Anthrax dispersal

Rickettsia can be stored as freeze-dried powders. In this form, they are easy to disperse. However, because they are living organisms and can be killed during the dispersal process there are limitations to the methods that can be used. They can also be stored and dispersed via infected vectors (e.g., lice, ticks). In most cases, large-scale attacks will be clandestine and only detected through epidemiological analysis of resulting disease patterns. Localized or small-scale attacks may take the form of "anthrax" letters. Even in these cases, without the inclusion of a threat the attack may go unnoticed until the disease appears in exposed individuals (e.g., the initial 2001 anthrax attack at American Media Inc., which claimed the life of Robert Stevens). 

For Fildes s successors at Porton Down, the problem is now beginning to look insoluble. As Rex Watson, the present Director of Porton Down, put it in an interview in 1981 The attraction of anthrax when it was used was that it was thought to be sufficiently resistant an organism to withstand being dispersed by a munition... I don t think at that time perhaps they understood as much as we do now about its persistence over very long periods. 7 Porton would expect there to be an area of contamination for the next tens, perhaps even hundreds of years. Until that area is clear, Gruinard will remain closed to the public. At the moment, to be sure of being safe, the Porton men who go back still have to wear protective suits and take a seven and a half month course of injections. I doubt, added Dr Watson, that we would do such an experiment now if we had to in those conditions. ... 

Japanese cult Aum Shinriky attempted at least three times to disperse aerosolized botulinum toxin and anthrax in downtown Tokyo and at U.S. military installations in Japan. All attempts failed. 

Fifth, there is a huge gap between detection technology and therapy. There are many biologic agents, and certainly many chemical agents for which there are no known treatments. We should not expect that terrorists will choose the agents for which we are prepared, and for which we have effective treatment, even if they are the easiest to create and disperse, such as anthrax or sarin. 

Only then, with a stock of fluffy and fine anthrax, would the attackers be ready And then the challenge would be to deliver the material so that it formed an aerosol cover that was large but also sufiiciently concentrated, and doing this on any kind of scale requires near-perfect weather conditions— that is to say, with little wind, and few up- or down-drafts to move the aerosol in unexpected directions, or to disperse it. None of these hurdles are insurmountable, but they are hurdles, and the smaller and less resource-rich an attacker, the less likely he is to be able to undertake an operation of this kind on a massive scale. Unfortunately, as we have seen in recent incidents, attacks on a smaller scale, in what now appear to be indoor rather than outdoor settings, have been lethal, and are of course deeply disturbing to citizens everywhere. But the point remains a terrorist attack on a city, with an immense deadly aerosol cloud descending on thousands of inhabitants, does not seem a likely scenario. 

Anthrax spores may be dispersed on a large scale in an aerosol form or placed in threatening letters or parcels a white-jwwder incident (see pages 82-85 and 228-231). 

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