The Secret Government Playbook For A Bioweapon Attack - Annie Jacobsen

1. 0:00 – 1:08

   Nuclear vs Biological War: Which Is Worse?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Last time we talked was about how we could blow ourselves to death.

   2. AJAnnie Jacobsen0:03

      [inhales]

   3. CWChris Williamson0:03

      And this time we're talking about how we could infect ourselves to death. Which one's scarier, nuclear war or biological war?

   4. AJAnnie Jacobsen0:11

      It's equally scary in completely different ways. I think, you know, with nuclear war, the response to that was so many people calling me up and saying like, "Okay, I read your book. I just wanna die instantly." Biological war is tricky and scary because you don't have to die instantly, and then you have to wonder, "I wish I did." That's the sort of bad news first.

   5. CWChris Williamson0:41

      That... Is there any good news with biological war?

   6. AJAnnie Jacobsen0:44

      There is because it can be prevented. I mean, unlike nuclear war, which is like a, just an event that happens without warning-

   7. CWChris Williamson0:52

      Hmm

   8. AJAnnie Jacobsen0:52

      ... it's literally called an event without warning. Biological war is event with warning, and that warning window, it's literally like 12, 24, 36 hours max. But that is the window of time when something can be

2. 1:08 – 4:23

   Why No One Is Talking About Bioweapons

   1. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:08

      done.

   2. CWChris Williamson1:08

      Why do you think biological warfare receives so little public attention compared with nuclear war?

   3. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:13

      Yeah. I mean, terrific question. For starters, biological war is illegal. Biological weapons are illegal. And yet biological weapons exist, including now today, 21st century, genetically modified biological weapons for extreme transmission, hypervirulence, and designed to defeat existing vaccines and countermeasures. But it's illegal, so no one has them except for they do.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:44

      Hmm. Is there something about it being invisible as well? There's no smoke in the sky.

   5. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:51

      I mean, that's what makes it incredibly sinister, I think. It's invisible, it's silent. And when you really just think of this simple idea that a biological weapon, any pathogen really, is a living munition.

   6. CWChris Williamson2:04

      Hmm.

   7. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:04

      It's alive and it replicates.

   8. CWChris Williamson2:07

      It's a bullet with a mind of its own.

   9. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:09

      And it's like with, it's self-reproducing and so it's just go once it gets unleashed.

   10. CWChris Williamson2:18

       Do you think bioweapons are the most underappreciated existential risk of the modern world?

   11. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:23

       Well, I came across this chart in the DoD that really freaked me out when I was reading, when I was working on nuclear war, and it's like the weapons of mass destruction, WMD threat spectrum.

   12. CWChris Williamson2:34

       Hmm.

   13. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:34

       And of course, nuclear weapons are like at the far end of the worst, most destructive. But biological weapons are a very close second and even more frightening. They are considered the most likely to occur and therefore the most dangerous.

   14. CWChris Williamson2:51

       Hmm.

   15. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:52

       And this has to do with, you know, laboratories doing defensive research on biological weapon countermeasures. So there, this is where you get really into a lot of, you know, sort of catch-22, very politicized, politicized debates, which we're gonna stay away from and just talk about it as like a, or at least I am, you know, because it's should-- no one should be for biological war.

   16. CWChris Williamson3:20

       Mm-hmm. What surprised you most about comparing the two, nuclear war and biowar?

   17. AJAnnie Jacobsen3:29

       Well, equally shocked in, in two lanes. So nuclear war, I remember when Craig Fugate, who's Obama's former FEMA director, told me that there is no plan for population protection in the event of a strategic nuclear attack-

   18. CWChris Williamson3:45

       Hmm

   19. AJAnnie Jacobsen3:45

       ... because everyone will be dead. I mean, that was stunning to me because this is coming from the guy in charge of it. Equally stunning is that there is a plan for protection in the event of biological war, but it's not for the population. It's not for you and me. It's for the government. It's for a tiny group of government officials that will live out the attack or the incident, by the way. It doesn't have to be an attack.

   20. CWChris Williamson4:13

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   21. AJAnnie Jacobsen4:13

       It can be an accident.

   22. CWChris Williamson4:14

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   23. AJAnnie Jacobsen4:15

       But this is super creepy and people should definitely know about it-

   24. CWChris Williamson4:19

       All right. All right

   25. AJAnnie Jacobsen4:20

       ... and be very upset when they do.

   26. CWChris Williamson4:21

       Let's, let's start-

   27. AJAnnie Jacobsen4:21

       Yeah. Yeah

   28. CWChris Williamson4:21

       ... to creep people out then.

   29. AJAnnie Jacobsen4:22

       Okay.

3. 4:23 – 7:14

   Is Genetic Engineering a Good Thing?

   1. CWChris Williamson4:23

      Starting at the beginning, how did we learn to engineer biotechnology? Like what, what's the story there?

   2. AJAnnie Jacobsen4:29

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, people talk about CRISPR now. Uh, you know, the CRISPR-Cas sort of e- gene editing. That's pretty much third or fourth generation gene editing. So the s- the origin story of gene editing is 1971 in a laboratory in Stanford, at Stanford University in Stanford, California. And a Nobel laureate named Paul Berg, he won the Nobel laureate for the work he did, figured out how to create what is called a chimera pathogen. So mix, chimera is like that ancient Greek idea of a monster made up of two different parts. And Berg figured out how to create recombinant DNA. That is the real fundamental word for gene editing. And that was way back in 1971.

   3. CWChris Williamson5:17

      Recombinant recombining?

   4. AJAnnie Jacobsen5:19

      Absolutely.

   5. CWChris Williamson5:20

      Okay.

   6. AJAnnie Jacobsen5:20

      It's just like it sounds. So much of this is just like it sounds.

   7. CWChris Williamson5:23

      Okay.

   8. AJAnnie Jacobsen5:23

      You know? And that's where it all began. And you know, then the, then there's the short and long version of how we got where we are now.

   9. CWChris Williamson5:31

      What's the argument for doing genetic engineering?

   10. AJAnnie Jacobsen5:35

       The argument, like all dual use technology, is like you can use it to heal, you can use it to harm. I mean, this is true of every technology going back to when humans invented or discovered fire, right? You can like cook your meat and not get trichinosis, or you can burn down the next tribes, uh, you know, ov- over. Um, every, every technology has that same component. And so with, with bioengineering, the idea is, and certainly now very specifically to where we are today, is about Okay, we, we will work with dangerous pathogens to genetically modify them so that if a dangerous pathogen is released, we will know how to create a c- medical countermeasure for it.

   11. CWChris Williamson6:26

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   12. AJAnnie Jacobsen6:28

       You see the chicken and the egg-

   13. CWChris Williamson6:29

       Mm-hmm

   14. AJAnnie Jacobsen6:29

       ... and the catch-22 of it.

   15. CWChris Williamson6:30

       Yeah. Offense and defense are-

   16. AJAnnie Jacobsen6:31

       Mm-hmm

   17. CWChris Williamson6:31

       ... contained within the same system.

   18. AJAnnie Jacobsen6:33

       Absolutely. And this is where huge divides occur, and this is where the term called gain of function, which, you know, 99.99% of the planet had never heard of until the COVID pandemic-

   19. CWChris Williamson6:50

       Mm

   20. AJAnnie Jacobsen6:50

       ... bec- has now become such a hot button issue. Gain of function is literally like it sounds. You work to genetically modify a pathogen to give it new functions, to... You know, so that it gains function. And the idea of that is that, okay, just in case someone releases a biological weapon, we will know how to go up against it. And this is the big debate about COVID, which-

4. 7:14 – 13:25

   What Covid Really Taught Us

   1. CWChris Williamson7:15

      Do you think that COVID, from a biological weapons safety pandemic standpoint, do you think that was kind of an important thing to happen in some ways? Do you think it was a positive or a negative?

   2. AJAnnie Jacobsen7:31

      I mean, that's, you know... It did happen, and here we are now, and I think the... Separate from what anyone thinks about, you know, natural origin versus lab leak-

   3. CWChris Williamson7:43

      Mm-hmm

   4. AJAnnie Jacobsen7:44

      ... the two most important lessons of COVID is, one, that we are extremely ill-prepared-

   5. CWChris Williamson7:51

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

   6. AJAnnie Jacobsen7:51

      ... for a pandemic-

   7. CWChris Williamson7:52

      Mm

   8. AJAnnie Jacobsen7:52

      ... despite the fact that in the US, billions of dollars are spent every year to, to, to deal with exactly that kind of thing. Um, that's the first lesson, and the second lesson is that the pandemic completely fractured public trust around science, around public health officials-

   9. CWChris Williamson8:14

      Mm

   10. AJAnnie Jacobsen8:14

       ... uh, around politicians. And so this fracturing is incredibly dangerous, and I believe is also where the solution lies. I mean, that's like a real long stretch to try to get there-

   11. CWChris Williamson8:27

       Yeah

   12. AJAnnie Jacobsen8:27

       ... but it must happen because it is such a dangerous position. And if we really get into it and eventually talk about the Russians' biological weapons program of the Cold War, uh, upon which some of the, the pathogen that gets deployed in my scenario is built, then you're really looking at the idea of Soviet Russia was to ruin Amer- to gut America-

   13. CWChris Williamson8:49

       Mm

   14. AJAnnie Jacobsen8:50

       ... by creating, by fracturing public trust.

   15. CWChris Williamson8:54

       The thing that's crazy, COVID feels really, uh, symbolic. I think of COVID as basically a vaccine that went wrong. COVID itself was a vaccine-

   16. AJAnnie Jacobsen9:08

       Mm

   17. CWChris Williamson9:08

       ... that went wrong, 'cause we could have been given-

   18. AJAnnie Jacobsen9:10

       Interesting

   19. CWChris Williamson9:11

       ... the, a small-

   20. AJAnnie Jacobsen9:12

       Mm-hmm

   21. CWChris Williamson9:12

       ... non-fatal dose of a future risk that would have a- alerted-

   22. AJAnnie Jacobsen9:16

       Yeah

   23. CWChris Williamson9:16

       ... us to all of the ways that we were ill-prepared so that we could be better prepared for it in future. But because of the way that institutions and the medical industry and communication and lockdown and trust were all degraded and, and, and really, really damaged, you're right. It's done two things at once. It's taught people what a super spreader event is.

   24. AJAnnie Jacobsen9:37

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson9:38

       It helps us to understand the importance of masking and ventilators. It's reminded us how ill-prepared we are. All of those things should prepare us better for the one in future. However, the current... If there was a pandemic that got released tomorrow, the amount of pushback from the populace would be huge because nobody has trust for it anymore. Uh, Jared, can you do a search for me, please? Search, um, Toby Ord, O-R-D, the precipice risk chart. It should be an image. And, um, this is the thing that's insane.

   26. AJAnnie Jacobsen10:13

       Mm.

   27. CWChris Williamson10:13

       The fact that we were so ill-prepared. I'm pretty sure that The Precipice came out in 2019. Uh, so before COVID, and it... In order to write the book and to have the research and to be able to get to the stage where... Yeah, top left. That's it. That's, that's the one. Existential, uh-

   28. AJAnnie Jacobsen10:27

       Yeah

   29. CWChris Williamson10:27

       ... ca- catastrophic risk via asteroid or comet, super volcano, stellar explosion. So natural risk. And it says, "Chance within the next 100 years, 1 in 10,000." That's of all of them. Stellar explosion, is that 1 in a billion? 1 in a billion. Uh, so we, we should be-

   30. AJAnnie Jacobsen10:42

       Wow
5. 13:25 – 21:25

   Who Created the First Biological Weapon?

   1. CWChris Williamson13:25

      Who were the first people to start using this as a weapon? Because obviously you've got recombinant DNA. Uh, uh-

   2. AJAnnie Jacobsen13:31

      Yeah

   3. CWChris Williamson13:31

      ... we've opened up this entire world, this technology.

   4. AJAnnie Jacobsen13:33

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson13:34

      Who were the first people to really turn it on an industrial-

   6. AJAnnie Jacobsen13:36

      Yeah

   7. CWChris Williamson13:36

      ... scale into becoming a, a w- weaponized threat?

   8. AJAnnie Jacobsen13:40

      That was the Soviets, right? So backing up once, first of all, in the Cold War, we had biological weapons programs. The US had a robust biological weapons program, offensive and defensive. I've written about it in other books. So did Russia, uh, the Soviet Union. In 1969, President Nixon renounced America's biological weapons program entirely for reasons that are debated. Doesn't matter. That was it. It's over. Destroy them all. Took 219 weeks to destroy. A treaty was signed around the world, the BWC, Biological Weapons Convention treaty. Biological weapons are too dangerous. They're called repugnant to the conscience of mankind in the preamble, right?

   9. CWChris Williamson14:24

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   10. AJAnnie Jacobsen14:24

       So it's this very lofty idea of like-

   11. CWChris Williamson14:26

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

   12. AJAnnie Jacobsen14:26

       ... you know, we will not do this, and everybody signed the treaty. And not-

   13. CWChris Williamson14:31

       Including the Soviets.

   14. AJAnnie Jacobsen14:32

       Including the Soviets.

   15. CWChris Williamson14:33

       Fucking Soviets.

   16. AJAnnie Jacobsen14:34

       And im- now we know because of a defector, and I get into this in the book because it's very interesting. I interview the British, um, intelligence officer who first found out about the whole Soviet program. Not until the late '80s did America, did the CIA, did British intelligence have any idea that the Soviets had this colossal program. They stole our recombinant DNA technology. I mean, good old IP theft back in the, in the '70s.

   17. CWChris Williamson15:03

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   18. AJAnnie Jacobsen15:03

       And they b-

   19. CWChris Williamson15:04

       They were the China of the '70s

   20. AJAnnie Jacobsen15:05

       ... and they began this biological weapons program. They called it our Manhattan Project, and we had no idea. Now bring us to the present day, just to deal with some facts about who has biological weapons. According to the State Department, Russia has a biological weapons program. This is on the record, and this is a pretty big deal, and their position is that the Soviet program was not dismantled as had been promised-

   21. CWChris Williamson15:32

       Hmm

   22. AJAnnie Jacobsen15:32

       ... when the wall came down, but rather absorbed. And the State Department has the same position about Nor K- North Korea, that they have a robust biological weapons program.

   23. CWChris Williamson15:45

       Hmm.

   24. AJAnnie Jacobsen15:45

       And then their position on China and Iran is they are questionable, which is like euphemism subtext for they have biological weapons programs.

   25. CWChris Williamson15:54

       Have the State Department admitted to having them themselves?

   26. AJAnnie Jacobsen15:58

       We do not have a biological weapons program.

   27. CWChris Williamson16:00

       How much do you believe that?

   28. AJAnnie Jacobsen16:01

       Officially. Officially.

   29. CWChris Williamson16:03

       [laughs]

   30. AJAnnie Jacobsen16:04

       But, but w- but, but... Okay, but well, let me just say this. What we do have and what we have had in the past is a defensive program. And so I've interview- I interview some really interesting people for this book, including, like, the top dogs in this world, okay? And, and people who run war games at the Pentagon for how this would go down.
6. 21:25 – 26:44

   What Makes the Perfect Biological Weapon?

   1. CWChris Williamson21:25

      What are the elements of the perfect biological weapon?

   2. AJAnnie Jacobsen21:28

      Airborne is number one.

   3. CWChris Williamson21:29

      Okay

   4. AJAnnie Jacobsen21:30

      Number one.

   5. CWChris Williamson21:30

      That would be the transition

   6. AJAnnie Jacobsen21:31

      Number one

   7. CWChris Williamson21:32

      Transmission

   8. AJAnnie Jacobsen21:33

      100% transmission. So what's interesting about COVID, and I just use this sometimes as a great example because everybody was, remembers COVID, those of us that, you know, lived through it and aren't a baby. Um, and there was, for the first three months of COVID, the WHO was sending out tweets that said, "COVID is not airborne," not in full capital letters. They believed that COVID was transmissible through, you know, me passing this to you, and it's called a fomite. Not how it's, not how it works.

   9. CWChris Williamson22:08

      Some pathogens are

   10. AJAnnie Jacobsen22:10

       Some pathogens are.

   11. CWChris Williamson22:11

       Right

   12. AJAnnie Jacobsen22:11

       Absolutely

   13. CWChris Williamson22:12

       But COVID wasn't

   14. AJAnnie Jacobsen22:12

       But COVID wasn't. And they were convinced it wasn't airborne, and it was airborne. There was 8,000 people already with COVID before the WHO made, made us change that statement, and this pr- they were not doing it to be nefarious. They were doing it because they didn't know. There is so much uncertainty-

   15. CWChris Williamson22:32

       Hmm

   16. AJAnnie Jacobsen22:33

       ... in biology, so much uncertainty. It's probably part of the reason why the US got rid of its biological weapons program. The Defense Department likes to know. You can measure how many people you're gonna kill with a bomb. It's called a circular damage issue, and you don't know with biology. And so the Defense Department, if they can't control it, they don't like it

   17. CWChris Williamson22:57

       Hmm. Yeah, I remember people were wiping down Amazon parcels. There was even a, a rule added into pickleball where you could do a paddle serve, so as the ball came toward you, you could scoop it up on the paddle, flick it in the air, and hit it because people were that worried that maybe the other person had picked the ball up, and if I picked the ball up, and then I p- so, uh, okay. So elements of the perfect biological weapon, first one is it's airborne.

   18. AJAnnie Jacobsen23:20

       Yes.

   19. CWChris Williamson23:20

       What, what-

   20. AJAnnie Jacobsen23:20

       Transmissibility

   21. CWChris Williamson23:21

       Transmissibility is airborne

   22. AJAnnie Jacobsen23:22

       Transmissibility, yeah

   23. CWChris Williamson23:22

       What else? What, what, what, how else would it be constituted?

   24. AJAnnie Jacobsen23:26

       Virulence, right? So it's, it's case fatality rate. COVID, as we said earlier, 1%, so 100 people get COVID, one dies. That's a pretty low case fal- case fatality rate. Hantavirus recently in the news, um, high 30% case fatality rate, so that's a lot of people if you... Right? The flu, the seasonal flu, by the way, is 0.1%. Pneumonic plague-

   25. CWChris Williamson23:56

       What's that?

   26. AJAnnie Jacobsen23:57

       Which, okay, we, you, we all know bubonic plague. Pneumonic plague is the aerosolized version of bubonic plague. Bubonic plague, a flea from an infected flea bites you, you get bubonic plague. Pneumonic plague, it gets into your lungs, and it becomes aerosolized. Pneumonic plague has a case fatality rate of 100%. Unless you get antibiotics into your system Within 24 hours, not 25 hours. First 24 hours, you get antibiotics, you have a chance at living. If you don't, you die 100%. 100%.

   27. CWChris Williamson24:40

       What's the incubation period of pneumonic plague?

   28. AJAnnie Jacobsen24:43

       The natural incubation period is between one and three days, sometimes five. Again, this is-- there's so much ambiguity in mother nature. Genetically modified plague, one day. So imagine a situation where this is what I-- this is the s- the pathogen that I choose in this scenario because it is what the Defense Department, FEMA, HHS, CDC, WHO is probably the most afraid of. It's called a select-- it's called a tier one select agent. It's mo- the mo- one of the most likely to be used, and it's a 100% killer. And now imagine if you could genetically modify that to evade cure. So imagine if antibiotics no longer work. And what I'm saying may sound like science fiction horror, except for it's precisely what was at the center of that Soviet biological weapons program of the '70s and '80s that we talked about a moment ago.

   29. CWChris Williamson25:48

       That's what they were engineering.

   30. AJAnnie Jacobsen25:49

       They were engineering a super plague weapon.
7. 26:44 – 27:50

   The Soviet Bioweapons Ambition

   1. CWChris Williamson26:45

      What was the goal of the Soviet scientists? Do you think it was primarily casualties or m- something more psychological?

   2. AJAnnie Jacobsen26:52

      Very good question. It was actually both. It was a twofold idea. It was this, create this mass death that we're talking about. And remember, maybe not the Soviet scientist. It was the Politburo, the sort of planners behind it, the military, the Soviet officials that just hated the, their American enemy so much that they came up with the most diabolical plan possible. And it was exactly that. It was just kill everyone, but also create such mistrust within the medical establishment. They wanted to outfox antibiotics, which normally will kill plague.

   3. CWChris Williamson27:33

      Mm.

   4. AJAnnie Jacobsen27:33

      The bacteria is called Yersinia pestis. And they wanted to specifically send America back to the sort of, you know, pre-antibiotic era and have all the people have completely lost trust in the medical

8. 27:50 – 34:38

   How the Soviet Program Was Exposed

   1. AJAnnie Jacobsen27:50

      establishment.

   2. CWChris Williamson27:51

      How did we find out about the Soviet weapons program?

   3. AJAnnie Jacobsen27:54

      The program was huge, and it was secretive, and no one knew about it from, you know, until 1988, '89. And then one of its leading scientist engineers named Vladimir Pasechnik had a moral crisis, and he was a rare Soviet scientist who was allowed to leave Russia to go buy equipment for the biological weapons program in France. And that is where he went. He decided to defect and tell the West. So he went to the embassy. He actually went to the Canadian embassy first, and they didn't believe him, and they sent him away. And he went back to a phone booth, and he called the British embassy. They took him very seriously, picked him up in a car, and a day later, he was sitting in London in a safe house across the table, just like you and I are now-

   4. CWChris Williamson28:54

      Hmm

   5. AJAnnie Jacobsen28:54

      ... from Dr. Christopher Davis, who was the on- pretty much the only guy assigned to biological weapons in the British intelligence because there were no biological weapons. There weren't supposed to be. So he was this young surgeon commander, and he knew a lot about biological weapons. Um, and I've interviewed him at length for the book. Imagine him learning about this and learning about the super plague weapon and going. And then the British told their American counterparts at the CIA. It was verified, and that-

   6. CWChris Williamson29:29

      How was it verified?

   7. AJAnnie Jacobsen29:30

      We sent... So Davis and another colleague, uh, went to the CIA in Langley, had a discussion with them, told them everything that Pasechnik had said. Um, these guys are MDs and PhDs and, you know, the CIA was like, "Okay, well, we have to verify it ourselves." They sent Joshua Lederberg, who's a very famous Nobel laureate, to the UK to interview Pasechnik himself. And Dr. Davis was there in that room, and he said Lederberg was like... He s- the way he said it was, "The scales fell off his eyes." Oh my God. Like, not only what have they done, but how did we not know this? They were manufacturing tons of plague weapon, tons of smallpox weapon. And the systems, the delivery systems were such in those days. They weren't airborne, truly airborne. They were going to be delivered, you know, on like sort of low-flying cruise missiles and dropped. There was a whole weaponization that had to happen

   8. CWChris Williamson30:34

      Like in capsules, in bombs, or in-

   9. AJAnnie Jacobsen30:37

      Yeah, like you put... They had r- they had engineered and actually correctly engineered, that was part of the verification process, creating warheads that could survive this incredible heat.

   10. CWChris Williamson30:48

       Hmm.

   11. AJAnnie Jacobsen30:48

       Um, and their delivery systems work, but that, those were never used.

   12. CWChris Williamson30:54

       Okay. So that's how weapons can be used to attack, but surely everyone also needs to build biodefenses as well.

   13. AJAnnie Jacobsen31:00

       And this is the big conundrum.

   14. CWChris Williamson31:02

       Yeah.

   15. AJAnnie Jacobsen31:02

       This is the big conundrum.

   16. CWChris Williamson31:03

       There's, there's a paradox there, right?

   17. AJAnnie Jacobsen31:04

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson31:04

       The effort to defend against biological attacks results in more labs being built-

   19. AJAnnie Jacobsen31:08

       Mm-hmm

   20. CWChris Williamson31:08

       ... which increases the opportunity for a biological catastrophe.

   21. AJAnnie Jacobsen31:11

       Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson31:11

       Because you don't just have purposeful deliberate leaks or attacks.

   23. AJAnnie Jacobsen31:17

       Yes.

   24. CWChris Williamson31:17

       Uh, you don't just have purposeful attacks, you also have accidental leaks.

   25. AJAnnie Jacobsen31:21

       Absolutely. And maybe no one would be crazy enough to use a biological weapon because they know about blowback now. You know what happens with a pandemic. Except a terrorist organization, you know, that doesn't value life, shall we say, in the s- certainly in the same manner as, you know, the West.

   26. CWChris Williamson31:40

       Hmm.

   27. AJAnnie Jacobsen31:41

       Um, but the lab accidents and the lab leaks are a very serious concern and should be. But let's talk about labs for a minute because I think it's very interesting to look at numbers. So we just spoke of like in the '90s, you know, the US finds out about the Soviet program. Clinton makes the use of a biological weapon a death penalty adva- uh, uh, uh, offense. The system really vamps up. The Cold War is down. Now there's a new enemy. I mean, the, the Cold War is over. The wall is down. Now there's a new enemy. It's definitely biological weapons. Terrorists start to enter into the fold, and then 9/11 happens.

   28. CWChris Williamson32:18

       Hmm.

   29. AJAnnie Jacobsen32:19

       And when n- and most people forget or aren't old enough to remember that just a few weeks after 9/11, there was an anthrax attack-

   30. CWChris Williamson32:28

       Yes. Yes
9. 34:38 – 37:30

   How Many Bioweapons Are Man-Made?

   1. CWChris Williamson34:38

      How, how many viruses are you aware of that have been crea- or bioweapon, bioweapon, uh, analogs-

   2. AJAnnie Jacobsen34:47

      Mm-hmm

   3. CWChris Williamson34:47

      ... have been created from scratch? Is there such a thing?

   4. AJAnnie Jacobsen34:50

      That, great question. That's called synthetic biology, and that is very new, like third generation recombinant DNA, CRISPR, where you, yes, you can create something that-

   5. CWChris Williamson35:03

      Just type it in. I want to see

   6. AJAnnie Jacobsen35:04

      ... does not exist in Mother in, in, in nature.

   7. CWChris Williamson35:07

      Or that is a chimera, uh, gain-of-function of an existing thing that exists in-

   8. AJAnnie Jacobsen35:12

      And that's not necessarily... Well, uh, that's sort of at the edge of synthetic biology. Yes.

   9. CWChris Williamson35:17

      Right.

   10. AJAnnie Jacobsen35:17

       It does involve synthetic biology, but you can actually create a completely new-

   11. CWChris Williamson35:21

       Blank slate

   12. AJAnnie Jacobsen35:22

       ... and that is, that's where you're getting into the area, and, and certainly with AI. This is-

   13. CWChris Williamson35:26

       Are you aware of any of those that have been made?

   14. AJAnnie Jacobsen35:29

       That is s- so incredibly classified. I mean, I would have to guess-

   15. CWChris Williamson35:34

       Your entire-

   16. AJAnnie Jacobsen35:35

       Yeah. Yeah

   17. CWChris Williamson35:35

       ... body of work seems incredibly classified.

   18. AJAnnie Jacobsen35:38

       Well, uh, well, no. I mean, this is what's interesting. People s- sometimes say to me, "Annie, how do you get classified information?" I don't. My sources would be in prison. I name my sources. So they're taking me up to the edge of what can be known. When we get into devolution, which is the program to save, you know, a small group of individuals when everyone else is dying-

   19. CWChris Williamson35:59

       Hmm

   20. AJAnnie Jacobsen35:59

       ... and mass anarchy and insurrection unfolds across the United States and everywhere.

   21. CWChris Williamson36:03

       Hmm.

   22. AJAnnie Jacobsen36:04

       I can-- That is a classified program, Devolution. Spooky. Evolution, Devolution, okay? Classified program, but the name has been declassified.

   23. CWChris Williamson36:15

       [laughs]

   24. AJAnnie Jacobsen36:16

       So like five years ago, the name-

   25. CWChris Williamson36:18

       You can't listen to my new album, but I'll tell you what it's called.

   26. AJAnnie Jacobsen36:20

       Or the river, right.

   27. CWChris Williamson36:21

       Yeah, yeah.

   28. AJAnnie Jacobsen36:21

       You know?

   29. CWChris Williamson36:22

       Yeah.

   30. AJAnnie Jacobsen36:22

       Um, I'll tell you what it's called, but you can't listen to it.
10. 37:30 – 45:04

    The Biggest Mistakes in Bioweapons History

    1. CWChris Williamson37:30

       Okay. What-- As far as you're aware, what are the most risky or controversial experiments that have happened in bioweapons so far?

    2. AJAnnie Jacobsen37:40

       Well, okay, so technically they're not in bioweapons. They are in, you know, biological countermeasure pursuits, okay? Because remember, biological weapon engineering is illegal. Um, just a few basic ones that are good to know and also how old some of this technology is, is like right around 2000, 2001, there was a mouse pox experiment. It was one of the first ones. So, um, in Australia, they took scientists there, just wanted to experiment and see, and they took mice that had been vaccinated, and they gave them mouse pox, which is similar to smallpox, to see if they could defeat the vaccine, and they did.

    3. CWChris Williamson38:23

       Hmm.

    4. AJAnnie Jacobsen38:24

       So that was a terrifying moment in bioengineering because you realize you could defeat a countermeasure.

    5. CWChris Williamson38:31

       Hmm.

    6. AJAnnie Jacobsen38:31

       That's where you're m- you know, engineering something to evade cure. That's incredibly dangerous. And then like 10, 12 years later, there was a, there was a modification on H5N1. It was called the f- the ferret flu, um, experiment. And the scientists working on that made H5N1 airborne. Before that, it was not airborne. So there's a l- there's a lesser airborne version, which is, um, respi- like con- like if I, if you and I are talking, have you ever been at a party with someone, loud music, and by... and they spit on you?

    7. CWChris Williamson39:09

       Mm-hmm.

    8. AJAnnie Jacobsen39:10

       That's called droplet transmission, right?

    9. CWChris Williamson39:12

       Okay.

    10. AJAnnie Jacobsen39:12

        And you know, we've all had it happen, and you kind of like go... Right? It's just gross, but it's, it happens.

    11. CWChris Williamson39:18

        Hmm.

    12. AJAnnie Jacobsen39:18

        Definitely never rub your eye.

    13. CWChris Williamson39:21

        Never rub your eye.

    14. AJAnnie Jacobsen39:23

        Or your nose.

    15. CWChris Williamson39:24

        Okay.

    16. AJAnnie Jacobsen39:24

        Or put your finger in your mouth.

    17. CWChris Williamson39:26

        Okay. Those are the three.

    18. AJAnnie Jacobsen39:28

        That's how droplet transmission occurs.

    19. CWChris Williamson39:31

        Okay.

    20. AJAnnie Jacobsen39:32

        Eye, nose, mouth.

    21. CWChris Williamson39:33

        Right.

    22. AJAnnie Jacobsen39:33

        Okay? Um, that's not, that's not airborne. Airborne is aerosolized. Airborne is just, it's in the air, and it's floating in the air, and it can stay in the air. Um, and so what scientists did in that 2012 experiment is they made dro- something that was droplet transmission, and that's, you know, if we, if I back way up and you're over there-

    23. CWChris Williamson39:54

        Hmm

    24. AJAnnie Jacobsen39:55

        ... and you're not leaning in close to talking to me-

    25. CWChris Williamson39:56

        Yep

    26. AJAnnie Jacobsen39:57

        ... I'm not gonna get your, if you're infected.

    27. CWChris Williamson39:59

        But realistically, that's what those big plastic welding shields that people were wearing during COVID, that's really all that they would've been good for.

    28. AJAnnie Jacobsen40:07

        Precisely, and that's what the, the, the mask does, is it just, if somebody spits on you-

    29. CWChris Williamson40:11

        Hmm

    30. AJAnnie Jacobsen40:11

        ... it, it's, it's a layer of protection.
11. 45:04 – 56:02

    What Happens in the First 24 Hours of a Leak?

    1. CWChris Williamson45:04

       it's very dangerous. Okay. Let-

    2. AJAnnie Jacobsen45:05

       Yeah

    3. CWChris Williamson45:05

       ... let's war game out your nightmare scenario.

    4. AJAnnie Jacobsen45:07

       Mm.

    5. CWChris Williamson45:07

       Day one, what happens?

    6. AJAnnie Jacobsen45:10

       Explosion at the Vector Lab in Russia. And the reason that I chose that is why I chose many plot points in the scenario is it happened once before. In 2019, there was an explosion at the Vector Lab. Vector is the BSL-4 facility where the, a majority of the Soviet bioweapons program occurred back during the Cold War.

    7. CWChris Williamson45:33

       Where is it?

    8. AJAnnie Jacobsen45:34

       It's in just outside of Novosibirsk, Siberia. Okay? And so that may sound like the middle of nov- nowhere. It's actually in a small v- sort of village, a science city called Koltsovo, eight miles from Novosibirsk. Siberia, it's a... You know, people are like, "Wait, Siberia? Is that a real place?" It is, okay? Sounds far away. It's the third largest city in Russia after Moscow and St. Petersburg. 1.6 million people. And most BSL-4 lab, or many BSL-4 labs, by the way, are just right in the middle of some of the largest popular population centers in the world. Tokyo, South Africa, Atlanta, right? So that's how it begins. I have an explosion in the lab, but unlike what happened in 2019 where there was no release, as far as anyone knows, there is a release of a pathogen, and it's pneumonic plague, and it's genetically modified pneumonic plague. And I take the reader through the military system of systems as, as I have spent my career working to understand all that, to see how the DoD reacts, and to see how and when the st- the president will be told, and to see how and when the different agencies get involved. And to me, that was just an extraordinary, you know, learning curve and a sort of like whoa along the way.

    9. CWChris Williamson47:06

       Mm-hmm.

    10. AJAnnie Jacobsen47:07

        With the number one thing leading the charge that every sort of expert in any of those agencies told me was, "Annie, if you can stop something with 12 to 24 hours, 12 to, 24 to 36 hours, if you can stop it in its tracks, you can prevent a pandemic." But of course, because biological weapons are illegal, no one wants to admit they have biological weapons in their freezers. And so-

    11. CWChris Williamson47:30

        The host nation's immediately gonna try and cover it up or deny it

    12. AJAnnie Jacobsen47:33

        ... and that is the natural response across history to just if there is an unnat... You know, there was a famous case in Sverdlovsk in Russia in 1979 where they were weaponizing anthrax. They were milling it into powder. Anthrax is an interesting pathogen because it's called a, a dead-end host, right? So if you get anthrax, it's not transmissible.

    13. CWChris Williamson47:56

        Hmm.

    14. AJAnnie Jacobsen47:56

        You, you get it in your lungs and you die, but you can't... It's not airborne. But it's like a super killer, and for whatever reason, it was the sort of favored, you know, pathogen of the Cold War. We had an anthrax program, too. So there was a, uh, there was some guy, some, you know, engineer in the Garrison 19 where they were milling the anthrax into tons of weapons-

    15. CWChris Williamson48:18

        Hmm

    16. AJAnnie Jacobsen48:18

        ... forgot to change the air filter, and it got out, and it killed 100 people in the town.

    17. CWChris Williamson48:25

        Hmm.

    18. AJAnnie Jacobsen48:25

        And so the Soviet Politburo, you can imagine the generals with their tall boots came in and were like, "It's contaminated meat And it was, you know, it was an escape. It was a lab escape, and they denied it for decades. Now it's known to be this kind of a situation. So a lab leak, a lab accident is really a very dangerous situation.

    19. CWChris Williamson48:51

        Would the US be aware? Because presumably they've got satellites that see if an ac-- They, they'll have an idea about where potential labs are.

    20. AJAnnie Jacobsen48:59

        Yes.

    21. CWChris Williamson48:59

        They'll be trying to track, "Hey, has there been some sort of kinetic event that's occurred there?" And wh- wh- wh- what's the process of what's going on there?

    22. AJAnnie Jacobsen49:08

        You're absolutely right. I mean, with nuclear weapons, we have satellites parked in geosync over all the facilities to look for that launch in the first second that it happens, and we see it and we know it. Lab, a lab accident is different in that it's a different kind of explosion, but they measure it from space. They know it's not a ICBM launch. It's an explosion.

    23. CWChris Williamson49:30

        Mm.

    24. AJAnnie Jacobsen49:30

        And the reason specifically why they have eyes on the Vector lab is not just because it's, like, a super dangerous lab that's known to probably have all the bioweapons, but because it's just a few miles from an ICBM facility in Novosibirsk. So the Defense Department officials I interviewed said, "Absolutely, Annie. We'd have eyes on it. We'd know it, and we'd call it in."

    25. CWChris Williamson49:52

        Mm-hmm.

    26. AJAnnie Jacobsen49:53

        And but what do you do? What do you do? You know, y- you, you reach out to Moscow through your State Department people. I spoke to State Department officials that work in the business of counterproliferation. This is sort of like a fancy word for saying trying to stop, you know, biological weapons in their tracks.

    27. CWChris Williamson50:14

        Mm.

    28. AJAnnie Jacobsen50:15

        They would make an overture. No response.

    29. CWChris Williamson50:20

        So now you're met with the do we drop the nuke or not question.

    30. AJAnnie Jacobsen50:23

        You are met with that, and then-
12. 56:02 – 57:19

    Bacteria vs Virus: Which Is More Dangerous?

    1. CWChris Williamson56:02

       Right. What's more deadly?

    2. AJAnnie Jacobsen56:04

       It depends. I mean, plague without, um-- a flu is a virus. You get the flu, it's not, it's the case fatality rate is .1, it's not that deadly. You get plague that's genetically modified to evade antibiotics, it's 100% death.

    3. CWChris Williamson56:21

       Uh-huh.

    4. AJAnnie Jacobsen56:21

       So it, it depends.

    5. CWChris Williamson56:24

       What's the most deadly virus that you're aware of?

    6. AJAnnie Jacobsen56:27

       I mean, Ebola is-- Ebola, Marburg, Nipah, they're up there in terms of if you get Ebola, your chances of living are very low. Now, medical countermeasures have been developed from the 2014 variant of Ebola. There's a, there's a medical countermeasure called ZMapp, and it was given to two nurses in Texas, for example, that I write a little vignette in the book about it. And that was a medical countermeasure, and they did not die of COVID. The host died, didn't have it. But the mutated version of Ebola that we're seeing right now in the Congo, ZMapp doesn't work because it's a variant.

    7. CWChris Williamson57:10

       Right.

    8. AJAnnie Jacobsen57:10

       No reason to believe it's genetically modified. Mother Nature does i- her own-

    9. CWChris Williamson57:16

       Mm

    10. AJAnnie Jacobsen57:16

        ... modifications. That's the nature

13. 57:19 – 59:21

    Does Dose Responsiveness Determine Survival?

    1. AJAnnie Jacobsen57:19

       of evolution.

    2. CWChris Williamson57:20

       We talked about, uh, incubation period. Am I right in saying that that is the amount of time that somebody can be exposed and it's in their system before they show or feel symptoms? Is that correct?

    3. AJAnnie Jacobsen57:30

       Absolutely. Yes.

    4. CWChris Williamson57:31

       Okay. In your scenario, how long is that incubation period?

    5. AJAnnie Jacobsen57:35

       It's very small. It's very squishy, meaning one to three days, depending on your dosage. So I told you, the guy who gave CPR to the infected person, that's a short incubation time.

    6. CWChris Williamson57:45

       Yep.

    7. AJAnnie Jacobsen57:45

       The person who's, you know, germaphobic and stayed back, and the aerosolization of it got a, a different dose, maybe a little bit longer.

    8. CWChris Williamson57:54

       Is there such a thing as a sort of dose responsiveness with v-virus or plagues-

    9. AJAnnie Jacobsen58:00

       Yep

    10. CWChris Williamson58:00

        ... uh, that um, how much of it do you need to be exposed to before it reaches critical mass to then be able to infect you?

    11. AJAnnie Jacobsen58:06

        That's a terrific question, and I was shocked by-- I asked that same question too. So there's a guy in the book called Dr. Henry Heine, and he is one of the world's experts on plague. He spent his entire life studying plague and creating m-medical countermeasures for plague. He worked at USAMRIID, which is the Defense Department's only BSL4 lab.

    12. CWChris Williamson58:25

        Mm.

    13. AJAnnie Jacobsen58:25

        He worked up there during the anthrax. And I asked him that question, and he said to me, "Okay, so for example, with plague, 40,000 plague particles fit on the head of a pin."

    14. CWChris Williamson58:39

        Mm-hmm.

    15. AJAnnie Jacobsen58:39

        So that's how, that's how tiny they are. Very low dosage, like 100, 500, 1,000. You got it.

    16. CWChris Williamson58:46

        Wow.

    17. AJAnnie Jacobsen58:47

        Okay?

    18. CWChris Williamson58:47

        Wow.

    19. AJAnnie Jacobsen58:48

        Now, this is what really blew my mind when Heine told me this. Dr. Heine told me this. He said, just to circle back to how, how little is known about so many pathogens. Today, with all the billions of people around the world infected with COVID, hundreds of millions or billions, depending who you're asking, we still do not know v-how many SARS-CoV-2 particles. That's the virus.

    20. CWChris Williamson59:15

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    21. AJAnnie Jacobsen59:15

        We don't know how many-

    22. CWChris Williamson59:17

        It's like the critical mass of this.

    23. AJAnnie Jacobsen59:18

        We don't know. We don't-- There is not an agreed upon

14. 59:21 – 1:02:19

    Are Incubation Time and Lethality Correlated?

    1. AJAnnie Jacobsen59:21

       number.

    2. CWChris Williamson59:21

       Okay. So you actually chose something that has a relatively short incubation window.

    3. AJAnnie Jacobsen59:25

       Yes.

    4. CWChris Williamson59:26

       Is incubation window and lethality usually correlated? Does something with a longer incubation window tend to be less lethal?

    5. AJAnnie Jacobsen59:33

       Another great question, and one that every-- By the way, the questions you're asking are questions that everybody should ask and know, and that is like sort of sliding us toward a hopeful situation because you can understand how complex some of these issues are, and they have to be thought through, and public health officials don't know everything, and the Defense Department doesn't know everything.

    6. CWChris Williamson59:52

       Yeah.

    7. AJAnnie Jacobsen59:52

       So-

    8. CWChris Williamson59:53

       Yeah

    9. AJAnnie Jacobsen59:53

       ... so your question was, one more time.

    10. CWChris Williamson59:56

        Incubation window and lethality.

    11. AJAnnie Jacobsen59:59

        Okay.

    12. CWChris Williamson59:59

        Are they usually correlated? My reason being, you've chosen-- I've played-

    13. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:00:04

        Yes

    14. CWChris Williamson1:00:04

        ... what's that game? Plague, Plague Inc.-

    15. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:00:06

        Yep

    16. CWChris Williamson1:00:06

        ... on mobile. Did you play that?

    17. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:00:08

        I don't know about this.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:00:09

        You don't know about this? Double-check. Can you ChatGPT for me, Jared, and see if it's called Plague Inc.? I'm pretty sure. Mobile game. It's one of the biggest games of all time. And in it, you design a plague. You design the incubation window, the transmission. Uh, you should partner with these guys. I don't why-

    19. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:00:26

        Okay

    20. CWChris Williamson1:00:26

        ... that'd be kind of morbid. Um-

    21. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:00:28

        Yeah. [chuckles]

    22. CWChris Williamson1:00:29

        Anyway, uh-

    23. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:00:30

        Okay

    24. CWChris Williamson1:00:31

        ... one of the things that I know you want is a long incubation window, 'cause if you've got a long inc-incubation window, people can be transmitting-

    25. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:00:38

        Yes

    26. CWChris Williamson1:00:38

        ... without knowing that they're sick. You chose-

    27. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:00:41

        Yes

    28. CWChris Williamson1:00:41

        ... uh, like- You stacked the deck a- against-

    29. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:00:45

        Yes

    30. CWChris Williamson1:00:45

        ... the global lethality of your virus in this book-
15. 1:02:19 – 1:08:39

    How the Soviets Created a Euphoric Plague

    1. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:02:19

       N- I mean, why did I choose plague? I chose it for an incredibly sinister reason that is based in science because I, I am a nonfiction author. Biological war scenario is sold in the nonfiction section. The Soviets, and this is what Dr. Hein told me, part of the Soviets' super plague weapon they were working on is they engineered into the p- the Yersinia pestis bacteria a gene for euphoria. Stay with me here. Euph- you get plague, you get flu, you get sick, you go home, and you get under the covers.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:03:02

       Yeah.

    3. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:03:02

       And you do not infect as many people as you would because-

    4. CWChris Williamson1:03:05

       Lassitude, yep

    5. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:03:08

       ... they infected a gene for euphoria because they wanted people to be, if y- you have euphoria, you m- you wanna go to a disco.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:03:16

       Wow.

    7. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:03:17

       And when, what Hein told me that that really sort of freaked out the USAMRIID doctors and scientists and said, "That is straight up evil that you would actually think that through." And that's why I chose that, because I wanted it to have an analogy in the real world.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:03:33

       So does yours have the euphoria thing in it?

    9. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:03:35

       Absolutely. It is genetically modified to have euphoria. So the first 24 hours, people are spent euphoric, and they only essentially collapse into the disease when the euphoria wears off, and now they're shedding-

    10. CWChris Williamson1:03:48

        Mm-hmm

    11. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:03:49

        ... bacteria. They're infecting people like nobody's business, and they've been at places like discos.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:03:55

        Hmm. Okay, so you got a bunch of happy people dancing around. How does that transmission chain begin in your book?

    13. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:04:02

        The transmission chain begins, I'm, I'm not gonna totally spoiler alert all my plot points, but outbreak in, in, in Siberia. You happen to have a group of international hunters who come across a scientist. When they get on their planes to go home to five or six of the seven continents-

    14. CWChris Williamson1:04:26

        In a great mood

    15. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:04:27

        ... in a fantastic mood. One of them shot a wolf, you know? And, uh, there begins the spreading.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:04:35

        Mm-hmm.

    17. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:04:36

        I also have a scientist that goes to a priest to confess what he's done, and a person there gets infected who is a student at UCLA, gets on a plane, and is immediately in Los Angeles. So the outbreak, spoiler alert here, but this, you learn this pretty much in the beginning, the outbreak happens in Los Angeles in a homeless camp because I learned from all the epidemiologists that I work with that h- the homeless population is so incredibly dangerous to public health epidemics.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:05:16

        Why?

    19. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:05:19

        After 9/11, the CDC created a nationwide syndromic surveillance system called BioSense. So you have 7,000, more than 7,000 hospitals, urgent care facilities, emergency rooms ex- feeding information to the CDC in real time about an outbreak so that an outbreak stops before it becomes an epidemic, before it becomes a pandemic.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:05:49

        Hmm.

    21. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:05:50

        America's 800,000 homeless people are not part of that system. All of the epidemiologists I talked to spoke of their great fear about transmission occurring in that kind of a situation. And-

    22. CWChris Williamson1:06:07

        And Los Angeles is kind of ground zero for that.

    23. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:06:10

        We have 75,000 homeless people. We have 4,000 homeless people on Skid Row with no healthcare, with no facilities.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:06:21

        But we're, we're way past the time where America could have just nuked the host country.

    25. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:06:28

        We're at hour 24, 36. Absolutely. I mean, you know, containment is possible. You could, if you had, if you had transparency from the host nation, right? If Russia had asked in my scenario-

    26. CWChris Williamson1:06:41

        It has to be done by them, though.

    27. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:06:42

        It has to-

    28. CWChris Williamson1:06:42

        But there's no time. You can't even get to Russia in the amount of time you need to contain it.

    29. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:06:46

        Well, you can.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:06:46

        So it's incumbent-
16. 1:08:39 – 1:23:37

    Six Days: From Outbreak to Anarchy

    1. CWChris Williamson1:08:39

       When does devolution happen?

    2. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:08:41

       So in the scenario I write, because we're dealing with plague, which is fast-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:08:45

       Mm

    4. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:08:46

       ... it's a fast killer, I take the reader from outbreak to anarchy in six days. That is how fast it happens, and on day six we have devolution. Devolution.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:08:58

       Oh, okay, okay.

    6. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:08:58

       Yep.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:08:59

       Well, in that case-

    8. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:08:59

       Yep

    9. CWChris Williamson1:08:59

       ... we'll get to that. Uh, so homeless encampment, LA student, UCLA student goes back. LA's not great, densely populated.

    10. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:09:09

        He's a pre-med student, and he does pro bono work there at the, at Skid Row.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:09:16

        Which is literally the worst place for him to be.

    12. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:09:19

        And he gives... You know, that's a super spreader event. Those homeless camps are super spreader events, and that's what happens.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:09:26

        This episode is brought to you by Whoop. According to my Whoop, I've tracked nearly 2,000 days of my life, and the thing that still gets me is that I could have predicted almost every bad day before it happens. That's because Whoop gives you a complete picture of your health every single day, your sleep, your workouts, your recovery, your breathing, your heart rate, even your steps, and over time you get to see what's working and what isn't. And the Whoop 5.0 is the best version yet. It's 7% smaller. You get more than two weeks of battery life from a single charge. It's got health span tracking to see how your daily habits affect your pace of aging. It's even got hormonal insights for the women that are listening. I'm a huge fan. This thing rules. It's been a huge part of my health journey, and it's why it's the only wearable that I've ever stuck with. Best of all, you can join for free, pay nothing for the brand-new Whoop 5.0 strap, and you get your first month for free, and there's a 30-day money back guarantee. So you can buy it for free, try it for free. If you don't like it after 29 days, they just give you your money back. Right now you can get the brand new Whoop 5.0 and that 30-day free trial by going to the link in the description below or heading to join.whoop.com/modernwisdom. That's join.whoop.com/modernwisdom. What, uh, what are the contributing elements or the characteristics of a super spreader event? High density.

    14. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:10:43

        Yeah. Poor, poor, poor airflow.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:10:46

        Right.

    16. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:10:46

        So you got ca- you know, tents and-

    17. CWChris Williamson1:10:48

        You got pretty good airflow if you're in a-

    18. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:10:49

        Tents. If you're in a tent

    19. CWChris Williamson1:10:50

        ... outdoor environment.

    20. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:10:51

        Yeah.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:10:51

        If you're under a bridge.

    22. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:10:53

        Eh, it's tents.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:10:54

        Right.

    24. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:10:54

        It's inside tents.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:10:55

        Right.

    26. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:10:55

        But more than anything, what you have is a very serious problem. First of all, you know, you've got free clinics. I mean, I spent quite a bit of time down on Skid Row interviewing people about this. Um, and you've got, you know, no public health care. You've got long lines for these free clinics, and you have first responders. You have these brilliant nurses and doctors who work down there, a lot of them pro bono also, diagnosing people. You're trying to differentiate between fentanyl overdosing, you know, tuberculosis, flu, in- acute flu, m- real serious problems that almost every homeless person has, physical health problems-

    27. CWChris Williamson1:11:33

        Mm

    28. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:11:33

        ... with what looks like a bad cold.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:11:35

        Mm.

    30. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:11:37

        And, you know, coughing up blood, another, you know, mistaken for alcoholism. So I take the reader through the science of this so that you can really see the close proximity of alarmism, and there's nothing wrong here.
17. 1:23:37 – 1:36:24

    How Close Covid Came to Social Breakdown

    1. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:23:37

       bodies.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:23:38

       How close do you think we came in COVID to total, like, anarchy? 'Cause we saw people f- worried and hoarding toilet paper and stuff-

    3. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:23:47

       Mm-hmm

    4. CWChris Williamson1:23:47

       ... like that. It's so interesting 'cause it's such a silly, funny thing-

    5. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:23:51

       Mm-hmm

    6. CWChris Williamson1:23:51

       ... right? Especially in retrospect to look back and think, "Oh my God, we were running out of..." And there was no eggs. Uh, and the reason there wasn't any eggs wasn't because we didn't have any eggs. It's 'cause we didn't have any egg cartons, which was kind of interesting.

    7. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:24:00

       Great detail.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:24:00

       So supply chain-

    9. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:24:01

       Oh my God

    10. CWChris Williamson1:24:01

        ... supply chain problems. Isn't that funny?

    11. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:24:03

        Oh my God.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:24:04

        Um-

    13. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:24:04

        Where do the egg cartons come from?

    14. CWChris Williamson1:24:06

        Uh, I'm not sure, but it's just the-

    15. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:24:07

        But that's great

    16. CWChris Williamson1:24:07

        ... the processing of being able to produce egg cartons-

    17. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:24:09

        Yeah, yeah

    18. CWChris Williamson1:24:09

        ... is harder than that of being able to produce eggs.

    19. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:24:10

        You, you have to have the carton. You can't, like, use a different container.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:24:12

        Exactly. Interestingly, in, in, in nightclubs, you know, when people buy those big, huge bottles of vodka, uh, the most expensive part from a production standpoint of making the vodka is not the vodka, it's the bottle. The glass is-

    21. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:24:24

        Yeah

    22. CWChris Williamson1:24:24

        ... more expensive than the liquid-

    23. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:24:25

        Yeah, yeah

    24. CWChris Williamson1:24:25

        ... that's inside of it, even though you're paying a ton of money. Uh, anyway, we saw ... That was a bit, and in, in, in retrospect, when you think about COVID as a scary scenario to have-

    25. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:24:39

        Mm-hmm

    26. CWChris Williamson1:24:39

        ... experienced or to reflect on, the bit that really got, "Fuck me, that's a bit wobbly," was how fervent-

    27. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:24:48

        Yeah

    28. CWChris Williamson1:24:48

        ... people became when restrictions on food, gas... I mean, I told my parents, I was like, "I need you to go now to the supermarket."

    29. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:24:59

        Oh, right. Yeah.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:24:59

        "You need 10 kilos of rice. I need you to get as many cans and, uh, things as possible. Like, don't take more than you're gonna need for the next few weeks, but, like, just in case-" Fill the c- do- you-- now is not the time to have empty cupboards-
18. 1:36:24 – 1:36:59

    Where to Find Annie

    1. CWChris Williamson1:36:24

       On that note, let's bring this one in to land. Annie Jacobsen, ladies and gentlemen. You're great, Annie. I think your work's fantastic. Everyone needs to go and read the book. Where should they go to check out everything that you're doing?

    2. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:36:34

       Bookstores everywhere.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:36:36

       Well, I'm excited and intimidated by what you write next. You're always great to speak to. Thank you, Annie.

    4. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:36:42

       Wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:36:44

       All right. See you next time, my beauties. Bye. Yes, we did it. [outro music] Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, YouTube knows who you are deeply. It thinks you're gonna like this one even more. Go on, press it.

Episode duration: 1:37:00