Word: lethal
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...Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. In a matter of days, highly trained specialists--essentially a public-health swat team from the premier U.S. government lab's Epidemic Intelligence Service--were on the scene. Within two weeks, their meticulous detective work had identified the deadly microbe: a lethal variant of a germ known as hantavirus, carried by rodents but never known to be deadly in humans. Armed with that knowledge, health officials launched a multistate public-awareness campaign, and before long the number of deaths plummeted--from 20 in the first few months to just 23 since...
...concede that I once did not view marijuana as dangerous, knowing that it is not physically addictive or lethal. (A fatal dosage would be three-quarters of a ton smoked over a 15-minute period.) Accordingly, I believed marijuana laws to be draconian, a view once shared by Jimmy Carter, Dan Quayle and Richard Nixon's marijuana commission, all of whom favored decriminalization. It was only after my appetite for recreational drugs had abated, and I had produced children whom I did not believe capable of "handling" marijuana as responsibly as I had, that I came to oppose decriminalization...
...like guided missiles. Sometimes the force of their impact is so great that the magnetosphere convulsively contracts. Even spacecraft in near-earth orbit can find themselves outside the magnetosphere's protective embrace, exposed to blasts of high-energy protons. A direct hit by these protons, experts warn, could prove lethal to astronauts working in space...
...agents know that weapons need not be highly sophisticated to be lethal. "There's a great danger in looking for the most sophisticated plan," says Harry Brandon, the FBI's former deputy assistant director in charge of international terrorism and a supervisor of the Pan Am 103 case. "We tend to think terrorists are invincible, that they're smart as hell, and often they're not." Just lucky. "All you need is a clock and an explosive that's powerful enough," says Ronay. On Pan Am Flight 103, the bomb was the size of a coffee cup, but it happened...
There are probably no deep, dark secrets here, just as there is nothing lethal in the culture of San Pedro High, which is no more and no less troubled than the average suburban high school. It is ethnically mixed yet relatively strife-free, with aging buildings and overworked but enthusiastic teachers, many of whom attended San Pedro themselves. The school has been touched by drugs, guns and gang violence, but teachers believe the worst problem is kids who come from troubled and broken homes, kids who cannot or will not communicate with their parents, kids who seem unable...