Biohazard - Softcover

Ken Alibek

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099414643 ISBN 13: 9780099414643

Publisher: Random House, 2000

Synopsis

"We thought we had lived through the terror of a nuclear war, but something far more ominous was brewing in the Soviet Union - a biological armageddon from which no one would escape. Dr. Alibek has emerged from the world's deadliest labs to tell a story that is as important as it is chilling. Sometimes the truth is far worse than fiction. No one can afford not to read this book" - Robin Cook, bestselling author of "Coma". "As the top scientist in the Soviet Union's biowarfare program and the inventor of the world's most powerful anthrax, Dr. Ken Alibek has stunned the highest levels of the U. S. Government with his revelations. Now, in a calm, compelling, utterly convincing voice, he tells the world what he knows. Modern biology is producing weapons that in killing power may exceed the hydrogen bomb. Ken Alibek describes them with the intimate knowledge of a top weaponeer" - Richard Preston, author of "The Hot Zone".

About this title

Review

In this fast-paced memoir, Ken Alibek combines cutting-edge science with the narrative techniques of a thriller to describe some of the most awful weapons imaginable. The result will remind readers of The Hot Zone, Richard Preston's smart bestseller about the Ebola virus. That book focuses on the dangers of a freak accident; Biohazard shows how disease can become a deliberate tool of war. Alibek, once a top scientist in the Soviet Union's biological weapons program, describes putting anthrax on a warhead and targeting a city on the other side of the world. "A hundred kilograms of anthrax spores would, in optimal atmospheric conditions, kill up to three million people in any of the densely populated metropolitan areas of the United States," he writes. "A single SS-18 [missile] could wipe out the population of a city as large as New York."

Chilling passages like these, plus discussions of proliferation and terrorism, make Biohazard a harrowing book, but it also has a human side. Alibek, who defected to the United States, describes the routine danger of his work: "A bioweapons lab leaves its mark on a person forever." An unending stream of vaccinations has destroyed his sense of smell, afflicted him with allergies, made it impossible to eat certain kinds of food, and "weakened my resistance to disease and probably shortened my life." But it didn't take away his ability to tell an astonishing story. --John J. Miller

From the Back Cover

Advance praise for Biohazard

"As the top scientist in the Soviet biowarfare program and the inventor of the world's most powerful anthrax, Ken Alibek has stunned the highest levels of the U.S. government with his revelations. Now, in a calm, compelling, utterly convincing voice, he tells the world what he knows. Modern biology is producing weapons that in killing power may exceed the hydro-gen bomb. Ken Alibek describes them with the intimate knowledge of a top weaponeer."--Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone

"An important and fascinating look into a terrifying world of which we were blissfully unaware. While we all grew up with the anxiety of the threat of a nuclear winter, little did we know there was an equally horrific menace from biotechnology. Biohazard takes you behind the scenes of the Soviet Union's clandestine bioweapons program. Read and be amazed. . . ."--Robin Cook, author of Contagion

"This is a gripping book. The hum of machines that kept deadly airborne germs away from the scientists and their families can be heard in the background. The technical details are vivid and terrible even as the human story unfolds. It was fascinating--and chilling--to peer inside this awesome war machine. I worked for a dozen years to develop defenses against a Soviet threat that was largely unknown. To see its full scope made me realize how overpowered we would have been if it had ever been used. Military casualties would have been incredible, but civilians would have suffered equally as contagious diseases raced through cities and towns. Some of the Soviet 'advances,' such as inducing antibiotic resistance in classical pathogens like plague, would have changed the practice of medicine forever."
--C. J. Peters, author of Virus Hunter, former deputy commander of USAMRIID, now at the CDC

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0099414643
• ISBN 13: 9780099414643
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 330