In 1989, a group of Soviet scientists was summoned to a secluded village on Moscow’s periphery, to discuss a pioneering technique for mass murder. Experiments had begun to demonstrate the viability of a bioweapon of mass destruction, a pathogen genetically engineered to spread
时政
(
twitter.com
)
In 1989, a group of Soviet scientists was summoned to a secluded village on Moscow’s periphery, to discuss a pioneering technique for mass murder. Experiments had begun to demonstrate the viability of a bioweapon of mass destruction, a pathogen genetically engineered to spread within hours, to kill within days, and to resist all existing treatment. Much of the work was carried out in a facility called Vector, which had live samples of Ebola, smallpox, Marburg, and other viruses. In 2019, there was an explosion at Vector.
A new book takes up this history, beginning with another fire at Vector. It quickly devolves into a prediction of mass extinction—a “scenario” in which all of humanity is wiped out by a man-made biological weapon. It combines strains of investigative reporting, drawn from both historical archives and contemporary sources, and strains of reality-adjacent but speculative fiction. Its author, Annie Jacobsen, writes that the “scenario builds on science fact, not science fiction.” Gideon Lewis-Kraus considers Jacobsen’s book, and the tension between accelerationist doomers and optimists: https://t.co/ukS6XamNOl
点击图片查看原图
