sfg-Ice__ wrote:
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Just a side note..prior to its mass dispersion to the military is was only tested on monkeys.
In the end the US company lost its contract to produce it for (what I think( was some bogus reasons. The US now gets the vaccine from a company in England and therefore since the supply dropped signifcantly the mass dispersion to the military drops alot.
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As far as side effects, from what I understand the most common ones are persistant flu like symptoms, extreme sensitivity to light (with some reactions in some cases), random vomiting, etc, etc...
ALot of bad shit really.
With the vaccine's limited span of protection in both what strains works against and how long it last ( only couple of years before you have to get re-vaccinated) plus the side effects, It is not good for general population unless there is a high likely hood of an anthrax attack. There should still be a larger surplus of the vaccine for the population at large in case of an out break. I don't remember what the shelf life of the anthrax vaccine is though.
Iraq received some 34 samples of Anthrax 17 of witch came from the US and as they 3 had mobile Bio labs it would have been easy for them to produce a weapon over a short time.
Anthrax strains that are highly resistant to anti-biotic have been created (made in Russia). Anthrax is also very stable in storage unlike viruses. Scientists pulled viable Anthrax spores form a sugar cube that was in a WWI museum for 75 years (the WWI intended use was to infect horses and live stock and disrupt supply lines). It took more than 50 years for a small island used in WWII for testing anthrax to become habitable again despite efforts of clean up. There are plenty of other Biological weapons that could be made, but Anthrax is a likely choice because:
Relatively easy to acquire
It’s stable
It’s mortality rate is high
Weapon production time is low
Cost to produce is less than chemical weapons.
Depleted uranium is bad stuff too. Supposedly there has been some sickness in Iran from the first Gulf War because of all the tank rounds the US fired creating D.U.D.E.