies and surveillance procedures.

In the most common hoax scenario, no biological agents are employed. For instance, an envelope with powder in it that says, “You've just been exposed to anthrax.” Such hoaxes already showed to produce a large psychological impact on the population.

Anti-agriculture attacks are considered to require relatively little expertise and technology. Biological agents against livestock, fish, vegetation, and crops are mostly not contagious to humans and therefore easier to handle by the attackers. Even a few cases of infections can disrupt a country's agricultural production and export for months like in the case with FMD.

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History

By the time World War I began, attempts to use anthrax were directed at animal populations. This generally proved to be ineffective. Shortly after the start of World War I, Germany launched a biological sabotage campaign in the United States, Russia, Romania, and France. At that time, Anton Dilger lived in Germany, but in 1915 he was sent to the United States carrying cultures of glanders, a virulent disease of horses and mules. Dilger set up a laboratory in his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He used stevedores working the docks in Baltimore to infect horses with glanders while they were waiting to be shipped to Britain. Dilger was under suspicion as being a German agent, but was never arrested. Dilger eventually fled to Madrid, Spain, where he died during the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. In 1916, the Russians arrested a German agent with similar intentions. Germany and its allies infected French cavalry horses and many of Russia's mules and horses on the Eastern Front. These action...
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Bioterrorism

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Bioterrorism is terrorism involving the intentional release or dissemination of biological agents. These agents are bacteria, viruses, insects, fungi, or toxins, and may be in a naturally occurring or a human-modified form, in much the same way in biological warfare. Further, modern agribusiness is vulnerable to anti-agricultural attacks by terrorists, and such attacks can seriously damage economy as well as consumer confidence. The later destructive activity is called agrobioterrorism and is subtype of agro-terrorism.
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