Combatting Terror Agents

Terrorism is premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience. 

There are also some new trends emerging in areas that might not have been fully appreciated as recently as ten years ago. Three examples are smart colloids, nanodispersions, and the need to combat agents of terror. 

The Tokyo subway sarin attack occurred in 1995, following the Matsumoto sarin attack, and served as a wake-up call for anti-NBC (nuclear, biological, and chemical) terrorism policy throughout the world. In the 10 years since the attack, efforts to combat NBC terrorism have focused on rapid and effective measures to respond to attacks employing nerve agents such as sarin. 

Disease has always been associated with war. Until the twentieth century, most casualties of war (soldiers and civilians) were due to disease rather than combat. In the Middle Ages, bubonic plague wiped out a third of the population of Europe (40 million deaths), and in modem times influenza outbreaks and the recent SARS epidemic have caused deaths worldwide. Biological agents are well suited for terrorism because they not only kill and disable but also cause fear out of proportion to their actual potential killing power. 

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