BARRY DOWSETT — PHOTORESEARCHER |
Likelihood: Not Very Likely
During the Cold War both the U.S. and the Soviet Union worked to develop methods of aerosol-releasing (spraying) plague bacteria into the atmosphere. A terrorist could do this with a crop duster airplane, a spray bottle or a variety of other methods. A 1970 World Health Organization report estimated that a city of 5 million sprayed with 50 kilograms of plague bacteria would suffer 36,000 dead.
Safeguards
- Plague is almost 100% fatal if not treated within a day of the onset of symptoms — but if it's caught early enough, modern antibiotics are quite effective. There's a vaccine available for bubonic plague (the "Black Death"), and a vaccine for pneumonic plague is currently under development.
- Plague is extremely contagious (it's spread through sneezes of victims as well as bites from infected fleas), so isolating victims is an essential step in stopping the spread of the disease.
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