Small groups of "terrorists" could cause devastation to a great numbers of persons through the use of these weapons in an attempt to forward their "cause". "One of the first instances of "bio"-terrorism in the US occurred 1984 when a local cult tried to influence an election by contaminating local salad bars with salmonella in Oregon. Their actions made 751 persons ill"(Pate 1). "In 1994 and 1995 four men were the first ever convicted in the US under the 1989 Biological Weapons Antiterrorism Act for possessing ricin, a chemical agent"(Pate 1).
In the late 1990s, a great deal of attention was given by the US government to the anthrax problem. "It was revealed that Iraq, USSR (later Russia) and South Africa all had done extensive experimentation on anthrax as a weapon"(Pate 2). In 1995, in Japan, a doomsday cult released sarin, a nerve gas, in the Tokyo subway. "12 were killed and over a thousand injured"(Pate 1). .
Some of the most deadly chemical and biological weapons are Anthrax, Cholera, Smallpox, The Plague, Ricin, Chlorine Gas, Hydrogen Cyanide, Sarin, and VX. Some of the symptoms include fatigue, blurred vision, nausea, diarrhea, blood poisoning, respiratory failure, frothing at the mouth, blindness, and convulsions. In many peoples opinion these weapons are worse than nuclear and I think they are right.
The CIA is probably the best intelligence source in the world. "Good intelligence is the front line of defense against terrorism. However, due to major restraints on the FBI and the CIA during the 1970s has made it far more difficult for the U.S. authorities to monitor violence-prone individuals and groups operating in the U.S."(Douglass 172). That means that terrorist can be operating right under our noses and our own government wouldn't even know. .
The most vulnerable target for contamination by a terrorist is a city's water supply. There are reservoirs all over the place so it would be hard to detect it.