Antrhax, Bacilus anthracis, is a bacterial pathogen. This rod-shaped microbe is commonly found in soil and is ingested by sheep, cows, horses, and goats; thus, it is labeled as a vetrinary disease. Anthrax is what's called a "gram positive" bacterium. This means it has the type of cell walls which are harmless, unlike the cell walls of "gram negative" bacteria, which attack tissue. Therefore, anthrax can only attack tissue by producing a special toxin which it excretes. One cell or spore does not produce enough toxin to start an infection. Anthrax is deadly in its spore form. When environmental conditions are detrimental to the bacteria, the rod shaped pathogen desicates. Soon after, the cell breaks and begins sporulating. In this stage, the bacteria can remain dorment, surviving for decades. Then, when environmental conditions are favorable, the spore germinates and returns to its rod shaped form and begins forming clusters. Since the human body acts as a culture medium for the bacteria, anthracis is not likely to sporulate inside the human body; due to this, anthrax is not contagious since a person wil
Despite the mass hysteria over anthrax, anthrax is not a biological weapon of mass destruction. It's inefficiency and difficulty in controlling the bacteria renders it almost useless. Anthrax will never be used successfully as a terrorist weapon, and probably never as a military weapon. It has to be converted to spores suspended in the air, which is technically very difficult; and the lethality is nowheres near the terror that it is made out to be. It is not 100% lethal as often claimed. Wool sorters inhale anthrax spores in small quantities continually 150 - 700 per hour.and only if they get a large dose does an infection get started. Weaponizing anthrax faces a plethora of obsticles, one of being aerosolizing the spores. The spores would have to be converted to a dry powder, because a liquid would create globs which would fall to the ground rather than staying suspended in the air. To create a powder, the spores would first have to be washed several times in an array of very large and expensive centrifuges. Then a drying apparatus would have to be used; and it would require spraying a mist into a vacuum
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