Biological War:A Scenario
by Annie Jacobsen
published by: Random House UK, Transworld Publishers
ISBN 9781911742029
In various places around the world, often located near large population centers, sit laboratories exploiting a loophole in international law, where scientists are working to develop and test biological weapons. As technology has evolved, so have the ways in which biological agents can be manipulated to cause maximum harm to humans and other creatures. Unlike nuclear weapons, which have at least a very short window of time between launch and detonation, by the time anyone knows that a biological weapon has been deployed, huge numbers of people are already sick, dying, and dead and the disease is spreading faster than any potential antidote can be administered--if there is an antidote. In this stunning book, Annie Jacobsen explains what these weapons are, how they have been developed, and what could/probably would happen in the event one of these manipulated biological agents of mass destruction was to escape the lab in some way and enter the general population. She does this by laying out one possible scenario--as she points out, not the only scenario or even the worst case scenario, but one that is possible and highly likely. She draws on history, conversations with retired governmental and military personnel with experience in this area, interviews with scientists, including some who worked on biological weapons in the Soviet Union and left, and documents in the public domain, some previously classified. She begins with some background about what kind of work is being done in these labs and how technology is enabling people to create more lethal biological weapons. The benefit of these, at least according to former Soviet officials, was that they would kill the people, leaving the infrastructure intact. After giving readers this necessary background information, Jacobsen then creates a plausible scenario for the escape of one such weapon--a genetically modified plague that has been manipulated to spread more easily through the air and has a higher rate of transmission than plague alone. It's also been created to delay the onset of symptoms. Rather, people feel euphoric when first infected, thus more likely to go out and socialize, which spreads the lethal agent further. In this scenario, the lab is located in Siberia and is unleashed when a worker in the lab recognizes the evil of the project and tries to destroy it by burning the lab down. This wouldn't work anyway, because the flames wouldn't be hot enough to destroy the weapon, but in any case, something goes awry and he is infected. Then he goes to confession, leaving droplets of genetically modified plague in his wake. When he collapses, people--tourists there to hunt big game--try to help him and begin artificial respiration, then carry him to a location where he might get help. They then disperse to their respective countries. Plague spreads. And what happens when people suddenly begin getting horribly sick and dying? Of course, panic, fear, anger, conspiracy theories, and violence. Societal breakdown ensues. We don't have to look too far back--just a few years--to see how this works. And if it was that bad during COVID, imagine what it'd be in a situation like this. Of course, we knew what COVID was. In this scenario, it would take days for people to realize they were dealing with a bioweapon and even more time to figure out what the weapon consisted of. Even more time would elapse before people found out whether or not there were secondary harms added to the plague.
This book reads like a dystopian thriller, even though it's a scenario built on information, facts, history, science, and expertise. As with her last book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, Jacobsen has created an informative, important work that is also highly readable and explains things beautifully for a general readership. At various points in the book, there are boxes telling the story of some historical event. Each of these was fascinating in and of itself. Usually I'm not keen on that kind of interruption in the text, but it worked really well here. These interludes were well placed, added to the story, and offered a kind of intermission in the tense story unfolding in the main text. Annie Jacobsen is excellent at this kind of writing. I will definitely read whatever she writes next. This is a powerful book packed with important information and much food for thought. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It made me wonder again what on earth humans think we're doing. And how is it that we're even still here? 5 stars--if I could give it more, I would.
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for a digital review copy.
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