North Korea develops bio weapon and accidently releases it.

I have always heard that biological weapons are a poor country's choice for weapons of mass destruction. Lets assume that North Korea develops an air borne Ebola virus and the lab is in Pyongyang. Before they can develop a vaccine, the virus is accidentally released from the lab and people in the near by area are exposed. Lets assume that the virus starts to spread through the city and then the rest of the country.

I am assuming that the impact on North Korea would be a tremendous loss of life. Could such an accidental release result in the virus making it to either China or South Korea? If so, would the virus eventually go world wide?

If this has already been discuss, please let me know what threads to read.

Regards

Stubear1012
 
What is the range of this airborne virus? Like human contact airborne? Like sneezing? If it's limited like that then it's easy- PR China, Russia, and South Korea close their borders (not all that hard considering the current state of contact) and once North Korea is depopulated SK and the PRC negotiate SK's peaceful inhabitation of the NK as long military installations stay below a certain threshold, US forces are drawn down and no US forces of any kind above the old DMZ (and the DMZ is probably begun to be cleaned up of land mines and such, but otherwise most of it is put aside as a nature reserve instead of developed except for highways and railways to connect the two ends.

A virus like Ebola, like all viruses, don't just "live" free in the air, they need a resevoir pool (Y. Pestis (the Plague) it is prairie dogs and such). NK is probably the easiest place that can be quarentined in case of an outbreak of a virus. Airborne or not, it's going to be contained.
 
For starters.

1) Isn't the northern part of the Korean peninsula a rather cold area for a virus like Ebola to actually thrive?

2) Given the extremely low level of travel by North Koreans to other nations (mentioned earlier) how is this disease going to spread?

Conclusions:

At worst lots of North Koreans die and people attribute it to a general lack of medical care and poor nutrition.
 
Thank you

Thank you, this is helpful. I was thinking that the virus would spread by people sneezing, coughing, close contact, and so on. So unless it jumps to an animal host, the infected people would have to cross the border to spread it.

I can see South Korea closing the border as part of a quarantine. Quarantines have a long history through out the world. Would they send aid north since these are their fellow Koreans?

Stubear1012
 
Thank you, this is helpful. I was thinking that the virus would spread by people sneezing, coughing, close contact, and so on. So unless it jumps to an animal host, the infected people would have to cross the border to spread it.

I can see South Korea closing the border as part of a quarantine. Quarantines have a long history through out the world. Would they send aid north since these are their fellow Koreans?

Stubear1012

Aid probably based on allowing SK, Chinese, and/or American control over sensitive things like nuclear material. The last thing you want is sick people of an irrational selling nuclear material, weapons plans, etc to terrorists or them storming and taking the stuff. Which also would spread the virus. Getting foreign people to agree to go in and monitor and/or guard these things in the middle of a virus outbreak...
 
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