Does North Korea Have Weaponized Anthrax?

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Sky News is reporting this morning that a North Korean soldier who defected to the South is immune to anthrax.  No big deal right? Well yes, actually it’s a very big deal. It means the guy was either exposed to anthrax or was vaccinated against it. And that means North Korea has anthrax. When anthrax occurs naturally, it’s a livestock disease. The treatment of anthrax isn’t medically difficult if the disease is caught early. A course of antibiotics can clear it up, BUT, and it’s a huge but, North Korea is poor, you may not think so with the amount of weaponry it displays and the rotund build of its leader, but in real people terms, it’s poor. North Koreans, particularly those not in major population centers are malnourished. Medical facilities are sparse and under-equipped. It’s highly unlikely that a lowly grunt in the massive North Korean army contracted the disease on mom and dad’s farm and the military establishment took pity on him and rustled up some highly prized antibiotics to treat him. Far more likely he was used as part of an experiment into the effects and treatment of anthrax. He is most likely the lucky one who was treated. Now some will say his defection was planned, that the North knew his immunity would be discovered so they allowed him to escape, propaganda, nothing more and nothing less. The fact is, it doesn’t matter if it was a set-up or not. The fact is, the man is immune to anthrax. What is anthrax? Medically, anthrax is a gram-positive rod-shaped bacillus called Bacillus anthraxis (source) that causes a serious, often fatal, disease in humans. In short, it’s a bacteria. It’s commonly found in soil and in livestock and wild animals across the globe. The bacteria is protected by a hard case. It can lie dormant for years and then when conditions are right can re-activate, causing infection in animals and humans. Back in 2016, an anthrax outbreak sickened 72 people after the disease came to the surface as permafrost melted. People can touch, eat, or breathe in anthrax spores. When this happens, the anthrax spores enter the human body and can turn into active bacteria. This is called exposure to anthrax. Not everybody who is exposed to anthrax will get sick. But many will, and as anthrax bacteria multiply inside the body, they can cause very serious illness. For example, 1 person in New York in 2006 and 2 people in Connecticut in 2007 were exposed to anthrax while making drums from imported animal skins. The skins contained anthrax spores. These people became extremely sick with anthrax disease. Getting anthrax this way is very unusual. In California, there has been no anthrax disease in humans since 1983, but there are cases of anthrax in farm animals (usually cattle) every few years. Terrorists could use anthrax to hurt people on purpose by releasing anthrax spores in public places. In 2001, letters containing powdered anthrax spores were sent through the U.S. mail, causing skin and lung anthrax in 22 people. Five people died, all due to lung anthrax. (source) More worrying still would be a deliberate release of aerosolized anthrax, and it’s such a possibility that keeps many talking heads in the D.O.D awake at night. Aerosolized simply means turned into a fine mist sometimes containing particles, by the use of a propellant. Think spraying anti-perspirant in the bathroom in a morning, the mist not only carries the particles of deodorant onto your armpits, the force of the propellant scatters it around. That’s exactly what would happen if anthrax was fired into the air with a propellant, a very small amount could go a long way further than the same amount sitting on a surface. Now imagine aerosolized anthrax was put into the ventilation system of a shopping mall, the propellant turnsit into a fine mist, the ventilation system transports it to the lungs of thousands of people out doing their New Year shopping…not a nice thought is it? Let’s take that one step further. A missile with an anthrax tip. Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun reports: North Korea has begun tests to load anthrax onto intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to an intelligence source here. The United States also has come to the same conclusion. The White House, in its new National Security Strategy issued Dec. 18, stated that North Korea is pursuing “nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that could threaten our homeland.” The source in South Korea said Pyongyang is conducting heat and pressure resistance tests to see whether anthrax germs can survive at temperatures of 7,000 degrees or higher, the level an ICBM encounters when it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere. There was an unconfirmed intelligence report that North Korea has already succeeded in such experiments. Washington had apparently been aware for some time that North Korea is culturing anthrax. Read More… What types of anthrax are there? Preparing yourself and your family against an anthrax attack isn’t easy. It’s odorless, tasteless and all but invisible in the air and there are no symptoms at all for up to six days. Once in the system the spores germinate and spread through the body. The first signs of exposure vary depending on how the anthrax was contracted. Cutaneous Anthrax If you have a wound, it can become infected. This is called cutaneous anthrax: Symptoms of cutaneous anthrax start 1 to 7 days after exposure: An itchy […]

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