Posted on 10/29/2001 2:04:30 PM PST by HEFFERNAN2
Attorney General Ashcroft news conference alerting that there may be addtional terrorist attacks this week.
I had never heard of 'Devil's Night' or 'Mischief Night' until we moved from the South to New Jersey. One year, I was about 5 months pregnant at Halloween and the local juvenile delinquent lobbed a bar of Ivory Soap through my front window. He was startled when about 10 seconds later I flew out the front door screaming and yelling and chasing him down the street. Unfortunatly I didn't catch him, but when I called the cops it took them about 2 hours to get there. Seems there had been a ton of vandalism that night. The cop said some clowns had taken something sharp and gone through the parking lot of a shopping center dragging said object across every car they could reach.
Some people laughed about Mischief night, but I thought it was just an excuse to vandalize whatever any little JD fancied, and I hated that people were so blase' about it!
Not true, the symptoms slowly fade over the course of weeks/months.
The only treatment involves passive antibody shots against the strains.
Not true, there is an anti-toxin that effectively stops progression of the disease by blocking the toxin.
How would botulism be spread to the general population? Salad Bars? Not to be silly, but I am not aware of how it could be mass-dispersed unless in food supplies...
I've watched "The Siege" several times (good movie, and should be required viewing since 9/11), and I never saw any "profiling is bad" message in it. The terrorists were Arab, and no one in the film had any problem with focusing the investigation on Arabs. What it *did* depict as a bad thing (correctly, IMNSHO) was indiscriminately rounding up all Arabs, citizens or not, and putting them in internment camps.
Another good film for these times is "The Peacemaker" (George Cloony, Nicole Kidman), about an attempt to track down a stolen nuclear weapon before it's used by terrorists.
Not panicking, but it did send my antennae up to hear my home state (CT) mentioned.
They may suspect that something is going down, but they can't decode the messages.
yah, me too. i'm glad you could pull a summary statement
out of the article... it left me more confused than ever.
:-)
Also, read the disclaimer in the book about the information used to write it.
AL-QAIDA MEMBERS FLEEING AFGHANISTAN. DESTINATION: EUROPE According to an article in Newsweek, suspected members of Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaida terrorist network are reported to have paid between 20-30 thousand dollars to be smuggled out of Afghanistan and into Europe. The article stated that anywhere between 150-200 Al-Qaida agents have escaped Afghanistan in the last two months. According to Pakistani sources quoted by the magazine, the terrorists have been traveling to Ukraine via central Asian countries with a final destination of Great Britain, Germany, or Italy.
(The MicrobeLibrary is a peer-reviewed, web-based collection of scholarly resources about the microbial world. The Library builds upon the scientific expertise, intellectual creativity, and private collections of the 45,000 members of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). Its contents include visual images, curriculum activities, a tri-annual educational newsletter, an annual educational journal, and reviews and resources)
Biological Weapons: Black Biology
Ron E. Hurlbert, Washington State University
Bot tox can be absorbed through the mucous membranes, so aerosol dispersal, addition to municipal water or food supplies, or spraying it from a van driving slowly through a city on a foggy night are likely effective ways of introducing bot tox into a population.
The known disadvantages of using bot tox are that it is unstable in the air if exposed to sunlight and dry conditions, and it is destroyed by brief boiling; thus effective exposure is limited by a small window of lighting and humidity conditions. Even though bot tox is highly toxic it would still take a large quantity to reach a lethal concentration in a large city's water supply. Further, contaminating a food supply would be difficult, although individual food processing plants are a likely target for terrorists. The centralization of huge food-processing plants that provide food for outlets around the country offers terrorists a tempting opportunity to commit mass murder.
A realistic view of the bot tox situation is that many of the problems of dispersal were likely solved by the less than 3,000 U.S. scientists that reportedly worked on biological warfare during World War II and the Cold War. The Iraqis admit to producing approximately 5,000 gallons of C. botulinum, but the yield of bot tox was not reported. Other nations like Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Libya are suspected of being in the business of producing biological weapons. It is unclear what has happened to the former Soviet Union's massive biological weapons production facilities and their BW arsenal since the breakup of the republics.
This is all from 1998---keep in mind.
mickeylee you should apologize to AuntB !
A team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., says botulinum toxin -- which causes the disease botulism -- is a "major biological weapons threat" to the American people because it is easy to make and very deadly.
Botulinum toxin attacks the human central nervous system and blocks the release of acetylcholine, which is a neurotransmitter that acts between cells to control muscle contraction. When muscle contraction is lost, paralysis sets in, causing loss of mobility along with loss of respiratory function.
Botulism patients who survive the initial onslaught oftentimes must spend weeks or months on mechanical ventilation equipment just to survive.
The panel said antitoxin can reduce the severity of botulism, but the condition must be recognized and treated very early.
However, "botulism is so rare that it is often misdiagnosed," said Inglesby. "Health professionals need to be aware of the symptoms and know how to report them to their local public health authorities. Rapid tests for diagnosing botulism need to be developed and made more widely available."
FReep link to article
Excellent work!
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