Bio-weapons: The emerging threat of the 21st Century
World map showing the countries currently affected by the Corona Virus. (Source: Channel News Asia)
It has no large Army to boast of, nor does it have an ultramodern Air Force with the latest high-tech Aircraft. It doesn’t have a vast Navy nor does it have an impressive array of ICBM’s and other WMD’s.
Yet in a span of just 4 months, the Corona Virus has managed to establish it’s base in every country of the world. It has touched more than 3 million people out of which 200,000+ have already succumbed to this deadly disease. And so far, it has shown no signs of abating.
Young and old, men and women, sick and healthy, king and commoner: no one has been spared from it’s deadly embrace.
Without firing a single bullet or missile, the Virus has caused unprecedented damage. Lock-downs have been initiated, travel and tourism has come to a grinding halt, schools and colleges have been shut down, unemployment is rising, economies have taken a huge hit and stock markets the world over are in the red.
This is a global wake up call.
For long, we have been hankering on the dangers of nuclear weapons and the threat they present to humanity. But this pandemic has brought forth another equally lethal threat: Biological Weapons and Warfare.
Bio-weapons can be equally deadly if not deadlier than the most powerful nuclear bomb.
A nuclear weapon attack is bad enough as it is. There will be nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. A nuclear bomb will drop, detonate and KAWHOOSH!!! You (and the entire neighborhood) will be vaporized within seconds. Death will be instantaneous.
But getting attacked by a bio-weapon is a different ball game. It’s like getting attacked by a Python. Pythons are known to wrap themselves around their victims’ body and kill them slowly by crushing and suffocating them. In the same way, a bio-weapon will disable you by targeting your body’s immune system and vital organs one by one, ultimately resulting in death. It will be slow torture, and definitely not a very enjoyable experience.
Consider the following points:
Producing a bio-weapon or a bio-toxin wouldn’t be as expensive as producing a nuclear weapon (Not that I’m an expert in producing bio-weapons, but I’m sure that producing a bio-toxin might not require the same amount of infrastructure and expense as producing a nuclear weapon does). A person with the right (or wrong) amount of knowledge, ingredients and equipment can easily produce a Bio-weapon is his/her backyard. It’s not for nothing that bio-weapons have been dubbed as the ‘Poor Man’s Atomic Bomb’ (Steven Block, Scientific American Magazine).
Secondly, a bio-toxin can spread easily via any medium: Humans, Animals, Air, Water and other sources and could be difficult to control and contain.
Third, a Bio-toxin does not know any boundaries. Given the right amount of stimulus and favorable conditions, it can spread rapidly among countries and continents killing or incapacitating thousands of organisms in it’s path.
Point number four: The symptoms of exposure to a bio-toxin might not be easy to detect early on. They could be mistaken for common ailments and people could realize the truth only too late (a point which has been amply demonstrated in this ongoing pandemic). This is probably the most dangerous consequence of a biological attack.
The fifth point; we have elaborate defense mechanisms for detecting and destroying incoming nuclear armed missiles instantly. But how will a Bio-weapon be detected and tracked? We have built bunkers to survive nuclear attacks. But how will we be able to defend ourselves from Bio-weapons?
And lastly, antidotes for new and unknown toxins could take years, if not months to develop and perfect. In the meantime, the toxin would continue on it’s rampage, causing untold suffering and misery.
Considering all the above points, I shudder to think what would happen if the know-how to produce Bio-weapons fell into the wrong hands. How many millions of lives would be at risk! This could well be exploited by terrorist organizations and rogue nations for their own gains.
The world is no stranger to biological warfare. Humankind has been witness to the use of bio-weapons in the past.
Mustard Gas was used in the trenches of World War One in Europe, by the Kaiser’s army as well as the allies. There was a considerable amount of research done on the production of large scale bio-weapons for use in world war two as well. The Japanese military killed thousands of Chinese prisoners by injecting them with lethal pathogens such as anthrax, cholera etc. In Europe, Nazi scientists carried out inhuman biological experiments on captured Jewish subjects. The US was considering the use of chemical and biological weapons against Japan to make it surrender, before switching to the nuclear bomb.
The US and the USSR did extensive research on bio-weapons after the second world war and developed and hoarded huge stockpiles of bio-toxins, before many nations signed a treaty banning the use of biological weapons in 1972.
As recently as 1995, the Japanese apocalyptic cult Aum Shinrikyo released a deadly and toxic nerve gas called Sarin in the Tokyo Subway, which killed 13 people and hospitalized many more.
These are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other documented and undocumented examples of the usage of bio-toxins in conventional and unconventional warfare.
The production and use of bio-toxins and other weapons are a threat to the human race and can have far reaching consequences even beyond our current generation.
The world must wake up to this emerging threat, before it’s too late.