Home > Media > Books > Ken Alibek and Stephen Handelman - Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World-Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It
Ken Alibek and Stephen Handelman - Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World-Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It
Pros: Extremely informative and a captivating story.
Cons: Not light reading, and may change you forever.
The Bottom Line: True account of the Soviet biological warfare system, its accomplishments, its goals, its politics. Though 10 years old, quite pertinent to today's world.
bonnieleigh's Full Review: Ken Alibek and Stephen Handelman - Biohazard: The ...
Recent ghosties and goblins not scary enough for you? Then read this nonfiction thriller about biological warfare!
This is not a book I would normally have picked off a bookshelf to read, but it sort of fell into my hands through hubby's used book store and I gave it a second look. Event hough it's about 10 years old, the jacket blurb caught my eye and I gave it a try. Written by "Ken Alibek," the Americanized version of Kanatjan Alibekov, who was for a couple of decades one of the moving forces in the Soviet Union's Biological warfare sysetm, it is a fascinating nuts-and-bolts biography of that program. It names names and gives dates and places, as well as naming and describing various biological agents that were cultivated, tested, and even deployed, whether by design or accident. Though the biological weapons program suffered greatly with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, there's still plenty left of the old system to scare the heck out of scientists and thoughtful people worldwide.
The biological warfare system in the Soviet Union was extremely complicated as far as organization is concerned. Certainly this was partly due to the mandate to keep its biological warfare program secret, as it was in direct violation of treaties signed with other world leaders in the 1970's and 1980's. The author even describes in detail the ruses used to keep these operations secret even when allowing foreign governments to come and do "inspections" of suspected facilities.
Mr. Alibek was educated as a medical doctor, who took the equivalent of our Hippocratic Oath to "do no harm." While initially he had a bit of a problem reconciling this oath to the work he did in developing and growing and planning delivery of terrible deadly biological agents, he was able to overcome his ethical qualms due to the constant Soviet "brainwashing" that the United Sates had an advanced biological weapons system and that they would not hesitate to use it to strike the Soviet Union. In fact, Alibek and his countrymen felt a very real and present danger lurking over their heads from the U.S.'s nasty germ warfare plans, and felt they needed to at least try to keep up with the Western threat.
The most violent and virulent bugs you can think of are described here, as well as some you've likely never heard of. The cold-bloodedness of the planners who were in charge of the germ warfare organizations will definitely make your blood run cold. The reader gains a lot of insight into the Soviet mindse in this book. For one thing, it is as much about politics as science. Normally I wouldn't have thought a book about Soviet politics would interest me, but this book did, and the author explained the politics well, keeping it to a level I could follow and understand. This ease of reading, of course, came though the assistance of his co-quthor, Stephen Handelman, a former columnist at Time magazine who had been assigned to Moscow earlier in his career.
You don't have to be a science graduate to follow the science needed in the book - it's all laid out for you. The hardest thing to follow, for me, were the numerous unhandy Soviet names of the players. I shortened or Americanized each name in my head in order to keep up with the principals (Androyov became Andy, etc.) Even though this is a fact-filled read, it did not bog down for m e. Chiefly, I kept reading to find out what "turned" the author and led him to defect, bringing a tremendous treasure trove of information to the U.S. That change, like real life stories the world over, was not as dramatic perhaps as I was waiting for, but the conclusion of the book is as satisfying as a novel of such intrigue might be.
The scientist-author's private life is mentioned only in passing in the book, yet we still get a pretty complete picture of what the man is like. It is so good to know that he now works for us! Yet his knowledge itself is very scary, and reminds us that whether from our own government's secrets, those of other world powers, or the ever-dreaded terrorist groups at work today, we are not at all out of the woods on this terrible threat. In many ways, massive biological warfare makes a limited nuclear conflict seem survivable.
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