Chimera virus's
Have you ever heard of a Chimera virus? While doing research for my history paper I came across what is known as a chimera virus. In case you didn’t know, a chimera is an ancient Greek monster that had the heads of a lion and goat with a serpent for a tail. Simply put it was a combination of a series of deadly creatures put into one. Similarly this concept was adopted into the virus world. If one was to take a few virus’s qualities like the lethality of Ebola, the contagiousness of smallpox, and the trigger like ability of herpes you would have one terribly nasty virus. Supposedly, during the cold war, the Russians were working on combining both Ebola and smallpox to be used as a bioweapon. Ebola is basically a filovirus that kills you in about a week. The virus destroys the body’s immune system, blood vessels, and consequently liquefies the major organs. After this has taken place the victim usually dies bleeding their innards out of every orifice or hole in their body. The virus has a 90 percent mortality rate. Thankfully though, in its natural state it is not terribly contagious. It would require direct blood contact from an infected individual to contract the disease. However, smallpox is extremely contagious. In a small hospital room, if an infected victim were to leave a small hospital room, 10 hours later, an uninfected individual could walk into the room and contract the disease by just breathing in the air of the room. Makes you think doesn’t it? What if these deadly qualities were combined and used against us as a method of terror?