Vial bodies
* Get a lab job
* Spread the germ stockpile
* Embrace the open air
* Germ-inate, exterminate
With great skill and no little perseverance, scientists are busy preparing the germs that some day you plan to liberate upon an unsuspecting world. They might be about a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair, but if these viruses are freed by the right hands they could reconfigure the planet as you know it. And some of your most favourite – Ebola, Aids, flu, and yellow fever – are just waiting for emancipation.
In a less than perfect world, these man-made viruses would be cocooned in impregnable laboratories by those petrified that their release into the environment could be sublimely catastrophic. It is with no little relief, therefore, that you have identified fifteen ‘containment level-4’ laboratories in Britain, laboratories that, while operating at the maximum biosecurity level, are certainly not impregnable and where the most infectious organisms are conveniently stored. Each lab handles some of the deadliest organisms known to man and nature: diseases that are highly contagious, fatal even in low doses, and impossible to treat.
As time goes on and research into bioweapons and other such hazardous organisms escalates, the risk of accidents increases with acceptable momentum. It strikes you as incredibly dangerous to keep all these germs in one place. Stockpiling is just asking for trouble. Being the dastardly cynic all this planetary meddling has inspired you to become, you deduce that a lot is going on behind closed doors. You must get behind those closed doors, enter the world of white coats and invaluable vials and disperse these germs for the good of your fellow men.
They can build tall walls, issue ID cards, erect automatic barriers, but you have identified the weak link in the world’s biosecurity measures: people. Impressive regulations and safety protocols are rendered useless by carelessness. People get bored adhering to tedious procedures; researchers pick up bad habits or – shock horror – become complacent. They may end up washing contaminated material down the wrong sink or ‘accidentally’ removing equipment from the laboratory before it has been properly decontaminated. Perish the prospect.
It was a hot summer’s day in 2007 when a damaging virus escaped from one of the country’s most secure government laboratories, in Pirbright, Surrey. The facility managed to disseminate foot and mouth into the surrounding countryside. It was revealed that drains beneath the government-funded Institute for Animal Health laboratories carried waste, including the viruses responsible for animal diseases such as foot and mouth, bluetongue, swine fever, and, another longstanding favourite of yours, African horse sickness. Safety investigators subsequently discovered that leaking pipes, unsealed manholes, freak floods, and building work at the Pirbright laboratories had probably allowed the 01/BFS67 strain of foot and mouth virus to rampage around nearby fields and infect cattle. Result.
To undertake your mission, first you must get access to the compounds. Get yourself a job at a laboratory whose work you believe involves pathogens deliciously capable of harming the environment. Initially, try one of the 350 ‘containment level-3’ labs in the UK, some of them owned by industry, some by government, hospitals and universities. Academia might be your best in. The role of universities in overseeing security clearance for research students working with dangerous pathogens is currently under scrutiny by a parliamentary committee, betraying an annoying realization that there is an underlying problem but at the same time offering hope of a passport to potential pathogen paradise.
Professor George Griffin, chairman of the Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens, has told MPs that he is perturbed by the lack of a national standard for people who work in high-security laboratories. Do not panic about not having relevant qualifications; training and risk assessment are the responsibility of the organization running the laboratory, and some, you suspect, will wave you inside – as long as you’re cheap, and, let’s face it, you’re not in this for the money. Make sure you seem eager and affordable. So strapped of cash are university laboratories that Griffin admitted that they lack sufficient funds to adequately maintain storage for dangerous pathogens. Universities, explained Griffin, are forced to ‘beg and scrape’ for money to maintain high-security labs with insufficient funds ‘for routine maintenance’ at containment level-3 and level-4 facilities.
Of course, don’t limit yourself to a university job just because they seem easy to snag. You are tempted by the riches on offer at the National Institute for Medical Research, where scientists study the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus, which has killed tens of millions of birds and spurred the culling of hundreds of millions others to stem its spread. You have learned that samples from infected people have been brought to the facility in north London for analysis. Equally exciting is information that researchers here have also been working on the 1918 pandemic flu strain that killed about fifty million people. If this sublime strain of the virus were allowed to make a fresh bid for freedom, it could cause a new pandemic. Virtually no one would have immunity. As humanity struggled with its latest threat, any care for eco-living and dolphins would be first to go out of the window. Normally just nine members of staff at a time are cleared to work inside this lab, so put on your best tie. CVs will certainly need embellishing for this one, not to mention the perennial staple of the bogus reference.
The NIMR facility is such a tempting target there’s no wonder it is one of the so-called Big Five, those authorized to handle the most dangerous diseases. The MoD’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, at Porton Down, on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, is another and carries out high-level research on diseases such as anthrax and bubonic plague. Checks here are, however, tiresomely strict, and instinct suggests your efforts are better placed elsewhere. Try the Health Protection Agency, which has its Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response on the same site and runs a similar lab at the Centre for Infections in Colindale, north London. The SARS virus, Lassa fever, and the Ebola virus, which causes massive bleeding in victims, are handled there by those privileged enough to enter its inner sanctum.
But your most desired target may have yet to arrive. Plans are afoot to build a laboratory housing dangerous pathogens in central London. The government-backed £500 million UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation is scheduled to be built in St Pancras and, at this stage, is likely to include work on the usual selection of hazardous agents. Daunting as some of these laboratories might seem now, do not be dissuaded; this is one plan where keeping your eyes on the prize is vital. When in doubt, think back to 2005, when a pandemic strain of Asian flu was released by an American laboratory after it was accidentally put into test kits sent to scientists around the world. Probably your favourite ‘accident’, though, occurred in the former Soviet Union in 1979, when weaponized anthrax bacteria escaped from a bioweapons facility in the Urals. Scores died when workers changing shifts left a vent unfitted with a filter, allowing the germs to escape.
Once you are inside your secure laboratory, stay cool. Put on your white suit, comb your hair, learn the lab layout by heart and, in particular, where the most harmful vials are stored. Each lab has different protocols and, initially, it is important only to blend in. Soon enough, you will be viewed as hard-working and trustworthy. You become known for your diligence in removing all clothing before entering and showering before leaving. Eventually, you will be handed the keys to the laboratory’s most prized contents. You will probably decide to smuggle stuff out one night after working late. By then, you will have taken the premises’ most dangerous airborne pathogen. Although viruses normally require a host, into which they inject their genes and hijack the cell’s biological machinery in order to duplicate, some can survive in the atmosphere for weeks. Foot and mouth sets an inspiring example, a virus which in 2001 blighted the UK economy and rural regions of Northumberland, Cumbria, and the West Country. But – and this shows the real power of a carefully targeted viral release – it has also had, and still does, fabulous international effects. With British meat effectively off limits after the 2001 foot-and-mouth epidemic, Brazil stepped in to make up the shortfall in meat production and began razing the Amazon forest like never before so it could plonk massive cattle ranches where virginal rainforest once stood.
Finally, if you fail to land a job, do not completely despair. In that scenario, contact one of your like-minded doctor academic friends. Doctors and scientists, as the UK terrorist attacks on Glasgow airport a year after Pirbright’s foot-and-mouth release proved, can be radicalized like the rest of us. But be selfish, really the prize is yours for the taking, and soon your white-coated spine will be shaking with the greatest viral release in humanity’s history.
* New international standards announced for containing dangerous pathogens. Certain.
* New lab opens in central London, but causes commuter chaos with bi-weekly closure of main London rail lines due to scares about the facility’s bio safe zone. Predictable.
* Lethal pathogen escapes from university lab. Cover-up revealed twelve months later by politicians suffering unusual symptoms of conscience and public concern. Possible.
* Bio-terrorists strike National Institute for Medical Research. They gain access to avian flu stocks, but are forced to surrender after being surrounded by armed police. Maybe.
* Protest groups reveal a number of previously serious but unreported incidents at secure government laboratories after freedom-of-information documents released. Likely.
Likelihood of dangerous virus release by 2015: 68%