Ebola can be turned into bioweapon, Russian & UK experts warn - Polidicks

This is stupid. Ebola is a shitty bioweapon, and last time I checked, Al Qaeda doesn't have world-class infectious disease research centers and hundreds of millions of dollars to spend developing it into something useful. Especially when bioweapons, just like chemical weapons, are ineffective and difficult to use anyway.

what a pointless article "deadly virus is deadly" the terrorists would likely end up killing themselves before doing any harm

[QUOTE=angelangel;45635187]what a pointless article "deadly virus is deadly" the terrorists would likely end up killing themselves before doing any harm[/QUOTE] Or, they could get some sick guy, wear masks around him, send him on a plane with a faked bill of health and get him to suicide bomb some place. Plenty of bodily fluids to go around, for the low-low price of one martyr. The way the recent ISIS shit has been going, I wouldn't put it past them.

[QUOTE=Zonesylvania;45630921]Imagine what might happen if somebody weaponized AIDS somehow. [B]We'd be fucked.[/B][/QUOTE] We wouldn't be though ... :v:

[QUOTE=Coyoteze;45635228]We wouldn't be though ... :v:[/QUOTE] I think the joke is that being fucked is the aids bio-weapon...

so if i were to gene splice ebola to be airborne i could have the world under my control pretty much? i assume its not really possible because no one has done it

[QUOTE=Katatonic717;45630922]So can any other illness. I mean shit, they could make some kinda super-death-polio-9000 if they really wanted to.[/QUOTE] yeah but imagine ebola suicide bombers. you walk into a crowded area and just explode blood out of you thats pretty metal

[QUOTE=Drsalvador;45632157]Compared to a ruddy great bomb that can potentially kill 90-100%?[/QUOTE] one bioweapon can potentially do far more damage to a population than one nuclear weapon

[QUOTE=Katatonic717;45630922]So can any other illness. I mean shit, they could make some kinda super-death-polio-9000 if they really wanted to.[/QUOTE] I thought polio doesn't exist in nature anymore and is only kept on ice in a few places worldwide? Also aren't they euthanizing people that clearly aren't going to survive the disease? seems like a fucking horrible way to die, and I bet morphine wont help when you're shitting your stomach lining out.

[QUOTE=Zenreon117;45635225]Or, they could get some sick guy, wear masks around him, send him on a plane with a faked bill of health and get him to suicide bomb some place. Plenty of bodily fluids to go around, for the low-low price of one martyr. The way the recent ISIS shit has been going, I wouldn't put it past them.[/QUOTE]Ebola is only infectious when the victim shows symptoms, at which point it's a very rapid descent into bleeding out of every orifice. Good luck getting that guy onto a plane, and having them remain composed enough to make it to a location and bomb it. [QUOTE=SpaceGhost;45636584]I thought polio doesn't exist in nature anymore and is only kept on ice in a few places worldwide? Also aren't they euthanizing people that clearly aren't going to survive the disease? seems like a fucking horrible way to die, and I bet morphine wont help when you're shitting your stomach lining out.[/QUOTE]You're thinking of smallpox, polio is very much alive in quite a few countries, particularly Pakistan and it's neighbours.

Well, India at any rate is completely polio free. Pakistan's still got it, though, as does Bangladesh and Nepal too.

[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;45634998]This is stupid. Ebola is a shitty bioweapon, and last time I checked, Al Qaeda doesn't have world-class infectious disease research centers and hundreds of millions of dollars to spend developing it into something useful. Especially when bioweapons, just like chemical weapons, are ineffective and difficult to use anyway.[/QUOTE] Honestly I think Ebola would be an amazing bioweapon. If anything its likely close to one of the best bioweapons imaginable. 1. Ebola has no known cure. The serums recently used exist in only small quantities, and the infrastructure necessary for mass producing it don't exist, nor will it likely ever exist, due to the virus' rarity. 2. A weaponized ebola strain would likely be based on one of the strains with extremely high lethality, and correspondingly kill almost everyone it infects. 3. It's fairly easy to handle because it only infects through direct body fluid contact, limiting accidental infection of your own soldiers/researchers. Not to mention that the lack of widespread manufacture of cure/serum doesn't preclude you from manufacturing limited amounts to cure the small number of your own researchers/soldiers who are accidentally exposed. 4. It's exactly the opposite when its aerosolized, where droplets will infect through contact with any mucous membrane (eyes, lungs, mouth, sinus, etc) or through any open wounds. Matthew Lukwiya is a doctor (and a hero) who died during the 2000's Ugandan outbreak of Ebola; he was infected because in a rush to treat a coworker, he forgot to wear his face shield/goggles and got sneezed on [Note that at the time he was wearing a mask, cap, gown, apron and two pairs of gloves and was by normal standards pretty fucking well protected]. Basically you just need a bomb that air bursts biofluid containing ebola over a city, and you're going to get quite a number of people. 5. It's method of killing is particularly gruesome and likely to induce fear/paranoia on the affected population. 6. Infected victims require large amounts of specialized, quarantined medical attention. Much like maiming an enemy soldier is considered more effective than killing them, widespread infection of ebola will cripple infrastructure. The isolation unit in Emory University Hospital is only one of four in the entire US, I assume that the majority of nations will have less. The number of cities in the world that would be capable of handling a mass outbreak of ebola can probably be counted on one hand. 7. Ebola has the advantage that not only will the "maimed" victim eat up (considerable) resources, they'll also very likely die, leaving behind a very infectious corpse that will also eat up considerable resources just to dispose of. 8. Ebola kills so efficiently that it rarely spreads very far, limiting further propagation and collateral damage. 9. The above mentioned lack of in place infrastructure would likely necessitate doctors and resources be brought in from other places in order to save a city, tying national scale resources. This effectively also means a nation's soldiers, doctors and nurses will be shipped directly into the zone where they are most likely to get infected and die. It's a bioweapon that kills too fast to become uncontrollably widespread (eliminating the primary disadvantage of bioweapons), but eats up tremendous amounts of manpower and resources, while simultaneously putting all that manpower at risk of further infection. An aerosolized air-burst bomb form of the weapon, even if it only infect 10% of a cities population, would likely kill almost the entire city's population and most people sent in to help treat it. Doctors and experts are only saying that there is no risk of ebola becoming a major epidemic in the US because the conditions for it to spread do not exist. This does not mean that a means to contain or handle an epidemic in the US exist, should one be artificially induced. I highly doubt that anyone is actually going to weaponize it, let alone ever use it on a civilian or military population, but if it were, it would be utterly catastrophic as a weapon. I imagine it would approach small scale nuclear weaponry in terms of capacity to cause loss of life.

[QUOTE=Shogoll;45637431]Honestly I think Ebola would be an amazing bioweapon. If anything its likely close to one of the best bioweapons imaginable. 1. Ebola has no known cure. The serums recently used exist in only small quantities, and the infrastructure necessary for mass producing it don't exist, nor will it likely ever exist, due to the virus' rarity. 2. A weaponized ebola strain would likely be based on one of the strains with extremely high lethality, and correspondingly kill almost everyone it infects. 3. It's fairly easy to handle because it only infects through direct body fluid contact, limiting accidental infection of your own soldiers/researchers. Not to mention that the lack of widespread manufacture of cure/serum doesn't preclude you from manufacturing limited amounts to cure the small number of your own researchers/soldiers who are accidentally exposed. 4. It's exactly the opposite when its aerosolized, where droplets will infect through contact with any mucous membrane (eyes, lungs, mouth, sinus, etc) or through any open wounds. Matthew Lukwiya is a doctor (and a hero) who died during the 2000's Ugandan outbreak of Ebola; he was infected because in a rush to treat a coworker, he forgot to wear his face shield/goggles and got sneezed on [Note that at the time he was wearing a mask, cap, gown, apron and two pairs of gloves and was by normal standards pretty fucking well protected]. Basically you just need a bomb that air bursts biofluid containing ebola over a city, and you're going to get quite a number of people. 5. It's method of killing is particularly gruesome and likely to induce fear/paranoia on the affected population. 6. Infected victims require large amounts of specialized, quarantined medical attention. Much like maiming an enemy soldier is considered more effective than killing them, widespread infection of ebola will cripple infrastructure. The isolation unit in Emory University Hospital is only one of four in the entire US, I assume that the majority of nations will have less. The number of cities in the world that would be capable of handling a mass outbreak of ebola can probably be counted on one hand. 7. Ebola has the advantage that not only will the "maimed" victim eat up (considerable) resources, they'll also very likely die, leaving behind a very infectious corpse that will also eat up considerable resources just to dispose of. 8. Ebola kills so efficiently that it rarely spreads very far, limiting further propagation and collateral damage. 9. The above mentioned lack of in place infrastructure would likely necessitate doctors and resources be brought in from other places in order to save a city, tying national scale resources. This effectively also means a nation's soldiers, doctors and nurses will be shipped directly into the zone where they are most likely to get infected and die. It's a bioweapon that kills too fast to become uncontrollably widespread (eliminating the primary disadvantage of bioweapons), but eats up tremendous amounts of manpower and resources, while simultaneously putting all that manpower at risk of further infection. An aerosolized air-burst bomb form of the weapon, even if it only infect 10% of a cities population, would likely kill almost the entire city's population and most people sent in to help treat it. Doctors and experts are only saying that there is no risk of ebola becoming a major epidemic in the US because the conditions for it to spread do not exist. This does not mean that a means to contain or handle an epidemic in the US exist, should one be artificially induced. I highly doubt that anyone is actually going to weaponize it, let alone ever use it on a civilian or military population, but if it were, it would be utterly catastrophic as a weapon. I imagine it would approach [B]small scale nuclear weaponry[/B] in terms of capacity to cause loss of life.[/QUOTE] i would not go[I] that [/I]far

[QUOTE=SexualShark;45637621]i would not go[I] that [/I]far[/QUOTE] The combined official death toll of Nagasaki and Hiroshima was 225,000, I'm pretty sure if you airbursted something like the Zaire strain with a 90% lethality over almost any densely populated city, you'd surpass that pretty easily.

[QUOTE=Shogoll;45637431]Honestly I think Ebola would be an amazing bioweapon. If anything its likely close to one of the best bioweapons imaginable. 1. Ebola has no known cure. The serums recently used exist in only small quantities, and the infrastructure necessary for mass producing it don't exist, nor will it likely ever exist, due to the virus' rarity. 2. A weaponized ebola strain would likely be based on one of the strains with extremely high lethality, and correspondingly kill almost everyone it infects. 3. It's fairly easy to handle because it only infects through direct body fluid contact, limiting accidental infection of your own soldiers/researchers. Not to mention that the lack of widespread manufacture of cure/serum doesn't preclude you from manufacturing limited amounts to cure the small number of your own researchers/soldiers who are accidentally exposed. 4. It's exactly the opposite when its aerosolized, where droplets will infect through contact with any mucous membrane (eyes, lungs, mouth, sinus, etc) or through any open wounds. Matthew Lukwiya is a doctor (and a hero) who died during the 2000's Ugandan outbreak of Ebola; he was infected because in a rush to treat a coworker, he forgot to wear his face shield/goggles and got sneezed on [Note that at the time he was wearing a mask, cap, gown, apron and two pairs of gloves and was by normal standards pretty fucking well protected]. Basically you just need a bomb that air bursts biofluid containing ebola over a city, and you're going to get quite a number of people. 5. It's method of killing is particularly gruesome and likely to induce fear/paranoia on the affected population. 6. Infected victims require large amounts of specialized, quarantined medical attention. Much like maiming an enemy soldier is considered more effective than killing them, widespread infection of ebola will cripple infrastructure. The isolation unit in Emory University Hospital is only one of four in the entire US, I assume that the majority of nations will have less. The number of cities in the world that would be capable of handling a mass outbreak of ebola can probably be counted on one hand. 7. Ebola has the advantage that not only will the "maimed" victim eat up (considerable) resources, they'll also very likely die, leaving behind a very infectious corpse that will also eat up considerable resources just to dispose of. 8. Ebola kills so efficiently that it rarely spreads very far, limiting further propagation and collateral damage. 9. The above mentioned lack of in place infrastructure would likely necessitate doctors and resources be brought in from other places in order to save a city, tying national scale resources. This effectively also means a nation's soldiers, doctors and nurses will be shipped directly into the zone where they are most likely to get infected and die. It's a bioweapon that kills too fast to become uncontrollably widespread (eliminating the primary disadvantage of bioweapons), but eats up tremendous amounts of manpower and resources, while simultaneously putting all that manpower at risk of further infection. An aerosolized air-burst bomb form of the weapon, even if it only infect 10% of a cities population, would likely kill almost the entire city's population and most people sent in to help treat it. Doctors and experts are only saying that there is no risk of ebola becoming a major epidemic in the US because the conditions for it to spread do not exist. This does not mean that a means to contain or handle an epidemic in the US exist, should one be artificially induced. I highly doubt that anyone is actually going to weaponize it, let alone ever use it on a civilian or military population, but if it were, it would be utterly catastrophic as a weapon. I imagine it would approach small scale nuclear weaponry in terms of capacity to cause loss of life.[/QUOTE] why do you sound so exited over this prospect?