Future terrorism
Ricin is also mistakenly believed to be an untraceable poison that will enable perpetrators to evade arrest and prosecution. future terrorism Surviving-a-terrorist-attack. In 1991, for example, four members of the Minnesota Patriots Council acquired ricin and discussed assassinating Internal Revenue Service officials, a U. S. deputy marshal, and local law enforcement officers. future terrorism Causes of war on terrorism. The FBI had penetrated the group, however, and arrests were made before any attacks were carried out. It is also important to distinguish between discrete and indiscriminate CBW attacks. Just because chemical and germ agents are often described as "weapons of mass destruction," it does not follow that the ability to inflict mass casualties is an intrinsic property. future terrorism Terrorist attack survival. Key variables in determining the impact of a CBW terrorist attack are the quantity of agent employed and the means of dissemination. Members of Aum Shinrikyo, for example, used VX to assassinate enemies of the cult by spraying the nerve agent from a hypodermic syringe into the victim's face. This small-scale use of a chemical weapon for assassination is clearly different from releasing a ton of nerve agent from an aircraft over a major city. Technical hurdlesOne reason there have been so few successful examples of chemical or biological terrorism is that carrying out an attack requires overcoming a series of major technical hurdles: gaining access to specialized chemical-weapon ingredients or virulent microbial strains; acquiring equipment and know-how for agent production and dispersal; and creating an organizational structure capable of resisting infiltration or early detection by law enforcement. Many of the microorganisms best suited to catastrophic terrorism-virulent strains of anthrax or deadly viruses such as smallpox and Ebola-are difficult to acquire. Further, nearly all viral and rickettsial agents are hard to produce, and bacteria such as plague are difficult to "weaponize" so that they will survive the process of delivery. As former Soviet bioweapons scientist Ken Alibek wrote in his recent memoir, Biohazard, "The most virulent culture in a test tube is useless as an offensive weapon until it has been put through a process that gives it stability and predictability. The manufacturing technique is, in a sense, the real weapon, and it is harder to develop than individual agents. "9The capability to disperse microbes and toxins over a wide area as an inhalable aerosol-the form best suited for inflicting mass casualties-requires a delivery system whose development would outstrip the technical capabilities of all but the most sophisticated terrorists. Not only is the dissemination process for biological agents inherently complex, requiring specialized equipment and expertise, but effective dispersal is easily disrupted by environmental and meteorological conditions. A large-scale attack with anthrax spores against a city, for example, would require the use of a crop duster with custom-built spray nozzles that could generate a high-concentration aerosol cloud containing particles of agent between one and five microns in size. Particles smaller than one micron would not lodge in the victims' lungs, while particles much larger than five microns would not remain suspended for long in the atmosphere. To generate mass casualties, the anthrax would have to be dried and milled into a fine powder. Yet this type of processing requires complex and costly equipment, as well as systems for high biological containment. Anthrax is simpler to handle in a wet form called a "slurry," but the efficiency of aerosolization is greatly reduced. (A low-tech terrorist might stage a chemical or biological attack in an enclosed space such as a subway station, as did Aum Shinrikyo, but fewer people would be harmed than in an open-air attack against a city. )Contamination of an urban water system is also beyond the capability of most terrorists because a huge volume of a chemical or biological agent would be needed to overcome the effects of dilution and chlorination.
Future terrorism
Solutions || Future terrorism || The war on terrorism || Terrorism-in-history