0:00:00 - 0:00:22 I wanted to make a quick follow up video on this idea of biological warfare as a part of an asymmetric attack as I had hoped. So, I, I have a, um, a friend who is much more knowledgeable about these sorts of things than I am and I was hoping he would fact check me in response to that video and he did 0:00:22 - 0:00:40 . And uh I asked his permission to share at least parts of an email that he sent me that has uh some corrections and some, some higher higher doses if you will of information here. So let's get to it. He says great video on the potential use of bio weapons and how we should be thinking about what that 0:00:40 - 0:00:56 means with respect to preparation and impact. I had a couple of clarifications and additions or further information that could help. I don't think it is all necessary to amend the videos. The main idea is to get people thinking about the concept that being said just so you have the info in case someone 0:00:55 - 0:01:19 asks, one of the things you said was that the particular strain of Turia, I was talking about infects the weaponized one infects at a very low dose but could not recall the amount it is as few as 25 colony forming units. That's 25 individual bacteria or a single aerosol droplet with the proper formulation 0:01:18 - 0:01:42 . To establish a lethal infection. You can get infected with fewer than 25. But he says that we don't have the ability to detect that few. And so they can't measure exactly how low it is. But, um, they know that in animals, he says we can go as low as 10 and get 100% mortality. Um So you can't detect 0:01:42 - 0:02:04 how many got into the human, I guess is the limit. Not sure. But um this along with its high mortality and easy aerosol, place it into the tier one select agent category, which is basically all the worst agents known to man in terms of threat. And you can look those up. He says the second thing you stated 0:02:04 - 0:02:22 is it did not replicate in humans. Yeah, this, this one I messed up and I apologize for that, but I am very grateful that he uh reached out to me with this information. So he says, I think what you meant was it does not transmit between humans. At least that we know the disease course is that it actually 0:02:22 - 0:02:41 replicates to really high levels inside people. But we've never observed natural in infection spread between people like from coughing or droplets coming from the lungs. It is always originated from some animal carcass being aerosolized insect or tick bites or water sup supply contamination or from people 0:02:41 - 0:02:58 handling butchered meat of infected animals. So in this light, you could get it from handling dead people, which could be a real issue. In the scenarios. You describe that being said the transmission between live people remains an open question. It, it could be that it does not spread easily between 0:02:58 - 0:03:17 live people. So that is why we've never seen it or it is so rare right now in nature that we never really see it with our current tools. He goes on to say some things that I need to anonymize a bit. But essentially there is reason to believe that it might be possible at least under some scenarios and 0:03:17 - 0:03:39 he uses uh bubonic plague. Well, the plague, I'm not sure if it's bubonic plague or if there's some other plague he's talking about. But um that's, it's normally passed by flea bites, but they know that that uh he says there's some evidence that in breakouts and population dense centers, it starts to 0:03:39 - 0:03:58 go mnemonic or from person to person via AOL and they're not sure why or when. OK, continuing to quote the other X factor in its utility as a bioweapon is that it can persist in the environment. This could be a benefit or a detrimental characteristic depending on the strategy in the short term, three 0:03:58 - 0:04:17 months to two years, it could really continue to cause problems and any troops coming in would be at risk. After that, it tends to stay in local rodent populations at higher rates. So you will find infected rodents for years after at higher rates than other regions. And he goes on to mention that there 0:04:16 - 0:04:42 was an experiment done in Alaska where they tested this particular weapon and uh they trapped animals to measure how effectively it was delivered. And there's still a higher rate of this disease um in the rodent populations there than you would find in nature. And it's been decades. So um putting all 0:04:42 - 0:05:00 this together and, and thank you again for this email and the information that you've provided here putting all of this together. What we see is, I, I guess two things I'd like to highlight, I, I'm sure there are more that could be drawn out of this. Is it one, this is a very long tail situation that 0:04:59 - 0:05:29 if this were actually both of the points I want to make are related to our time frames. The, the first is that um the active phase of this would be three months to two years and people would be getting actively um infected. Now, the breakdown of normal life, this is an understatement, but basically everything 0:05:29 - 0:05:54 would go to hell a lot faster than that. Typically, you've got about three days after the power goes out in any major way before things start to fall apart very quickly. And it just cascades from there. So a department of defense report years ago concluded that if the grid went down nationally, 90% of 0:05:53 - 0:06:19 the United States would be dead within a year. So, um that's just for, for reference. But then the, the tail of this things would continue to, to there would be consequences of this for decades to come where for decades, there would be some people who are exposed to it, um an new or potentially for the 0:06:19 - 0:06:46 first time and then they would require these antibiotics, which uh it's very difficult to imagine their availability after something like this uh were to do what it's designed to do. So I think the takeaway from this is, is one takeaway is, is again to come back to how we tend to deal with things that 0:06:46 - 0:07:11 we're not really wanting to hear. It's the stages of grief revisited and you'll, people don't want to hear these things, but as they are forced to wrap their heads around them or maybe they do it voluntarily, they'll switch to this safety mechanism of thinking about it in terms of it happening all at 0:07:11 - 0:07:36 once, but very few things do. And so it's almost like they get cooked twice because on the on the one side of the coin, they deny it longer than they should missing out on opportunities to prepare. And I don't mean just some co some kind of temporal preparation, the most important preparation, you can 0:07:36 - 0:08:05 do is spiritual and emotional and logical. It's all internal preparation. And then the, the second most important preparation you can do if you're a parent is, or, or if you're married is to prepare your family in that same internal way. And it's only then that the external things will make any difference 0:08:04 - 0:08:28 if they do it all. So you miss out on this, these opportunities to prepare and then you get cooked on the other side because once the thing happens, whatever the thing is, and this is the, the, again, this is a, the beautiful thing about predicting the future is that you don't have to get it. Exactly 0:08:27 - 0:08:52 . Right. If you combine enough of these potential things and effectively extract common themes, you can actually prepare for not just a, a big set of the things you expect, but things you can't even think of right now just by taking this principled approach and saying, you know, it's like, it's like 0:08:52 - 0:09:13 advising someone to get out of debt. Well, that's, there's an infinite list of, of benefits to that. Right? And, and maybe one specific thing is because you're gonna get smacked with cancer next year. Right? And you're gonna have a huge medical bill and you'll better obtain treatment if you're out of 0:09:13 - 0:09:34 debt or it'll be less stressful. I don't know, whatever. Well, maybe that doesn't happen. That's a very specific thing, but there are a million other things that could happen in the future, many of them are really normal and extremely likely and getting out of debt would help you with that with all of 0:09:34 - 0:10:00 them. And so you can do the same thing thinking about these things like a potential biological attack or an E MP or solar flare or the list goes on and on and in isolation, especially in a specific short time frame, it's very unlikely that any of these one things will happen. But if you, if you extract 0:09:59 - 0:10:26 the commonalities between them, a list of things that will emerge from this, that are obviously a very good idea to work on. Like I said, starting with yourself in your spiritual situation because if you trust God truly and you know that you're on good terms with him, most of your worries will go away 0:10:26 - 0:10:49 no matter what happens and what a blessing that is. And it turns out that if you're not freaking out, you tend to perform better in anything that could possibly happen. I mean, if you lose your job, you'll, you'll become and serene during that. If your spouse leaves you, if you lose a child, if you get 0:10:49 - 0:11:09 bone cancer and the list goes on and on, you know, you get in a car accident, I was driving to work one morning and it was dark because it was early and the separator on the bridge, big piece of steel was, was up and it was impossible to see. Um And it was right over a crest. So several other people 0:11:08 - 0:11:31 had nailed this thing, but you couldn't even see them because they were still over the hill. So I come up over the hill at highway speeds and I nailed this piece of metal. It completely took out my oil pan. And so I just hear a loud smack and I look up in my rear view and I see this cloud of oil um trailing 0:11:30 - 0:11:53 behind me and I see a bunch of, of cars up ahead stopped and I see my oil pressure gauge go who there was an old enough car where it had one of those. So I immediately just a split second. I put on my blinker, I pulled to the side and I realized what had happened. And so I pulled out my cell phone, I 0:11:53 - 0:12:15 called the tow truck and then pulled out my laptop and just got to work. It just started working and I don't think my heart rate went up once the whole time. Why? Because I was exactly where I was supposed to be doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing, fully engaged in the life that God has given 0:12:15 - 0:12:45 me with constant contact and perfect alignment with him. And you cannot beat that blessing. It's the most important thing is to be one with the Lord to walk with him. So don't fall for this double trap of ignoring things that are obvious, missing out on time to prepare. And then on the tail side of that 0:12:44 - 0:13:11 thinking it's gonna be all at once or it will be over very quickly. So many bad, bad, bad choices in life come from people seeking to end an uncomfortable experience and they'll pay any price to do it. No matter how suboptimal that path is, you have to do it in the right way. And reality has a way of 0:13:10 - 0:13:29 dragging things out and remember it's all designed by loving God to teach us the things that we lack to become more like Him. So no matter what the details are, remember what the purpose is and make use of it.