In reply to Lawrence de Bivort's message of Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:49:49 -0500: Hi, [snip] >Having looked at quite a few 'terrorist threat' scenarios from technical and >political PoVs, my sense is that the 'single most serious threat to the >national security of the United States' is the election of another US >president who is both out of touch with international realities and >susceptible to the manipulation of internal lobbying groups. > >But, to the narrow point, a 'terrorist' atomic bomb is not at all the most >threatening of the weapons that COULD be developed and used against the US. > >Lawrence
I agree whole heartedly. By far the most dangerous would be a lethal virus, rapidly spreading from person to person. Such a virus could easily wipe out a large percentage of the population, whereas a single nuke would "only" kill the inhabitants of a single city and it's immediate surrounds, and some people downwind from eventual fallout. Furthermore, such a virus would likely not stop at the US borders, but also spread all over the planet, particularly if it had both a long incubation time, and a high mortality rate. The former ensures that the disease is not easily detected in a given host for some time, i.e. that they don't show any symptoms, yet are capable of infecting others. The latter ensures that once contracted, the disease is usually fatal. The latest bird flu is an example of the latter. The mortality rate is/was around 50% as near as I can tell. The mortality rate for the "Spanish flu" was only a few percent. Now you can see why bird flu had so many governments worried. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk The shrub is a plant.
