willowmp

(Not entirely sure that this thread goes here, but I think it does at least)

A while ago I was surfing the roguesci forum (basically a forum for amateur chemists and stuff) and found a thread that discussed a new breed of terrorist, and after thinking about it for a while it really has shocked me to the degree of power these "bioterrorists" could elicit.

When you think of a terrorist what image forms in your mind? A suicide bomber, a car bomb blowing up near people and killing people, 9/11, etc. These people are called terrorists because they use terror to attempt to gain leverage over something, such as a country, or its people. Now this process does work to a point, but it could be greatly improved. When a suicide bomber walks into a store and blows himself up, he may take a few people with him, if he's lucky close to a hundred people. The fear of death is what fuels the terror and by having a few people die the terrorist can expect that the media will blow it up into a huge crisis, thus gaining the terrorist ground.

Now the method that terrorists have used so far have been quite mundane. Think about how many people actually die in a terrorist attack. Sure a few hundred, or maybe even thousands can be killed, but this is still quite an insignificant number. Really, basing your campaign for power on terrorism seems pretty weak, as it can be easily thwarted, as the "crisis" is just media glamor. So, how could one improve on this model, and actually create a crisis that would be effective in achieving the goals of the terrorist? Through the use of bioterrorism.

Bioterrorism, when deployed correctly can be extremely effective. Unlike a terrorist bioterrorists do not kill small numbers of people and let the media create a pretend crisis out of nothing, they create a real crisis through the use of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. Some of these weapons include nerve gasses, and other toxins. If bioterrorists were to visit colleges and such, they could effectively wipe out entire generations in a country. This would cause the country to fall apart, and the terrorist would be successful.

Imagine a bioterrorist deploys chemical and biological weapons in mass to schools around the country. High schools, if attacked would wipe out generations, and have the benefit of being closed air systems, allowing the toxin to spread extremely rapidly. In schools such as my own that would mean 4,000 people that will die in 2 months, that don't even know they are about to die, per school. How many schools could 1 bioterrorist travel to in 1 day? Suddenly the mundane suicide bomber killing 100 people doesn't seem all that bad.

Now lets take a look at what that would mean, if they attacked schools. Multiple year gaps would be formed from this type of attack. Suddenly the intelegent citizens in our society have been eliminated. Our goverment and businesses can no longer run. Our economy degenerates and we become a third world nation. Due to the requirement that children attend schools most
are eliminated leaving a huge gap in population that we might not be able to recover from.

Depending on the toxin they used they would also have quite a bit of time to execute the plot. I know there is a mercury related toxin that will kill after around 2 months of exposure 100% of the time, and very little is needed to be exposed to the point of death. Those who are exposed have no igns of exposure until hours of death, which would enable these terrorists to expose quite a huge number of schools before anyone realizes there is a problem. Unlike anthrax there is no cure, so once the students are exposed they are dead. This would give the terrorists 2 months to infect as many schools in the nation as possible, and with a pretty large team they could expose a large amount of schools. but why leave it at high school children. Infect colleges and elementary schools and a gap in society of 17 years is created. This would spell disaster for our country.

Its a scary thought that a corrupt organization merely has to synthesize these chemicals and toxins and could effectively eliminate an entire country. Sorry for such a long post.

Thoughts, opinions, etc?