ABSTRACT

For example, if a tactical nuclear weapon is designed to attack a city block and a strategic weapon an entire city, then an operational nuclear device would affect a neighborhood. Both state and nonstate actors can potentially employ biological threat agents on similar scales and can even more finely hone the attack to affect a single house or a single person in the house. Even the threat of using biological threat agents can be devastating. State actors and nonstate actors may have different moral constraints, resources, and motivations, which influence the choice of agents, potential delivery methods, maximum quantity of agent available for use, and threshold for use.