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In 1992, a Soviet defector revealed to Western intelligence that he had overseen an extensive, illegal programme to develop smallpox into a highly effective biological weapon.
Britain and the United States were shocked by the revelations. Russia's intent to use biological weapons, they claimed, was morally abhorrent. But a closer look at the history of biological weapons shows that Britain and America both played seminal roles in turning lethal diseases into weapons of war. In fact, Britain was probably the first nation to come up with the idea of using smallpox to kill its adversaries.
In the 18th century, the British fought France and its Indian allies for possession of what was to become Canada during the French and Indian Wars (1754-63). At the time of the Pontiac rebellion in 1763, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in North America, wrote to Colonel Henry Bouquet: 'Could it not be contrived to send smallpox among these disaffected tribes of Indians? We must use every stratagem in our power to reduce them.' The colonel replied: 'I will try to inoculate the [Native American tribe] with some blankets that may fall in their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself.' Smallpox decimated the Native Americans, who had never been exposed to the disease before and had no immunity.
It has been alleged that smallpox was also used as a weapon during the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). During the winter of 1775-76, American forces were attempting to free Quebec from British control. After capturing Montreal, it looked as if they might succeed. But in December 1775, the British fort commander reportedly had civilians immunised against the disease and then deliberately sent out to infect the American troops. A few weeks later a major smallpox epidemic broke out in the American ranks, affecting about half of the 10,000 soldiers. They retreated in chaos after burying their dead in mass graves.
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World War Two and after
During World War Two, British and American scientists investigated using smallpox as a biological weapon. However, because of the availability of a vaccine, they never felt it was a particularly effective weapon. In November 1969, President Nixon officially halted the US offensive biological weapons programme, bowing to pressure from the American public who had been abhorred by the use of chemical weapons during the Vietnam War.
In the wake of Nixon's historic abandonment of biological weapons, an international agreement was tabled outlawing their development and production. In 1972, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union all signed up to the Biological Weapons Convention.
The US believed initially that, like them, the Soviet Union had done away with its bio-weapons programme. However, it had miscalculated. In 1989, a senior Soviet bio-weapons scientist defected to the UK. Vladimir Pasechnik (who died in November 2001, aged 64) asserted that far from abandoning its bio-weapons programme, the Soviet Union had intensified it. He revealed that the civilian pharmaceutical company Biopreparat, which the Soviets had established in 1973, was in fact a front for a massive offensive bio-weapons programme.
There were more bombshells to come. Dr Kanatjan Alibekov, or Ken Alibek as he is now known, was Chief Scientist at Biopreparat from 1987 to 1992. Ken Alibek's bosses told him that the Americans and British had not given up on biological weapons and were still engaged in their own offensive programmes. He felt his work was justified on these grounds.
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Healers and cynics
Ken Alibek started to find discrepancies in the KGB's information and began to have doubts. In December 1991, in exchange for US/UK inspections of a number of Soviet laboratories, a team of Soviet officials was invited to inspect four US facilities. This trip cemented Alibek's concerns. 'A real turning point was when I came to the US and I saw all the so-called BW [bio-warfare] facilities, completely abandoned, not active. I was shocked.'
Alibek defected to America in October 1992 and spent much of the next year being debriefed by CIA officers. His most startling revelation concerned smallpox. He told them how, during the global campaign to eradicate the disease, samples of smallpox taken by Russian doctors had been turned into weapons by the Soviet military. Donald Ainslie Henderson, who led the eradication campaign, felt particularly betrayed by this.
'The Russians themselves had proposed the global eradication programme back in 1958. They had pledged to provide 25 million doses of vaccine every year to the programme. If we hadn't had that amount of vaccine we could never have succeeded.' Alibek claims the Kremlin had a clear understanding that if smallpox was eradicated, and vaccination ended, the virus had the potential to be 'the most powerful and effective weapon ever created to eliminate human life'.
According to Alibek, one particularly virulent strain, India 67 or India 1, was chosen by the Russians to be weaponised. They perfected techniques for mass producing smallpox and maintained a rolling annual stockpile of hundreds of tonnes. They also developed ways to disseminate the virus in aerial bombs and ballistic missile warheads. Additional work was done to enhance the virulence of the virus and to combine it with other viruses.
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The new threat
Ken Alibek believes that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, unemployed or badly-paid scientists are likely to have sold samples of smallpox clandestinely and gone to work in rogue states engaged in illicit biological weapons development. DA Henderson agrees that this is a plausible scenario and is upset by the legacy it leaves. 'If the [Russian bio-weapons] programme had not taken place we would not I think be worrying about smallpox in the same way. One can feel extremely bitter and extremely angry about this because I think they've subjected the entire world to a risk which was totally unnecessary.'
But this may not be the only source of the virus. Unrecorded samples left over from the time when the disease was endemic may still exist in other countries. In 1984, when the world's remaining smallpox samples were moved to two high security laboratories in Russia and America, no inspections were carried out to verify that other countries had destroyed their stocks of the virus. As Henderson says, it would have been an impossible task: 'To try to identify what there might be in anybody's deep freeze is a real problem.'
There is no hard evidence, but in Alibek's opinion, 'there are many non-official stocks of smallpox virus'. Western intelligence agencies also believe, based on circumstantial and anecdotal evidence, that three countries - North Korea, Iraq and Russia - currently have the capacity to deploy smallpox as a weapon of mass destruction. Other countries that are suspected of having inadvertently or deliberately retained specimens of the virus include China, Cuba, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and Yugoslavia.
It is difficult to assess the real nature of the threat from smallpox from this evidence. Why anyone would wish to use a disease which could lead to the indiscriminate killing of millions as a weapon is difficult to gauge. However, as the world found to its cost on 11 September 2001, no possibility can ever be ruled out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/pox_weapon_01.shtml

Buhari Evil and Devilish plan not New...
But it would never succeed.

I now agree buhari is a terrorist .

that's the strategy they want to implement on southeast

I wonder how people will honnestly be so charged up a out Monkey pox sef.

The ish has a 1% fatality rate sef…how can that be used as a biological weapon?

Mynd44:
I wonder how people will honnestly be so charged up a out Monkey pox sef.

The ish has a 1% fatality rate sef…how can that be used as a biological weapon?

first of all its not impossible to think that Nigerian army (the same one that killed millions thru hunger in 1969) can kill people with a biological weapon.
Second of all its not impossible that Nigerian govt (the same one that committed Odi and Asaba massacres) can kill its own citizens or silently endorse it at least
Third of all its not unreasonable that Nigerian govt weaponised the monkeypox virus, ignorantly believing that it would do reasonable damage since it had no cure

NIGERIA LEARNT A LOT OF BAD THING FROM BRITAIN

LastMumu:
Just one question. If you have 20 people in the same room with you, 19 are your friends and one I an enemy, isn't it suicidal for you inject your ' supposed enemy' with a contagious deadly virus knowing fully well you and your folks run a 100% risk getting it from him?

yea. Now do u think the Hausa dominated millitary will see it like that? Are they smart? When they were going house to house killing pple in Asaba, did they think of it as war crimes capable of making them international fugitives?

Buhari and his hausafulani terrorist army want to kill us all but we are always ahead of them.when did buhari start caring for igbos that is question my fellow should be asking.

LastMumu:
An institution smart enough to create a biological weapon isn't smart enough to know how it works?

they know how it works. They just probably couldnt forsee that they wont contain it in the east. They may have thought of establishing quarantine camps in the east
Being inteligient and being smart are not the same. Otherwise how can u explain that pple who just killed Igbos recently were not smart enough to knw that sentiments are against them in the east

LastMumu:
An institution smart enough to create a biological weapon isn't smart enough to know how it works?

Most Biological Weapons are created in highly secret military facility of developed countries.. not 3rd world like Nigeria .

How ever like the case of Defunct Zaire, they are sold to the goverment of 3rd world African countries to use against their people... Why the creators stand back and document observation.

The truths is from the world go, Africa and African leaders are worst than Animal... Buhari is no different.

Bede2u:
first of all its not impossible to think that Nigerian army (the same one that killed millions thru hunger in 1969) can kill people with a biological weapon.
Second of all its not impossible that Nigerian govt (the same one that committed Odi and Asaba massacres) can kill its own citizens or silently endorse it at least
Third of all its not unreasonable that Nigerian govt weaponised the monkeypox virus, ignorantly believing that it would do reasonable damage since it had no cure

then we can agree that the igbos used polio as a biological weapon in the north since it's rampart there...

Even the cases discovered in Lagos and Kano are against the igbos, right?

Biological weaponry ensures that the victim dies in no time and the antidote takes a long time to arrive at...

Are u thinking at all?

SLIDEwaxie:
then we can agree that the igbos used polio as a biological weapon in the north since it's rampart there...

Even the cases discovered in Lagos and Kano are against the igbos, right?

Biological weaponry ensures that the victim dies in no time and the antidote takes a long time to arrive at...

Are u thinking at all?

the Igbos have never control FG and therefore cant use a biological weapon against anybody
Cases discovered elsewhere can be people who were in the east recently
Not really... biological weapon may also be for the long term. Besides u can only weaponise a biological weapon u know how to weaponise and therefore u may weaponise one that takes time to kill if thats the one u know

Kazim88 with his hate threads for Nigeria and love for Biafra. Guy go and sit down somewhere

SLIDEwaxie:
then we can agree that the igbos used polio as a biological weapon in the north since it's rampart there...

Even the cases discovered in Lagos and Kano are against the igbos, right?

Biological weaponry ensures that the victim dies in no time and the antidote takes a long time to arrive at...

Are u thinking at all?

This IPOB .ish made so many IPOB terrorists to lose their thinking faculties my brother.

Why after Python Dance that monkey pox broke out.