Flutterby™! : The Radiant Path of Madness

There has been talk lately of supressing publication of papers on Bird Flu that might suggest ways to weaponize the disease. Be that as it may, we don't really know how complicated it would be for a terrorist group in the Tora Bora or some basement in Ossetia to pull off a biological or chemical attack. A paper referenced by BoingBoing tells how it works in real life, sortta. This longish PDF from the Center for a New American Security analyzes the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway carried out by the apocalyptic Aum Shenrikyo cult in Japan. It's a fascinating story of a group of technically savvy people who worked for years developing biological and chemical weapons to hasten the end of the world. Fortunately most of their attacks failed, but they did kill a number of people even before the fianl attack, which killed 13 and injured 6,000.

Oddly enough, the main problem isn't technical, but managerial. If you want to keep the projecdt secret, you have to limit it to the inner circle, even if they don't have the primary skills to pull it off. This will surely hold up an Al Queda plots.