What is this "Research" section for anyway?
I did a lot of research before writing Keres' Eyes. I wanted it to be as realistic as possible -- and unfortunately, the reality was frightening enough without having to embellish a lot. I wanted to share my research with you. Some of it is easy to find. For example, the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" page is taken directly from Wikipedia. Much of the other information, however, is from a variety of sources, starting with the information above. Check out the other pages in this section. They range from threats mankind has faced over the ages, to the latest news on Ebola, Marburg, etc.
I also included information I found on the legend of the Keres. You don't think I just made up that name, did you? Check out the fascinating myth behind them here.
Unnatural viruses, or the brutality of man
If, for whatever sick reason, you want to create a biological weapon, there are two types of biological weapons: those that are contagious and those like anthrax which are not. Contagious weapons means that along with the original victims infected, they then spread the disease to others like a cold. Noncontagious weapons means that you can hit your enemy, but so long as your troops aren't in the initial strike zone, you should be OK. This is the preferred method, obviously. It's bad enough your kids can one day bite you in the ass; you don't want your weapons to do the same.
Biological agents can come in the form of toxins, viruses, and bacteria.
If you decide to go the anthrax route, you should know that they are the form of spores. Spores usually degenerate from sunlight. Ultraviolet rays break them up (mostly). So why bother using anthrax? Unlike many biological weapons, anthrax spores can be stored indefinitely. So there's that. And with anthrax, one person can infect 20 others.
More cheerful information for you:
Botulinum and ricin are both poisons that can be used.
Botulinum toxin—boyulism, or "bot tox", as it’s known militarily, is a nerve agent that is 100,000 more times more powerful than Sarin gas.
You get blistering with very effective agents like smallpox or measles.
A bacteriological weapon is grown in a fermenter tank, and it gives off a yeasty smell, somewhat like beer or possibly a meaty smell, like a meat broth. Virus weapons are not grown in fermenter tanks, because a virus doesn't cause fermentation when it grows. A virus converts a population of living cells into more viruses. What happens is called amplification of the virus. The machine that amplifies a virus is called a bio-reactor. Nothing ferments inside the tank and no gases are let off, so there is no odor.
A bio-reactor is a rather small tank with a sometimes complicated interior. The tank contains a warm liquid bath that is saturated with living cells. The cells are infected with a virus that is replicating. The cells leak virus particles, and the bio-reactor becomes charged with them. A virus particle is a tiny nugget of protein (sometimes with a membrane) that surrounds a core of genetic material (DNA or RNA). A typical virus particle is a thousand times smaller than a cell.
How do you use a bio weapon and who has them?
Unlike a chemical agent, bio weapons stay ‘hot’ even miles away. It doesn't lose killing power as it dissipates. It stays just as powerful, unless hit with sunlight and decays.
A bio-aerosol behaves like a gas. The particles are light, fluffy, dancing in the air and slipping through the smallest of cracks.
A large variety of viruses are made into weapons:
- a South American brain agent called VEE (Venezuelan equine encephalitis)
- Eastern equine encephalitis EEE (another brain virus) and tick-born encephalitis
- Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever
- Ebola virus (highly effective in the lungs when it’s freeze-dried)
- Marburg virus
- Machupo (Bolivian hemorrhagic fever)
- Rift Valley fever
- Lassa virus
- Junin virus
- Sabia virus
- enterovirus 17 virus
- and the poxs: camelpox, monkeypox and smallpox.
It’s easy to put antibiotic-resistant genes into bacteria—very easy. It’s a basic technique, nothing fancy (I'm not going to go into how, though). A potential strain of Black Death was resistant to 16 antibiotics and nuclear radiation.
Another scary piece of information (as if the above isn't scary enough), you can get a strain of botulism through the mail, from the American Type Culture Collection, a nonprofit organization in Rockville, Maryland, that supplies microorganisms to industry and science organizations.
Perfect size for bioweapon: one to five microns across. It is the size particle that can be inhaled deep into the lung, a particle that will stick naturally to the lung membrane. Particles of this size float in the air. You can’t smell them or see them. Don’t know you've breathed them until you get sick. Not even rain can get them out of the air. In fact, rain can oftentimes help because rain clouds block out sunlight. Bio-aerosols don’t work well in sunlight, because the light destroys their genetic material and kills them.
After you've made your bioweapon, you can release it via bombs, rockets, drops from airplanes, spraying into the air, etc.
There are bioweapons programs not just in Russia, but in Syria, Iran, as well as other Asian countries. Many are probably benefiting when the Russian program was largely shut down and the people were out of work.
As far as the U.S., the US Army has a major facility at the Umatilla Chemical Depot. (The Army has an estimated 3,700 tons of Sarin gas, including G-B sarin, at the facility.)
Because of the danger biological weapons pose to humanity, the Biological Weapons Convention was signed as the first multilateral disarmament treaty was signed.
Are we screwed?
Not necessarily, although the news isn't great. They are called "weapons of mass destruction" after all.
With biological weapons, it is essentially impossible to completely exterminate an entire population. Some people simply won’t come down with the disease. However, bioweapons cut population levels drastically. With the right weapon, it is easy to cut the population in half in a number of hours.
A virus cannot be cured. Most viruses are untreatable and uncurable. Usually the only defense against a virus is a protective vaccine. It takes years of research and hundreds of millions of dollars to invent a vaccine for a new virus (keep in mind that even after all of the effort, no one has a virus for AIDS yet).
As far as a cure against bio agents: the preferred protection is inoculation. You can also try antibiotics (heavy doses) and vaccines.
To make a virus vaccine, you can use a bioreactor to grow strains of viruses. You can also use the same equipment and manufacturing processes to make hot weaponized viruses. However, of course it's extremely difficult to create a vaccine, especially if it's some modified strain no one has ever encountered before, which is a driving thought behind Keres' Eyes.
Do I think a terrorist organization will someday use a bioweapon against the US and/or Europe? Yes, I do. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. When that happens, many will suffer.