Word: sickness
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...enemy's well is an ancient tradition, but would-be terrorists would find it extremely hard to inflict widespread casualties through our water supply. Chlorine in treated water kills most microbes, and huge quantities of chemical toxins would have to be dumped into a reservoir to make many people sick, let alone kill them. (A U.N. study estimated that it would take 10 tons of potassium cyanide.) Drinking water might be threatened locally, however, if someone managed to tap the pipe going into a building or neighborhood or infiltrate a water-treatment facility. With this threat in mind, municipal water...
...anything from hamburgers to swimming pools, sicken hundreds of thousands of Americans each year. In New York City this spring, a man was arrested after he was spotted spraying what turned out to be feces-laden water over the contents of a midtown salad bar (fortunately, no one got sick). A far more virulent strain of the bacterium called O157:H7 is sometimes fatal, but identifying and isolating the right strain is beyond the technical capabilities of most terrorists...
...supermarket. They poured it into a glass of water and handed it to a judge. They fed it to the district attorney, the doctor, the dentist. Their plan: to seize control of the county government by packing polling booths with imported homeless people while making local residents too sick to vote...
...first large-scale bioterrorism attack on American soil, but it didn't get much attention at the time. Nobody died--although at least 751 people got very sick. There was no Fox News or MSNBC to report every case of gastroenteritis. And the federal officials called in to investigate held off publishing a study of the incident for fear of encouraging copycats...
...strategic justification for military action is clear. Although a forceful response may kindle anger among our sworn enemies, we would be fools to maintain illusions of courting their friendship. We have no leverage over sick fanatics who blow themselves up to win salvation from whatever demons they mistake for gods. They do not respond to incentives, they do not fear death, and they will not stop hating us until we cower away in ignominious isolationism...