Biological warfare Totally Explained

Everything about Germ Warfare totally explained

Biological warfare (BW) — also known as a germ warfare, biological weapons and bioweapons — is the use of any pathogen (bacterium, virus or other disease-causing organism) as a weapon of war. Using nonliving toxic products, even if produced by living organisms (for example, toxins), is considered chemical warfare under the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention. A BW weapon may be intended to kill, incapacitate or seriously impede on an individual as well as entire cities or places. It may also be defined as the material or defense against such employment. BW is a military technique that can be used by nation-states or non-national group. In the latter case, or if a nation-state uses it clandestinely, it may also be considered bioterrorism.

Overview

The creation and stockpiling of biological weapons ("offensive BW") was outlawed by the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), signed by over 100 countries. The BWC remains in force, and it prohibits storage, stockpiling, and usage of these weapons. The rationale behind the agreement is to avoid the devastating impact of a successful biological attack which could conceivably result in millions, possibly even billions of deaths and cause severe disruptions to societies and economies. However, the consensus among military analysts is that, except in the context of bioterrorism, BW is of little military use. Many countries pursue "defensive BW" research (defensive or protective applications) which are not prohibited by the BWC. As a tactical weapon, the main military problem with a BW attack is that it would take days to be effective, and therefore, unlike a nuclear or chemical attack, wouldn't immediately stop an opposing force. As a strategic weapon, BW is again militarily problematic, although with a possible exception with the Soviets, the weaponized biological agents didn't spread from person to person. Spread is less of a concern for terrorists, but it was very much a concern for post-WWII BW development by major powers.

History

Biological warfare has been practiced repeatedly throughout history. Before the 20th century, the use of biological agents took three major forms:

Deliberate poisoning of food and water with infectious material
Use of microorganisms, toxins or animals, living or dead, in a weapon system
Use of biologically inoculated fabrics

The ancient world

During the 16th century B.C, the Assyrians poisoned enemy wells with ergot, a fungus that would make the enemy delusional, and Solon of Athens used the poisonous herb Veratrum to poison the water supply of Phocaea during his siege of the city. During the 4th century B.C. Scythian archers used arrows with tips covered with animal feces to cause wounds to become infected. In 204 B.C, Hannibal of Carthage had clay pots filled with venomous snakes and instructed his soldiers to throw the pots onto the decks of Pergamene ships.

Medieval biological warfare

The Mongol Empire established commercial and political connections between the Eastern and Western areas of the world, its Mongol armies and merchant caravans probably inadvertently brought bubonic plague from central Asia to the Middle East and Europe. The Black Death swept through Eurasia, killing approximately one third to one half of the population and changing the course of Asian and European history.
   During the Middle Ages victims of the bubonic plague were used for biological attacks, often by flinging their corpses and excrement over castle walls using catapults. In 1346 the bodies of Mongol warriors of the Golden Horde who had died of plague were thrown over the walls of the besieged Crimean city of Kaffa (now Theodosia). It has been speculated that this operation may have been responsible for the advent of the Black Death in Europe.
   At the siege of Thun l’Eveque in 1340, the attackers catapulted decomposing animals into the besieged area.
   In 1422 during the siege of the Bohemian castle of Karlstein Hussite attackers used catapults to throw dead (but not plague-infected) bodies and 2000 carriage-loads of dung over the walls. However, during the 1785 siege of La Calle, Tunisian forces flung diseased clothing into the city. When the Pilgrims arrived in the New World in 1620, the native population of the Plymouth area had already been virtually eliminated by diseases that arrived with European fishing expeditions to the waters of the Northeast. The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in Mexico and the English predominance in North America might not have occurred if not for the devastating effect of diseases that had been previously unknown in the Americas and against which the local populations hadn't built up any immunities.

The 18th century

In September 1710, during Queen Anne's War, Iroquois Indian tribes used biological warfare against the British. (Attempts by missionaries to provide inoculation to local tribespeople were usually met with suspicion, thus leaving the native population completely vulnerable to epidemics.) Despite the lack of historical evidence, the claim that British and American soldiers used germ warfare against North American tribes has remained fairly strong in certain oral traditions and in popular culture. Such oral histories of smallpox infested blankets being used are especially strong in the oral traditions of native nations along the west coast of Canada.

The 19th century

It can be difficult to separate malice from ignorance. In 1834 Cambridge Diarist Richard Henry Dana (Two Years Before the Mast; available in Project Gutenberg) visited San Francisco on a merchant ship. His ship traded many items including blankets with Mexicans and Russians who had established outposts on the northern side of the San Francisco Bay. Local histories document that the California smallpox epidemic began at the Russian fort soon after they left. Blankets were a popular trading item, and the cheapest source of them was second-hand blankets which were often contaminated.
Native peoples in Aptos gave Spaniards gifts of freshly cut flowers wrapped in leaves of poison oak. The natives themselves were immune to poison oak, which they used for purposes such as dying their baskets.
During the American Civil War, General Sherman reported that Confederate forces shot farm animals in ponds upon which the Union depended for drinking water. This would have made the water unpleasant to drink, although the actual health risks from dead bodies of humans and animals which didn't die of disease are minimal.

The 20th century

The Geneva Protocol of 1925 prohibited the use of chemical weapons and biological weapons, but said nothing about production, storage or transfer; later treaties did cover these aspects. Twentieth-century advances in microbiology enabled the first pure-culture biological agents to be developed by WWII. There was a period of development by many nations, and Japanese Unit 731, based primarily at Pingfan in occupied China and commanded by Shirō Ishii, did research on BW, conducted forced human experiments, often fatal, on prisoners, and provided biological weapons for attacks in China.. Biological experiments, often using twins with one subject to the procedure and the other as a control, were carried out by Nazi Germany on concentration camp inmates, particularly by Joseph Mengele.

1937-1945

During the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and World War II, Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army conducted human experimentation on thousands, mostly Chinese and Korean. In military campaigns, the Japanese army used biological weapons on Chinese soldiers and civilians. This employment was often ineffective due to inefficient delivery systems, using disease-bearing insects rather than dispersing the agent as an aerosol cloud. Some other firsthand accounts testify the Japanese infected civilians through the distribution of foodstuffs, such as dumplings and vegetables, contaminated with plague. There are also reports of contaminated water supplies. Three veterans of Unit 731 testified, in a 1989 interview to the Asahi Shimbun, that they were part of a mission to contaminate the Horustein river with typhoid near the Soviet troops during the Battle of Khalkhin Gol.
   Such estimates report over 580,000 victims, largely due to plague and cholera outbreaks. Repeated seasonal outbreaks after the end of the war brought the death toll much higher.
   In response to biological weapons development in Germany and Japan, the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada initiated a BW development program in 1941 that resulted in the weaponization of tularemia, anthrax, brucellosis, and botulism toxin. The center for U.S. military BW research was Fort Detrick, Maryland, where USAMRIID is currently based; the first director was pharmaceutical executive George W. Merck. Some biological and chemical weapons research and testing was also conducted at Dugway Proving Grounds" in Utah, at a munition manufacturing complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, and at a tract on Horn Island, Mississippi
   During the Cold War US conscientious objectors were used as consenting test subjects for biological agents in a program known as Operation Whitecoat. There were also many unpublicized tests carried out on the public during the Cold War. Considerable research on the topic was performed by the United States (see US Biological Weapon Testing), the Soviet Union, and probably other major nations throughout the Cold War era, though it's generally believed that biological weapons were never used after World War II. This view was challenged by China and North Korea, who accused the United States of large-scale field testing of biological weapons, including the use of disease-carrying insects against them during the Korean War (1950-1953). Cuba also accused the US of spreading human and animal disease on their island. Recently revealed documents indicate that this was disinformation produced by Soviet intelligence. The relevance of these documents to this question has been disputed.
   At the time of the Korean War the US had only weaponized one agent, brucellosis (agent US), which is caused by Brucella suis. The original weaponized form used the M114 bursting bomblet in M33 cluster bombs. While the specific form of the biological bomb was classified until some years after the Korean War, in the various exhibits of biological weapons that Korea alleged were dropped on their country nothing resembled an M114 bomblet. There were ceramic containers that had some similarity to Japanese weapons used against the Chinese in WWII, developed by Unit 731. althouh in practice it would be impossible to distribute it so efficiently, and, unless it's protected from oxygen, it deteriorates in storage.
   On September 18, 2001 and for a few days after several letters were received by members of the U.S. Congress and media outlets containing anthrax spores: the attack killed five people. The identity of the perpetrator remains unknown as of 2007. See 2001 anthrax attacks.

Biological weapons characteristics

Anti-personnel BW

Ideal characteristics of biological weapons targeting humans are high infectivity, high potency, availability of vaccines, and delivery as an aerosol.
   Diseases most likely to be considered for use as biological weapons are contenders because of their lethality (if delivered efficiently), and robustness (making aerosol delivery feasible).
   The biological agents used in biological weapons can often be manufactured quickly and easily. The primary difficulty isn't the production of the biological agent but delivery in an effective form to a vulnerable target.
   For example, anthrax is considered an effective agent for several reasons. First, it forms hardy spores, perfect for dispersal aerosols. Second, pneumonic (lung) infections of anthrax usually don't cause secondary infections in other people. Thus, the effect of the agent is usually confined to the target. A pneumonic anthrax infection starts with ordinary "cold" symptoms and quickly becomes lethal, with a fatality rate that's 80% or higher. Finally, friendly personnel can be protected with suitable antibiotics.
   A mass attack using anthrax would require the creation of aerosol particles of 1.5 to 5 micrometres. Too large and the aerosol would be filtered out by the respiratory system. Too small and the aerosol would be inhaled and exhaled. Also, at this size, nonconductive powders tend to clump and cling because of electrostatic charges. This hinders dispersion. So the material must be treated to insulate and discharge the charges. The aerosol must be delivered so that rain and sun doesn't rot it, and yet the human lung can be infected. There are other technological difficulties as well.
   Diseases considered for weaponization, or known to be weaponized include anthrax (TR), ebola, Marburg virus, plague (LE), cholera (HO), tularemia (SR & JT), brucellosis (US, AB, & AM), Q fever (OU), machupo, Coccidioides mycosis (OC), Glanders (LA), Melioidosis (HI), Shigella (Y), Rocky Mountain spotted fever(UY), typhus (YE), Psittacosis(SI), yellow fever (UT), Japanese B encephalitis (AN), Rift Valley fever (FA), and smallpox (ZL)
   Attacking animals is another area of biological warfare intended to eliminate animal resources for transportation and food. In the First World War German agents were arrested attempting to inoculate draft animals with anthrax, and they were believed to be responsible for outbreaks of glanders in horses and mules. The British tainted small feed cakes with anthrax in the Second World War as a potential means of attacking German cattle for food denial, but never employed the weapon. In the 1950s the United States had a field trial with hog cholera.
Unconnected with inter-human wars, humans have deliberately introduced the rabbit disease Myxomatosis, originating in South America, to Australia and Europe, with the intention of reducing the rabbit population - which had a devastating but temporary results, with wild rabbit populations reduced to a fraction of their former size but survivors developing immunity and increasing again.

Biodefense

Role of public health departments and disease surveillance

It is important to note that all of the classical and modern biological weapons organisms are animal diseases, the only exception being smallpox. Thus, in any use of biological weapons, it's highly likely that animals will become ill either simultaneously with, or perhaps earlier than humans. Indeed, in the largest biological weapons accident known -- the anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) in the Soviet Union in 1979, sheep became ill with anthrax as far as 200 kilometers from the release point of the organism from a military facility in the southeastern portion of the city (known as Compound 19 and still off limits to visitors today, see Sverdlovsk Anthrax leak).
Thus, a robust surveillance system involving human clinicians and veterinarians may identify a bioweapons attack early in the course of an epidemic, permitting the prophylaxis of disease in the vast majority of people (and/or animals) exposed but not yet ill. For example in the case of anthrax, it's likely that by 24 - 36 hours after an attack, some small percentage of individuals (those with compromised immune system or who had received a large dose of the organism due to proximity to the release point) will become ill with classical symptoms and signs (including a virtually unique chest X-ray finding, often recognized by public health officials if they receive timely reports). By making these data available to local public health officials in real time, most models of anthrax epidemics indicate that more than 80% of an exposed population can receive antibiotic treatment before becoming symptomatic, and thus avoid the moderately high mortality of the disease.

Identification of bioweapons

The goal of biodefense is to integrate the sustained efforts of the national and homeland security, medical, public health, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement communities. Health care providers and public health officers are among the first lines of defense. In some countries private, local, and state (province) capabilities are being augmented by and coordinated with federal assets, to provide layered defenses against biological weapons attacks. The traditional approach toward protecting agriculture, food, and water: focusing on the natural or unintentional introduction of a disease being strengthened by focused efforts to address current and anticipated future biological weapons threats that may be deliberate, multiple, and repetitive.
The growing threat of biowarfare agents and bioterrorism has led to the development of specific field tools that perform on-the-spot analysis and identification of encountered suspect materials. One such technology, being developed by researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), employs a "sandwich immunoassay", in which fluorescent dye-labeled antibodies aimed at specific pathogens are attached to silver and gold nanowires. Researchers at Ben Gurion University in Israel are developing a different device called the BioPen, essentially a "Lab-in-a-Pen", which can detect known biological agents in under 20 minutes using an adaptation of the ELISA, a similar widely employed immunological technique, that in this case incorporates fiber optics.

List of BW institutions and programs by country

According to the United States Office of Technology Assessment, since disbanded, seventeen countries were believed to possess biological weapons in 1995: Libya, North Korea, South Korea, Iraq, Taiwan, Syria, Israel, Iran, China, Egypt, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Bulgaria, India, South Africa, and Russia.

United States

Fort Detrick, Maryland

Operation Whitecoat

Project SHAD

Iraq

(passim)

Al Hakum

Salman Pak facility
Treaties banning or restricting BW

Geneva Protocol

Biological Weapons Convention
List of people associated with BW
Bioweaponeers:

Anton Dilger

Paul Fildes

Rihab Rashid Taha

William C. Patrick III

Kenneth Alibek

Yuri Ovchinnikov Writers and activists:

Matthew Meselson

Jeanne Guillemin

Richard PrestonFurther Information
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