21st Century Terrorism

Way back when, just after the 9-11 attacks, when the anthrax scares were going on, I was convinced that the people behind the anthrax mailings were going about their job all wrong. Mailing envelopes of powder to major names in major cities was good for immediate headlines, but really, did any of you really worry about coming across a packet full of anthrax? I know I didn’t. As long as they were targeting Dan Rather, it was obvious that most people didn’t have anything to worry about, unless they happened to be along the route of the envelope during its travels.

No, if these terrorists really wanted to get under people’s skins, they should have chosen anywhere from one to five small, out of the way, podunk little towns in the midwest. Some little burg in the middle of Nebraska, or Idaho, or Kansas, or Oklahoma. Pick one of those, grab the local phone book, and do a mass-mailing for whatever you can come up with, and dust all the mailers with anthrax (or your weapon of choice). It’s not immediate headlines, but once people realize that an entire town (or a few towns) in the middle of nowhere has been targeted (and potentially decimated) by a bioterror attack…that’s the kind of thing that is likely to get people’s attention.

Because that would be truly random. That would have been an American analogue to the bombings in the mideast — random, unpredictable, and deadly to anyone, not just Big Names.

And for the past week, that little mental exercise has been running through my head over and over as the current E. Coli spinach scare continues on. Each day more people get sick and reported contaminations pop up in more and more places — according to CNN, we’re up to 111 people ill, one dead, and cases reported in 21 states.

When the news reports started breaking, I thought that, while unlikely, this would be the perfect sort of terrorism attack. Don’t worry about having to get your ‘sleeper cells’ set up with bombs, pilots licenses, or anything that’s already been tried. Instead, just figure out enough biology and chemistry to mix up an effective E. Coli solution, put together some simple form of distribution mechanism (heck, today’s Super Soakers can be fitted with water-filled fanny packs…it doesn’t seem terribly hard to adapt a rig like that) with a tube running along the arm, then send your agents shopping. All they have to do is shop like they normally do, only as they’re handling the produce, they’re spraying a fine mist of bacteria over everything they touch or get near.

Simple. Effective. Random. And nearly untraceable.

Obviously, I have no idea if such a thing is actually what’s happening now, and it’s probably rather unlikely. The news reports briefly mention bioterror, only to say that it’s currently not a likely source (but it hasn’t entirely been ruled out, either). Still…it’s a possibility, and one I find a lot more likely than someone mixing their shampoo and conditioner into a high explosive that gets triggered with their iPod.