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PaperclipPerfector  17d ago (text post)   916 thread views

Transnational Thursday for October 31, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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To be clear, while generally regulated as a biological weapon due to its origin (it's extracted from the castor plant), ricin is a toxin rather than something that replicates; one is poisoned with ricin, not infected. Anthrax, however, is weaponised as viable spores, which do infect people and replicate inside them (but as noted, anthrax doesn't spread living to living; it's corpses of people/animals that have died of anthrax that spread it to others).

Bioweapons that actually threaten epidemic are generally known to be For Crazy People Only (because, well, once you release one of those it's pot luck whether it comes back to infect your guys too). Stuff like plague (ISIL played around with this a few years back, IIRC, but thankfully they only killed themselves with it) and smallpox (extinct, but the tech exists to bring it back) fall into this category.

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