5 ms·

Has there been any research on Prions as a bio-terrorism weapon? It sounds like you could infect thousands/millions and have a close to 100% death-rate without

Has there been any research on Prions as a bio-terrorism weapon? It sounds like you could infect thousands/millions and have a close to 100% death-rate without anyone noticing until many years after the contamination started. Imaging contaminating food/drinking water with the Prion which causes Kuru [1] for example. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)

Omavel 5y ago
bio-terrorism is not effective.
- tyingq 5y ago
  What's "effective" mean in this context? The anthrax letters in the US in 2001 certainly dominated news cycles.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    And killed very few people. That's what we call terrorism (lots of news coverage for very few deaths) - it's not effective in doing anything but news cycles.
    - tyingq 5y ago
      5 envelopes, 5 dead, 17 more infected.
    - emptyfile 5y ago
      >it's not effective in doing anything but news cycles. That's literally the desired effect. What you're thiking of is war.
      - ekianjo 5y ago
        I was referring to the original comment above: > It sounds like you could infect thousands/millions Its not the right way to infect millions of people. It does not scale. Therefore not effective.
    - triceratops 5y ago
      "Terror" is the point of "terrorism". It's in the word.
      - ekianjo 5y ago
        Terror only propagates through mass media. Mass media is the issue.
        PKop 5y ago
        Given that an attack of this sort would be propagated through mass media, then the claim that the attack would be ineffective is wrong.
        ekianjo 5y ago
        ineffective to kill millions which was the initial claim.
      - inglor_cz 5y ago
        Point of terrorism is achieving a political change through terror. Terror is not the end in itself. From this point of view, mailing of anthrax in 2001 was very inefficient.
        jessaustin 5y ago
        We need to expand the set of possible actors and goals. The anthrax campaign happened immediately after 9/11. The result of the campaign was the end of effective political opposition to the massive expansion of military and "secret" aspects of the USA government made possible by 9/11. Cui bono? Certainly not the several implausible patsies the authorities immediately had lined up to blame. Numerous USA calamities make a lot more sense when we study them with an eye toward who benefits rather than who is blamed.
        Dah00n 5y ago
        What made 9/11 such a successful terrorist attack was that it made the US live in fear. That is a change (and it hasn't changed back). Terror (fear) is a perfectly fine end in itself for terrorism. The anthrax mailing caused changes and fear in US society with very little work. That sounds like a very efficient terrorist attack IMO.
    - Dah00n 5y ago
      > it's not effective in doing anything but news cycles. "The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims" is a definition of terrorism. Death count is irrelevant (outside of spreading fear itself). Zero deaths in a terrorist attack could still be a very effective attack. Spreading something that causes a hideous disease in a city and causing mass hysteria could be an excellent terrorist tactic. Likely better than a bomb that kills a few people.
  - myWindoonn 5y ago
    The most effective bioterror attack in the USA was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Rajneeshee_bioterror_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Rajneeshee_bioterror_atta... and it killed zero people, affecting 751 people in total. Bioterror is expensive and difficult. For prions specifically, the main "problem" (which is a good thing overall for us) is that they're naked proteins, and they denature relatively quickly when outside of a protective environment. Spray them onto crops? Crops and soil are covered in small bugs and microbes which break down anything too long, including proteins and carbohydrate chains. No, in order to have prions in the food supply, you need something like cannabalistic cow-raising practices or other ways of recycling prions in a wet+hot safe environment.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      So you just inject them into the food supply?
    - Johnny555 5y ago
      Can’t you just spray them into a hamburger meat grinder at a meat packing plant to protect the prions in beef? But it’d be a pretty ineffective terror attack if it takes 10 years for people to show symptoms… though that could also mean that attack was already made 5 years ago and we just don’t know yet.
    - Marsymars 5y ago
      > For prions specifically, the main "problem" (which is a good thing overall for us) is that they're naked proteins, and they denature relatively quickly when outside of a protective environment. How does this jive with the seemingly extreme difficulty of effective sterilization of prion-contaminated objects? https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/32/9/1348/291736 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/32/9/1348/291736
    - Dah00n 5y ago
      >affecting 751 people in total. That is not how terror is defined though. The amount affected by terrorism is the amount of people that get terrorised by the act, not the amount that gets sick, dies or know someone who did. Using your definition 9/11 only affected aprox. 10.000 people but in reality if cased mass hysteria and fear in the US (and elsewhere) that is still there today.
- nabla9 5y ago
  Terrorism that is effective is usually called warfare, genocide or something else.
  - natmaka 5y ago
    Indeed. http://exiledonline.com/wn-38-ira-vs-al-qaeda-i-was-wrong/ http://exiledonline.com/wn-38-ira-vs-al-qaeda-i-was-wrong/
ekianjo 5y ago
if you want to kill lots people thats pretty much the worst way of doing it.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  The definition of terrorism is "inciting fear", not necessarily "kill thousands". A million people afraid if they caught BSE/cow madness is definitely hitting that definition, especially as the stuff can't be tested for... people exposed to prions will have that sword hanging over their neck for the rest of their lives, and the affected area will be out of order for years. To this day, many countries ban all people who lived in the UK between 1980-1996 from donating blood (https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/bse-nachwirkungen-blut-spenden-wer-in-england-war-bleibt-ausgeschlossen https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/bse-nachwirkungen-blut-spend...) simply because of that fear.
overlordalex 5y ago
I've always thought a _very_ effective strategy would be to get a crop-duster and spray a prion-contaminated mist over a major city, basically contaminating every public surface in a large area I'm also not sure how you would begin to clean up afterwards - do you remove the surface of everything in your city? To those saying bio-terrorism is ineffective or would not kill a lot of people in any appreciable time-scale, think about the terrorism aspect - imagine not being able to interact with any surface? It would be like a permanent covid lockdown on the area The psychological effect of a large-scale area-denial would be massive
- dnautics 5y ago
  It's not really effective because it takes years to manifest symptoms of prion disease. Terrorism usually has a message attached to it, and "you're gonna start dying in 10 years" is not conducive to messaging.
  - medstrom 5y ago
    In this case I guess the message targets people in other cities than the doomed one. "This could happen to your city too".
    - dnautics 5y ago
      you'd still have to wait a decade after the first attack to make threats on the second city.
      - medstrom 5y ago
        I think reading about prions is the scary part, no need to wait for the deaths.
        dnautics 5y ago
        feel free to experiment with terrorism establishing credibility using a different psychological model. I, personally, won't.
dotcommand 5y ago
> Has there been any research on Prions as a bio-terrorism weapon? All such research has dual military-civilian usages. Similar to how all nuclear energy research has nuclear weapons implications. All space/rocket research has icbm implications. As a matter of fact, all nuclear energy, space activity, etc by all nations are tied explicitly or implicitly to the military/defense. It's why when our "enemies" ramp up on nuclear energy or space research, we ( the government and our media ) complain. It's also why we keep tabs on such research by our "allies" as well. If any major nation is researching something, my guess is that they are also researching how to weaponize it and defend from it.

Omavel 5y ago

bio-terrorism is not effective.

tyingq 5y ago
What's "effective" mean in this context? The anthrax letters in the US in 2001 certainly dominated news cycles.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  And killed very few people. That's what we call terrorism (lots of news coverage for very few deaths) - it's not effective in doing anything but news cycles.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    5 envelopes, 5 dead, 17 more infected.
  - emptyfile 5y ago
    >it's not effective in doing anything but news cycles. That's literally the desired effect. What you're thiking of is war.
    - ekianjo 5y ago
      I was referring to the original comment above: > It sounds like you could infect thousands/millions Its not the right way to infect millions of people. It does not scale. Therefore not effective.
  - triceratops 5y ago
    "Terror" is the point of "terrorism". It's in the word.
    - ekianjo 5y ago
      Terror only propagates through mass media. Mass media is the issue.
      - PKop 5y ago
        Given that an attack of this sort would be propagated through mass media, then the claim that the attack would be ineffective is wrong.
        ekianjo 5y ago
        ineffective to kill millions which was the initial claim.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      Point of terrorism is achieving a political change through terror. Terror is not the end in itself. From this point of view, mailing of anthrax in 2001 was very inefficient.
      - jessaustin 5y ago
        We need to expand the set of possible actors and goals. The anthrax campaign happened immediately after 9/11. The result of the campaign was the end of effective political opposition to the massive expansion of military and "secret" aspects of the USA government made possible by 9/11. Cui bono? Certainly not the several implausible patsies the authorities immediately had lined up to blame. Numerous USA calamities make a lot more sense when we study them with an eye toward who benefits rather than who is blamed.
      - Dah00n 5y ago
        What made 9/11 such a successful terrorist attack was that it made the US live in fear. That is a change (and it hasn't changed back). Terror (fear) is a perfectly fine end in itself for terrorism. The anthrax mailing caused changes and fear in US society with very little work. That sounds like a very efficient terrorist attack IMO.
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    > it's not effective in doing anything but news cycles. "The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims" is a definition of terrorism. Death count is irrelevant (outside of spreading fear itself). Zero deaths in a terrorist attack could still be a very effective attack. Spreading something that causes a hideous disease in a city and causing mass hysteria could be an excellent terrorist tactic. Likely better than a bomb that kills a few people.
- myWindoonn 5y ago
  The most effective bioterror attack in the USA was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Rajneeshee_bioterror_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Rajneeshee_bioterror_atta... and it killed zero people, affecting 751 people in total. Bioterror is expensive and difficult. For prions specifically, the main "problem" (which is a good thing overall for us) is that they're naked proteins, and they denature relatively quickly when outside of a protective environment. Spray them onto crops? Crops and soil are covered in small bugs and microbes which break down anything too long, including proteins and carbohydrate chains. No, in order to have prions in the food supply, you need something like cannabalistic cow-raising practices or other ways of recycling prions in a wet+hot safe environment.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    So you just inject them into the food supply?
  - Johnny555 5y ago
    Can’t you just spray them into a hamburger meat grinder at a meat packing plant to protect the prions in beef? But it’d be a pretty ineffective terror attack if it takes 10 years for people to show symptoms… though that could also mean that attack was already made 5 years ago and we just don’t know yet.
  - Marsymars 5y ago
    > For prions specifically, the main "problem" (which is a good thing overall for us) is that they're naked proteins, and they denature relatively quickly when outside of a protective environment. How does this jive with the seemingly extreme difficulty of effective sterilization of prion-contaminated objects? https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/32/9/1348/291736 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/32/9/1348/291736
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    >affecting 751 people in total. That is not how terror is defined though. The amount affected by terrorism is the amount of people that get terrorised by the act, not the amount that gets sick, dies or know someone who did. Using your definition 9/11 only affected aprox. 10.000 people but in reality if cased mass hysteria and fear in the US (and elsewhere) that is still there today.
nabla9 5y ago
Terrorism that is effective is usually called warfare, genocide or something else.
- natmaka 5y ago
  Indeed. http://exiledonline.com/wn-38-ira-vs-al-qaeda-i-was-wrong/ http://exiledonline.com/wn-38-ira-vs-al-qaeda-i-was-wrong/

ekianjo 5y ago

if you want to kill lots people thats pretty much the worst way of doing it.

mschuster91 5y ago
The definition of terrorism is "inciting fear", not necessarily "kill thousands". A million people afraid if they caught BSE/cow madness is definitely hitting that definition, especially as the stuff can't be tested for... people exposed to prions will have that sword hanging over their neck for the rest of their lives, and the affected area will be out of order for years. To this day, many countries ban all people who lived in the UK between 1980-1996 from donating blood (https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/bse-nachwirkungen-blut-spenden-wer-in-england-war-bleibt-ausgeschlossen https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/bse-nachwirkungen-blut-spend...) simply because of that fear.

overlordalex 5y ago

I've always thought a _very_ effective strategy would be to get a crop-duster and spray a prion-contaminated mist over a major city, basically contaminating every public surface in a large area I'm also not sure how you would begin to clean up afterwards - do you remove the surface of everything in your city? To those saying bio-terrorism is ineffective or would not kill a lot of people in any appreciable time-scale, think about the terrorism aspect - imagine not being able to interact with any surface? It would be like a permanent covid lockdown on the area The psychological effect of a large-scale area-denial would be massive

dnautics 5y ago
It's not really effective because it takes years to manifest symptoms of prion disease. Terrorism usually has a message attached to it, and "you're gonna start dying in 10 years" is not conducive to messaging.
- medstrom 5y ago
  In this case I guess the message targets people in other cities than the doomed one. "This could happen to your city too".
  - dnautics 5y ago
    you'd still have to wait a decade after the first attack to make threats on the second city.
    - medstrom 5y ago
      I think reading about prions is the scary part, no need to wait for the deaths.
      - dnautics 5y ago
        feel free to experiment with terrorism establishing credibility using a different psychological model. I, personally, won't.

dotcommand 5y ago

> Has there been any research on Prions as a bio-terrorism weapon? All such research has dual military-civilian usages. Similar to how all nuclear energy research has nuclear weapons implications. All space/rocket research has icbm implications. As a matter of fact, all nuclear energy, space activity, etc by all nations are tied explicitly or implicitly to the military/defense. It's why when our "enemies" ramp up on nuclear energy or space research, we ( the government and our media ) complain. It's also why we keep tabs on such research by our "allies" as well. If any major nation is researching something, my guess is that they are also researching how to weaponize it and defend from it.