ILLUSTRATES Studio mol
It is an artifact designed to spread live agents – viruses or bacteria – capable of infecting a large number of people. There are records of manipulating infectious agents to infect enemies as far back as the 14th century.
It is almost impossible to develop effective biological weapons without a scientific-military apparatus. Therefore, an attack of this type would only happen in a war or carried out by terrorists very well trained by governments that hold this technology. Fortunately, so far such a disaster has not yet happened. But if some crazy person decides to carry out a mass attack, we hope he doesn’t choose anthrax, the biological weapon with the greatest potential for destruction. “With anthrax there is no chance of human-to-human transmission. But, depending on the agent used in the biological weapon, transmission can also occur from individual to individual, causing an epidemic and increasing its devastating effect”, says geneticist Roque Monteleone Neto, member of the UN Surveillance, Verification and Inspection Commission.
Biological weapons are just as feared as chemical ones, which use toxic substances like deadly gases created in a laboratory. In fact, they have several similarities: they cause mass death, they preserve physical infrastructure (buildings, documents, etc.), and they can be spread without explosions. In order to prevent these artifacts from being used for military purposes, 144 countries signed an international convention in 1972. The problem is that the agreement is just a kind of letter of intent – that is, it does not stipulate penalties for violators.
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life that kills
Bacterial attacks like anthrax could kill up to 3 million people
THE ATTACK
air hazard
The deadliest way to do an anthrax attack would be aerial spraying. To float at the ideal height to infect humans, each anthrax spore particle would need to be 10 to 15 microns in size, five times smaller than the diameter of a strand of hair.
adverse effects
Under ideal conditions, a biological attack with 100 kilograms of anthrax has the potential to kill up to 3 million people. In the same scenario, a ton of sarin gas, a chemical weapon, would cause “only” 8,000 deaths
THE GUN
deadly bacteria
O Bacillus anthracis, the scientific name for anthrax, is a bacteria common in nature, which infects cattle and sheep through food. Man can be contaminated on purpose or by accident, by contact of the bacteria with the skin, by inhalation or ingestion.
Evil seed
To cause mass destruction, anthrax would need to be manipulated in the laboratory to assume the form of a spore, a stage in which the bacteria resist high temperatures and lack of water, but remain alive and capable of causing infections.
condemned fauna
In nature, anthrax can infect not only humans, but any mammal that inhales the spore. The bacteria can be «incubated» for several decades in the environment, making human life impossible in the place.
THE DISEASE
first symptoms
The human body offers conditions for the spore to lodge and return to activity in the form of bacteria. If the spore is inhaled, the first symptom is the flu. If the spore comes into contact with the skin, small sores appear. It happens within a week
skin contamination
When the anthrax spore only hits the skin, that’s okay: the skin irritation takes one to two days to develop into open sores with an exposed dark lump. Despite the horrific appearance, only 20% of cases not treated with drugs are fatal.
pulmonary contamination
When a person inhales an anthrax spore, things get ugly: the infection that looked like a simple flu quickly contaminates the lungs and spreads through the bloodstream, releasing toxic components that lead to death within 48 hours
THE CURE
Medicines
For those who presented the symptoms of pulmonary infection by anthrax, there is no way out: there is no medicine that saves. But it is important to medicate potential victims with antibiotics to inhibit the bacteria in the early stages of contamination. There is a vaccine against anthrax, but it would need to be applied before the attack, it is expensive and has strong side effects.
cleaning the area
To eliminate spores from the environment, vehicles, buildings and even the ground must be sterilized with chemicals, such as formaldehyde, or incinerated. Just to give you an idea, it took the British government more than four years to clean up the uninhabited Scottish island of Gruinard, the site of anthrax tests in World War II.