Anthrax (disease)
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Anthrax, also called splenic fever, is a disease. It is very dangerous, and often leads to death.
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[change] Catching it
Anthrax is most common in animals, but people can also catch it if they come close infected animals.
[change] Anthrax
[change] Types of anthrax
There are 89 different kinds (strains) of anthrax. One of them, the Ames strain, was used against the United States in 2001 as a chemical weapon.
[change] Treatments for anthrax
Treatment for anthrax are often antibiotics, such as penicillin.
[change] Uses of anthrax
Anthrax is generally used with the Russians who made many of the strains during the Cold War era to use against the United States if war was ever to brake out. One of the symptoms that came with catching Anthrax were large black lumps and then extremely ugly and deep looking scabs that would spread across the body and at that point the person/victim is as good as dead. It can be stopped but it is very difficult.
[change] History
[change] Outbreaks
At one point on April 2, 1979, there was a leak at one of the plants just outside of Sverdlovsk that made anthrax during the Cold War. 94 people were affected and 64 of those people were killed. The USSR blamed the deaths on another strain of anthrax that the people caught by digesting infected meat.
[change] Consequences of the outbreak
Investigators from the United States and others found the story believable but during the Carter administration the case was opened again and searched and found flaws and shared their supsicions with the public, but once again, the USSR denied it and still blamed it on the meat because of fear that they would be found out that they were making chemical weapons which violated the treaty of Biological Weapons Convention and an investigation was immediately conducted by other countries to see if their suspicions were true or not.
[change] How it was hidden
The KGB had conducted a very throughout "cleansing" or confiscating all surviving records from all hospitals and other areas with recorded acounts and descriptions of the anthrax. The scientist made do and were able to track down survivors and people who witnessed the anthrax {such as nurses in hospitals}. Their results showed that on the day of the incident all the victims were clustered along a straight line downwind from the military facility. Livestock in the same area also died of anthrax. After completing their investigation, the team concluded the outbreak was caused by a release of an aerosol of anthrax pathogen at the military facility. But they were unable to determine what caused the release or what specific activities were conducted at the facility. According to an interview with Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov, former first deputy chief for Biopreparat (the civilian part of the Soviet biological weapons program), the anthrax airborne leak had been caused by workers at the military facility who forgot to replace a filter in an exhaust system. The mistake was realized shortly after, but by then some anthrax spores were released. Alibekov says if the wind had been in the opposite direction that day--toward the city of Sverdlovsk--the death rate could have been in the hundreds of thousands.
To this day, Western inspectors have not been allowed to visit this military facility.
