ABSTRACT
One month after the bombings of the World Trade Centers on September 11, 2001, citizens across the United States received specific directions for the handling of mail suspected of contamination by anthrax.1 One warning, cir culated by electronic mail on a university campus, asks staff members to familiarize themselves with procedures on the following checklist:
On February 8, 1722, Daniel Defoes Due Preparations for the Plague, as well for Soul as Body described a similar postal nightmare. In his portrayal of a model family that survives the plague because of efficient preparation, Defoe outlines an even more elaborate protocol than that illustrated in the univer sity warning:
Despite very different contexts, the twenty-first-century e-mail and the eighteenth-century publication on the plague record the vulnerability of information networks, like the postal system, under the threat of disaster. The documents, both warnings that depend upon quick circulation, must pass through the community like the infection they mean to deter; sent from one party to another, the survival of the message means the survival of its readership. The letters described in each message must also pass through the same channel that transmits the virus, so that any communication about infection could be communication 0/it.
