Biological War: A Scenario

From Annie Jacobsen, the author of the bestselling Nuclear War: A Scenario, a book on a subject that has long orbited her reporting: biological warfare. A lab accident, a bio-attack, a global pandemic, and the collapse of human society. In this essential new book, based on dozens of new interviews with experts with high-level political, governmental, medical, and military responsibility, Annie Jacobsen examines this very scenario. It would only be a matter of days from such a global infection before the infrastructure built to handle this gravest of situations would be in a battle for human existence. The fallout: mass death, total societal breakdown, widespread insurrection, anarchy, and a plague-ravaged wasteland that no longer resembles modern civilization. In other words, dystopia. Following the gripping narrative style that launched Nuclear War to the New York Times bestseller list, Jacobsen looks deeply at a situation that is in some ways the opposite of a nuclear bomb: there is no mushroom cloud, no shock wave or blast. Instead, the scenario that could end the world as we know it begins with something so small, and something so malicious, that when used for evil, only evil can result. This is what could happen; a ticking-clock roadmap to the hours, days, and weeks following the release of a biological agent, that serves as the most essential, forward-looking journalism in preparation for urgent societal upheaval.

Finished reading: Biological War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen 📚

Sobering. Frightening. A very informative book that I think everyone should read. We all need to understand where the world is at in reference to biological warfare.

The details of how a biological war would be handled were fascinating. The government protocols and procedures were very interesting to read about. The chaos of civilian life seemed realistic to me. Basically, the government saves a small group of people, and everyone else is left to die. There is not enough medicine to go around, and no one to administer it.

The epilogue had even scarier information about where biological weapons sit today. They have engineered trap doors into them now. You start taking antibiotics to cure the first disease and that triggers another disease. It’s a death sentence. We basically have no chance.

Why would humans make these things?

What began in Colorado with one person naturally infected with Mother Nature’s pneumonic plague led to eighty-eight people needing antibiotics, according to the CDC. Which brings us to a true horror undergirding this story. Even if the coming pneumonic plague epidemic can be treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics, there will not be enough antibiotics in the United States to go around.

The federal workforce is in disarray. Employees without a need to know have no idea that Devolution is happening. Those cleared for Devolution have disabled their cell phones so no one tracks their movements. So no one learns they’ve been chosen to live, while millions will be left to die.

The United States does not have a vaccine for plague, for reasons that are complicated.

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Finished reading: Biological War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen 📚