Thanks for writing this! It’s good to know that there probably weren’t recent close calls for governments using bioweapons on a large scale on purpose. The history linked in the last post mentions a few times when testing accidents might have hurt nearby people—do you think there were other close calls for testing accidents, including ones that might have affected many more people?
It seems quite possible. Japan aside (and those largely weren’t “accidents”), the anthrax accidentally released at Sverdlovsk by the USSR program is a major one. I think Alibek describes more in his book Biohazard, but I’m not certain, and nothing else on the scale of that incident. It seems possible that there have been more accidental releases to civilian populations, than just these.
Thanks for writing this! It’s good to know that there probably weren’t recent close calls for governments using bioweapons on a large scale on purpose. The history linked in the last post mentions a few times when testing accidents might have hurt nearby people—do you think there were other close calls for testing accidents, including ones that might have affected many more people?
It seems quite possible. Japan aside (and those largely weren’t “accidents”), the anthrax accidentally released at Sverdlovsk by the USSR program is a major one. I think Alibek describes more in his book Biohazard, but I’m not certain, and nothing else on the scale of that incident. It seems possible that there have been more accidental releases to civilian populations, than just these.