Soviet Union anthrax

Likewise, the United States and the former Soviet Union could choose among BW agents that were lethal or those that were mostly nonfatal, depending on the mission. On the one hand, the inhaled route of anthrax infection is among the most lethal (more than 50% would die under the best of circumstances), a weapon delivering an aerosol of anthrax spores would have meant large percentages of dead. On the other hand, Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE) virus could be employed, in which case most of those infected with VEE would be incapacitated by the disease but few would ultimately die (Smith et al., 1997). 

In a rare concession, the Soviet news agency, Toss, admitted that there had indeed been outbreaks of anthrax in Sverdlovsk, caused by what it called poor standards of personal hygiene in handling contaminated food. The explanation did sound plausible, since it was well known that anthrax had not been eradicated from large areas of the Soviet Union, and that at the time of the Sverdlovsk incident articles had appeared in the local press advising people on how to treat Siberian Sore , as the disease was locally known. What little information had reached the west about Sverdlovsk tended to support this explanation.13... 

Very little is known about the nature of Israeli biological weaponry, although they are believed to at least have such weapons. Experts suggest that Israel s BW program may have been modeled on the arsenals of the US and the former Soviet Union. If this is true, Israel probably has stockpiles of anthrax, bot-... 

The bacteria that cause anthrax and the botulinum toxin are among the most likely candidates for weaponization. (Whether or not botuUnum toxin would be an effective weapon, however, is a matter of controversy.) Viruses such as Ebola, while extremely deadly (up to 90 percent mortality in some instances), are difficult to weaponize due to their fragile structures. Ebola kills its victims by destroying cells, especially those that line blood vessels, finally bursting them open after the virus has replicated itself. Although their BW scientists found weaponizing Ebola quite difficult, a successful effort was made in the former Soviet Union to weaponize Marburg virus, taxonomically a close relative to Ebola. 

Before the United States ended its program in 1969, it had been developed an anthrax weapon. Until recently, a dried preparation of anthrax was an important part of the Soviet Union s strategic BW arsenal, and Iraq has admitted to UNSCOM inspectors in 1995 that it too had weaponized anthrax. 

Unlike anthrax, plague bacteria do not form spores, therefore are much more susceptible to environmental stresses and usually die after several hours of exposure to sunlight. Nonetheless, compared to other bacteria that do not form spores, plague bacteria are hardy. (The Soviet Union weaponized it for their BW arsenals, but American scientists—during the heyday of the US BW program—were unable to master the technique of mass producing Yersinia pestis.)... 

As the story finally emerged, seven years after the BTWC was promulgated and four years after it was put in force— with the Soviet Union one of its key signatories—a terrible accident occurred at a Soviet BW facihty in Siberia. A filter at the Compound 19 facihty in Sverdlovsk, where weaponized anthrax was being produced in massive quantities, was accidentally removed, allowing Bacillus anthracis spores to become aerosolized, and then vented from a high-level containment facility and into the air outside. The horrified Soviet scientists, as soon as they realized what had happened, raced to replace the missing filter, but it was too late. 

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