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