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2009-01-20 Africa North
Al Qaeda bungled unconvential weapon experiment
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Posted by  2009-01-20 08:11|| || Front Page|| [11132 views ]  Top

#1 I sense the vengeful hand of a righteous God in all this. A finger on the "SMITE" key of His PC, anyway.
Posted by Mike 2009-01-20 08:33||   2009-01-20 08:33|| Front Page Top

#2 Yes, "bungled" possibly. They could have also been test volunteers, either witting or... unwitting. I'll hold off on popping that celebratory bottle of Heidsieck.
Posted by Besoeker 2009-01-20 08:42||   2009-01-20 08:42|| Front Page Top

#3 Occam's razor suggest that this was just being unlucky instead of anything intentional on their part. Plague is an odd disease, because unlike most epidemics, it seems to increase in infectiousness and virulence until it burns itself out.

It usually begins with body lice, the only human louse that acts as a disease vector (not head or pubic lice), and resides much of the time in clothing, or in rats. In this case, rural Algeria is not the best environment for rats, so plague is not endemic.

Likely, a traveling al-Qaeda showed up already infested with lice, got sick and died, so the lice migrated to other hosts. One of these hosts developed the pulmonary form, spread by coughing, which can kill in a few hours, even before pneumonia sets in.

The increasing virulence worked against the plague from that point, as it wiped out the camp before most of them could take off, taking the disease with them, or not being infected in the first place.
Posted by Anonymoose 2009-01-20 09:06||   2009-01-20 09:06|| Front Page Top

#4 Well, if it is determined to have been a bio-weapons
lab, the New York Times will say this is AQ's response to the coalitions use of "disproportionate force".
Posted by HammerHead 2009-01-20 09:57||   2009-01-20 09:57|| Front Page Top

#5 "Terrorists are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon."

Both are “Low probability – High Consequence” threats. However both nuclear and biological threats are indeed possible. Either way, the likelihood of an established Terrorist becoming a Microbiologist is much less plausible then an established Microbiologist becoming a Terrorist.
Posted by DepotGuy 2009-01-20 10:11||   2009-01-20 10:11|| Front Page Top

#6 Either way, terrorist scum dying in a very slow, painful and terrifying manner always makes me happy.
Posted by DarthVader 2009-01-20 10:24||   2009-01-20 10:24|| Front Page Top

#7 Since they're so big on suicide, what's to stop a deliberately infected set of jihadis boarding planes to Europe of the US just after they are infected? A few good coughing spells should do some serious damage through the panic if nothing else.
Posted by AlanC 2009-01-20 10:39||   2009-01-20 10:39|| Front Page Top

#8 What's to stop them from unknowingly infecting NGO's and others heading back to the west for that matter. Folks that won't cause a second look at security clearing.

The problem is getting a disease that doesn't incapacitate or even show signs for awhile, and hopefully one that is still infectious.
Posted by rjschwarz 2009-01-20 11:41||   2009-01-20 11:41|| Front Page Top

#9 Anyone playing with plague would have had antibiotics. Plague is very easy to cure with very inexpensive antibiotics. Plague lives naturally in that region. It was probably a natural outbreak. Heck, we have a few people a year in the US that come down with plague each year and it lives naturally in the coastal hills of California and in four corners region of the US.
Posted by crosspatch 2009-01-20 11:54||   2009-01-20 11:54|| Front Page Top

#10 re: posting the story again.

This article included quotes attributed to a senior US intel official. Yesterday lots of RBers speculated it was a bio experiment gone awry, but if it had been plague that might not have been necessary.

Note that the official says it was NOT plague and it WAS the result of a bioweapons experiment gone awry.

Lots of bioterror materials that aren't easily dealt with by a couple days worth of streptomycin, btw.
Posted by lotp 2009-01-20 12:24||   2009-01-20 12:24|| Front Page Top

#11 Just a wild guess, but there might be something of a shortage of Biosafety Level 3 & 4 lab facilities in the neighborhood.

Q: What kinds of organisms are included under Biosafety Levels 3 and 4?

Biosafety Level 3 includes a wide spectrum of viruses, bacteria, and fungal agents. Bacterial agents include: tularaemia, pulmonary and nonpulmonary tuberculosis, glanders, melioidosis, typhoid fever, paratyphoid fever, plague (bubonic, pneumonic, and septicaemic), Q fever, typhus (scrub and epidemic), and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Viral agents include over 170 arboroviruses such as West Nile, yellow fever, and various forms of encephalitis (i.e. Dengue fever and Hantavirus), lymphocytic choriomeningitis (LCM) (neurotrophic strains), Hepatitis B and C, HIV, and Rift Valley fever. Fungal agents in BSL3 include: Coccidioides immitis (which causes pulmonary disease), pulmonary histoplasmosis, and North American Blastomycosis.

Biosafety Level 4 covers a smaller group of pathogens that pose a “high risk of exposure and infection to personnel, the community, and the environment.” These include a number of arenaviruses, filoviruses, and arboroviruses such as: Junin, Marburg, Russian Spring-Summer, Congo-Crimean, hemorrhagic fever, Omsk hemorrhagic fever, Lassa, Machupo, Ebola, Sabia, and Encephalmomyeltis.

The Biosafety Level of each agent is determined by taking several characteristics into consideration. Generally, the BSL3 agents are “indigenous or exotic agents with potential for aerosol transmission, diseases may have serious or lethal consequences.”(2) BSL4 agents are defined as “dangerous/exotic agents which pose high risk of life-threatening disease, aerosol-transmitted lab infections, or related agents with unknown risk of transmission.”(3) Some agents, such as anthrax, are classified at different biosafety levels, depending on the quantity of the agent and the form the agent takes (aerosol, non-migratory, etc).
Posted by Besoeker 2009-01-20 12:30||   2009-01-20 12:30|| Front Page Top

#12 “…what's to stop a deliberately infected set of jihadis boarding planes to Europe of the US just after they are infected?”

Hopefully, a conventional (and well trained) security apparatus will thwart the “jihadis” from boarding the plane in the first place. For the human host (On a trans-Atlantic flight) scenario to be effective it couldn't be "just after they are infected". The most virulent pathogens must be fully incubated in order to be contagious and even then others must be close proximity for an extended period of time. A simple one time cough or sneeze isn’t enough to spread the infection. Again, hopefully, once the human host begins to display the tell tale symptoms of an advanced infection (and all those lesions and snot ain’t pretty) someone will recognize the need for quarantine.
Posted by DepotGuy 2009-01-20 12:37||   2009-01-20 12:37|| Front Page Top

#13 Depot Guy,

Do you really think that foreign security would stop anyone that had no symptoms flying out of Dubai or Riyadh or Cairo for example?

Just train them to shoot themselves up in the men's room just before takeoff and then when they get to Europe they just hang around public incubators like train stations or bus terminals. It doesn't take a huge epidemic to sow panic.
Posted by AlanC 2009-01-20 13:37||   2009-01-20 13:37|| Front Page Top

#14 It seems to me that it wasn't anything like a communicable disease. It seems more like a sudden event and the rest ran away without fear of spreading something. It suggests chemical to me. Also, they quarantined the place. If they did that, it suggests that the hazard would not disperse within a short time. Ricin again?
Posted by gorb 2009-01-20 13:58||   2009-01-20 13:58|| Front Page Top

#15 AlanC,

All I’m saying is the Human Incubator scenario makes for better fiction then a practical terror tactic. Again, the host must be in an advanced stage of infection to be contagious and their targets must be in close proximity for an extended period of time. Whether it’s Cairo or Copenhagen, airport security is trained to bar seriously ill passengers from boarding intercontinental flights. And it’s doubtful that many people would share a park bench for very long with someone exhibiting acute symptoms of hemorrhagic fever.
Posted by DepotGuy 2009-01-20 15:19||   2009-01-20 15:19|| Front Page Top

#16 The base may had been shut down, but it remains to be seen how well it has been sealed agz the spread of plague.

PRAGMATICALLY, AFRICA AS A STRATEGIC FRONT IS NEXT ON THE JIHADIST PRIORITY LIST AFTER MAINLAND ASIA [Nuclear Russia, China, India]. Given the historical animosities or disdain between semitic Muslims versus their fellow black African Muslim brothers, its possib that iff AQ can't contain the spread of plague they may try to use its spread to as a weapon in depopulating vast swathes of black Africa [Muslim or non-Muslim].
Posted by JosephMendiola 2009-01-20 19:12||   2009-01-20 19:12|| Front Page Top

#17 The Soviets were in Algeria in the 80s and were known to be into developing smallpox as a bio weapon. It wouldn't be surprising if Al Q either bought or stumbled into a supply.

Given the conditions in E. Algeria and the type of medicine Al Q uses, an outbreak would probably infect most people exposed, kill most of the people it infects (within a fairly short time) and disfigure the ones that survive.

They would reasonably try to seal off that group of Al Q to prevent it from wiping out other groups.
Posted by mhw 2009-01-20 20:46||   2009-01-20 20:46|| Front Page Top

23:58 DLR
23:50 Bangkok Billy
23:15 trailing wife
22:53 Barbara Skolaut
22:46 Eric Jablow
22:37 Ming the Merciless
22:31 Frank G
22:31 Halliburton - Mysterious Conspiracy Division
22:25 Glenmore
22:09 Ming the Merciless
22:06 Frank G
22:00 swksvolFF
21:58 Frank G
21:56 swksvolFF
21:56 KBK
21:54 Frank G
21:50 Hellfish
21:49 Anonymoose
21:44 Old Patriot
21:41 KBK
21:40 swksvolFF
21:37 swksvolFF
21:34 swksvolFF
21:33 Hyper









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