Dear FRONTLINE,

It strikes me that people are looking in the wrong directions for protection against biological weapons. If the US build a stock pile to protect herself, it won't make any difference. People if they intend to use it, will. We have suacide bombers, in the US capital punishment exists, does that stop people from blowing up buildings or murdering their fellow man? People, extremists will still use weapons like these if they feel they have to. What the US and the UN must do is to try and prevent the climates where people are going to be able to threaten the world with these weapons.

Simon Upton

Dear FRONTLINE,

As a trained soldier in the U.S. Army I have the equipment to deal with a chemical attack. The average citizen has no concept of chemical and biological warfare. When will some one actually admit that even after the U.S. identifies and possiably diagnoses a attack that millions will already be dead. This is not some thing that a simple flu shot can solve. Technology has created a weapon that is capable of destroying humanity but works undetected until it is to late. The only way to prevent this is to destroy all chemical and biological elements along with the delivery systems required for their uses. I can't even protect my own friends and family.

daniel kaufman
Blooming Prairie, MN

Dear FRONTLINE,

I believe there should be a world-wide ban on any biological weapons whatsoever. I personally don't want to contract some horrible, disfiguring disease that has come from the hands of man.

jennifer anderson
milwaukee, wi

Dear FRONTLINE,

Use of biological agents are nothing new when one examines the history of war. However, it is only in the past fifty years that man has realized the true lethal potential of using biological agents as a weapon. With weapons comosed of live bacteria and viruses, we may have the possibility of making vaccines to inhibit their growth and prevent spread of disease. But because we are able to easily isolate the smallest causitive agents of these diseases from these microbes, such as botulin toxin, the battle becomes more difficult. We forget that live biological weapons indiscriminaty kill, able to grow from only a single transmitted cell or particle, multiply, and spread disease. Even those responsible for an attack are not safe from the reaches of their own biological weapon. We now live in a world where ease of travel for humans has become even more effective to spread disease to all areas of the globe. I fear of where and when a biological attack will occur, but even moreso that it will spread to far before we detect it.

Mark Sullivan
Seattle, WA

Dear FRONTLINE,

Will America heed the warning? I hope so, but I think not. In the pursuit of comfort, we have lost our willingness to sacrifice, and it will take sacrifice and endurance of great suffering, without surrender, if we are to prevail when the mask of the red death disrupts our warm cozy lives.

May God have mercy on the poor souls who will be made to suffer this attack, and may he give the rest the strength to carry on in the face of the petrifying fear and terror that will result.

Tom Convery
Ventura, CA

Dear FRONTLINE,

Plague War was most certainly an intense perspective on the possibility of biological warfare. My biggest fear is how easy these viruses are made. Any terrorist group willing to pay a high price to rogue scientists and money is usually no object to themwould be able to produce these deadly viruses. The ease of planting such devices in large cities is like taking candy from a baby. It is only a matter of time before the first incident happens. Unfortunately it will have to happen before people wake up and realize its gruesome destruction.

It's scary to know that there are increasing numbers of 3rd world countries that would love to release these viruses in the US because America is becoming more and more hated to some countries inparticular.

After watching the show, I feel helpless when US inspections do not have the power or authority to prove their disbeliefs regarding biological weapons manufacture in foreign countries. The fact is, if they have something to hide, then they are not telling the truth. Sanctions should be put on countries for not complying with random inspections just like chemical and nuclear weapons facilities are inspected.

Todd Liles

Dear FRONTLINE,

I am offended by the thought that Soviet/Russian officials could callously prepare for the extermination of millions and now some of those same people expect us to belive that they are "just like us." Why would anyone seek to create a "doomsday" biological agent with 100% effectiveness? If that isn't the height of madness then I don't know.
May we or our descendants never have to wonder why.

Hilario Wilson
West Covina, CA

Dear FRONTLINE,

Some 20 years ago, I was a young sailor on a ship in underway traing at the Naval station at Guantanamo GTMO Bay in Cuba. Part of ou training was in Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Warfare. We ran extensive underway drills in Nuclear and chemical warfare but nothing in Biological Warfare. I asked one of the shipriders conducting the training why didn't traiin in Biological Warafare. He shrugged his shoulders, said that there was really nothing we could do but keep our shots up-to-date. Beyond that, he said, they would wait until we all died, collect tissue samples and figure out what killed us later. It wasn't much different when I went through my last underway training in 1992, two years bfore I retired from the Coast Guard. I hope that they have made some progress in protecting the front line soldiers and sailors beyond what they had just a few years ago.
Fair winds and following seas to all.

Bo Bolinaga
Fullerton, California

Dear FRONTLINE,

I just finished watching your frontline episode on biological weapons, and I must tell you that it was a frightening awakening. The thought of such a massive destructive force being used against human life is just to much to think of. What is even more horrifying is that this could be the terrorists new weapon.

Can anyone or any country really protect itself from something like this? Or do we just prepare/teach ourselves on how to minimize loss of life if such an attack were to happen?

Jeff Olson
Tempe, Arizona

Dear FRONTLINE,

Seeing your program on the threat of biological weapons again reiterates how mankind and all of us can so easilly be tempted to threaten the lives of all our fellow living beings. It's amazing how easy it is to kill so many and on the other hand amazing that more people don't kill. What the temptation is for people to willingly continue such research is just beyond me.

Martijn Veltman
Los Angeles, CA

Dear FRONTLINE,

All I can think about after watching the program is what a scary world this has become...

Rick Golenor

Dear FRONTLINE,

It seems to me our primary hope might be with a reliance on a perhaps "goodness" basis of individual human beings and their lives and a corresponding distrust of a groupthink mentality whether it be governments or terror based organizations.

Robert Crysler
Denver, Colorado

Dear FRONTLINE,

Your program was most fascinating and disturbing. However, it gave the impression that biological weapons B/W are something new. This is far from the case: as an example, B/W were used against the U.S. in 1915 by agents of Imperial Germany, who injected horses bound for military use in Europe with anthrax and glanders bacilli at the Black Tom loading peir on the New Jersey side of the port of New York.

Dan Kahan
Washington, D.C.

Dear FRONTLINE,

As a person who no longer has a great deal of faith in our own government, I find myself unable to believe the lovely fantasy that the wicked, bad, evil conspirators of the Soviet Union have spent the last several decades developing enough chemical and biological weapons to eradicate the entire population of the planet many times over, while our own government has been sitting idly, crocheting doilies perhaps, or planting daisies. For reasons of national security, amongst others, I do not believe that your program or the public in general would be able to easily access any information that our government, as practiced in deception as they are, would truly feel the need to conceal. Out of everything that I have learned from your
program tonight, stands the chilling realization that only madmen with no regard whatsoever for the fate of humanity would pursue such a course, thus our lives are in the hands of madmen.

Brenda Wolfe
Austin, Texas

Dear FRONTLINE,

The Russian chemical/biological weapons programs do not bother me as much as the availability of information and equipment to produce bioweapons by private individuals and groups does. Only a small, fanatical group or individual with their back up against the wall would have a strategic use for such a weapon.

This unchecked information traveling around on the internet combined with the growth of seperatist/fundamentalist lifestyles is a recipe for disaster.

Robert
, IL

Dear FRONTLINE,

Citizens need to form an alliance for protection from bio plauges. Donations to provide immediate answers, breathing apparatus, food and water storage systems, self quarantine and home protection besides vaccines,antidotes & herbs

brad snower
chicago, illinois