Washington, D.C.
The CIA warned last week that terrorists were more likely to use biological weapons than nuclear ones to cause mass destruction in the next 15 years. In an exercise in Washington, D.C., a dozen U.S. and European diplomats found that they were powerless to stop the spread of smallpox after fictional terrorists linked to al Qaida unleashed the highly contagious disease in New York and four European cities. While the diplomats bickered over whether to close schools and borders and how to use limited stocks of vaccine, the scourge spread quickly, and threatened to claim 660,000 victims. “Nobody is ready,” said Jerzy Buzek, a former prime minister of Poland, who participated in the exercise.
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