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Title: Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It by Ken Alibek, Stephen Handelman ISBN: 0-385-33496-6 Publisher: Delta Pub. Date: 11 April, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.31 (75 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Frightening Picture of Russian Biowarfare Program
Comment: You would be a fool not to be frightened by Ken Alibek's chilling depictions of the Russia bioweapons program. Alibek, the former #2 man in Biopreparat--the Russian cover for a large facet of their weapons work--defected to the United States after going there on a weapons inspection program, and his account is detailed and frightening.
The United States officially ended their biowarfare programs under Nixon, and for years most of the western world naively believed the Soviet claims that they, too, had done so. Yet under the guise of ostensibly civilian medical entities like Biopreparat, the Soviets and then Russians continued their work toward creating the world's deadliest microbes--as told here by one of those at the very top of the effort.
Himself the innovator behind the Russian's weapons-grade anthrax, Alibek saw the makings of bioweapons from his own anthrax to turlaremia (which he himself accidentally contracted), plague, smallpox, and such emerging threats as Ebola and viral encephalitis. The Soviet program became so compartmentalized that with the fall of the Soviet Union, not even those involved know the full extent of what was done or what has become of many of those working on such weapons--many of whom have been courted by North Korea, Iran, and Iraq.
Alibek left Russia in the 90's, yet even today there is admission from their government of continued work with smallpox at the viral facility of Vector (to where they illegally moved their WHO-sanctioned smallpox stores). The same individuals from the Communist regime still run a now largely-bankrupt program... who knows what horrors are even now being cooked up in their secret labs? Alibek's true tale leaves one incredibly scared as to the answer.
Rating: 5
Summary: Hell Revisited...
Comment: As this review is written, in October 2002, it is well to remember that Ken Alibeck first brought his revelations of the massive Soviet (and now, Russian Federation) bioweapon production to the public in his book BIOHAZARD more than two years ago. His defection to the U.S. occurred almost four years earlier.
And yet, as I travel the country to promote my own book --a fiction bioterrorist assault on the U.S. that threatens humanity itself-- I'm dumbfounded to discover that the majority of my audiences have no idea of who Ken is.
Worse, they have no conception of the horrors that he, as deputy director of Biopreparat/Vector, the massive organization the Soviet Union created to develop and mass-produce lethal viruses and other bioagents BY THE METRIC TON, has visited on today's world.
Today we live with the very real threat of a worldwide pandemic of smallpox --a disease officially eradicated in nature three decades ago-- that could be sparked by any number of rogue nations or their terrorist clients who possess the weaponized form of smallpox that Biopreparat/Vector produced.
And because that hideous form of variola virus is likely to have been genetically modified, it is entirely possible that existing smallpox vaccines (such as that being recommended for mass immunization in the U.S., Israel, Australia and elsewhere) simply will not work against it.
While I was researching my novel of bioterrorism, Final Epidemic, I met many experts in the field of national security, medicine and government. In private conversations, those who consented to be interviewed all agreed on one point: a staggering volume of bioweapons exist today, and could be released upon mankind at any time by a ruthless ideologue... or a madman.
But almost as many agreed on a second point, too: the majority of these weapons are likely to have come from Russian stocks, or to have been newly manufactured by Russian scientists formerly employed by Vector and recruited by nations such as Iraq, Iran, Syria and North Korea.
BIOHAZARD is the basic primer for how this all began, as well as a detailed indictment of those in Russia who coldly ignored both international treaties and simple respect for life in their quest for the single-cell killing machines they created.
Today, even two years after its initial publication, it remains a horrifying chronicle of cold-blooded preparation for mass murder.
By all accounts, Ken Alibeck himself is a charming individual, highly intelligent and possessed of an eloquent manner.
Without doubt he is a gifted scientist, as evidenced by his own personal lead role in developing a particularly lethal and persistent variety of anthrax which is still a prized part of the Russian bio-arsenal. Alibeck is reported also to be a man of conscience, as evidenced by his disillusionment and ultimate defection.
Would that his crisis of conscience had come far earlier, or at least had been shared by more of his Vector colleagues. Humanity would have been far safer that it has proven now to be.
As it is --and as BIOHAZARD so clearly shows us-- we are facing the barrel of a gun, loaded and cocked and aimed at the heart of human society by fanatics and the possibly insane.
Buy and read BIOHAZARD; if you already have, re-read it. No other book so clearly underlines the genesis of the threat facing the human species today.
Earl Merkel
Rating: 5
Summary: Everyone should know this.
Comment: When reading this book, remind yourself that things have moved on in 20 years.
Current day threat is far, far worse. Won't go into details, but the Cobra Event by Preston says why pretty well.
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Title: Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, William Broad ISBN: 0684871599 Publisher: Touchstone Press Pub. Date: 17 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston ISBN: 0345466632 Publisher: Fawcett Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Plague Wars: The Terrifying Reality of Biological Warfare by Tom Mangold, Jeff Goldberg ISBN: 0312263791 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The Cobra Event by Richard Preston ISBN: 0345409973 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The Biology of Doom: The History of America's Secret Germ Warfare Project by Ed Regis ISBN: 080505765X Publisher: Owl Books (NY) Pub. Date: 01 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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