How likely is the use of Soviet bioweapons in a full exchange?

How likely is the use of Soviet bioweapons in a full exchange?

  • 10%

    Votes: 6 18.8%
  • 20%

    Votes: 2 6.3%
  • 50%

    Votes: 4 12.5%
  • 75%

    Votes: 4 12.5%
  • 90% or more

    Votes: 16 50.0%

  • Total voters
    32
The U.S., based on available information, was unaware of much of the Soviet program.
Apparently the first major source was when Vladimir Pasechnik the head of the Institute of Ultra Pure Biochemical Preparations, a part of Biopreparat, walked into the British embassy in Paris in 1989 whilst visiting France for a conference and defected. The information he provided tallied with what the US had already observed of the Soviets test-firing ICBM warheads incorporating large radiator panels that were dumping heat so by extension had to be cold inside. Engineered resistant plague and anthrax that could be manufactured literally by the ton and with a delivery system, now that's vaguely terrifying.
 

CalBear

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An ounce?

Isn't that in perfect conditions with perfect distribution?
Not really.

Perfect distribution in perfect conditions and it could be done with around 10 grams, maybe less.

In perfect conditions you need to infect a few people. Full stop.

A weaponized disease will run into zero natural immunity among the population, making transmission a virtual automatic in any encounter. Since the same weaponization can also ensure 100% lethality once the fire is started it is only a matter of time.

When it get complicated is if you are trying to also protect your population, or segments of your population. That requires inoculation/vaccination. Both of those can allow parts of, for example, the protein coding of the agent to get into the wild. That, in turn, can result in enough exposure by the population at large to reduce the agent's effectiveness (keep in mind that the agent is able to evade all immune response because the body will not recognize it as an invader until it is too late, even killed virus increase the chance that some of the identifiers might get into circulation).

The real nuts and bolts of the process require a degree of knowledge I do not have, but the broad strokes are fairly straightforward.
 

CalBear

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Funny you mention Anthrax. Anthrax does have heat resistant spores, but there are some notes to consider.
First is that Anthrax is primarily used against livestock. This is due to the fact that while the spores are resilient in dirt, they have a relatively short endurance in places with a lot of concrete due to increased exposure to UV. Regular anthrax is also present in the soil and for a bio weapon to seed a significant area with a significant load the survival of spores from a one way trip with an ICBM is simply too low.

It is not that Anthrax cannot be delivered with an ICBM, but that it is an incredibly inefficient delivery method.

There are some other nasty critters which can be used , but for a bio weapon to be efficient there has to be a reasonable incubation period and that incubation period allows for travel across the Atlantic thus also putting the USSR and countries of the Warshaw Pact at risk.
You are, of course, correct for ordinary, naturally occurring wild anthrax. Weaponization can address many of the issues that any potential agent poses. While not perfect, it really doesn't have to be.

The use of bio-weapons ties very closely to the use of some sort of "doomsday" system. The fact that the Soviets did, in fact, develop such a system (although the details on certain aspects are still not in open source) is a reasonable indicator that there were at least some scenarios that the Soviet leadership expected to wipe out the USSR's civilian and military leadership. That they wanted to be able to strike back in such a scenario (and did it using a system that was "black" rather than overt as a deterrent) says a great deal about the mindset of the Soviet command structure regarding the concept of "losing gracefully".
 
It seems like it's a matter of sending a few infected people to the busiest international airports in the world and letting things escalate from there. The Spanish Flu managed to kill almost 100 million people when the only forms of mass travel were ships and trains so imagine what a modern pandemic could do.
 

CalBear

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It seems like it's a matter of sending a few infected people to the busiest international airports in the world and letting things escalate from there. The Spanish Flu managed to kill almost 100 million people when the only forms of mass travel were ships and trains so imagine what a modern pandemic could do.
That is exactly how a terrorist organization would do things. Most of them are either death cults or religious zealots who actually believe that THEIR God will protect them while letting everyone else die (or, like Da'esh, they are both).

The question you asked, however, is about a full exchange. the above outlined method, if used by a nation state, could START a full exchange but is unlikely to be part of the actual exchange.
 
Funny you mention Anthrax. Anthrax does have heat resistant spores, but there are some notes to consider.
First is that Anthrax is primarily used against livestock. This is due to the fact that while the spores are resilient in dirt, they have a relatively short endurance in places with a lot of concrete due to increased exposure to UV. Regular anthrax is also present in the soil and for a bio weapon to seed a significant area with a significant load the survival of spores from a one way trip with an ICBM is simply too low.

It is not that Anthrax cannot be delivered with an ICBM, but that it is an incredibly inefficient delivery method.

There are some other nasty critters which can be used , but for a bio weapon to be efficient there has to be a reasonable incubation period and that incubation period allows for travel across the Atlantic thus also putting the USSR and countries of the Warshaw Pact at risk.
Travel across the Atlantic, after a full on nuclear exchange, really? Travel is going to pretty much stop, military government travel is likely to observe quarantine regs if a bio agent is used on them, any large craft are likely seized by authorities, ditto fuel supplies, navigation aids are going to be down, I would say the risk of an agent spreading across the Atlantic is unlikely

A bioweapon doesn't have to be efficient to be effective in this role, to be effective what it has to do is merely disrupt recovery operations, if people are worried about a super disease, they will be a lot more paranoid, insist upon quarantine and take steps, using up time, energy and resources that would otherwise go to stabilizing from the nuclear attacks. It doesn't have to kill anyone, just be clear that it isn't a bluff, any direct deaths are an added bonus, though a few deaths per warhead would make the point a lot clearer

Bioweapons are also easier to deploy to the US via ICBM, have a pile of spare missiles hidden within driving distance of your TEL launch point with orders to shoot after say 10 days unless receiving orders to the contrary. Cruise missiles, bombs and sprayer tanks are much more efficient, but need strategic bombers, which have to have survived their way into and out of the US, made it back to their dispersal area, had that particular dispersal area be one with a bioweapon cache, have enough fuel to reach the US and make it back into the US
 
ICBM delivery of anything but nuclear weapons is plain stupid because the recipient will always assume that they carry nukes. This is true about IRBM and SLBM systems as well.
 
ICBM delivery of anything but nuclear weapons is plain stupid because the recipient will always assume that they carry nukes. This is true about IRBM and SLBM systems as well.
That's why you use them both which is exactly what the USSR planned.
 
Also, dispersing bio weapons with an ICBM? If it isn't the heat from the launch then it is the lack of proper distribution of the agent (how do you disperse aerosols from an ICBM) or the big red flair from an ICBM entering the atmosphere and telling everyone to stay out of harms way which makes it really inefficient.

See Corona Film capsule recovery

discoverer_cap.gif

Replace film with dispersal gear
 
I vote 100%. The USSR did not act like a normal nation-state, its leadership was deeply paranoid of the effect a war might have upon it, namely that the Army would use the opportunity to defect. It is my opinion that Biological weaponry was developed not as a deterrent but as a scorched earth weapon to preclude any survivable world but a post-war Communist one, even if it destroys all of the USSR. That was the stakes, victory or death.
 
With the exception of spore forming organisms, most biological agents are quite fragile. Too much heat, too much cold, too much dry, too much UV alone or in combination can do in biological agents. Viral agents such as Ebola, Marburg, Smallpox do not survive outside of a host for long. Most pathogenic bacteria (such as plague {Yersinia Pestis}) do not lurk in the environment but are transmitted via a reservoir of hosts (typically rodent-rodent, rodent-human, or human-human via the infected flea). What this means is that unless there are people who are directly under the dispersal cloud of the ICBM warhead not much happens. Agents lying around on the ground, with the exception noted, will degrade rather rapidly. On top of this, if you fire off these missiles right away, you may end up dropping biologicals on an area which was/will be nuked or ends up in the fallout cloud which will inactivate a certain proportion of those agents that survive to hit the ground.

Weaponizing pathologic agents does not necessarily mean they are "new" agents, it means packaging them in a way that allows them to be dispersed by spray, artillery, etc. Changing the agents so they are resistant to antibiotics or unaffected by vaccines can be done to some extent. However if you change a virus (like Smallpox) so that the outer coat is not recognized you may change its ability to cause disease. Making pathogens highly resistant to known antibiotics is very risky unless you have some secret antibiotics that work, likewise vaccinations for "new" agents. Given the state of the Soviet pharmaceutical industry this is not a given.

It is important to note that unlike nuclear warheads, warheads with biological agents can't be stuck on a missile (or in a bomb or artillery round) and let to sit with exception of a few agents. Most need to be loaded fresh or they become ineffective and this means transport from where they are made to the missile site, depot, etc shortly before use.

All of this does not mean biologicals can't be used but their strategic use delivered by strategic systems is actually pretty marginal.
 
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