A national security expert warns a pneumonic plague could spiral from "outbreak to anarchy in six days" as a suspected plague outbreak wreaks havoc in a European country. In recent days, the world has held its breath as disturbing reports emerged from Russia of a suspected outbreak of pneumonic plague, with at least two people reported dead and nearly 200 in quarantine.
The country's consumer welfare service stated that the "sanitary-epidemiological situation" was "stable", but questions remain over the outbreak. One of the deceased, a lab worker, was previously reported as saying she'd broken a test tube containing live bacteria. Meanwhile, a second death was said to have occurred at Irkutsk district hospital.
Kremlin urges reliance on official statements
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has urged people to "rely on official statements", while reports from exiled opposition site People of Baikal claim doctors have been openly discussing plague. Locals have also reported sightings of people in PPE, including hazmat-style suits and masks.
One person who took note of the rapidly developing situation was Annie Jacobsen, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Biological War: A Scenario. She took to X on October 2 to explain how it was suggestive of the "inciting incident" in her book and was "unnerving".
A scenario of outbreak to anarchy
In her speculative non-fiction book, Annie examines the prospect of a biological attack or accidental release of a deadly, even artificially engineered pathogen and how humankind would react to the outbreak. Published this year, Annie's nightmare scenario bears a striking resemblance to the incident in Russia. A genetically-altered form of pneumonic plague is the pathogen mentioned in the book, one that emerges from a lab in Russia and reaches the US.
Speaking exclusively to us just prior to the book's release, Annie explained why she chose this specific type of virus. She said: "In Biological War: A Scenario, I take the reader from outbreak to anarchy in six days. And what happens after the six days, when the US government sort of implements its Continuity of Government programme, is terrifying: day seven and forward. And so they have different timelines, but both are extraordinarily short."
Continuity of Government (COG) refers to a programme that reflects the POTUS' intent for the US to have a "comprehensive and effective" programme to ensure the "survival" of constitutional government and the "continuity" of federal functions in the event of an emergency.
Anarchy and biological twilight
Annie explains in the book how such a scenario might unfold. She sets out how the very first infection would, within a matter of days, push the world's response systems to the edge as they try desperately to contain the outbreak, but ultimately fail. She later paints a terrifying picture of what the world might expect as the days creep to their conclusion.
Annie writes: "Millions of corpses will attract millions of scavenging rats. The rats and their fleas will continue to spread plague, neither of which can be barred from entry by high walls, barbed-wire fencing, or a small army of soldiers with guns." As the "chosen" few officials hunker down to wait for things to alleviate, the "nation is in a free fall". She continued: "The military can no longer use its valuable resources to protect cities from panic, mass death, and widespread insurrection."
At the end of the book, Annie pushes the narrative forward a number of years to a time of "biological twilight". It's a world that's "silent and infected", mostly male, where everyone is left wondering "which day might be the end".
Plague versus COVID
Speaking to us, Annie described the key differences between a plague and COVID outbreak: "A longer pandemic like COVID had to do with the incubation period of the pathogen being a long time. So the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused COVID, it could be in your lungs for up to two weeks before you began shedding virus, being then contagious, there was contagion around you.
"There is also the component of asymptomatic carriers. So we all know many people who were carrying COVID around, and they never got sick; they were infecting others. The pathogen I chose, pneumonic plague, I chose also for two reasons. One, it has a very short incubation period. So in many ways throughout history, a pneumonic plague outbreak will extinguish itself because the timeline is so short, everyone around you dies, and then it's snuffed out."
Explaining the hypothetical "chimaera" virus in the book more, Annie said: "When (plague expert) Dr (Henry) Heine explained to me that he had been privy to a component of the Soviet chimaera program involving plague. That genetically modified plague to spread faster and be more virulent for one reason, and that is because they genetically modified plague, this was their plan in the '80s, cutting into it the gene for euphoria. Now, at first, you say, 'What does that even mean?'
"Well, what it means is this: when you are sick, we all know this, you just want to go home and be under the covers, and your transmissibility factor is reduced almost to zero if you're under the covers, maybe your mum bringing you chicken soup. But this idea that the Soviets modified plague with euphoria, the nefarious design behind it was to then make infected people go out and socialise, talk to other people, go to the disco. Hence, spreading the disease far and wide in that incredibly hyper-transmissible period."
Annie claimed that Heine referred to it as an "evil plan", and it's a term she took note of. She says she learned that "bad actors", those who are "modifying pathogens in chimaera ways" - referring to a purported hybrid created by joining two distinct viruses - there are "no limits". Annie also says she learned that: "There's no limits to the kind of grotesque evil, if you will, ideas that have come to bear that the intelligence community has been privy to people are working on. And I think that is a real component of public health."
