A biological weapon is any of several disease-causing organisms, such as bacteria, viruses, rickettsiae, fungi, poisons, or other biological agents, that can be used as weapons against humans, animals, or plants. The direct application of infectious agents and poisons to enemy personnel is an ancient technique in warfare. Indeed, in numerous conflicts, viruses have killed more people than all of the combat arms combined, even when they were not intentionally deployed as weapons. Biological weapons, like chemical, radiological, and nuclear weapons, are usually referred to as weapons of mass destruction, despite the fact that the word is not entirely relevant for biological weapons. Although lethal biological weapons can cause mass deaths, they cannot destroy infrastructure, buildings, or equipment on a large scale. Nonetheless, most countries have agreed to ban the entire class of weapons due to their indiscriminate character, the potential for causing broad pandemics, the difficulties in regulating disease effects, and the mere dread that they generate.
Biological Weapons Convention (BWC)
As of 2013, 180 states and Taiwan has joined the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), with 170 of them signing and ratifying the pact, which was opened for signature in 1972. The BWC prohibits member states from employing biological weapons in conflict, as well as creating, testing, producing, stockpiling, or deploying them. However, a few of states have continued to develop biological warfare capabilities, preferring a less expensive but still lethal strategic weapon over the more difficult and costly path to nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the potential that a demented individual or terrorist organisation will create or steal biological weapons is an increasing security problem.
Biological warfare agents
Biological warfare agents vary widely in terms of the organism or toxin utilised in a weapon system, lethality, incubation time, infectiousness, stability, and capacity to be treated with existing vaccinations and medications. There are five types of biological agents that could be weaponised and utilised in combat or terrorism. These include bacteria, which are single-celled creatures that cause diseases like anthrax, brucellosis, tularaemia, and plague.
• Rickettsiae—microorganisms that seem like bacteria but are actually intracellular parasites that reproduce inside cells. Rickettsia organisms produce diseases such as typhus and Q fever.
• Viruses are intracellular parasites that are about 1/100 the size of bacteria and can be weaponised to produce diseases like Venezuelan equine encephalitis.
• Fungi are pathogens that can be weaponised against crops to cause illnesses like rice blast, cereal rust, wheat smut, and potato blight.
• Toxins are poisons that can be weaponised after being extracted from snakes, insects, spiders, marine organisms, plants, bacteria, fungus, and animals. Ricine, generated from castor bean seeds, is one example of a toxin. Some of these biological agents have traits that make them more likely to be weaponised, such as lethality, incapacitating ability, contagiousness or noncontagiousness, hardiness and stability, and other characteristics. The toxins ricin, staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB), botulinum toxin, and T-2 mycotoxin, as well as the infectious agents responsible for anthrax, brucellosis, cholera, pneumonic plague, tularaemia, Q fever, smallpox, glanders, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, and viral hemorrhagic fever, have been identified as potential biological weapons candidates. Several states have also considered weaponising hundreds of different biological agents at various points in time.
Defence against biological wars and weapons Military defence
The majority of weaponised fatal biological agents are designed to be delivered as aerosols, causing illnesses when inhaled by the targeted individuals. As a result, the most effective defence against biological weapons is a good protective mask equipped with filters capable of preventing bacteria, viruses, and spores larger than one micron (one millionth of a metre) in cross section from entering the wearer’s nasal passages and lungs. Protective overgarments, such as boots and gloves, can help prevent biological agents from coming into contact with open wounds or skin breaks. Additionally, decontaminants can neutralise biological agents in affected areas following a biological attack. Developing and fielding effective biological weapon sensors that can sound an alarm would allow personnel to put on masks before exposure, change into protective overgarments, and enter, preferably toxic-free collective protection shelters. Medical teams may then rapidly respond to check and treat anyone who had been exposed. Biological warfare attacks can be rendered ineffectual if the targeted individuals have been vaccinated against the specific disease-causing agent utilised in the attack.
Civil defence for Biological wars
Civil defence against biological weapons has improved dramatically since the September 11, 2001 assaults in the United States, but development does not always imply success. To provide a successful civil defence against massive biological attacks, significant development must be achieved in sensors, warning systems, vaccines, medications, responder training, public education, and emergency procedure planning. These features of civil defence are briefly outlined in this section, with examples from actions implemented in the United States following September 11. The medical infrastructure already in place to cope with naturally occurring diseases serves as the foundation of any societal defence against a biological weapons assault. Special vaccinations have been developed, tested, and licensed to combat the two most devastating biological agents, which can also be easily weaponised: anthrax and smallpox. For example, the United States government has enough smallpox vaccine to vaccinate the whole American population, as well as enough anthrax vaccine to immunise at least every member of the US military. Effective vaccines for plague and cholera are now available and approved for use, but only limited quantities have been developed, considerably short of what would be required if a huge number of people were sick. Furthermore, in the United States, a number of vaccines are still classified as Investigational New Drugs (INDs) and must undergo additional testing before the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) can approve their efficacy or safety. These include vaccinations for Q fever, tularaemia, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, viral hemorrhagic fever, and botulism. There are currently no effective vaccinations for preventing illnesses from glanders, brucellosis, staphylococcal enterotoxin B, ricin, or T-2 mycotoxins, all of which are biological agents that certain governments have previously explored or weaponised for military purposes. However, in some circumstances where vaccinations are not yet accessible, drugs have been produced to assist the sick in their recovery. Long-term medical research is underway to study the prospect of producing vaccines and supplements that, when provided, may increase the efficacy of the recipient’s immune system in protecting against the entire spectrum of potential biological warfare agents. One US civil defence program that could help in a biological emergency is the Strategic National Stockpile program, which has created 50-ton “push packages” of vaccines, medicines, decontamination agents, and emergency medical equipment that are stored in a dozen locations across the country in preparation for emergencies. Furthermore, all states in the United States have bioterrorism response plans in place, which include plans or recommendations for mass vaccines, triage, and quarantines.
The United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has also developed model legislation on emergency health authorities for states to use in dealing with such situations. Following the September 11 attacks, the United States implemented a new emergency response system. The National Guard boosted the number of its Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams, which respond to chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons attacks by supplementing the police, fire, and medical first responders in the vicinity of any assaults. Furthermore, the Department of Homeland Security, in collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services, has made significant investments in passive biological assault defences, with initiatives like as Project BioShield and the Laboratory Response Network at the forefront. The CDC also launched a bioterrorism training program for thousands of medical lab technicians, while the National Institutes of Health established new biocontainment research laboratories to further vaccination, medicine, and bioforensics research. Sensors for detecting the presence of biological agents in the air, water, or on surfaces are still relatively ineffective, but the goal of research is to develop a “detect-to-warn” system that will allow potential victims to put on masks, cover up, and seek shelter before becoming infected. The current “detect-to-treat” capability is inadequate because responders would be treating many previously infected individuals. Most existing biological detectors are point detectors that cannot provide early warning after scanning an airborne cloud of particles to determine whether they contain biological agents of a specific type. Biological weapons in history One of the first recorded uses of biological warfare occurred in 1347, when Mongol forces catapulted plague-infested bodies over the walls into the Black Sea port of Caffa (now Feodosiya, Ukraine), which was at the time a Genoese trade centre on the Crimean Peninsula. Some historians believe that ships from the beleaguered city brought the virus back to Italy, sparking the Black Death pandemic that spread through Europe for four years, killing an estimated 25 million people. In 1710, a Russian army attacking Swedish soldiers trapped in Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia) threw plague-infested corpses over the city walls. During Pontiac’s Rebellion in 1763, British troops besieged Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh) handed smallpox-infected blankets to Indians, resulting in a deadly outbreak among their ranks. Biological weapons in World Wars During World War I (1914-18), Germany launched a covert operation to infect horses and animals owned by Allied soldiers on both the Western and Eastern fronts. The infectious agent for glanders was said to have been employed. For example, German operatives infiltrated the United States and infected animals before shipping them over the Atlantic to support Allied soldiers. Furthermore, it is said that in 1915, the Germans attempted to spread plague in St. Petersburg in order to undermine Russian resistance. The horrors of World combat I prompted most countries to join the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibited the employment of biological and chemical weapons in combat. Nonetheless, Japan, one of the protocol’s signatories, conducted extensive and clandestine biological warfare research, development, manufacture, and testing, and it violated the treaty’s ban by using biological weapons against Allied forces in China between 1937 and 1945. In addition to using biological weapons in China, the Japanese experimented on and killed over 3,000 human victims (including Allied prisoners of war) in order to test biological warfare agents and various biological weapons delivery techniques. The Japanese experimented with infectious agents such as bubonic plague, anthrax, typhus, smallpox, yellow fever, tularaemia, hepatitis, cholera, gas gangrene, and glanders, among others. Although there is no documented evidence of any additional use of biological weapons in World War II, both sides had active research and development (R&D) programmes. The use of biological warfare agents by the Japanese against the Chinese prompted the United States to conduct biological warfare research in order to better understand how to defend against the threat and, if required, develop retaliatory capabilities. The United Kingdom, Germany, and the Soviet Union all had similar R&D programs during World War II, but only Japan was proven to have employed such weapons.
Biological weapons in the Cold War
During the Cold War, which followed World War II, both the Soviet Union and the United States, as well as their respective allies, launched large-scale biological warfare research and development and weapons production projects. Those programs were required by law to be suspended and dismantled following the signing of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) in 1972 and its coming into force in 1975. The United States and its allies appear to have fully complied with the requirements of the pact. Despite having signed and ratified the convention, the Soviet Union continued to operate an intensive clandestine biological warfare program. The absence of a verification framework to ensure members’ compliance with the BWC made it simpler for the Soviets to violate the convention without detection. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and its subsequent partition into 15 separate republics, Russian Pres. Boris Yeltsin acknowledged that the Soviet Union had breached the BWC and promised to end what remained of the old Soviet biological weapons program. However, another issue remained: the potential transfer of information, technical help, production equipment, materials, and even produced biological weapons to states and groups beyond the former Soviet Union’s boundaries. The United States and the former Soviet states agreed to collaborate to prevent the spread of biological warfare capabilities. With finance from the United States. The Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and other sources provided assistance in getting civilian jobs in other sectors for some of the estimated 60,000 scientists and technicians who had worked in Soviet biological warfare programs. Biological weapons proliferation Of the United Nations’ more than 190 members, just a dozen or so are highly suspected of having active biological weapons programs. However, such operations are easily concealed and camouflaged as vaccination plants and benign pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities. bacterial weapons are less expensive to build than nuclear weapons, but a devastating bacterial weapon might still be the strategic weapon that wins a war. The possibility of military superiority may motivate certain regimes to obtain the weapons, although clandestinely. Because the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) lacks existing verification or inspection processes to ensure compliance by its parties, cheating on the treaty may occur with no outside evidence to the contrary. It is entirely plausible that a small and somewhat poor country might successfully launch a biological warfare program with a minimal capital investment and a few dozen biologists, all of whom could be surreptitiously housed within a few buildings. Indeed, a terrorist organisation may have the technological and financial resources to launch a biological weapons program. In conclusion, the extent of biological weapons spread is highly unknown, difficult to detect, and hard to quantify.
Biological terrorism
Terrorist organisations have utilised biological weapons on a few occasions in the past. In the 1980s, followers of the exiled Indian self-proclaimed guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh settled on a ranch in Wasco County, Oregon, United States. The “Rajneeshies” took political control of the nearby town of Antelope, renaming it Rajneesh, and in 1984, they attempted to extend their political control throughout the county by suppressing voter turnout in the more populous town of The Dalles. Prior to the countywide elections, cult members experimented with contaminating groceries, restaurants, and The Dalles’ water supply with Salmonella germs. Their attempts made at least 751 individuals sick. The scheme was not revealed until a year after the attack, when one of the participants confessed. From April 1990 until July 1995, the AUM Shinrikyo sect employed biological and chemical weapons against targets in Japan. The members’ biological attacks were mainly ineffective since they never learnt the science and technology of biological warfare. Nonetheless, they attempted four anthrax assaults and six botulinum toxin attacks on various targets, including a United States naval installation in Yokosuka. Al-Qaeda operatives have expressed an interest in producing and deploying biological weapons, and they ran an anthrax laboratory in Afghanistan before being overwhelmed by US and Afghan Northern Alliance forces in 2001-02. In 2001, anthrax-laced letters were addressed to numerous politicians and other notable figures in the United States. The letters murdered five people and hospitalised 22 others, causing the evacuation of congressional office buildings, the governor’s office in New York, various television network headquarters, and a tabloid newspaper office. This event resulted in billions of dollars in cleanup, decontamination, and investigation costs. The Federal Bureau of probe ended its probe in early 2010, more than eight years after the mailings, concluding that the letters were mailed by a microbiologist who had worked in the United States. Army’s biological defence program for years, and who committed suicide in 2008 after being identified as a suspect in the probe. The Internet has widely distributed knowledge on the creation of biological and chemical weapons, and many researchers at biological facilities throughout the world have access to basic scientific information as well. Unfortunately, poisons and disease agents appear to be the most likely weapons of choice for terrorists.
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