Re:Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada
by littlestymaar on Thursday May 06, 2021 @05:02AM
(#27060727)
> hypothetical bioterrorist due to the difficulty in detecting them, their durability and also the delay on effects.
Terrorism is about fear, and that comes with spectacular actions even if it kills relatively few people, not with stealthy poisoning of big population.
You're not gonna have anything remotely as impactful as 9/11 with prions, even if you killed a million people in the long run.
Is it a good weapon for a nation state going at war, or committing a genocide. Definitely yes! But it sucks for terrorism.
With that said I sort of disagree with you. Prions are particularly attractive to a hypothetical bioterrorist due to the difficulty in detecting them, their durability and also the delay on effects. As I said above, once you know you have a problem it will be too late.
Keep in mind these are just the prions that nature has produced. It is quite possible that humans are able to modify existing threatening prions or develop whole new classes of threatening prions that haven't developed in nature.
Overall I think the most effective strike from a bioterrorist won't come from a single attack vector but a well timed combination of vectors. We've seen how something as minor as COVID has taken all of our attention and resources, now imagine if a terrorist timed something like COVID with a follow up strike like prions.