As we navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire world has become aware of the impact a pandemic has on the way we live and do business. While COVID-19 is believed to be a natural outbreak of a new coronavirus and not the product of bioterrorism, it shows what a widespread pandemic can do to our society, spreading from a single village to every continent in just 36 hours. The United States has struggled to slow the spread of COVID-19, but in South Korea, scientists used lessons learned during the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States to develop a plan for distribution of drugs, should a bioterrorism attack occur. The bioterrorism plan was the starting point for a drive-through testing plan for the COVID-19 pandemic, featuring testing centers all over the country and an easy-to-use app to locate them. Their quick response helped contain the coronavirus by identifying carriers and quarantining them before it spread further. COVID-19 gives us all the opportunity to learn from a worldwide pandemic and prepare for the possibility of bioterrorism attacks in the future.
Then & Now
Bioterrorism may seem like a new danger, but it has been used in warfare and terrorism since the sixth century B.C., when Assyrians poisoned their enemy’s wells with fungus. Over the past couple of decades, it has become a more common threat. Extremist groups, such as ISIS and al-Qaeda, are studying the effects of the current pandemic and the ways it is weakening the world economy and governments. In addition to determining ways to prey on the weaknesses created by COVID-19, they may develop plans to create biological attacks on their enemies, in hopes of recreating the same worldwide impact as the coronavirus. Fortunately, terroristic plots often require knowledge and infrastructure that is beyond the means of many terrorist groups, so we have not experienced any widespread damage from bioterrorist attacks to date, but bioterrorism is a real possibility that could have a tremendous impact on the way we live.
What is Bioterrorism?
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For the past 20 years, Innovative Engineering Inc. (IEI) has provided security engineering services to help protect individual buildings and entire campuses through blast and progressive collapse-resistant design, as well as helping secure these facilities from terroristic and wartime threats of chemical, biological and radiation (CBR). IEI works with the Interagency Security Committee (ISC), Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) criteria, designing for terroristic and wartime threats. In addition, on behalf of the government, IEI provides peer reviews of other security consultants’ work to ensure its integrity. Highly trained and experienced in comprehensive security risk assessments, IEI representatives also conduct routine training seminars on security criteria.
