You Decide

A friend sent this.  Mind boggling if it proves true.

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"Dropping the H-BombHow dangerous is a "herpes bomb"?

It's not easy to build a biological weapon, even if you do have a big enough supply of virus particles. Soviet and American experts spent years developing a form of Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis virus that could be deployed in a military context. They first had to derive a particularly tough strain. Then they formulated a chemical shell to protect it from the hot and dry explosion required to disperse the virus, and also to give it some added bulk so the victim's breath wouldn't blow it right back out after it landed inside the mouth, throat, or lungs. (The ideal diameter is between one and three microns. Herpes, like many viruses, is around one-tenth that size.) It is unlikely that an assistant professor with no professional experience in biological weapons development would have the expertise to accomplish these steps.

The anthrax letters of 2001—which seem to have been the work of a sophisticated scientist—were among a very small number of terror attacks in which aerosolized pathogens were used to infect the intended victims. Those with less expertise are better off using food- or waterborne pathogens. The Rajneeshees, a religious cult in Oregon, managed to infect 751 people in 1984 with Salmonella by contaminating restaurant salad bars. In any event, Bishop seems to have had enough experience to know that a bomb would be an impractical method of infecting her colleagues. Instead, she might have tried contaminating their laboratory equipment or pouring a saline solution containing the virus into their water bottles."

Explainer thanks Bryan R. Cullen of Duke University, Nishal Mohan of the Federation of American Scientists, Patricia Spear of Northwestern University, and Raymond Zilinskas of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies."