Obtaining anthrax

Anthrax

Anthrax is an acute disease caused by Bacillus anthracis. It affects both humans and animals and most forms of the disease are highly lethal. There are effective vaccines against anthrax, and some forms of the disease respond well to antibiotic treatment.

Like many other members of the genus Bacillus, Bacillus anthracis can form dormant spores that are able to survive in harsh conditions for extremely long periods of time, even decades or centuries. Such spores can be found on all continents, even Antarctica. When spores are inhaled, ingested, or come into contact with a skin lesion on a host they may reactivate and multiply rapidly.

Anthrax commonly infects wild and domesticated herbivorous mammals which ingest or inhale the spores while browsing—in fact, ingestion is thought to be the most common route by which herbivores contract anthrax. Carnivores living in the same environment may become infected by consuming infected animals. Diseased animals can spread anthrax to humans, either by direct contact (e.g. inoculation of infected blood to broken skin) or consumption of diseased animals' flesh.

Anthrax spores can be produced in a test tube or in a controlled environment and used as a biological weapon. Anthrax does not spread directly from one infected animal or person to another, but spores can be transported by clothing or shoes and the body of an animal that died of anthrax can also be a source of anthrax spores.

Anthrax spores can lay dormant for centuries and is almost impossible to destroy. As such, cleanup of anthrax-contaminated areas is considered problematic.

It takes up to three days of burning to completely destroy all spores in a large carcass. The most common approach is therefore to bury carcasses deeply enough to prevent resurfacing of spores. However, this requires much manpower and expensive tools. Some wildlife workers have experimented with covering fresh anthrax carcasses with shadecloth and heavy objects. This prevents some scavengers from opening the carcasses.

Millions of anthrax sites around the world

The main reason why anthrax is so easily obtainable is that the spores can lay dormant for centuries underground without being destroyed. There have been thousands of animal outbreaks on all continents and it has been used in weaponised form to kill hundreds of thousands of people during several wars (including WW1, WW2). Every buried individual or animal infected with anthrax is to be considered an anthrax source. You only need one single spore to grow several kilograms.

It shouldn’t be too hard to either buy anthrax on the black market or locate an anthrax contaminated area/burial site on one of the continents around the world due to the fact that there are millions of them (all containing dormant spores).

Its first modern incidence (as a biological weapon) occurred when Scandinavian "freedom fighters" (the rebel groups) supplied by the German General Staff used anthrax with unknown results against the Imperial Russian Army in Finland in 1916. In 1942, a British bio-weapons trial severely contaminated Gruinard Island in Scotland with anthrax spores of the Vollum-14578 strain, making it a no-go area until it was allegedly decontaminated in 1990.

Дата добавления: 2015-05-31