Science: TOWARD THE DOOMSDAY BUG

IN the manufacture of the machinery of war, man’s ingenuity knows few limits. Even now, he is capable of putting orbiting H-bombs into outer space, ready to drop on signal. Tomorrow his navies may be prepared to fight at sea with ships capable of speeds up to 100 knots; his armies may be organized to battle on land with compact, radiation-proof robots.

Yet for all their terror, such weapons are not the most frightening in the armory of the future. A new book titled Unless Peace Comes (Viking; $5.75), written by 16 scientists and scholars from six different countries, contends that man may soon be able to hurl nature itself at his foes. He could flood coastal cities with tidal waves and unleash uncontrollable hurricanes and earthquakes. A well-aimed, chemical-tipped rocket could puncture the atmosphere’s ozone shield, loosing a flood of ultraviolet rays that would eventually kill all exposed life below.

Only slightly less devastating are the weapons of chemical and biological warfare (CBW) that are already within the reach of contemporary warriors. Sophisticated and sinister, CBW can be waged in many ways. There are gases that can incapacitate an opponent temporarily or deal him a quick, mortal blow. A few pounds of LSD in a city’s water supply could theoretically send the entire population helplessly tripping. Entire nations could be infected with strange, drug-resistant diseases spread by a handful of immunized saboteurs.

From the U.S. to Sweden to Taiwan, many nations are exploring the potential of CBW, and Soviet scientists are perhaps the busiest in the field. The Russian army has chemical-war fare specialists down to the battalion level, and the Russians probably provided the lethal nerve gas used by the Egyptians in Yemen last year.

In a recent book, Chemical and Biological Warfare: America’s Hidden Arsenal (Bobbs-Merrill; $7.50), Seymour M. Hersh, a former A.P. Washington correspondent, reckons that the U.S. Defense Department allocates some $300 million a year for the development and production of CBW weapons —three times the figure the Pentagon usually makes public. Whatever the amount, it is known that the U.S. operates six major CBW research, testing and manufacturing centers and regularly farms out experimental projects to scores of private and university labs. For Pentagon planners are convinced that the U.S. must have a considerable CBW capability, if only as a deterrent.

Chemical Flood. In existing American and foreign arsenals, there are no deadlier weapons than nerve gases. Usually odorless and colorless, they were accidentally discovered by German researchers in 1936 and were a closely held secret until the end of World War II, when the Allies captured Nazi stores. Releasing a flood of the body chemical acetylcholine, which sets off muscle contractions, nerve gases cause uncontrollable convulsions in their victims. By one scientist’s account, according to Hersh, “The pupils, bladder and alimentary canal constrict, the penis erects, the tear and saliva glands secrete and the heart slows.” The victim is generally asphyxiated.

In the early 1950s, Britain’s Porton Down labs perfected even more effective gases known as V agents. They not only can cause death on contact, but also remain lethal days after they settle on foliage or the ground. The U.S. variation of the gas—VX—accidentally killed more than 6,000 sheep near the Army’s Dugway Proving Grounds in western Utah last March. Nerve gases have long been stockpiled in aboveground tanks at another CBW installation, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, ten miles outside Denver. But now the Army has promised to relocate these stores.

Research does not stop with nerve gases. In The Silent Weapons (David McKay; $4.95), Robin Clarke, editor of Britain’s respected Science Journal, reports that CBW investigators are also exploring the practical potential of natural toxins. Among the objects of current study are jellyfish, mollusks and the highly poisonous puffer fish—a Japanese delicacy that, if not properly prepared, can kill adventuresome gourmets in a matter of minutes.

Considerable interest has focused on psychic or hallucinatory chemicals. Dubbed “incaps” (for incapacitating agents), they are designed to disorient temporarily rather than kill—which leads CBW’s proponents to argue that it is a more humane form of fighting. Most notorious of these new gases is BZ, a mind-bending secret compound developed by the U.S. Army. In one test, a guard who had been given BZ tried to challenge an invader, forgot the password, and slumped to the ground, hopelessly confused.

Genetic Warfare. Deadly partners of such potions are the agents of biological warfare—viruses and bacteria that reproduce with astonishing rapidity and quickly assume more menacing proportions than far larger quantities of chemicals. The U.S. Army’s germ-warfare research center is at Fort Detrick, Md., a heavily guarded, 1,300-acre compound where security is as tight as at any nuclear installation.

Much of Fort Detrick’s work involves the hunt for more powerful and effective contaminants—a search sometimes sardonically called “public health in reverse.” Occasional scientific papers published by the fort’s resident researchers indicate that they have been particularly interested in finding new, treatment-resistant strains of such old virulents as plague, anthrax, encephalomyelitis, brucellosis and parrot fever.

Ideally, biological agents in the toxic arsenal should meet three essential qualifications for what Britain’s eminent science writer, Lord Ritchie-Calder, calls the “doomsday bug.” They should infect easily, cause serious illness, and retain their potency after prolonged storage or exposure to sunlight. Anthrax spores, for example, are still alive and lethal on the abandoned Scottish coastal island of Gruinard more than two decades after the biological-warfare experiments that took place there during World War II.

Genetics may open the door to still more macabre methods of destruction. In The Biological Time Bomb (World; $5.50), published last week, British Science Writer Gordon Rattray Taylor raises the specter of genetic warfare—one nation permanently weakening the people of another by infecting them with potent lab-made viruses carrying damaging hereditary material. Experiments have already shown that viral infections can make fruit flies fatally sensitive to such ordinary substances as carbon dioxide. M.I.T. Bacteriologist Salvador Luria speculates that some day a diabolical individual may be able to concoct a virus that renders men equally susceptible to specific substances. Then, says Luria, he could threaten to release the material unless the world did his bidding.

Ban the Germ. Few CBW specialists worry about such bizarre schemes. Figuring out defenses against the existing possibilities keeps them busy enough. And from gas masks to astronaut-type suits, air-filtering systems and early-warning devices, no known precautions promise to save more than a few people from a well-executed attack. No country is really fully prepared for the horrors of chemical or biological warfare, but repeated international efforts to outlaw CBW have not halted the growing interest in its potential. Few diplomats give Britain’s current ban-the-germ campaign at the Geneva disarmament talks any realistic chance of succeeding.

Perhaps the worst aspect of CBW is the easy availability of its weapons. While the nuclear club remains relatively exclusive, nuclear arms can continue to provide a built-in deterrent—a balance of terror that restrains nuclear powers from starting a war in which winner and loser alike will figuratively glow in the dark. Members of the CBW club may soon multiply. And their very number could vastly increase the possibility that one of them could be tempted to exercise CBW’s awful power.