"My belief is that the only weapon of mass destruction is a nuclear detonation," said Angelo Acquista, medical director for the New York mayor's Office of Emergency Management. He said biological and chemical weapons are more likely to kill a few people and frighten millions, as happened in the 1995 sarin-gas attack in a subway in Japan (12 deaths), and the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States (five deaths).
Acquista's new book, The Survival Guide, details 15 biological threats and 16 chemical threats, as well as nuclear weapons and "dirty bombs," which are relatively low-tech conventional explosives that disperse radioactive material.
"So much has been said about how bioweapons can injure people, but we've seen very little about how we have therapies and cures for most of the bioagents," he said. "I wrote this book to inoculate people with knowledge."
Scary scenarios are easy to find. A report Monday by three university researchers calculated that 2.2 pounds of anthrax released in the air above a city the size of New York could kill 120,000 people. However, the authors say that such mass destruction is not inevitable, noting that with an improved distribution plan, nearly everyone willing to take antibiotics could be saved.
Acquista says that even if terrorists released germs or deadly chemicals in a city like Philadelphia, most people would have a good chance of survival, and their odds improve the more they know and the less they panic.
Reassuring people is tricky, because no one can quantify this new risk. "We're in unknown waters now," Acquista said.
