Less-Fictional Fiction

Tom Clancy goes to the White House in this thriller of political terror and global disaster. The American political situation takes a disturbing turn as the President, Congress, and Supreme Court are obliterated when a Japanese terrorist lands a 747 on the Capitol. Meanwhile the Iranians are unleashing an Ebola virus threat on the country. Jack Ryan, CIA agent, is cast in the middle of this maelstrom. Because of a recent sex scandal, Ryan was appointed vice president, a slot he doesn’t hold for long when he lands in the Chief Executive’s chair. He goes after the Iranians and then tries to piece together the country and his life the only way he knows how—with a fury that we’ve grown accustomed to in Clancy’s intricate, detailed, and accurate stories of warfare and intrigue. - Executive Orders by Tom Clancy

The most informative technically oriented passages of the book deal with the Iranian germ-warfare attack on the United States itself. Clancy is to be forgiven for presenting us with one more rendition of the ghastly effects of the Ebola virus (an innocent nun, the absolute bastards!), and he does in fact perform some service by demoting this and other superdiseases from the status of apocalyptic agents to just more nasty bugs. Unlike what films like “The Hot Zone” would have you believe, epidemics really do not spread all over the world like a quart of fuel oil spilled on a map. Diseases that are both highly contagious and rapidly fatal also usually burn themselves out quickly. Most serious infections, including Ebola and AIDS, actually are not highly contagious at all, and can be controlled through their means of transmission. That is why germ warfare is really a terror weapon. - John J. Reilly

Kay’s list is chilling. It includes a secret network of labs and safe houses within the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi foreign intelligence service; bioorganisms kept in scientists’ homes, including a vial of live botulinum toxin; and my favorite, “new research on BW [biological weapons]-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin” — all “not declared to the U.N.” I have been to medical school, and I have never heard of Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever. I don’t know one doctor in 100 who has. It is a rare disease, and you can be sure that Hussein was not seeking a cure. - Charles Krauthammer

Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is a viral disease caused by CCHF virus. The virus, first isolated in the Congo, is transmitted by ticks, principally of the genus Hyalomma, with intermediate vertebrate hosts varying with the tick species. The disease, next found in the Crimea, occurs also in the Middle East, the Balkans, the former USSR, and eastern China. In 1969 it was recognised that the pathogen causing Crimean haemorrhagic fever was the same as that responsible for an illness identified in 195 6 in the Congo, and linkage of the 2 place-names resulted in the current name for the disease and the virus. Little is known about variations in the virus properties over the huge geographic area involved. Humans become infected through tick bites, crush ing an infected tick, or at the slaughter of viremic livestock. Even in epidemics, cases do not show narrow clustering and person-to-person spread is rare. CCHF would probably be delivered by aerosol if used as a BW agent. - Congo-Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever

The current fatality rate is around 30%. Someone wanting to use it as a terror weapon would probably be looking for a way to increase that. Which leads us to Rainbow Six…

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Less-Fictional Fiction

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Great Fleas And Little Fleas

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