What's Next?

WHAT CAN BE DONE Besides increased vigilance at municipal reservoirs, keeping an eye out for the initial flulike symptoms could let doctors initiate early and effective treatment.

So how serious are any of these threats? Almost anyone with undergraduate training in biology can raise colonies of dangerous microbes. Delivering them is much harder, as the technologically savvy extremist Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo learned in the early 1990s when it tried to spread botulism in the streets of Tokyo before finally settling on sarin gas. Moreover, germ weapons have a tendency to boomerang, as gas attacks often did during World War I when winds suddenly shifted. Highly infectious agents also are difficult to handle, a risk underscored by at least one major anthrax accident in the Soviet biowarfare program that killed scores of Russians--though that wouldn't stop the suicidally minded. And then there's something else for germ warriors to think about: an attack on Americans, if traced back to a state sponsor, could trigger nuclear retaliation, as the U.S. quietly made clear to Saddam during the Gulf War.