Bioterrorism and Biological Warfare

This important, disturbing, and timely book focuses on the use of disease and germs as a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) and the threat bioterrorism poses in an increasingly unpredictable and volatile future for the world.

For context, it traces developments from the earliest primitive but effective days of infectious rams, poison-tipped arrows, and plague-infected corpses used as toxic, disease-spreading projectiles, to the twenty-first-century industrial-scale weaponization of biomedicine.

Paul Chrystal shows how biological weapons and acts of bioterrorism are especially effective at instilling terror, panic, death, famine, and economic ruin on a large scale, shredding public confidence in governments and civilization itself.

For the disaffected, lethal biological agents are comparatively easy to manufacture and obtain, and they have the benefit of being almost invisible, easy, and quick to administer in lethal quantities through a variety of discreet delivery systems. Just what the terrorist wants.

We explore the sinister connection between the industrial-scale proliferation of biological weaponry by state actors and the greater opportunities these growing bio-arsenals give to the increasingly scientific-minded and determined terrorist to manufacture his or her weapon of choice, taking advantage also of the state-of-the-art sophisticated delivery systems.

The epilogue analyses the concerted but groundless 2022-2023 disinformation campaign conducted by Russia, with support from China, relating to the claim that public health facilities in Ukraine are 'secret U.S.-funded biolabs', purportedly developing biological weapons.

Bioterrorism and Biological Warfare is authored by Paul Chrystal, who has written a number of books on conflict and military history. His works include the best-selling British Army of the Rhine: The BAOR 1945-1993 (2018); Northern Ireland - The Troubles from the Provos to the Det 1968-1998 (2018); Women at War in the Ancient World (2016), Roman Military Disasters (2015); War in Greek Mythology (2020) and Rome: Republic into Empire - The Civil Wars (2019), all published by Pen & Sword.

He is also the author of A History of Britain in 100 Objects (2022); Wars and Battles of the Roman Republic (2015) and Wars and Battles of Ancient Greece (2018). His Biowarfare and Bioterrorism: Disease as a Weapon of War is due for publication in 2023. See his full list at www.paulchrystal.com.