BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
Russia had developed a new variant of anthrax that is completely resistant to antibiotics and could cause a worldwide catastrophe, the British military defense service reported. “It only needs this, or the new chemical nerve agents to be independently discovered by an ostracized nation’s scientists and then developed for missile delivery for an Armageddon situation to occur whereby the only reliable retribution may well be overwhelming nuclear response,” Jane’s, the authoritative defense manual warned. Anthrax, a disease carried by sheep and cattle, can infect human beings and cause an agonizing death. In addition to this bacteriological disease, Jane’s reported that Russia had developed three new nerve agents that were eight times as deadly as the VX nerve agent stockpiled by Iraq. (The Pentagon belatedly confirmed that chemical weapons were used in the Gulf War in 1991 and may be a factor in Gulf War Syndrome, the debilitating illness many Gulf War veterans later experienced.)
The ready availability of virulent microbes from research laboratories is also a cause for alarm. In 1997, an Ohio man was sentenced to perform 200 hours of community service and serve 18 months probation for illegally obtaining bubonic plague germs by mail. A Maryland lab sent him three vials of the freeze-dried, inactive bacteria which he said he needed to research a book.
Source: Jane’s Land-Based Air Defense 1997-98 and wire service reports.