A disaster team practices for possible biological attack

November 20, 1998
Web posted at: 11:43 p.m. EST (0443 GMT)

STANFORD, California (CNN) -- Ever since the only use of atomic bombs 50 years ago leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, international leaders and scientists have managed to hold nuclear weapons in check.

Yet today the world could face more cataclysmic threats from biological and chemical weapons; and they may be more difficult to keep in check, say scientific and government authorities who gathered recently at Stanford University's Hoover Institute to examine their threat.

"The high-end scenarios, the ones that kill the most number of people, or cause the most fatalities, are the open-air releases of chemical or biological agents," says Dean Wilkening of Stanford.

Already the world has had some pretty close calls. Three years ago the Aum Shinrikyo sect released sarin gas in a Tokyo subway, killing 12 and sickening 5,000. Experts say only minor mistakes prevented the attack from being even worse.

Easy access to information and advances in technology have worried many about the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons.

"For biological weapons in particular, you don't need big facilities. You need nothing more than what one would consider a microbrewery in your backyard to brew the bugs," says Sidney Drell, also of Stanford.

Whether it's backyard bacteria or chemicals combined in a garage, they pose a difficult threat "not merely because of their lethality, but because of the profound difficulties of determining where someone is building them, using them, disseminating or even working on them," says biophysicist Steven Block.

Some emergency response teams, like one in San Jose, California, have drilled specifically for biochemical disasters. But their training may offer little protection against a carefully orchestrated biological attack.

Says Dr. Margaret Hamburg of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department: "There's going to be an exposure, a silent exposure. And then people will start to get sick. Those people will now be spread out, all across the nation, potentially, if the exposure occurred on a site like Grand Central Station."

John Gannon, a senior intelligence officer, calls chemical and biological weapons a clear and present danger for the United States.

"America's prestige and high profile as a global power make us the world's biggest and most dispersed target." A target that so far has little defense against the emerging threat.

CNN's Don Knapp contributed to this report.