Terrorist introduces biological weapon to Boston's water supply

Hi!

I'm from Boston and we recently had a problem with a water main break which cut off potable water for a couple of days. The repair crew was in a big hurry to dig down into the pipes and fix the problem.

Now suppose that one of these repairmen is a terrorist. With all of the hustle to fix the leak and repair the pipes, no one thinks about terrorism. The terrorist introduces a soluble biological weapon into the water supply while he's down there. He then seals the pipe and covers it up with the weapon already in place.

When the governor says everything's OK, people start drinking water like crazy. Before they know it, everyone gets sick. Is it blamed on contamination from water leak? Terrorism?

Is this plausible? What would the effects be? I'd expect the water supplies in general are already guarded, but for an operation like this things could be relaxed given the hurry.

Note, incidentally, that the city of Cambridge (next to Boston) has its own water supply and it would not be affected (at least initially) by this attack.

ACG
 
I'm certainly no expert, but even then I would expect it to be limited to a smaller area at first, because it most likely wasn't introduced in some kind of main reservoir. It will most likely be seen as a contamination from the leak and not an terrorist attack at first. Depends on just what is introduced to the water.

If it's biological, as in bakteria, then you might have the problem spreading, if they can reproduce within the water system. If you're thinking more along the lines of poison I don't know how effectiv it would be all in all. Sure there are some out there that are dangerous in small quantities, but there is a limit what can be put into the water unnoticed and I'd expect it to become severly deluted in a water system of a big city.
 
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