WI: biowarfare used against Japan instead of atomic bombings?

Inspired by this half-joke.

So, to take the premise seriously...

The US had a biowar research program during WWII. There were lots of things that could have stymied the Manhattan Project.

So, let's imagine that the US has either not gone with the MP or cut it short. There's more time, effort, and $$$ to put into bioweapons. Let's say that allows the War Research Service to sort out their production problems. (OTL, according to the article above, tests of the production facility in Terre Haute, Indiana showed a lack of "adequate engineering safety measures" resultingb in "contamination of the plant and environs".) By 1945, a usable weapon is available. Truman, looking at the nasty casualty estimates, says go ahead and soften up the SOBs....


Plausable?

What pathogens would work best? Anthrax is likely out. Weaponized Rice Blast wasn't part of the program, but would likely have been wickedly effective. Ebola's wasn't discovered yet (too bad for the Ebola Gay...). Smallpox was ruled out by OTL programs at the time due to widespread vaccines. I'm thinking Cholera or Q Fever would probably be good choices as agents.
 
good question

mabye the Manhattan Project got delayed for a reasion.

Or one of those Japanese FU GO ballon armed with Plague, hit a major westcoast city of the USA
And President wandet a Biological counterattack on Japan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon

here alo a list what the USA was working on, very nasty stuff even for today:

Bacillus anthracis (anthrax)
Francisella tularensis (tularemia)
Brucella spp (brucellosis)
Coxiella burnetii (Q-fever)
Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEE)
Botulinum toxin (botulism)
Staphylococcal enterotoxin B

more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_biological_weapons_program
 
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good question

mabye the Manhattan Project got delayed for a reasion.

There are lots of avenues for this. My fave is to have the 1st incident with the "demon core" be even worse. Too bad it'd be too late of a PoD for this.

Or one of those Japanese FU GO ballon armed with Plague, hit a major westcoast city of the USA
And President wandet a Biological counterattack on Japan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon

Such a sucessful balloon bio attack is highly implausable. Most likely result would be a few plague infections that wouldn't likely be associated with a Japanese attack.

here alo a list what the USA was working on, very nasty stuff even for today:

Bacillus anthracis (anthrax)
Francisella tularensis (tularemia)
Brucella spp (brucellosis)
Coxiella burnetii (Q-fever)
Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEE)
Botulinum toxin (botulism)
Staphylococcal enterotoxin B

more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_biological_weapons_program

Yep. But, most of those fall under the same problems as with Anthrax. An agent with either a more direct vector for human infection or one targeting Japanese agriculture would work better.
 
The thing with bio-weapons is that they're specifically designed to target civilians, since most of the people who will be affected will be civilians. Of course that will mostly be the case with bombing campaigns as well, but there is practically no way of making a really deadly bio-weapon with a limited spread, thus you'll be targeting the whole civilian population, not just the resident who happen to be in that city.
 
None, using it on Japanese cities would have been devastating. Although the British being seen as delivering the final blow may be something of an embarrassment back home for the Americans.

So why couldn't the Americans have bought, traded, or borrowed the technology and the anthrax bombs from the British?
 
So why couldn't the Americans have bought, traded, or borrowed the technology and the anthrax bombs from the British?

Again none, if they spent as much money on development of Anthrax as they had the Manhattan project and built on British research, they would have had an effective WMD as early as 1943. Although actually getting to a proper target in Japan would have taken until June 1944 as IOTL.
 
As I understand it, the problem with anthrax, at least at that time. was it used cattle as the vector, a la Operation Vegetarian. Japan didn't (and doesn't) have sufficient livestock for that to work.
 
As I understand it, the problem with anthrax, at least at that time. was it used cattle as the vector, a la Operation Vegetarian. Japan didn't (and doesn't) have sufficient livestock for that to work.

The British also had a bomb, simply named 'N', which would be unleashed directly on cities. It would kill the humans who breathed in the spores within a few days and would contaminate the area for decades.
 
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