How a Biological Attack Could Send America Into Anarchy in 6 Days

What would you rather go through? A nuclear war scenario or a biological pathogen that >> Okay, first >> because that could be that could be a long slow painful death. I mean, so I guess so could nuclear war if you weren’t in the blast zone. But >> I mean, one of the biggest takeaways that readers came back at me with after reading nuclear war as scenario was, I just want to die in the immediate blast because, you know, it’s like that Nikita Kruev quote, the survivors would envy the dead. In many ways, bio has that

same component probably because of what you said that you just think of having this like long slow painful death. But the reality I learned when researching and reporting this book is actually a little bit more frightening which is that so in nuclear war I take readers from nuclear launch to nuclear winter in 72 minutes.

 72 minutes not days, minutes. That’s how fast it could happen. According to Stratcom, in biological war, I take the readers from outbreak to anarchy in 6 days because anarchy and insurrection is the real threat. And that was shocking to learn again from the defense department. And you’re talking about in the homeland, anarchy, insurrection.

 A common phrase I came across when looking at declassified documents was fear of infection will send America spiraling into anarchy and insurrection. Fear of infection. There’s just something so visceral about about this idea of being infected. >> Do you prepare for this kind of stuff? I mean, what you know, what does your house look like? >> What is my bunker? >> What? >> You got a bunker? >> No, I just have a house, you know.

 Um I mean, >> you know, call me naive, but I just really think man-made problems, man-made solution, and I that’s the optimist in me. Um, but it is really helpful to know what you’re up against. It’s very helpful to know. Um, I mean, you want me to give you like the three basic ideas of of of bio to understand? >> Yeah.

>> Okay. Because like sometimes the I write for like everybody like just give it to me so I can understand it. That’s the questions I ask the smartest people in the room and it’s what I try to convey because if you try if you’re like too knowledgeable on a subject sometimes you lose your audience.

 So, and we all lived through the COVID pandemic. So, whenever you’re talking about a biological incident, three things. How might I get it? How that’s transmissibility. How might I get it? How deadly is it? Okay. COVID 1% death rate. One out of a 100 people died. Flu.1%. Okay. Third thing is, is there something I can take that will heal me? That’s called medical countermeasure.

Three basic components. And so through all of modern history and defense department, planning against biological war has been like looking at those three and creating lists of of of fears around them. And so when people don’t know any of that, you the fear like for example your tick situation, a tick is called a vectorbor disease.

 So it has to bite you for you to be infected. >> Mhm. >> Okay. >> Um the most deadly threat is an airborne pathogen and that’s what CO was. So something that can be breathed in the something that can linger in the room that’s a real problem and that’s the scenario I take readers through an airborne pathogen because that is what all of government fears it’s unstoppable.

 The weapon essentially becomes the human l the weapons delivery system becomes the human lungs. And you know and another really interesting thing to me learning about all this was that the uncertainty idea is so huge in public health. Remember when COVID happened for or maybe people don’t remember this cuz it’s kind of like easier to forget.

 M >> for the first 3 months the CDC who is in charge and the WHO who’s kind of in charge internationally were sending out tweets that said CO not airborne NOT in big letters. I reprint one of their tweets in the book. >> Nice >> COVID not airborne. It was airborne. It was airborne. And instead of admitting they were wrong or even out of the gate saying look we don’t know because they didn’t know to insist that then creates this kind of spiraling mistrust.

 Hence your opening question about trust. You know just going through you know the outline and it brought a lot of stuff to mind. I mean, we’ll get into the book here in just a second, but if you if you looked at ancestry.com or like any of these, you know, these uh um my mind’s going blank here, biometrics, you know, companies.

 And I mean, and who owns them? And I mean they could they could take your DNA that you paid to have tested >> and create a boweapon specifically designed to assassinate you. >> Absolutely. I mean individual targets are a whole other dirty game and historically that that has been going on for a very long time. The Soviets had huge assassination programs specifically, you know, creating like like bio poisons.

 Poisoning is like one of the oldest assassination ruses in the world. I mean, you can think of like a poison arrow or like somebody there was a there was an al-Qaeda guy that got assassinated. I want to say one of the like before the war on terror. He was um in Kosovo I believe and he Katab was his last name. >> Interesting. >> And he like opened up a letter or and and somehow licked it or closed the letter and that there was poison on it and he died.

 So there are these very specific assassinations that way. But what I think is the really big threat is the what what the defense department calls what FEMA calls what HHS or health and human services call because bio is a multi- multi- agency event which is even more complex and threatening because now you’re talking about multiple agencies and stove piping.

 But you have um you know you have airborne pathogens that can be gen or rather you have pathogens that can be genetically modified to your point to become airborne. Right. So um genetic modification of of path let’s start let me let me say one thing because the pathogen thing can kind of be like what the hell is that? Viruses and bacteria are both pathogens.

 Germs are everywhere. We have germs in our stomachs. Germs are not necessarily bad. When you call it a pathogen, that means it can be deadly. Virus and bacteria. COVID was a virus. Plague, which I use as the pathogen in my book, that scenario. Plague is a bacteria. Plague was a boweapon of yestery year because and then a medical countermeasure was invented to fight plague because it’s a bacteria.

 So antibiotics kill the plague. Now with genetic modification you can tweak the plague pathogen which is called urinia pestus so that it is immune to the antibiotics. That’s where we’re into some very sinister genetic modifications that most people don’t know about, don’t want to know about, but probably should know a little bit about.

I talk a lot about training, nutrition, and mindset. But if your sleep is off, you’re leaving a lot on the table. Recovery doesn’t happen while you’re grinding. It happens when you’re asleep. That’s when your body rebuilds, resets, and actually absorbs the work you put in. And one of the biggest factors in sleep quality is temperature.

 If you’re too hot, you end up tossing and turning and not getting deep sleep. That’s why I started using Chiliped 2.0 by SleepMe. Chiliped 2.0 is a water-based mattress topper that lets you control your sleep temperature from 55° to 115°. And it works with a mattress you already have.

 I love how simple and effective it is. Plus, the new version has a redesigned dock. It’s quieter, the tank is bigger, and the topper unzips, so it’s easy to wash. And the nightstand remote is huge. Each side of the bed gets its own thermostat, so if one person runs hot and the other runs cold, you can each set your own temperature. It even detects when you get into bed and automatically starts your sleep schedule.

 For me, falling asleep and staying asleep is the whole game. Chilipad helps make the room, the bed, and the temperature work for recovery instead of against it. Visit www.sleep.me/srs to get up to $255 off your Chilipad 2.0 with code SRS. This special offer is available for Shaun Ryan Show listeners and only for a limited time.

 Order it today with free shipping and try it out for 30 days. You can return it for free if you don’t like it with their sleep trial. Visit www.sleepslep.me/srs and see why cold sleep is your ultimate ally in performance and recovery >> because it helps you know what you’re up against. >> I mean, it’s scary. You know, it’s from what I understand, it’s a lot a lot cheaper.

 uh to produce a bioweapon a lot easier to sneak it in the country, a lot easier to get it released. I mean, I don’t I don’t I’m not a scientist or anything, but you know, you see um you know, all the things that are being created right now. >> Mhm. >> The direwolf, the woolly mammoth supposedly is coming back.

 We had Charles Hoskinson on who’s one of the scientists. Have you heard about the plants that they’re developing? >> They’re big. They’re making bioluminescent plants that can glow whatever color they want, which is uh amazing. You know, some of the use I mean, he was saying, you know, you could put these things around put these plants around a nuclear power plant or or or whatever.

 And if there’s if there’s any radiation leaking, then the plants will >> will glow red. And he showed me pictures of what these things look like. We couldn’t put it on the on the episode because it was so early on. >> But I mean, it’s it it’s like something you would see in that movie, The Avatar. >> It’s like science fiction except for it’s science fact.

>> It’s Yeah, it’s real. And this is, you know, when you’re talking about these kind of modifications to mother nature, it brings up this idea which I think is super important and is kind of at the heart of all of this debate, discussion, science moving forward, which is dual use.

 So yes, if you’re able to create plants that can detect radiation leakage, that’s another form of an intelligence vehicle like what’s called Mazin, you know, like we have sniffer technology. We have we, you know, we can test sewer water. We can same as we can see, you know, explosions from space. That’s a signals intelligence.

 So ma measurement and signature intelligence called mason would be the plants and that would be terrific for us because it’s a way of you know understanding what an adversary is up to in the biomed world. The reason you have genetic modification the reason this all began and by the way it was kind of discovered invented in 1971 in a lab in California at Stanford.

 um genetic modification. So the idea of those scientists, they certainly weren’t weapons engineers. They were like, we’re going to be able to create incredible medical counter measures in the same way that penicellin itself was a medical counter measure and stopped infection. You know, so many soldiers died in World War II because of wound infection.

Penicellin comes along. Fantastic. you’ve taken, you’ve knocked out all of so many bacteria deaths. So that’s the idea if you’re, you know, a doctor, if you’re trying to do good in the world or trying to kind of keep the world in balance. But the other side of dual use is weaponizing something. And one of the original sort of components I saw after I wrote nuclear war and I was like, am I really going to touch bio? And I had had many sources saying to me, Annie, you’ve got to write about it because it’s more

threatening. There’s a threat spectrum diagram that I found an unclassified version of it in looking through the defense department documents and it shows all the weapons of mass destructions on a scale. And of course, nuclear weapons are at the worst end of because they are the most destructive. But bioweapons are considered by the defense department the greatest overall threat >> really >> greatest overall threat.

 That is shocking that needs to be discussed. >> Yeah. >> And it’s because the bar for entry is so low. You know, think about what think about we’ve had nuclear technology for 80 years now. Weapons technology. There’s an incredibly low bar for I mean high bar for entry. You can’t just make a nuclear bomb in your basement.

>> Boweapons. >> People will now tell you that like a high school student with limited biology can essentially do some genetic tweaks to create this kind of thing. So the accident absolutely that is that sounds alarmist. It’s true. That is like worthy of a discussion in and of itself. That’s basically everybody.