On bioterrorism: Quantico, by Greg Bear

 Let's turn back to some science fiction.  This morning, we examine a less-than-satisfying book, but it will allow me to make some observations about COVID, bioterrorism, conspiracy theories, and I'm not absolutely certain where I'll go with this, but whatever.  It's Sunday morning, I've got a bunch of coffee and a bad book sitting by my computer, so let's have a good, old fashioned rant, shall we?

We begin, though, with the first tests of the atomic bomb.  At this point, we understand how nuclear fission works.  As the Manhattan Project prepared for the Trinity test, though, it was a well-established hypothesis, building towards an empirical test.  Empirical tests don't always go the way we expect... [he says, having observed more failures of his hypotheses than he cares to admit in this particular post].  One of the fears was that an uncontrolled chain reaction could do more than create a somewhat bigger than ordinary boom.  "Kill all life on Earth" was not a likely scenario, but it was not completely unimaginable, from the perspective of those who had never tested a fission device, and understood that one should respect the limits of our knowledge at any given point in time.  Sure, you'll always have your wackos, like the idiots who were scared that the Large Hadron Collider was going to create an Earth-destroying black hole, but the people afraid of the Trinity test were probably more rational.  Or at least, weren't as obviously kooky.

As a general rule, "I cannot be certain" is a reasonable scientific observation, if not the core scientific observation, but certainty comes in degrees.  Particle colliders?  Not new, and way less scary than the first test of a fission bomb.  A fission bomb is scary.  An all-out nuclear war would wipe out all life on Earth.  One bomb, though, won't.  And those who worried about the Trinity test... well, we can always quote Oppenheimer, quoting the Bhagavad Gita, can't we?  The Trinity alarmists were wrong.  They weren't absolutely, 100% batshit crazy, and one can understand their mindset from the perspective of the time, but they were wrong.

Biological weapons, though.  This brings us to Greg Bear's Quantico.  Bear wrote the book a few years after 9/11, although I just read it, 'cuz.  What you may or may not remember is that shortly after 9/11, somethin' else weird happened.  A set of letters containing anthrax went through the mail, to a set of odd targets.  And we never found out who sent it.

That was Bear's motivation when writing Quantico, a near-future bioterrorism vaguely sci-fi-ish/procedural-ish thing.  I'm not going to recommend the book.  Mostly, it was dull, the characters were poorly constructed, and the resolution was bullshit.  However, if you are interested in political issues like inter-agency relations and the complications introduced by overlapping and competing jurisdictions, and that kind of stuff, then have at it.  I read weird stuff.

Anyway, here's the deal.  Some years after 9/11 and the anthrax attacks, changes happen to the structure of the intelligence system, and everything gets messy.  The story focuses on, not surprisingly given the title, the FBI.  A set of FBI agents, including recent graduates of the titular Quantico, investigate a convoluted plot involving the guy behind the anthrax attacks.  He is a weirdo.  It is unclear precisely what's going on in his head, but it should suffice to say that he ain't right in the head.  Smart guy, not right in the head.  He is manipulated into devising a biological agent that will disrupt neurotransmitters, or something, which results in amnesia.  Something like that.

So here's the thing.  The FBI originally thinks that it is going to be anthrax again.  And with anthrax, the disbursal system he has devised, and with a sufficient scale, given the batch he cooked, you have a planet-wide problem.  As described by the analysts, he needs three big attacks, and you have a planet-wide problem, given the spread.  Let's assume that his amnesia-whatever would work the same way.  Sure.  Fine.  Whatever.  Sci-fi, suspend disbelief, whatever.  (I told you that I didn't actually like the book.  I'm just going somewhere with the core observations.)

Spread a biological agent like that, and everyone is fucked.  So who would do it?  Someone with a death wish.  Or in the case of the amnesia bug, someone with a crazy idea about making everyone forget... 'cuz.  Bioterrorism is a thing that you don't do, unless you have a fuckin' death wish yourself.

Return to my initial observations about Trinity.  Some of the alarmists worried about a chain reaction.  Was their math right?  No, but you can understand their concern.  And had they been right, you wouldn't set off one of those devices.  It'd be a Dr. Strangelove doomsday device.

On the other hand, a loony-toon may set one off, if sufficiently toon-like.  The guy who sent the anthrax letters in Quantico was a cartoon character.

Here, then, is the question of bioterrorism.  Why have we seen so little of it?  This is a dog that isn't barking.  We think of terrorists, for the most part, as barking mad, but while the dupes who strap on the bombs are... well, dupes, the organizers who aren't dumb enough to strap on those bombs-- the ones who plan the attacks?  They aren't suicidal.  They are, often, quite rational, in their way.  And bioterrorism fucks everyone.  The only reason the characters in Quantico did it was that they were loony.  Tommy Juarez, the guy who sent the anthrax letters in the book, was batshit crazy.  Lawrence Winter, the guy who manipulated Tommy, was crazy in a different way.  No grip on reality.  He intended to subject himself to the amnesia thing.

To be clear, I am not arguing that bioterrorism is not a legitimate concern.  I am observing, though, that while Bin Laden was happy to send saps out to kill themselves as long as they could take out enough innocent people in the process, he wasn't on one of those planes himself.  And I don't think it was just because he was already famous.

So let's turn to COVID.  As with all things in the modern world, it has been the subject of batshit crazy conspiracy theories.  Cooked up in a lab!  Somethin' like that.  The thing is, look around the world.  The point of the metaphor of "shit hitting the fan" is that when those blades are spinning, they distribute fecal matter everywhere.  And there are very few places around the world that have not been covered in shit.  This does not mean you need to go buy every roll of toilet paper at the grocery store, but if someone released a contagious, biological agent, what'd happen?

Well... take a fuckin' look!

So let's play a game called "backwards induction."  Game theory term.  You don't do that if you are rational, and unwilling to pay that price yourself.

One of the fascinating, and fascinatingly pleasant mysteries of the post-9/11 world is that the only real biological attack we have had was that set of anthrax letters.  Which... led to a fun story.

Right now, lefties are all up in arms about student loans.  Like, "oh, I shouldn't have to pay back my student loans 'cuz I'm a millennial snowflake!"  You can tell where I stand on this.  Sign a contract, borrow my money, and pay it the fuck back.  And actually, the only way those loans are discharged, given the low interest rates the federal government gives you is... to die.  So amid all of the mess of the anthrax letters, a woman whose son had died kept getting collection letters for his student loans.

So, she did a bad.  She did an oopsies.  She... mailed some of his ashes as a "fuck you, leave me alone, he's dead."  During... the anthrax scare.  Here.  Read about it.

Point being, we've been looking for the next biological attack for a long time.  And, that dog hasn't barked.  As time passes, the probability of any event asymptotically approaches 1.  There will eventually be another biological attack.  A bigger one.  Yet the observation for today is that there is a fundamental difference between a biological attack and even a nuclear attack.  A fission device is a scary thing.  Yet, even its fallout has limited range.  Biological attacks can range uncontrolled, in a manner that was closer to the alarmist fears of those worried about a worst-case-scenario for the Trinity test.

Comparatively speaking, COVID isn't even that deadly.  A mortality rate of 2%, in the scheme of things... it could be so much worse.  And look what havoc has been wreaked.  That's both an explanation of why even psychos are nervous about bioterrorism, and why we have so many resources devoted to planning for it.

As time passes, the probability of a real bioterrorism attack asymptotically approaches 1.  We don't know the probability today, nor the first, nor second derivative.

And whatever happens, it won't happen like Greg Bear said.  'Cuz that book sucked.  But at least I got a grumpy blog post out of reading it.

Seriously, this guy gets nominated for the Hugo every year?  Meh.