MALICIOUS actors plotting to bring down governments and wreak havoc on the world need only a petri dish to spark devastation, experts fear.
The threat of an apocalyptic bioterrorism attack is growing – with insiders warning we are edging closer to a nightmare scenario where extremists could unleash “unnatural” pandemics.
This refers to disease outbreaks caused by the deliberate release of deadly pathogens – from weaponised strains of Ebola to the reintroduction of smallpox.
High-tech labs have given militant groups unprecedented power to open the floodgates of disease, insiders say.
Professor Richard Sullivan, a biosecurity expert and adviser to the World Health Organisation, warned that weak lab security and oversight makes infiltration the likeliest route for hostile agents.
He told The Sun: “There are two real possibilities for them. One is they steal material from a biological facility. And the other option is using human beings as a dispersal mechanism.
“Take somebody who has Ebola, they are a walking infected agent.
“Think about how easy transmission is. You could easily see terrorists taking somebody with an infection like this and marching them around an airport, for example.”
Such an outbreak would spark mass panic, shut borders and could even cripple economies within days.
Sullivan said: “It’s a hardcore terror tactic. There’s a reason the Russians use Polonium and Novichok. They could have just shot the person, but those agents create much more fear.
“The psychological, social, and economic impact of using a biological weapon over a conventional weapon is orders of magnitude greater.
“It’s much more frightening. You’ll get people’s attention. It has a wider impact.”
Members of the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult cultivated this fear to great effect with a deadly chemical terror attack on the Tokyo metro in 1995.
Ten perpetrators released sarin, a deadly nerve agent, on three trains and left 14 people dead and over 1,000 injured.
American Anthrax attacks in the early 2000s led to a wave of mass-hysteria.
These were particularly terrifying – as “dormant” spores contained within letters reactivated when they were inhaled, killing the recipient.
And while bioterrorism is the most chilling scenario, experts warn that a biocatastrophe of some kind is almost certainly on the cards in the near future.
Sullivan said there are three ways a devastating pandemic could begin – with natural outbreaks still the most likely.
He said: “The most likely would be a natural outbreak, what we call a zoonotic spillover.
“Because of conflict, massive movement of people, and the way humans are interacting, we are creating the conditions for those spillovers.”
Scientists refer to the unknown next threat as Disease X – a mystery virus potentially 20 times deadlier than Covid that is capable of spreading rapidly across the globe.
“We’ve seen it with SARS and coronaviruses, but there are others like Ebola or hemorrhagic fever, pretty nasty things,” Sullivan said.
The second major danger is an accidental leak from one of the thousands of high-security laboratories studying deadly diseases.
Sullivan warned: “There are laboratories all over the world and they are proliferating. Unless the governance and standard operating procedures are good, there could be an accidental leak.”
Multiple incidents have already been recorded.
Sullivan said: “If you just Google accidental laboratory leaks, you’ll see all over the place things have come out.
“They’ve turned into pretty nasty outbreaks.”
Meanwhile, the global expansion of high-risk laboratories is raising fresh concerns.
There are thousands of facilities handling dangerous pathogens – with the some studying viruses with high fatality rates and in some cases, no known cure.
These include Ebola, Nipah, Lassa fever and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever – all of which have the potential to be far deadlier than Covid.
While these labs are essential for developing vaccines and treatments, gaps in regulation remain a serious concern.
McIntyre warned that hidden accidents could allow outbreaks to spiral into global crises.
She said: “Enhanced pathogens of pandemic potential are a concern as they can easily cross international boundaries and cause epidemics or pandemics.”
Last January, the CIA claimed that the Covid outbreak was “more likely” to have leaked from a Chinese lab than to have come from animals.
The agency said that based on available information it is “more likely than a natural origin”.
The assessment came almost immediately after the CIA’s new director John Ratcliffe, appointed by Donald Trump, took charge.
Ratcliffe has been outspoken about his stance on the pandemic’s origins, favouring the lab leak theory and claiming Covid most likely came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The lab is a 40-minute drive from Huanan Market where the first infections were reported.
In 2023, former FBI Director Christopher Wray told Fox News that the bureau’s assessment was that the pandemic’s origins are “most likely a potential lab incident.”
He added: “You are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab.
“I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work that our US government and close foreign partners are doing.”
Epidemiologist Dr Raina McIntyre warned poor oversight makes it harder to determine whether bioleaks are natural or man-made, which only increases the danger of an outbreak.
She said: “A pathogen with a fatality rate of 30 to 50 per cent could massively depopulate the world with cascading effects on critical infrastructure and the ability of society to function.
“We saw a glimpse of this during Covid, with supermarket shelves empty and impacts on transport networks.
“We should be concerned, as high consequence pathogens may be an existential threat.”
Rapid advances in synthetic biology and genetic engineering are adding fuel to the fire.
To put the threat into context, the variola virus, which causes smallpox and has now been eradicated, could be recreated in a lab.
In the 20th century, smallpox killed around 500 million people, with roughly one in three infected individuals dying.
Although vaccines exist, experts fear hostile agents could engineer strains capable of evading immunity.
Sullivan said the threat of antimicrobial resistance – where antibiotics lose their effectiveness against bacteria – is the “big problem”.
“It’s super scary stuff and it’s only getting worse,” he added.
Known as “the silent pandemic”, around 40 million deaths are projected for drug-resistant infections.
It could prove to be an existential threat to the human race if paired with the deliberate release of a lethal pathogen.
Bioterrorists also have the potential to strike in more clandestine ways.
An example of this is the Rajneesh attack in 1984, where hundreds of people in Oregon fell ill with salmonella.
It was later discovered that members of the Rajneesh cult had sprinkled bacteria on salad bars in 10 restaurants across the region.
Their motive was to make the towns people sick so that they could control a local election.
Some 751 people were struck with stomach aches – with 45 hospitalised.
Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/16243424/terrorists-weaponise-viruses-smallpox-ebola-biolabs-arms-race/
