Today, Explained - Weapons of mass infection

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

A new book imagines the chaos that could unfold if a biological weapon were released — either accidentally or on purpose. This episode was produced in partnership with Vox's Future Perfect. It was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Miranda Kennedy with help from Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by Patrick Boyd and David Tatasciore, and hosted by Noel King. A person wearing an orange protective suit and a gas mask is seen at an event to promote the German government's new initiative to strengthen civil defence nationwide. Photo by Maryam Majd/Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The investigative journalist Annie Jacobson made a name for herself writing deeply reported books about things you kind of think are conspiracies, Area 51, ESP, and finding they are not entirely conspiracies. In 2024, Jacobson tried something different. She has lots of high-level sources in government. And she conducted years of interviews asking what would happen in the event of a nuclear war? How would it play out? Her book, Nuclear War, a scenario, was a work of imagination. It was fiction. But she'd done so much research and she'd talk to so many people that what emerged was a terrifying and realistic look at how things might actually play out. And those people in the know on nukes gave her a piece of advice. After you look at nuclear, you have to look at bio. Bio warfare.

And so Annie is back to terrorize us with a new book. Coming up on today, Explain from Box, in the event of a biological war. I'm pretty confident talking into a mic. Hey, I'm doing it right now. But home projects, I second-guess everything. Is that noise normal? Is that water damage? And who should I even call?

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with claims paid back in as a little as two days. Go to fetchpet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save. Today explained I'm Noel King. Annie Jacobson, author of Biological War, a scenario for this book. You talked to dozens of officials at places like the Pentagon. How does your book start? The inciting incident in the book is an accident at a biosafety level for shorthand,

BSL4 lab in Siberia, in Russia, and it's called Vector. And it's an actual BSL4 lab, the highest classification, and right behind that BSL3, which is also dealing with incredibly dangerous pathogens like anthrax, plague, hauntavirus, and many others. And there was an actual accident and explosion there in 2019. In that real-life incident, a deadly pathogen was not released that we know of. But of course, in biological war, a scenario, a deadly pathogen is released. And it's a form of pneumonic plague, which is a nightmare pathogen and sits at the top of the tier one select agent list of the CDC. And so in the first act of the book, I show the scrambling of the intelligence community and the Defense Department trying desperately to determine if something got out and what it is that got out. Of course they reach out to their partners in Moscow.

But in this scenario, nothing comes of that. And the release of the pathogen widens. And so once you have escape and you do not. have mitigation, which has to happen in the first 24, 48 hours. Now you have a situation which is unstoppable. The thing that you say, this is an unstoppable scenario now, what is it? A plague itself, of course, conjures up images and ideas of the bubonic plague of the 14th century, the black death. That killed between one half and one third of Europe. The bacteria is called Yersinia pestis. And pneumonic plague is the airborne version of

plague. The problem with an airborne pathogen is that because the delivery system is the human lungs, it can move very quickly from a scientist in that lab who now has Yersinia pestis in his lungs out to the general public. And that is precisely what happens in the scenario. And then how does it spread from there? This city in Russia, where this lab, where this BSL4 lab is, it's not a massive city, right? It's not Moscow. It could be worse. What happens once it is in the lungs of people who work in that lab or the janitor who was cleaning the lab that night? That's right. Well, suddenly it's in everyone's lungs. And those people go out into their community. And even though Coltsovo, the small science town where Vector is located is a small town. It is just 12 miles from Novo Sabirsk,

which is the third largest city in Russia. And also, there happens to be in this scenario a group of international hunters on a hunting trip in that area who come across a dying scientist in the snow. One of them gives him CPR, being the good Samaritan that he is, and loaubes. And behold, those travelers suddenly are now getting on an airplane in Novo Sabirsk, flying home to where they reside in five or six of the continents. What happens to the people who get infected? What makes this form of plague so novel or so dangerous? I pull this information from actual facts of the Soviet Cold War era biological weapons program.

that we know about from Soviet defectors. And I want you to keep in mind, this is 40 years ago when gene editing was in its infancy. But there are two things specifically that the Soviet bioweapons engineers did to plague. Their idea was to create a super plague weapon. And one of them has never been revealed before. They were working to insert the gene for euphoria,

into the plague pathogen. And you might say, why on earth would anyone do this? Well, it goes like this. When you get a disease, a pneumonic type disease, pneumonia, tuberculosis, you want to go home and get under the covers because you feel terrible. And when you do that, you're infecting a lot less people than you would. if a gene for euphoria had been inserted into the pathogen, which would make you feel terrific,

which would make you want to go out and socialize with people, perhaps even go to a crowded disco. And the other thing that the Soviet scientists were working on was a way to defeat medical countermeasures, but with an added component of psychological distress, they inserted a gene into the pathogen that would be triggered by the taking of antibiotics. And that second pathogen would give you encephalitis, which is a swelling of the brain. The psychological part of it, according to the Soviet scientists, was this.

They said, the idea. And this was because during the Cold War, the Russians hated the Americans so much. They wanted the last thought of the person dying of what they thought was pneumonic plague, but would in fact be encephalitis. They wanted their last thought to be, my government and Western medicine has failed me. How quickly does this turn from people on planes going to places where we wish to God they would not go, but they're going home? into mass panic. I am at home in my house in Washington, D.C., and I am now aware that something is spreading. Mother Nature's mnemonic plague has a tiny window of incubation, but in the situation that we

are talking about in the 21st century, where gene editing is possible, and other edits to bacteria and viruses that makes them more transmissible or more virulent, that window can be seen. sped up even faster. You know, I think often, those of us who try to remain optimistic or thinking there's a way to stop it, like if this were a movie, and you remember during the COVID pandemic, people would point to movies where there was an outbreak and then the government gets under control and then, okay, maybe a lot of people die, but we're all right. That is not where your book is headed. How does your scenario end? So in the book, I take readers from outbreak, to anarchy in six days.

Wow. Anarchy is what will happen according to Pentagon Wargaming and pandemic planning. And this is because fear of infection becomes a secondary weapon, if you will. People begin to behave like they are about to die, which is most certainly underpinning everyone's mind. And so after those first six days, the principles committee, the president's biodefense committee must make a decision. The president has to declare the Insurrection Act, which allows the military to step in as a law enforcement agency. What happens to the president really blew my mind as a reporter? He goes somewhere in the United States very far away from everyone because the idea, the goal, is to make sure that the president doesn't get the airborne pathogen in his lungs.

So maybe I'll leave you with an image. Imagine the president sitting alone in a room, a few secret service outside the door. the military aid with the nuclear football and the president alone in a room wearing a gas mask. Yeah, in the book, the people who survive are the ones who have gas masks, and it's like everyone else is gone. And look, we hope we never get to that. Yeah.

By all means. But yes, the Pentagon has issued 1.7 million gas masks to its military personnel. And that is a spooky thought in and of itself, coupled with the idea that the military is predominantly male. There's something like 17% women in the military. And so unlike the nuclear war scenario in which I had science-based nuclear winter theory to work from, In biological war, nothing has been written on the science record about what it might be after. And so the one imaginative part of the book is the very end where I write about biological twilight.

And I write about who would be left based on the gas mask idea, based on the people that would be qualified, if you will, to survive. Anarchy insurrection. And it is a very, very ugly world. Annie Jacobson, her book is Biological War, A Scenario. When we come back, biological weapons are planet killers. How and why did we end up making these things? Support for today explained comes from Built. There's a whole system in your brain that is nicknamed the Rewards System, or so they say. Built took a page out of the brain's book and created a reward system for when you make your housing payment. Because why not? Built started out as a renter rewards program and has expanded. Members now can earn points on mortgage payments, too. Every housing payment earns you points that you can use toward flights with top travel partners like United and Hyatt, lift rides, Amazon purchases, so much more.

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Viagra is a registered trademark of Vietris, specialty LLC. HIMS is not affiliated with or endorsed by Beatrice. It's today explained. I'm Noel King. We're back with Annie Jacobson. She's the author of the terrifying new book, Biological War, A Scenario. Annie, how long have biological weapons been around? You know, it's a dark and nefarious and odious subject. They have been around for as long as war has been recorded if you really consider poisoning, catapulting, flea-infested bodies. over castle walls in the medieval days. And throughout the Cold War, all of the major powers

were actively developing biological weapons, including the United States. And of course, biological weapons are living weapons. But we did at some point outlaw them, right? That's right. Very mysteriously, in 1969, President Nixon just unilaterally declared that the arsenal was going to be destroyed. I have decided that the United States of America will renounce the use of any form of deadly biological weapons that either kill or incapacitated.

This is the burial ground for the remains of America's germ warfare arsenal. The Army claims every last microorganism has been sterilized and scattered in this plot of soil at Pine Bluff Arsenal, Arkansas. Within two years, we destroyed all of our seedstocks. We destroyed all of our production material at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and we completely got out of the biological warfare business. But at the same time that all of the nations of the world were working to sign this treaty called the Biological Weapons Convention Treaty, the BWC for shorthand, everyone was working to sign it.

The Russians, Soviet Russia at the time, signed it, and with its kind of, fingers crossed behind its back, immediately began work on an illegal biological weapons program that was colossal. And this went without notice, without any idea really, by the CIA and the Pentagon all the way until 1989 when one of the Soviet scientists named Vladimir Pesach had a crisis of conscience. And he defected. And he talked it. And he talked. told British intelligence all about the program and everyone was shocked. You debriefed him, didn't you? Yes, indeed.

And what were the headlines of his revelations? The Soviet Union had a huge, sophisticated, expensive, extensive and highly secret biological weapons program throughout the entire Soviet Union, which had been going on uninterrupted since the early 1970s. And so this is something that is happening, even though it is illegal. Where have we seen biological weapons used of late? Maybe the most important example of a biological attack in the past, certainly here in the United States, are the anthrax attacks, which occurred right after 9-11. In just a week's time, we have had four confirmed cases of anthrax, all with media connections and a number of anthrax scares as well.

The U.S. House of Representatives is closing offices today until Tuesday to allow a complete sweep for traces of anthrax. Weaponized anthrax was sent through the mail to U.S. senators and a number of media outlets. Anybody who puts poison in mail is a terrorist. Anybody who tries to affect the lives of our good citizen is evil. Another day of germ warfare and still no sign, the worst case of bioterrorism in this country is close to being solved. So five people ended up dying. 22 got sick in four states. But that really kicked off what can be considered the biological military industrial complex, if you will, which led to this buildup in biosafety level four BSL four laps,

around the world today. Billions have been spent on developing and stockpiling vaccines, but more labs mean more people who could deliver classified information into the wrong hands. There are 110 BSL4 labs around the world.

There are more than 3,500 BSL3 labs. So those labs exist, they are there. They are official, i.e. in your book, there is a map of where they exist. I found that weirdly somewhat comforting, mainly because I don't live too near any of them. It makes me wonder, if there is a threat that one of these things is going to be

released, either accidentally or deliberately, where is the threat coming from? Is it a rogue nation? Are there underground BSL4 labs that I don't know about? Is it terrorists? Is it a government getting angry and doing something, you know, potentially world ending? Certainly bad actors getting a hold of a biological weapon was the great concern of the post-anthrax situation. And that is why so much emphasis was put on bioterrorism. Now, I avoided that specifically in the book. In other words, I didn't have a terrorist organization using a biological weapon, which many war games game out. And I didn't even have an attack.

Rather, I had an incident. I had a lab leak because I have learned in the decade since that that really is the greatest concern. So many of these BSL 3 and 4 labs are in places without a lot of security, including in countries where there are wars going on. Is it possible that somebody is making a biological weapon in a basement somewhere? Like, I like knowing where the labs are, but could there be? be somebody doing this off books and we don't know about it? Absolutely. And another

disturbing document I came across unclassified in the Pentagon was a threat spectrum that showed weapons of mass destruction in terms of destructiveness. And of course, nuclear weapons sit at the far end of the spectrum. They are the most destructive. But very close behind were biological weapons. and even more startling was the notion that biological weapons present the greatest overall threat. That is a quote for precisely the reasons you mention. Nuclear weapons have an extremely high barrier for entry. You have to have fissile material. You have to have weapons grade uranium or plutonium.

You have to have a weapons delivery system like an ICBM or a submarine. You have to have a triggering mechanism. That creates a situation where most nuclear weapons, all nuclear weapons, if you will, are in the hands of a command and control system within a nation. Biological weapons have no such barriers. In fact, the barriers for entry are getting lower, literally by the day. You now can have a situation where someone with very limited, knowledge of biology can create a biological weapon in their basement with the use of computational

systems like an AI system, for example. Your book reads like a thriller, and I am going to recommend it to people and recommend it right now to listeners who are of sound mind because it is terrifying. I wondered reading it, how much have you exaggerated? How much have you novelized in order to hold our attention. Everything in the book is based in science fact, meaning all of the facts, all of the figures. I write a hundred or so pages of notes in the back of the book for readers to be able to answer the question that you are asking me. Anything that you come upon in the narrative that you wonder, is this her imagination or

is this based on an interview with an official, based on a figure? in Defense Department monographs. In the notes, you can find that answer. Did any of those people give you good recommendations for how to avoid a disaster scenario, or how, at the very least, Annie, to avoid these things proliferating? Well, you know, the ticking clock scenario that I write has an even more urgent ticking clock, which is the public's pressure on lawmakers to absolutely do something about this nightmare scenario before it happens. Look, we have a world right now where you have the CEOs of the largest AI companies in the world admitting publicly that the lane of bio mixed with AI is of their

top concern. You don't hear that about nuclear. You hear that about bio. I How do you keep yourself from, I don't know, how do you sleep through the night? You know, anyone who knows me personally can vouch for the fact that I am an optimist at heart. I really believe that information is king. Once you know things, it gives you a lot of power. Perhaps that's whistling by the graveyard, but that's what works for me. Do you have a biohazard suit? I do not.

I do not. Okay. But I do have a few gas masks. I must tell the truth. Annie Jacobson, her new book is Biological War, A Scenario. Avashai Artsy produced today's show. Miranda Kennedy and Jolie Myers edited. Gabriel Dunantub checked the facts and David Tadishore and Patrick Boyd mixed. I'm Noelle King. It's today explained. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.

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