Bioterrorism

These are just some of the questions to be addressed in this paper. We do not pretend to give the final and complete answers, as the field under study still has many grey areas and even some areas completely unexplored by scientific research.

           We aim to at least open the discussion on the subject of bioterrorism, without claiming to be the supreme authority in the field or the final voice. We do not even pretend that our work is relevant in terms of security solutions in such a complex and fluid security environment, where situations and states of affairs can change dramatically from year to year. However, our aim in this series of papers on bioterrorism is to clarify a number of notions, concepts and theoretical or practical issues necessary for the general public to understand what bioterrorism is all about and what we should expect in the coming years. At the time of writing, the COVID-19 crisis is still in full swing, despite some apparent improvements over the last few weeks. This may only be the beginning of a series of widening and deepening crises that are hitting human society, again and again confronting it with great existential questions. The current COVID-19 crisis is and will continue to be followed by severe economic and social impacts that are almost impossible to predict.

           Situations in which crises break out everywhere and in all sorts of ways, and situations in which the states of the world are gathering into increasingly isolated and hostile groups, are nothing other than the specific preconditions for the outbreak of world conflicts. We have no intention whatsoever of promoting defeatism or of creating and spreading alarmist rumours for who knows what obscure purposes. The situation is simply worrying, at times reaching alarming levels that go beyond mere fear of the future. The bioterrorist phenomenon is beginning to emerge more and more clearly as a concrete threat to the present and the near future. From this point of view, an effort will have to be made (or at least begun) to enlighten the general public on how this new threat could materialise.

Authors

Cătălin Hideg 

Daniela Georgiana Golea