Deep within the bowels of a dilapidated building on the southeast side rests a small laboratory carved out from the remnants of what would’ve been the furnace room. There no longer existed a need to heat the uppermost floors as the only residents were a ragtag assortment of immigrants that served no purpose but to present the image of just another slum dwelling. They came and went about their affairs and nobody on the outside bothered to consider that they were all part of an elaborate function percolating within the basement boiler-room. The cockroaches and rats were just a natural byproduct of the need to remain concealed. Yet, what arose from within this seemingly condemned building was an activity that sought to condemn an entire people; a brewing of toxic solutions that once released into the community would herald devastating effects. The products that were shipped through an intermediary – a quasi-legitimate biological research organization – repackaged and marked as charitable donations were anything but compassionate in nature. The west side of the structure served to fabricate Ricin and Botulinum toxins as well as purify Anthrax spores. The east side of the cavernous basement dabbled in a chemical alternative – Tabun and Sarin nerve gases. Less than 800 grams of any of these abominations could wreak havoc on an area larger than a square mile in size. Why the outside world didn’t notice the inner workings of this rundown structure was because nobody was allowed in or even near the building without ‘management’ knowing about it. The beggars snoozing on the steps, the semblance of maintenance on the perimeter, even the prostitutes parading out front all served as a security force to ensure that no outsiders entered the complex and lived to tell the tale… The above scenario may not be true, but can that be guaranteed? When the Aum Shinrikyo cult poisoned thousands of unsuspecting patrons of the Tokyo subway system in 1995, could anyone have understood the breadth of the group’s commercial activities – that hundreds of businesses owned by the cult served thousands of government and commercial clients? And what of their 35,000 Russian members, most of whom had been employed within the chemical and biological sciences? Terror upon civilization did not begin with al-Qaeda and it did not end with September 11th, 2001. Anyone with a grievance and a bit of knowledge can use our open society’s products against it and these most assuredly include biological and chemical weapons. Whether the Tokyo gas attacks, the still at-large perpetrator of the Anthrax attacks of 2001, or the almost forgotten poisoning of 571 Oregon restaurant patrons in 1984 by the followers of the opportunistic Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, terrorists will continue to use the most heinous of weapons against society whenever the opportunity presents itself. NORARAS BIOCHEM aims to stop them – at any cost. |
