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What Stops Terrorists from Spreading Leprosy?

posted by martyb on Sunday May 07 2017, @01:33AM   
from the disarm-the-terrorists dept.

cafebabe writes:

Leprosy is bacterial. In addition to curing leprosy with antibiotics, we also have anti-biotic resistant leprosy. What prevents a terrorist from deliberately infecting themself with leprosy and then engaging in promiscuous activity? How would a city like San Francisco, Washington DC, Paris or Berlin react to leprosy? When leprosy has a long incubation period, are we certain that leprosy isn't spreading already?

martyb: I was debating whether or not to run this story; from the Wikipedia page, "Contrary to popular belief, it is not highly contagious." But, there is more to this than just antibiotic-resistant leprosy. It invites discussion as to other agents with delayed response that could be employed. In addition, given a terrorist's intention to affect some other group, what options do they have which would affect that group without also adversely affecting their own group? How many of their own group are people willing to "harm" in the pursuit of harm to another group?

takyon: Bill Gates: Bioterrorism could kill more than nuclear war — but no one is ready to deal with it
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Original Submission

• The whole point of terrorism The whole point of terrorism (Score: 5, Informative) by stormwyrm on Sunday May 07 2017, @06:52AM (6 children)

  by stormwyrm (717) on Sunday May 07 2017, @06:52AM (#505751) Journal

  …is to spread “terror”. It’s not so much about killing people, but killing them in as flashy and spectacular a manner as possible in order to inspire such terror. Biological weapons are only so-so for doing this. If, say, a terrorist group managed to get hold of a really deadly biological warfare agent, as effective as perhaps the 1918 Spanish Flu, and it manages to kill millions of people. If they released such a thing and claimed credit for it, just how credible would such a claim be? It would be hard to prove that the flu was man-made and that they were the ones who did it. It could just as easily be a natural disaster, and it would behave as such as time went on, and dealing with all the sick people would be foremost in the minds of the authorities. They could kill ten thousand times more people this way than the 9/11 terror attacks but it would be nowhere near as effective as 9/11 in spreading terror. Terrorists do what they do in order to accomplish some sort of political goal, and since biological weapons are in general indiscriminate killers, such weapons are of limited utility in achieving such goals. A conventional bomb is much more spectacular and would be far better at inspiring terror and achieving the political goals of the terrorists than releasing a biological agent and waiting for it to spread.

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  Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.

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• Re:The whole point of terrorism (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @09:31AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @09:31AM (#505776)

  If they released such a thing and claimed credit for it, just how credible would such a claim be? It would be hard to prove that the flu was man-made and that they were the ones who did it.

  Encode a message in the nucleic acid. Upload message and decoding instructions to social media, like the Arecibo message.

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• Re:The whole point of terrorism (Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday May 07 2017, @09:47AM

  by Bot (3902) on Sunday May 07 2017, @09:47AM (#505779) Journal

  Terror is effective when you already have power, and counterproductive when you want to acquire it, so I am a bit skeptical of the official narrative around terrorist acts. I think "The Network", 1976 is nearer to the truth.

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• Re:The whole point of terrorism (Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday May 07 2017, @09:50AM

  by Bot (3902) on Sunday May 07 2017, @09:50AM (#505782) Journal

  BTW, when your opponent has nukes, all it needs to do is to show a bit of leprosy victims on TV, proceed to glassing arab countries, and send bots to do the oil extraction. Please think of the bots. Sand hurts us badly.

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• Re:The whole point of terrorism (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday May 07 2017, @12:02PM

  by VLM (445) on Sunday May 07 2017, @12:02PM (#505808)

  releasing a biological agent and waiting for it to spread

  A good analogy to the leprosy problem is second hand tobacco smoke. We've barely managed to make that illegal.

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• Re:The whole point of terrorism Re:The whole point of terrorism (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @01:03PM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @01:03PM (#505816)

  Your classification is erroneous, the Jihadists are not terrorists. Oh sure, we may call them as terrorists, but they themselves see themselves as holy warriors fighting in the name of god. Make no mistake, flashy "terrorist" attacks are not there to scare you, their purpose is to be inspiration and motivation to other would-be mujahideen.

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  • Re:The whole point of terrorism (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08 2017, @02:03AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08 2017, @02:03AM (#506124)

    And the argument stands. Inspiring other mujahideen is a political goal. Biological warfare is still a crummy way of accomplishing that.

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