Sociology

The pace of technological progress the world has witnessed over the last one century is arguably the fastest pace in recorded history. While this progress has brought with it immense benefits to human life, it has made human beings more vulnerable to attacks from hostile individuals and groups. A few centuries ago, killing a thousand people was a feat requiring mighty armies armed with swords, bushknives, clubs and other rudimentary weapons. In the modern world, it is very possible to use one bomb controlled by one person to kill the same number of people, or even bigger within a length of time that could not be imagined some centuries ago. Combatants, who for one reason or the other plan to avoid military reaction to their attacks, have found a functional tactic in biological weapons. The threats of bioterrorism across the world are so real that the defense departments of many countries devote resources to spotting and countering biological attacks. Even among professionals, there is the great difficulty of telling between a bioterrorist attack and an outbreak of an infectious disease. It therefore takes days, and some lives, before professionals evaluate all available clues to confirm a biological attack.

Factors used to distinguish a bioterrorism attack and natural outbreak
In most instances, attackers use biological agents which are highly contagious and therefore capable of affecting and killing hundreds or thousands of infected people in a matter of hours or days after coming into contact with the agent. To increase the potency of the agent, the attackers prefer organisms which are resistant to vaccines and drugs.

Using data collected on past cases to for analyses can yield an epidemic curve which is a good tool for differentiating natural outbreaks from biological attacks. In a natural attack, the number of infected people increases gradually and progressively as more and more people come into contact with the vectors. The epidemic curve falls gradually and people develop immunity to the agent, leading to fewer and fewer cases of new infection. In a biological strike, the infection originates from one point and affects all the people who come into contact with the agent at the same time. The epidemic curve therefore rises sharply and is more compressed. It may also have a second peak as the people infected originally spread the disease to those who were absent from the scene of attack (Pavlin, 1999).

Other crucial factors include the sudden rise of a disease in a geographical area where or in a season when it is not expected. Transmission agents of some diseases are restricted to specific geographical areas and not others. For instance, malaria-causing anopheles mosquitoes are expected in wet areas with poorly drained soils. Furthermore, the mosquitoes are expected not during dry seasons but during wet seasons when there are more pools of stagnant water and fast growing bushes which are good breeding grounds for the mosquitoes. There would therefore be good grounds to suspect intentional attacks in cases of malaria attacks in very dry areas or during the dry seasons.

In some, but not all attacks, a terrorist group or cell comes up to warn of an attack before it occurs or to claim credit for an attack after it occurs. In the presence of a pre-attack or post-attack claims pointing to the use of a biological agent, investigators have the grounds to suspect an intentional attack. Inglesby (1999) noted that just before one such attack in Northeast, the FBI had been warned that a shower of anthrax would rain (Inglesby, 1999, pg 556). Only days, 80 lives later and thousands of infections later did the professionals confirm that the attack was intentional.

Investigations can also lead to the finding of the tools and equipment used to produce and release the agent. Production of biological agents is a sophisticated process which may require complicated equipment and environment. The discovery of secret laboratories or equipment can provide evidence to suspect a biological attack.

One of the prominent factors which pointed to the possibility of an intentional attack in the Anthrax outbreak was the warnings which the FBI had received prior to the attack. Inglesby (1999) notes that the threats were credible, meaning that the authorities had strong reasons to suspect that a biological attck was imminent.

In the Anthrax outbreak in the U.S., the sudden rise in the number of infections should have pointed to the possibility of an intentional attack. A couple of days after the game, hundreds of people had been taken ill and tens of deaths were being recorded. The facts that the disease initially affected people who had attended the football game before spreading to others, and that anthrax is not contagious should have indicated that the agent was released in or near the football field. Had it been a natural outbreak, the disease would probably have infected people living in the area, and would have most likely affected fewer people initially before spreading to more people. In this instance however, the disease affected many people from different localities, but who had attended the match.

A terrorist group is more likely to use a biological agent if it lacks the human resource and equipment to launch an armed attack against a people. To achieve its end of having its conditions met or as a way of getting even, a militarily inferior group can opt for a biological attack. Not all terrorist groups can marshall the resources of the AlQaeda, Tamil Tigers, IRA, Janjaweed or the American drug cartels which can run military confrontations against attackers. Small terrorist groups which cannot afford military campaigns thus find alternatives in biological warfare.

Terrorist groups also take advantage that biological attacks are predictably more devastating than fire attacks. While many countries respond rapidly to violent attacks, few are properly prepared for biological attacks. At the very best, it is days before countries recognize that their people are the victims of a biological attack. The complexity of the process of recognizing and reacting to a biological attack leads to delays which create space for more infections (Rempfer, 2009). As more and more people are infected, the terrorists achieve their end of harming the population.

Conclusion
Biological warfare is one which no one country can claim to be totally prepared to counter. The increasing prevalence of terrorist activity across the world and the quick pace of technological progress raise worries of biological attacks. However, countries can learn from the Anthrax outbreak in the U.S. to improve their level of preparedness against biological attacks. Careful analyses of the events and changes surrounding an outbreak can help in the timely diagnoses of biological attacks.