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| Biological weapons could become the poor man's nuclear bomb | | | NIKHIL GUPTA | 12/6/2013 11:46:17 PM |
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In old times the veterinary doctors had tremendous respect and it is said that the camp of such doctors was kept near the camp of the Kshyatriya Gupta King in the battlegrounds . In those days also enemy used to employ biological techniques to induce disease in the horses or elephants as these were important part of the war scenario . Various bio-agents were used to harm the man and animal on the battleground . Armies in those times , for instance, tainted water supplies of entire cities with herbs and fungus that gave people horrible diarrhea and hallucinations . According to the Bible, it took 10 calamities inflicted on the Egyptians to finally convince an obstinate Pharaoh or the then Egyptian King to liberate the Hebrews who were treated as slaves in those times . The calamities included deadly bio infection in the cattle of Egypt . The Assyrians (whose civilization began around 2400 B.C. in modern Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq) poisoned enemy wells with a fungus that could grow on wheat and other grains and it caused hallucinations and other symptoms among the enemy . The Greeks used to poison the water supply of enemy with a herb that caused violent diarrhea . The Roman soldiers used to throw decaying human corpses and carcasses of dead animals into their enemies' water supplies, and catapulted them over the walls of enemy towns to cause spread of deadly diseases among the enemy population . In medieval times there was a bio weapon assault in a European habitation that got out of hand and triggered an epidemic that ravaged the population of Europe . In 1797, Napoleon - the French warrior infected residents of a besieged city in Italy with malaria. When America was a colony of Britain , the British caused smallpox infection among the native American Indians as British suspected them of siding with French .
In today's world the modern warfare has seen the exponential rise in use of science and technology . The modern use of toxins , harmful pathogens and other bio materials has enabled various nations to manufacture and stockpile biological weapons . These Biological weapons are toxic materials produced from pathogenic organisms (usually microbes) or artificially manufactured toxic substances that are used to intentionally interfere with the biological processes of a host or enemy.
These substances work to kill or incapacitate the host . Biological weapons may be used to target living organisms such as humans, animals or vegetation. They may also be used to contaminate nonliving substances such as air, water and soil. There are a variety of microorganisms that can be used as biological weapons. These agents are commonly chosen because they are highly toxic, easily obtainable and inexpensive to produce, easily transferable from person to person, can be dispersed in aerosol form, or have no known vaccine. While it is possible to develop biological weapons from microbes, typically bacteria , finding a means of distributing the substances is difficult. One possible way is through aerosols . Biological agents distributed by air may be destroyed by UV light or rain may wash them away. Another method of distribution may be to attach the toxins to a bomb so that they may be released upon explosion. The problem with this is that the microbes will most likely be destroyed by the explosion as well . The foundation of microbiology by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch offered new prospects for those interested in biological weapons because it allowed agents to be chosen and designed on a rational basis. These dangers were soon recognized, and resulted in two international declarations-in 1874 in Brussels and in 1899 in The Hague-that prohibited the use of poisoned weapons. However, although these, as well as later treaties, were all made in good faith, they contained no means of control, and so failed to prevent interested parties from developing and using biological weapons. It is well known fact that man has used bio-agents for assassination purposes ever since the dawn of civilization, not only against individual enemies but also against huge armies . However in modern times the German army used weapons of mass destruction, both biological and chemical, during the First World War .
German army's attacks with biological weapons were on a small scale and were not particularly successful. They used anthrax and glanders to infect animals directly or to contaminate animal feed in several of their enemy countries . After the war, with no lasting peace established , various European countries started their own biological warfare programmes . In second world war , the Japanese embarked on a large scale programme to develop biological weapons and eventually used them in their conquest of China. Japanese obtained yellow fever virus from some Institute in New York , America and developed it for their bio weapon program. It is reported that Japanese used prisoners of war for their bio weapon experiments . Further it is reported that the Japanese tested many different disease-causing agents on prisoners and unsuspecting civilians. During the war, the Japanese army poisoned more than 1,000 water wells in Chinese villages to study cholera and typhus outbreaks. Japanese planes dropped plague-infested fleas over Chinese cities and distributed them by means of saboteurs in rice fields and along roads which caused the epidemics that persisted for years . The people in USA also did not lag behind in the biological weapons program and conducted many experiments for enhancing her bio -weapon arsenal . The most infamous test was the 1966 contamination of the New York metro system with Bacillus globigii- a non-infectious bacterium used to simulate the release of anthrax to study the spread of the pathogen in a big city .
There was a danger that biological weapons could soon become the poor man's nuclear bomb . Due to many such reasons America signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) in 1972 . But it is somewhat ironic that the Americans let the verification protocol fail in 2002 may be because of Russian advancement in bio warfare project. The Russians stockpiled tons of anthrax bacilli and smallpox virus, some for use in intercontinental ballistic missiles, and engineered multidrug-resistant bacteria, including plague. They worked on hemorrhagic fever viruses, some of the deadliest pathogens that humankind has encountered . One of their scientists died after injecting himself with the deadly Marburg virus and his colleagues isolated the virus from his body and found that it had mutated into a more deadly form .
India is also not immune from the threat of the biological warfare from both nation states and also from non state actors like various terrorist groups . Till now India has not faced a single bioterrorism incident, either from non-state actors (terrorists/criminals/deranged scientists) or from 'capable' state actors. India has faced the so-called 'bio scares' intermittently due to the suspicious nature of a natural outbreak or a possible human intervention (eg. Plague in Surat, Japanese Encephalitis in Siliguri, Bird flu/Swine Flu outbreaks in Northeast and Pune). Also, India has its share of man-made bio weapons related scares/blackmail in the past. There are many examples of 'bioscares' in India where a possible angle of non state actors/person/scientist with criminal intent, could be noticed .
There was postal letter scare in India in 2001 and some letters did contain wheat flour-like powdery substance. For instance, powder laced letters were received by the then Maharashtra deputy chief minister's office till late October 2001 but they were found to be anthrax negative. In October 2010, a threat letter was received from an unknown terrorist group called Indian Mujahideen (Assam) to launch a biological war in the northeast state of Assam; a classic case of bio terror blackmailing by non state actors. Their demands were to free all jihadi leaders held at the Guwahati central jail, end operations against jihadi forces in Assam and stop all ongoing development projects in Assam.
The Indian government has recognised the threat from bio weapons as real and imminent. Both the ministry of defence and ministry of home affairs place high priority on this issue. In 2007, Government of India underscored the fact that the government was working towards mitigating biological weapon threats. In July 2008, India's National Disaster Management Authority devised a draft plan to counter the threat of biological disaster, including man-made and natural outbreakst Various Teams of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were deployed during the 2010 Commonwealth Games. NDRF teams were deployed with prophylaxis for anthrax and nerve-gas antidotes and were equipped with residual vapour detectors, chemical agent monitors, water poisoning detector kits and three-colour detector papers to tackle any biological/chemical incidents at the venues in New Delhi.
India is surrounded by enemies and there is a big threat from the inside also . There are various terrorist groups who routinely detonate bombs killing innocent Indians . India must safeguard herself from these undesirable elements . India must choose true KSHYATRIYA GUPTAS as leaders who can defeat enemy and make India strong . In my opinion THE ROYALE GUPTAS , THE ROYALE MARATHAS and THE ROYALE TAMILS are the best kshyatriya warriors who can deliver our nation from various evils . It is to be noted that we cannot choose those who get defeated quite often or who refuse to take hard decisions when nation needs such decisions. The example of Israel is in front of us where the top leaders are themselves commandos who have served their nation in various capacities . Our nation when under attack from terrorists in 2002 when our supreme parliament was attacked did not do much . Then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee ji mobilized Indian army and kept it ready for many months but couldn't take decision to launch attack . My humble and learned opinion is that India as a democratic , peaceful , bountiful and secular republic should choose her leaders from amongst true kshyatriya Gupta warriors. Let India shine and prosper and defeat the enemies .
The content has no bearing on any person or any organisation and the author is guided by the motto " THE ROYALE GUPTA WARRIORS NEVER FIGHT FOR THEMSELVES BUT FIGHT FOR A BIGGER CAUSE " . Vande Matram and Jai Hind. |
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