North Korea may be fitting its ICBM's with biological weapons including anthrax.

A North Korean missile being tested. Yahoo.

North Korea may be attempting to modify their ICBM's to accept warheads loaded with biological weapons, including anthrax. Yahoo New UK. Officially North Korea is a signatory of the Biological Weapons Convention and is opposed to developing them but unofficially it is an open secret that they have been developing them. Right now the North Koreans are reportedly experimenting to see if anthrax can survive reentry on their ballistic missiles. 

My Comment:

An interesting report. I am skeptical that the North Koreans can pull this off. They are still very early into their ICBM program and may not be able to modify their warheads yet. Remember, they barely have effective missiles that can even hit targets yet, let alone carry specialized warheads. It isn't clear if they can even load nuclear weapons on these missiles yet, let alone biological ones. 

It's a tougher challenge to do so. Anthrax or any other biological weapon isn't like a nuke. They are living things and they have to be able to survive not only the low oxygen of the upper atmosphere and space, but they have to survive reentry as well which involves quite a bit of temperature extremes on both ends of the spectrum. Having to do so is a technical challenge that I doubt the North Koreans are up to defeating. 

If they manage it though it is a gamechanger for them. North Korea only has limited nuclear weapons but they can mass produce anthrax and are only limited by how many missiles they have. A launch of a few nukes mixed in with a large number of anthrax or other biological warheads would make intercepting them much harder. It would also potentially allow the nuclear weapons to pass through our defenses as there is no way to tell apart a nuclear missile from a biological one. 

A ICBM attack on a major city armed with biological weapons would be horrifying. The actual deaths would likely be low. Anthrax isn't that deadly, with a mortality rate of 20 to 80% depending on what kind it is, and can be treated with antibiotics. But it would almost certainly cause a panic and would cause the economy to come to a halt. And if a more deadly pathogen, like Smallpox or Ebola were to be used it could get way worse. It would be better than a nuke going off, yes, but not by much. 

I am not too worried about biological weapons on ICBM's from North Korea. I am much more concerned about them using biological weapons through other means. Short range missiles would be much easier to adapt and so would artillery shells and bombs. There is also the possibility that they could use special forces behind enemy lines to infect South Korea's civilian population. That is the real threat from North Korea's biological weapons program. The ICBM threat is far off and not likely for the time being but we still shouldn't discount it.