The wilderness survival guide

If threat forces attack with biological agents, there may be little or no warning. This will depend on the S2′s and your IPB assessment. We cannot detect or identify biological agents with our currently fielded detector kits and systems. Soldiers in a unit automatically mask when there are high probability indicators of an attack to protect themselves against contamination.

Biological Attack Indicators
Biological agents may be disseminated as aerosols, liquid droplets or dry powder. Biological attack indicators fall into two groups to indicate a high probability or possible attack.

High probability.
Attacks with biological agents will be very subtle if favorable weather conditions prevail. Symptoms can appear from minutes to days after an attack has occurred. Indicators may be the following:

• Mysterious illness-many soldiers and civilians sick for unknown reasons.
• Large numbers of insects or unusual insects.
• Large numbers of dead wild and domestic animals.
• Mass casualties with flu-like symptoms, fever, sore throats, skin rash, mental abnormalities, pneumonia, diarrhea’s, dysentery, hemorrhaging or jaundice.

Possibility.
Indicators of a possible biological attack are any of the following:

• Artillery shells with less powerful explosions than HE rounds.
• Aerial bombs that pop rather than explode.
• Mist or fog sprayed by aircraft or aerosol generators.
• Unexploded bomblets found in the area.

Immediate Actions
Putting on the protective mask and keeping the clothing buttoned up protects adequately against living biological agents. But, an agent can gain entry through clothing using two routes: one, openings such as button holes, zipped areas, stitching, and poor sealing at ankles, wrist, and neck and two, through minute pores in the fabric of clothing. Putting on one’s protective ensemble greatly increases the protection level of the individual soldier. Toxins, however, require the same amount of protection as liquid chemical agents. Since no rapid-warning, biological agent detection device is fielded, consider any known agent cloud as a chemical attack, and take the same actions prescribed for a chemical attack.

For collective protection, personnel must be housed inside a shelter with an efficient air filter system. Many buildings can be converted into temporary shelters if cracks are carefully sealed and a filter system with a ventilating mechanism is installed.It must be emphasized that in order to counter a biological attack, protective measures must be initiated before an attack. The use of the NBCWRS is ‘ an effective and established means for giving advanced warning, along with intelligence data provided by the intelligence community.