Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Prologue
- Foreword, by Ronald K. Noble, Interpol Secretary General
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART I THE BIOVIOLENCE CONDITION AND HOW IT CAME TO BE
- 1 Why Worry?
- 2 Methods of Bioviolence
- 3 Who Did Bioviolence? Who Wants to Do It?
- PART II THE GLOBAL STRATEGY FOR PREVENTING BIOVIOLENCE
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Why Worry?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Prologue
- Foreword, by Ronald K. Noble, Interpol Secretary General
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART I THE BIOVIOLENCE CONDITION AND HOW IT CAME TO BE
- 1 Why Worry?
- 2 Methods of Bioviolence
- 3 Who Did Bioviolence? Who Wants to Do It?
- PART II THE GLOBAL STRATEGY FOR PREVENTING BIOVIOLENCE
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
If someone really despises 21st Century civilization, what can be done? For the truly diehard nihilist, passionate terrorist, or zealous lunatic, there are frustratingly few options. At some point, they have to realize that conventional attacks just are not doing the trick. The 9/11 attacks, the bombing of the Madrid and London subways, and numerous smaller attacks have all put civilization on edge, but history marches inexorably forward more or less as it was before. The United States and its allies are resolute, continuing to assert materialistic values and using their force of arms and media to propound those values to everyone else. A few thousand people can be killed, yet western armies still traverse the world. The sun never sets on a U.S. military base.
There is, however, one way to shred the predominant social fabric. It is how the deity has done it since the days of pharaoh: inflict a scourge. The Bible is replete with lessons of how the infidels were beset by pestilence – the holy wrath of the righteous. What more symbolically justifiable way to provoke an apocalyptic confrontation between the forces of good and evil? Causing collective death and misery may be seen as performing a sacramental reckoning that morally justifies mass murder.
The threat of bioviolence is unique among perils facing humanity, and those who would perpetrate bioviolence are villains in a class of their own.
WHY BIOVIOLENCE IS DIFFERENT
Bioviolence is ultimately about destruction of living organisms, not buildings or equipment.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- BioviolencePreventing Biological Terror and Crime, pp. 11 - 19Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007