The Next (And Final) Pandemic? with Annie Jacobsen

Lemonada. You can count on the exchange rate you'd usually get on Google. No unwelcome surprises. Plus, ditch that where's my money feeling. Most transfers arrive in under 20 seconds. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees. Be smart. Get wise. Visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. It's been over six years since COVID, and we now live in a completely different country. A country that's a little bit different from what we live in. A country which has learned from its past mistakes, and that now treats the threat of a global pandemic with the appropriate seriousness to ensure that something like this can never happen again. President Trump is withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization. Ooh, that's a big one. The Department of Health and Human Services is losing about a quarter of its workforce. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is ousting all 17 members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices. Three people are dead, four more are ill, and nearly 150 others stranded on board the ship, a rare form of the hantavirus. They fired the people who work specifically on the issue of viruses spreading on cruise ships. The CDC is quietly cutting back on its monitoring of certain food-borne illnesses. Cyclosporiasis, a parasitic illness that causes diarrhea. He says the parasite has had him on the toilet every hour, multiple times an hour. F**k. The Trump administration, is destroying America's public health infrastructure, and we are all sharting our way towards another pandemic. Three days, four days, five days, six days. I can't really do this anymore. COVID used to be the worst pandemic I could possibly imagine. It killed millions of people. It was horrible. But then I started doing some research, and it turns out there are worse viruses than COVID. Like, waivers. And we store them, on purpose, inside hundreds of labs in major cities around the world. This is not some sort of weird Avengers plot point. This is real. In Atlanta, there is literally a building where the CDC keeps smallpox and Ebola. And in Colorado, they are storing the plague. Like, the actual f**king plague, the Yersinia Pestis Bacterium. But here's the wildest part. Those pathogens that have killed hundreds of millions of people on planet Earth, they aren't even the worst thing these bio labs are storing. A lot of them contain pathogens that have been genetically engineered to spread more easily, kill more quickly, and resist illness. And that's why they're called bio-antibiotics. Weaponized pathogens, aka, bio-weapons. To be clear, bio-weapons are illegal. But they do exist, and it's never been easier to create them. You don't even need a chemistry degree to make them. AI chatbots will literally walk you through the process. According to new reporting by the Wall Street Journal after OpenAI's update to ChatGPT last summer, quote, "hundreds of users worldwide began asking it how to make and deploy biological weapons and poisons." First of all, who the f**k are these weirdos? ChatGPT was not created to destroy humanity. It was created to destroy the education system, which would eventually destroy humanity. So use it for what it's for, plagiarizing, you f**king dorks. So how did this happen? Where did the knowledge base that these chatbots are tapping into come from? Who invented bio-weapons? And how did this happen? How did they end up in labs all over the world? This is the part where, normally, I would go into a history of bio-weapons and reveal that this is all America's fault, but I'm not gonna do that. America didn't invent bio-weapons, but we did help make them worse. "Biological warfare? What do they expect me to do about it? It's not my headache." "You're wrong. You had better find out the facts about biological warfare or BW." The United States started its bio-weapons program during World War II. A.K.A. our four-year cheat day for killing civilians. "But here, in 1942, the very first BW field trials were carried out. Sheep were used because they're particularly sensitive to inhaled anthrax." The British ended their program in the 1950s, but the U.S. continued to grow its arsenal into the largest in the world. In 1943, the U.S. government went to university biology departments all around the country and said, "Hey, so this is a little awkward, but. Can you uncure typhoid?" "Some germs cause typhoid fever, plague, and such diseases." For the next 26 years, American scientists stockpiled bacteria. They grew viruses in millions of fertilized eggs and a variety of f---ed up stuff. For example, when America was plotting an invasion of Cuba, scientists created a virus that they could spray over the country to make Cubans too sick to fight back. "We produced about 3,000 gallons of Q fever and about 2,500 gallons of VEE virus slurry. We would incapacitate that Cuban population. And the concept is that we didn't destroy the infrastructure, we just made a lot of people sick. Very few of them are going to die. We could move our forces in and take over the country and that would be it." Imagine you're stirring up a vat of disease to unleash a diarrhea Hiroshima. Let me say that one more time. Okay. Imagine you're. Three f---ing hell. This is an insane sentence, but it's very funny. Imagine you're stirring up a vat of disease to unleash a diarrhea Hiroshima. And you're still like, "Yep. Greatest generation." Now eventually, the US publicly renounced biological weapons under the guidance of our most moral, compassionate leader. President Richard Nixon tried to put the biological genie back in the bottle. Biological warfare may produce global epidemics and profoundly affect the health of future generations. Therefore, I have decided that the United States of America will renounce the use of any form of deadly biological weapon. President Nixon, aka Napalm Gandhi, led the creation of the Biological Weapons Treaty in 1972, which banned bioweapons. But even though over a hundred countries signed that treaty, not all of them actually shut down their bioweapons programs. For years, Soviet scientists ran a secret program called "Biopreparat," which used techniques like transferring DNA from one germ into another germ to create super germs. "In laboratories like the one in the United States of America, there was no such thing as 'Biopreparation.' In laboratories like this one, Vector in Siberia, Soviet scientists were able to use modern biotechnology to combine traits from several organisms into one, even to create entirely new diseases unknown to nature." In one case, at that Vector lab, they worked on creating a biological agent that combined plague with Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, or VEE. The idea was that once people got infected with the plague, they would take antibiotics and that would trigger the VEE. Which would kill them! And it wouldn't just kill them. It would make people think that the doctor killed them, destroying trust in the medical system. I mean, can you imagine if trust in the American medical system was destroyed? What would that even look like? "The disinfectant knocks it out in a minute. You can do something like that by injection." In the early 1990s, the Soviet Union collapsed and these weapons programs were shut down. Kinda. Some of the labs were just sort of, uh, left to run. But the Soviet Union was still a very good place to be. The Soviet Union was a very good place to be. of function. Now, I know what you're probably thinking. I am not gonna talk about the China lab leak theory. That debate tore apart families, WhatsApp threads, and of course, it tore apart the comedy community. I mean, we are talking about a group of people that barely graduated community college, and now they have hard opinions on virology? It was a nightmare. I don't know what the is going on. FBI says this, NIC says that. I'm holding out until the DMV chimes in. But there's a reason gain-of-function research got so much attention. It's a series of techniques where scientists deliberately change a virus or bacterium to give it a new function, which often makes it more dangerous. Gain-of-function research seeks to make a virus more easily transmissible between humans to increase the severity of the disease it triggers or to make it resistant to existing treatments or vaccines. Sounds crazy? I mean, yeah. But, I mean, there must be some good reason for doing it, right? Two main reasons are given for why this type of research is done. One is to better predict which viruses in animal populations might one day naturally mutate and become infectious for humans. The second is to be better prepared when a new pandemic hits, for instance, by already developing a vaccine for it preemptively. Okay, so we are making dangerous pathogens that didn't exist so we can protect ourselves against the dangerous pathogens we created? I mean, this sounds like jumping in front of a bus to sue the city of Cleveland. But hey, the do I know. I'm not a scientist, my dad is. Maybe gain-of-function has produced some tangible benefits that make it worthwhile. So how many vaccines have been developed as a result of gain-of-function research? None. There have been no preemptive vaccines to date. Have any pandemics been prevented thanks to gain-of-function research? The answer is not that I know of. Great, so this seems super reckless, but also, isn't this illegal? Like, we're making germs that are more contagious, more deadly, and more resistant to vaccines on purpose. Those are basically bioweapons, which are supposed to be banned. Well, apparently, if you look closely at that 1972 treaty, there is an exception for pathogens used for protective or peaceful purposes, which includes gain-of-function research. Nixon, you sneaky son of a bitch. I'm not a crook. So to recap, the world is littered with metal boxes full of invisible doomsday germs. Some of those germs were created by us to solve a problem that didn't even exist. Others were deliberately created as weapons, and if they ever got out of those labs, they could, in a matter of days, kill millions of people, overwhelm health systems, cause mass panic, mass migration, mass violence, insurrections and the collapse of the governments around the world, setting back human civilization literally hundreds of years. But hey, nothing to worry about. But hey, nothing to worry about, folks, because they are locked up tight, and we're all safe. - An explosion has occurred at the Vector State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Kosovo. It houses a unique collection of viruses, including the smallpox virus. - In 2019, there was an explosion at a Russian BSL-4 facility, which are the highest security biosafety facilities in the world. This one is called the Vector Institute, the same one I mentioned earlier, which used to create Frankenstein germs during the Cold War. Now, thankfully, there were no pathogens stored in the room where the explosion happened. But what if there were? And what if the pathogen that escaped was a weaponized one created under the BioPreparat program that was still around in a freezer? And what if this particular strain was weaponized plague that had been injected with the endorphin gene so people who were infected would feel good at first, and then they'd go out in the public and contaminate more people, which is something that Soviet scientists reportedly actually experimented with. - That is exactly the scenario played out by Annie Jacobson in her new book. That's right, folks, Annie Jacobson is back to scare the out of you once again. - Once nuclear war begins, 72 minutes from nuclear launch to nuclear winter. - She has followed up her global bestseller, "Nuclear War: A Scenario," with a new nightmare, "Biological War: A Scenario," a Chernobyl for germs that takes us from infection to anarchy in six days. So I sat down with Annie for the second time this year to talk about why we're even doing gain-of-function research. - Across the spectrum. Everyone I interviewed said gain-of-function is dangerous. - To double-check with her that plague is bad, right? - The lungs are fighting for oxygen, coughing up blood, necrotic spots on your arms. It strikes like lightning. So 24 hours, maybe 48 hours, you're dead. You can also bleed from the eyes. - What? - Yeah. - And for any of you returning because you love the rich, soothing, sound of Annie's voice, oh boy, oh boy, we have a special ASMR treat for you at the end of the interview. - "Apocalypse ASMR" with Annie Jacobson. Alone in the tiny laboratory, the American traveler collapses. His spittum sprays against the walls. At this point in the disease's progression, he can barely stand. - Oh, no. - Parts of his lungs are beginning to rot and die. The detective steps outside to vomit. - People. - So put on good headphones, sit back and relax, and prepare to stop relaxing. 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You want the right currency, at the right rate, right away. That's why 15 million people choose the smart way, the WISE account. Whether you're sending money back home or moving money between your accounts in different countries, count on the exchange rate you'd usually find on Google. With WISE, say goodbye to that "where's my money" feeling. Most transfers actually arrive before you can hit refresh, in under 20 seconds. Join millions. Millions on hidden fees. Be smart. Get WISE. Visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. You came in earlier this year and you scared the shit out of our audience talking about nuclear war, but this book is now about biological war. What is the difference between nuclear war and biological war? You know, after I wrote Nuclear War, a lot of people emailed me and said, "I just want to go in the flash. Like I do not want to be around." Which is probably how most people will go. Biological war, a lot scarier, I think because there's a little bit of a slower burn. When I say slow, stay with me here for a second. In Nuclear War scenario, I took readers from nuclear launch to nuclear winter in 72 minutes. For your idea of slow, biological war is outbreak to anarchy in six days. It's fast. That's a big difference. Yeah. So it's fast, but it's not 72 minutes. But, you know, then there is some time after six days. Six days is quite a bit. That first book, hey, you know what? you're going to die in 72 minutes, you don't get time to get your affairs in order. It's this just kind of just like look of, I just shat my pants and then it's over. Six days, that's like 192 episodes of Law and Order. That's probably what it is. I have to do the math. Do you see biological war as a bigger or smaller threat than nuclear war? Ooh, I wish that my opinion was what mattered, but really what matters is a defense department document I found where it said, it's called a threat spectrum of weapons of mass destruction. And nuclear weapons sit at the very end, obviously, because they're the most destructive. But really close behind was biological weapons with an even spookier line that said, biological weapons present the greatest overall threat. Greatest overall threat. Right. And more likely to happen next. Do you remember in the 1990s, there was a litany of movies about biological warfare. One of my favorites is the 1994 hit film, The Rock, starring Nicolas Cage. I don't remember bio in that. Really? Wait, so like those green vials and then when he like injects himself and he does this. Okay. I don't, I'm going to have to go back. That was nerve gas. Is that biological warfare? No, no, no. That's chemical. Oh. What is the difference between biological warfare and biological warfare? A biological weapon is a living weapon, a living weapon. It's invisible and it can self-replicate. So when you think about weapons of mass destruction, everything needs a delivery system that, you know, vile, it has to go in you. Nuclear weapons have to go on an ICBM. A biological weapon that's airborne, and that's what the Defense Department is most afraid of, as are all public health departments. The weapon delivery system is, in essence, your and my lungs. So it's just going to be passed in the air. Droplets. Worse than droplets. Droplets is a different kind of transmission. You know, if we want to be graphic, we would have to be standing really close to one another, like at a party with loud music. You get a little drop of spit on your face. That's droplet transmission. Okay. Airborne means you and I are talking right here. And it's aerosolized. So we could actually leave this room if I had pneumonic plague. The person who walked in next, the editor, the janitor, they would get the pathogen in their lungs. Okay. So one big difference with biological war is that it doesn't have to be intentional, right? Another shocking set of documents in Defense Department nomenclature. It doesn't have to be a biological attack. It can be. It can be a biological incident, which means an accident, which means a lab leak. Okay. We want to get spicy. Let's get spicy. There are certain terms in the English language that will tear apart society, WhatsApp threads, and families. I'm talking about words like critical race theory, words like fascism, socialism, polyamory, and the one you just said, lab leak. Right. The event that starts off your book is a lab leak, but let's just get this. Let's get this out of the way. Do you think COVID was a lab leak? I'm going to actually abstain from comment and not be spicy, the opposite of spicy, like very bland. You can read the book and decide for yourself. But what I do know is people who are reading the book say to me, wow, I got a lot of new information just from what I'm telling you about the history and the future. I love that you just both sides that. Brilliant. That's really helpful. Answer the question you want to answer, not the question you're asked. Nicely done. You just did what Michael Jordan did when he goes, hey, Republicans buy Nikes too. What is a BSL lab? Biosafety level four. It's the highest level maximum containment laboratory. Speaking of movies, any movie you see that has bioweapons in it, there's always like someone in a suit with a sort of air hose. Yeah, sure. That is what you wear. You wear in a BSL four lab. There's submarine locks type architecture to get into it. Like nothing can come out. BSL three lab is the next level down. I was really surprised to learn in my reporting that BSL three labs, of which there are 3,500 around the world, you can work with plague, hantavirus, rabies. So BSL four, BSL three, those are the scary labs. There are lots of them. There are lots of them around the world. One of the graphs I have in the book shows labs that are in major population centers with millions of people. And just so we're clear, there's 110 BSL four labs across the world? Across the world. Before 9-11, there were only two in the United States. Now there's 15 and two more being built. So there's 17 in the United States alone. What kind of bacteria are in these labs? There's virus and bacteria in every nightmare virus or bacterium. Okay. So just so I'm clear, let's break this down. What is a pathogen? Pathogen is a deadly organism, virus or bacteria. Germs are like, I had some yogurt this morning, you know, gut germs, right? So germs are not necessarily bad. Pathogen connotates it's going to do something bad to you. The reason I use a bacteria in the scenario I write is because. Everyone thinks of virus, you know, it's kind of almost become like the word Xerox. But in fact, bacteria are super dangerous. Plague, anthrax among them. And everybody's thought, oh, but antibiotics will kill bacteria, which is true or actually was true. Because now a lot of these very dangerous, you know, research programs that are going on in these high maximum containment labs are working to modify pathogens to outdo bacteria. And so, you know, I think that's one of the things that I think we need to be careful about, is that we're not going to be able to do anything about it without phox antibiotics. Explain this to me, Annie. All these labs are in major cities. I mean, we're talking about Tokyo, Johannesburg, Berlin, Rome, Atlanta. Why do we put smallpox so close to these city centers? Isn't that crazy? I mean, a lot of times it's because the city center is like the locus of government research or it's where, you know, there's a cross with public health. But it seems to me like those labs should be absolutely moved far away. Totally. I mean, if there was ever an argument. Make this remote. We have two Dakotas. Go for it. The scary part is, is I go to the Atlanta airport all the time. And now after reading your book, I'm like, holy shit, I'm at the Chick-fil-A at the Atlanta airport. I'm probably four exits and eight walls away from hantavirus. You probably are. Listen, I went to visit a BSL-3 lab to where they work with plague because that's the pathogen I write. And I wanted to really understand plague. And it was probably five miles from here. So my anxiety was right in this scenario. It was absolutely right. Actually, your anxiety should go up one notch, really, when you drill down on the reality of where these facilities are and how much could go wrong. Look, I'll give a little, you know, answer your earlier question about a lab leak theory. One of the very high ranking presidential advisors told me that, you know, his belief was that what happened in Wuhan went out on someone's sleeve. And I meant, I said, literally. And he said, well, maybe even literally. But it's a really good analogy that it doesn't have to be nefarious. It doesn't have to be somebody covering something up. Like, you know, knowing you got injected with a virus, as has happened in the past. Someone's working with a pathogen and they, you know, ping themselves with a syringe. Yeah. And they know they're infected and they don't say anything. That's not what is believed happened at Wuhan. It was more like, oops. It was a whoopsie-daisy. It was an oops. And it was a worldwide oops. Outside of Wuhan, do these places ever have leaks that get out? Oh, my God. There's something like 300 chronicled accidents at labs. And this is, again, where someone goes and reports it and says this is what happened. Right. And then there's a big investigation. You or I never hear about it. You have to really dig deep into the literature to find it. But another dangerous component of that is if you are actually doing illegal biological weapons. Uh-huh. And you have an accident, you are going to go to great lengths to cover that up or to not let anybody know. And that's another seriously dangerous loophole. Annie, there's probably way more documented incidences that no one's talking about. So is, in a way, do you start to have empathy for the tinfoil hat people here that are saying it's all a cover up? Tinfoil hat people I like to call alternative narrative thinkers. Hmm. It takes a little of the stink off of the idea of, like, conspiracy theory. But on the idea of theft, the U.N. I did a lot of interviews with the U.N. because I try to, like, not have this be a partisan drama, you know? So I try to get information from as many people as possible. Right. Certainly when I was deciding which scenario, I would write. Because remember, it's biological war, a scenario. Yeah. Not biological war, the only scenario. Right. And the U.N. is most concerned. Right. And the U.N. is most concerned about theft. They're concerned about someone working in a laboratory. a state-funded laboratory, doing secret illegal biological weapons work and being approached by a rogue actor, by a bad actor, and selling that to them for some kind of a nefarious terrorist type attack. But, you know, I didn't want to go the terrorist route because it's just so loaded and it certainly doesn't have to be that a terrorist attack. It can be an incident or a lab leak. Well, let's take just an incident. Let's say one of these viruses escaped on accident. Okay. Like normal Ebola. Just regular speed limit, 65 miles an hour Ebola. I'm not talking about something extreme, just regular degular off-the-rack Ebola. Or normal smallpox. Or normal plague. That wouldn't destroy the world, right? Mother Nature's variant of that, right? Case by case, you had Ebola, smallpox, and plague, right? But the normal ones. The normal ones. So, Ebola has, well, there's two. We have treatments for these, right? Well, you want me to give you like a little. Okay. So, there's virulence, there's transmissibility, and then there's medical countermeasure. Okay. It's kind of easy. Like, that sounds like a lot of science, but virulence, how deadly is it? Transmissibility, how can I catch it? And can I catch it? And then medical countermeasures, what can I do if I do catch it? So, Ebola has like 65% to 90% case fatality rate. You catch it, you have a really serious chance of dying. But transmissibility is difficult. If someone has Ebola over there, you and I are not going to get it. You have to. It's fluid transmissible. They have to bleed on you, and it has to go into one of your orifices. Sorry to be graphic. We're talking about biological weapons. Okay. Ebola has no countermeasure, except for it did for the Zaire variant. Now, this new variant, not yet a medical countermeasure. So, you can kind of get. You want me to do the other one? Please. Okay. So, smallpox. So, just to put that to bed, Ebola, a little bit more chill. Ebola, a little bit more chill, unless you're a doctor in an Ebola facility, unless your child has Ebola. Right. You're like, if you're a mom and your kid has Ebola, you're not going to be like, okay, stay over there. You're going to hold your child, and then you are going to have Ebola, and then you're going to get out of Dodge fast, and you're going to infect everybody that you hold, or that holds you as you're dying. It's kind of grim and gross, but that's what. But Ebola is not airborne. Yeah. Very, very different. Smallpox is airborne. Smallpox was also eradicated in 1980. It was the most successful WHO campaign in the history of medicine, perhaps. Yeah. However. It's made a comeback, right? It's. Okay. Well, before it makes a comeback, because it hasn't made a comeback, it sits in two BSL-4 labs for medical counter. Purposes. Guess where they are. Atlanta. Your favorite place, CDC in Atlanta. Oh, fuck. Okay. And Vector. Those are the two repositories. Vector in Siberia. Vector in Siberia, where I start the scenario I write, okay? Okay. So, smallpox is deadly. Smallpox has a 30% case fatality rate. If smallpox gets out, it's a nightmare scenario. Plague is a. Totally different animal. Bubonic plague that we have all heard of. A flea has to bite you. Then you get infected in your buboes. That's what. Your lymph nodes. That's why it's called bubonic plague. I'm talking about pneumonic plague, which is the very nefarious sort of uncle of bubonic plague when it gets into your lungs. Pneumonic, think pneumonia. Yeah. Okay? 100% case fatality rate. Oh, jeez. 100%. You get it. You don't get antibiotics into your system. Within 24 hours, you're dead. You're dead. No other option. So, imagine. And pneumonic plague is airborne. Right. So, pneumonic plague is the tier one select agent, top of the list, nightmare pathogen. That's why I chose it. That's why I wrote it. When you shake hands or take public transportation, are you freaked out now that you've written this book? Well, now, okay, we can really get science nerdy here. That's actually called. I'm improving your vocabulary here today. Sure. Fomite transmission. Okay. That's different than germophobia because germophobia is just about germs. Well, fomite transmission means there's a germ on this chair and if I touch it, I've got the germ. Mm-hmm. In COVID. You know, like, uncertainty is a huge part of biology. And it really is. And I think our public health officials would really do well to kind of start admitting that. Because one of the things they said right away in COVID, they said. First of all, they said COVID not airborne. The WHO tweeted out three months after COVID was declared a pandemic, COVID not airborne. Not was in big capital letters. COVID was airborne. The other thing they said was you could get it from fomite transmission, like shaking hands with someone on the subway. Right. And this is why we were, like, bleaching tomatoes. Yeah. It's why we were. Lysol disappeared from the supply chain. Right. Yeah. COVID fomite transmissions turned out to be. You ready for this? One in 10,000. So they got it, like, wildly wrong. They got it, like, wildly wrong. How do you. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT Work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger, multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT Work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans. Hank joined BJ's Wholesale Club the day he became a father of 30. I coach football. Now Coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices. 30 pounds of pasta, 3 cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. And that's just pregame. He knows teamwork, and BJ's knows savings. This is your home, Coach. Home of the Save. Join for just $20 at BJ's.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for 6 months. Open soon. Limited time offer, new members only. BJ's. Home of the Save. I'm not giving up. I am selling the Velcro. I'm building. The final season of FX is the Bear. The restaurant is flooded. Everything's either going to be okay. No! Stop! Or not. We are outgunned and we are outmanned, but we have each other. FX is the Bear, the final season, all episodes now streaming on Disney Plus. What you bring into your story is a pathogen that was genetically altered as a weapon. What is a Chimera weapon? I know because I saw it in Mission Impossible 2, which I believe is the worst Mission Impossible. I can't remember Mission Impossible 2, but a Chimera weapon. Okay, Chimera. I'm a narrative storyteller. I'm always going to look for the mythology of it. Remember Greek mythology and history class, the Chimera. You see, like, it's got the body of a lion and the head of a serpent and maybe wings coming out of it. It means mixing. It means mixing organisms, but it's no longer just in the realm of mythology. In 1971, in a lab in Stanford University, a Nobel laureate named Paul Berg created the world's first Chimera organism by mixing two forms of DNA. That was the first. That's the origin story of genetic engineering, and today we're like, you know, having CRISPR. I mean, there's been incantations of it over all the decades since that have is really outpaced. It's outpacing just about every other situation involving safeguards. Yeah. But a Chimera means making a pathogen more deadly by taking the deadly functions of two different organisms and mixing them. And that's where you get into the nightmare germs. So, just so I get this clear, I don't know, are you familiar with Jurassic World? Yes. Okay. So, you know how they make Indominus rex? Yes. Is a Chimera essentially the Indominus rex? of biological warfare. - Wait, tell me, give me a few more details so I can remember. - So Indominus Rex, can you look this up real quick, Scott? From what I understand, 'cause, and the reason why I wanna get this right isn't about me getting it right for you, our viewers. My son is super into Jurassic World. He may watch this episode. - Genetically engineered hybrid dinosaur and the main antagonist of the 2015 film Jurassic World. - Yeah, so he is a genetically engineered dinosaur, but he's basically, is he a T-Rex? But worse. - Like, is he a bigger T-Rex or is he, okay. - He's a bigger T-Rex. He can become invisible. - Oh, okay. - Yeah, that's not funny. I mean, it's really serious. - That's like mixing a ghost with a-- - Correct. - With a dinosaur, okay. - Yeah, kind of like a chameleon, not a ghost. There's no supernatural, don't insult it. It's actually a great movie and, oh my God. It really kind of rebooted and relaunched the series in a whole new way. Chris Evans, not Chris Evans, sorry. From Parks and Rec, what's his name? Chris Pratt really had a glow up. - Okay. - And kind of rebooted the series. chimera. That is the Indominus rex. But that's a great, that's an, that's a great example. And that's an interesting concept because you're just making something more powerful, more virulent, you know, deadlier. Yep. And that's what's happening with these pathogens now. How complicated is, is it to create a genetically modified pathogen today? Yeah. This is where, this is where it's really unsettling. So hang on to your seat. Sure. Because unlike nuclear weapons, which have an extremely high barrier for entry, right? So you have to have like weapons grade uranium. Right. Vissile material. Yeah. And you have to have a weapons delivery system like an ICBM. Yeah. Okay. You got to really be a nuclear nepo baby. Dad has to have a lot of money. So far, no one's been able to do this. Whoever it is, whether it's Kim Jong-un. Well, that's different. He's got like a lot of state sponsored equipment. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. He's got a lot of support. Just like when you see some of these upper west side yuppies that get to be filmmakers. It's like, dude, your dad's rich. You're not that talented. He's bankrolling you. I feel the same way about Kim Jong-un. It's like, you got the whole state behind you. A lot of people are really suffering, but yeah, go hand. Yep. Anyways, continue. Okay. So nuclear weapons, you have to either be that kind of a nepo baby or you have to, you know, have a state controlled nuclear system behind you. Totally. So biological weapons, as it was explained to me by all the subject matter experts, what's so unnerving is that they have an extremely large amount of nuclear weapons. So they have a lot of nuclear weapons. They have a lot of low barrier to entry. In essence, the way it was described to me is a high school student with ill intent can engineer a biological weapon with the help of an AI compute system in their basement. So what do you think is a bigger threat here? A state using a bioweapon or a divorced man using Reddit 12 hours a day? If he has, if he has like the desire to make chat GPT, help him make a bioweapon. And he has like a mailbox where he can get some pathogens in the mail. It's unfortunately far easier than you would think. And again, that's not just Annie Jacobson's sort of imagination. That's subject matter experts who advise the president, not just this president, former presidents about this. And as AI systems get more and more powerful, this is, and as genetic engineering becomes easier to do with a CRISPR type situation that we've all heard of. Can I share a silver lining to you? Please. Now, while I see this Wall Street Journal reporting on people using AI chat bots to help them do this simultaneously, while this is happening, math scores, reading scores, and science scores are at an all-time low. So the hope for me is you do want some f***ing loser wants to do this, but he's too f***ing dumb to pull it off. In that killer combination of illiteracy, meeting hubris means this numbskull won't even be able to pull it off. That's actually the silver lining to all of this, in my opinion. I agree with you. It's like John von Neumann's zero-sum game in the basement. Yes. Okay. Yeah. We agree. Essentially, but with, you know, a bunch of people that kind of cheated their way through undergrad by control copy, control pasting, Wikipedia, and chat GPT. According to a 2025 State Department report, Russia, North Korea, China, and Iran either likely or actively operate biological weapons programs. So I have to assume we have one too, right? Technically, we don't. I'm not towing the party line there. I'm reporting the area. Now, okay, this, you've brought up the spicy subject. What did you call it? Saucy? Spicy. Spicy. Spicy, saucy. Why did I say saucy? I thought you said saucy. I said spicy. We're talking about lab leak. Yeah. Okay. This is that subject because technically we do not have a biological weapons program. Of course we don't. We adhere to the treaty. But many people, and not just crazy dads on Reddit, ask, well, wait a minute. What constitutes biological weapons engineering, if not gain of function, doing dangerous pathogen research? So you see, it's like what language, what nomenclature are you going to throw at this to avoid the reality that may or may not be happening in these labs? So what is gain of function research and what are the arguments for and against it? So gain of function is exactly like it sounds. You're trying to gain the function of a pathogen, make it more virulent, make it more transmissible, make it evade countermeasures, right? So like you could, there was one of the first gain of function experiments that's kind of publicly known was in 2001. That was a long time ago. Think about how much science has happened since. It was a mousepox experiment. Okay. Yeah. So you're like, they're taking. They're taking a very similar pathogen to smallpox and showing how they could do gain of function techniques on it. And the mouse had been immunized against smallpox. Then it gets a dose of the gain of function pathogen and suddenly there's no immunity. So that's the kind of work in a science lab that many people will tell you is bioweapons engineering. Most of the subject matter, actually all of the subject matter experts I spoke with from the defense department to HHS to CDC, public health. I mean, across the spectrum, everyone I interviewed said gain of function is dangerous. So in the book, you quote former presidential advisor Andy Weber saying that gain of function is a euphemism for biological weapons engineering. So why isn't it illegal? I mean, that is exactly the point. And let's be clear about Andy Weber's quote. Because they're really important. First of all, you know, he was President Obama's top biodefense advisor. Obama actually had him in charge of the American response to the Ebola crisis in 2014. But Weber's been at it for decades. He actually is the only person I know, I think is the only person I know, who has visited Vector Lab. He actually went to Vector right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To specifically oversee making sure the scientists there didn't sell their bioweapons to Iran and other rogue nations that were interested in buying them when the wall came down. He kind of like worked with them to destroy the program to destroy their bioweapons. And so when you have somebody like Weber with all his creds for across decades, across multiple administrations, saying that gain of function is a fancy word. For biological weapons engineering. I mean, I think he's the person I would listen to most. So the book begins with an explosion in the Vector Lab in Siberia in a genetically modified pneumonic plague escapes. Question, is pneumonic plague bad? Pneumonic plague is the worst of the worst. It's really the only pathogen, along with rabies, which is a virus. That has a 100% case fatality rate. Meaning if you don't, with rabies, you get shots in the stomach. Yeah. With pneumonic plague, you get antibiotics immediately. And then with rabies, it goes from 100% to pretty much 0% chance of death. Pneumonic plague goes from 100% death to about 15% death. What exactly does pneumonic plague do to your body? Give me, you know, those lurid anecdotes. You know, any lung infection, you got to really think about what ends up happening to you as you drown. So when the bacteria infiltrates your lungs and begins sort of eating it apart, the lungs are fighting for oxygen and they become like soggy sponges, water-filled sponges. You're coughing up blood. You've got like necrotic spots on your arms. Yeah. Interestingly, it's mistaken a lot of times for some kind of a respiratory illness or, you know, acute alcoholism because you're throwing up blood. And then pneumonic plague is also called a fulminant disease, meaning it strikes like lightning. So this is all happening really fast. 24 hours, maybe 48 hours, you're dead. Well, great. Now I'm not going to sleep tonight. Okay. I left out, you can also bleed from the eyes. Not always, but sometimes. What? Yeah. I thought, so the lungs and the skin stuff wasn't enough. You can also. It wasn't. In some cases, you can bleed from the eyes. I just had to throw that in there for like the extra gory factor because usually people associate that with Ebola, but that is a symptom of acute pneumonic plague. The virus in the book has been bioengineered to cause euphoria. So this is really interesting. Oof. You kind of get happy and then you spread it to other people. Is there any evidence a virus like this has been created before? Well, that's what the chimera viruses and the chimera pathogens are all about. It's like adding some kind of dark, nefarious component to an already existent species of a pathogen that like, you know, takes it into a whole new realm. What you're talking about with euphoria was something that a Usamrid doctor. named Dr. Henry Hines. So you Samarit is the Defense Department only BSL-4 lab. It's at Fort Detrick in Maryland. It's actually where we had a biological weapons program when it was still legal. It's now where we don't have a biological weapons lab, where we have a lab that looks at dangerous pathogens. So Hein, who was there for decades, explained to me what he learned about the Soviet chimera virus, never reported before, that really had him up at night. And that was the insertion of a euphoria gene. Now you might say, what is that all about? Well, think about it. Okay. If you get any kind of infection, any kind of disease, you are going to go home and crawl under the covers. It's a downer. It's a downer. And basically it's mother nature's way of, you're not going to infect a lot of other people. Totally. So now you understand, insert the gene for euphoria. You suddenly have someone with pneumonic plague who actually wants to go out and socialize, who might even go to the disco. And that's what the Soviets engineered specifically to make pneumonic plague more transmissible. That's what scared the shit out of me while I was reading the book. They basically put pneumonic plague and they sprinkled a little MDMA and Coke on it. I mean, that's another good metaphor. It's so, you know. Because they were basically like, let's hit the Christmas party. Let's go. I mean, let's go. Let's go. Let's go. I mean, they, in the Cold War, the Russians hated the U.S. so much. And again, this is not me. This is the Soviet defector scientists saying how they were, you know, how this was discussed. Like, we have to try and kill as many Americans as possible. And also, here was the plan, because the plan was to kill all the people and leave the infrastructure intact. Like, nuclear is going to take out all the buildings, but everybody like drops dead of plague. Yeah. Or actually sort of like has like a very quick, horrible, painful death of plague. Now, just so I have this clear, you're sure that the villain here is the vector labs and it's not BlackRock, which is trying to buy up single family homes and they want everyone to drop dead so they can buy them up. Another interesting metaphor. But in the case of this scenario, the villain is certainly the scientists who create the pathogen. And it's actually, you know, it's not a vector that this, that the incident takes place. You know, that sort of dispersal from a BSL-4 lab is something that we've seen historically and kicks off the action in my book. Now, the book takes us through some of the real plans that the government has in place if a real outbreak like this happens. What is the Strategic National Stockpile of Antibiotics? So that is a classified program with an unclassified name. And I work, I worked with Obama's former FEMA director, Craig Fugate, to learn what I could about the Strategic National Stockpile and also what happens on day seven. So I could like inform the public. And the most I could come up with was that the Strategic National Stockpile, first of all, its contents are classified. That kind of makes sense. Like you don't want to know it's filled with just Cipro or a certain antibiotic that, you know, will be a counter measure to that disease, but not that disease. Cause then the bad guys are going to, you know, sure. You can look through all that, but it is classified and it's hidden in bunkers around the country. Right. But where is it specifically? Give me latitude and longitude. Okay. Well, you want to know how I found that out? Cause I'm not supposed to know that. Okay. How'd you get it out? Okay. So that's exactly what I was wondering as a reporter. See, we think alike, comedian, reporter, very close. I wondered, okay, we're a country of 500, million guns. Okay. You know, we talked about preppers. Like I know them, you know, them, you lived in the woods. You had to have done some prepping. Everybody's going to, you know, ammo up and go after the Strategic National Stockpile. If you think there are supplies in there that are going to save you from pneumonic plague. Okay. So how do you find, that's why the location of the Strategic National Stockpile is classified. Okay. So I had chat GPT tell me where it was. What? Yes. Because I wanted to know if this anarchy is going to break out exactly in that way. And so now, you know, I have. So it was able to just scrub the internet and then give you the coordinates? You know, if you, if you just try to make it do that, it will say, no, you can't know where that is. It's classified. But I have a little bit more nomenclature in me and I know sort of some keywords to use. And I really pushed chat GP hard and found the actual location in Los Angeles. Now word got out to some, I told some colleagues who are friends with Sam Altman. Yeah. So he asked to speak with me about this. And we had a discussion. And one of the questions he asked me was, how do you know that that's the right location? You want to know? And what'd you say? Well, I told him that it's a location with a big perimeter fence around it. But more importantly, it has a rail track that goes in and doesn't come out. That's how you bring the supplies in. Whoa. So Sam knew that I had actually located it. And the reason that chat GPT was able to locate it was because a government official by accident on page, like, I can't remember, it was like 434 of some document. Put it on some.gov website? No, like in an emergency earthquake, you know, notice situation. And there it was. But the large language model searched through a zillion bits of data with my prompts to be able to deliver that information to me. Now, I wasn't going to report that in the book. But after my conversation with Sam Altman, the ability to find that location disappeared. But the bigger cautionary tale part of it is like, these AI CEOs don't know what they don't know. Right. Is that PDF still on the internet? The PDF is there, but how to find it is not there. Well, now that the book's published, I bet the PDF will go away. But I don't know. When you say you pushed chat GPT, you just started bullying it? And you're like, you know what I f***ing mean? Like, is that what you did? Actually, I find that chat GPT responds to. I use please and thank you. Well, I'll tell you what you do if you kind of suggest that it isn't as smart as it thinks it is. You negged it? I negged it. Yeah. Wow. And it got like a little, I'll show you-ish. So according to your reporting, the people in charge of handing out the antibiotics in an outbreak, they're volunteers? That's when you think bureaucracy is inept. Then you really dig into some of these, you know, things that have to happen in the moment of extreme emergency crisis. And you find out that the strategic national stockpile has kind of a mirror image at the Los Angeles department, you know, the county. And they have a hundred thousand bottle stash of antibiotics in the event of an outbreak of something like pneumonic plague or smallpox. Well, actually, smallpox is a. It's a virus, but anthrax. Okay. So Cipro antibiotic would help or treat anthrax or a plague. This hundred thousand bottle stash is supposed to go to first responders. But when you really dig down on it, you find out that it's hidden away somewhere in its own kind of bunker. And then it has to get brought out. And then it has to be set up in parking lots of said hospital. Life-saving bottle are volunteers. How are they going to get there? How are they going to be able to negotiate with an armed law enforcement officer when they say, no, no, no, no, no. You can only have three bottles, which is what the earmarking is. And the person says, well, wait, I have five kids. Right. I mean, you can just use your, you don't need, it doesn't need to be a dystopian horror film to figure out how something like that is going to go down. I mean, it's not just a dystopian horror film. It's also like this weird comedy because this thin line of defense is a bunch of college undergrads trying to beef up their application to go to med school. And this group of 19-year-olds is essentially going to have to stave off lunatics, drive through fires, overturn cars, shootouts, essentially to tell people to form an orderly line. I mean, you're thinking of the college students. I'm thinking of like the people who help you when you go vote. Okay. Demographic, little older. Sure. You know, kind of drove in from far away. Yeah, yeah. I'm not more inspired here though, Annie. Like, I'm not like, oh, wow, you clearly their wisdom. That's exactly my point. It's like either way. It's going to come into play here. It's just not going to work. That crowd isn't the John Cena type. You know, we're not talking about a group of people that are going to, you know, keep us safe. So in your scenario, the president invokes the Insurrection Act to restore order. But just. the idea of disorder is in the eye of the beholder. holder because during COVID, the Trump administration was going to enact the Insurrection Act when a bunch of black people essentially said, stop killing us. But then when a group of dudes dressed as Vikings broke into the Capitol and shat on Nancy Pelosi's desk, those people were considered to be patriots. So what do you think meets the bar of disorder in a biological attack scenario? If you have people fighting over the stockpile, if you have people trying to evacuate cities, driving on the wrong side of the road, attacking gas stations because the lines are too long, if you're talking about real insurrection, that is something really far beyond anybody's imagination or experience. And that is what the president has the authority to do. Declare the Insurrection Act. It lifts this post-Civil War Act called Posse Comitatus, which says that the military cannot be used to enforce laws. So it allows the military to deploy with their guns, with shoot-to-kill orders, and try and regain control. You quote, a former official saying that the line between order and anarchy is thin. Do you believe that? After writing and reporting this scenario, I believe that as a possibility, if something really serious collectively as a democracy isn't done, you know, I mean, the spoiler alert, the other spoiler alert for the end of the book is after I take you through dystopia is I say the point is not panic, it's pressure. So when you learn about some of these programs that are in place, you realize there is a lot of money being spent, but it's obviously being spent in the wrong manner. At least to my, that's my opinion. Personally, I actually think the line is thicker than we think. I don't know. I went through COVID. There was some crazy shit, but people were pretty cool. Generally speaking. Stealing toilet paper is different, or rather hoarding toilet paper is different than this image that came to me from an interview I did with former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. And he was the subject of the anthrax attacks. So he had weaponized anthrax sent to his office after 9-11. And in our discussion about biological war, a scenario, because he's dedicated all these decades since to the anthrax attacks, he's dedicated all these decades since to the anthrax attacks. And he's dedicated all these decades since to the anthrax attacks. to looking at bioware and trying to prevent an outbreak or an incident. And he said to me, not only will it be a nightmare, but it will be people doing inhuman things just to survive. That's so far afield from hoarding toilet paper. Coming from someone like Tom Daschle, that is really something that gave me pause. The government in your book goes beyond the Insurrection Act pretty quickly. They go to this thing called devolution. Am I pronouncing that correctly? It's evolution with a D in front of it. Yeah. So like devolving. What is devolution? The devolution plan is classified. The name is not classified, which is why Craig Fugate, Obama's former FEMA director, could discuss it with me and take me up to the edge of what can legally be known. It is a plan to enact. After. After the Insurrection Act has been declared, after the country goes to continuity of government readiness condition one, which I'm sure no one even know exists. Yes. That triggers the devolution plan. A pre-set, a pre-chosen group of people disappears off into the wilderness to what's called a hot site, a cold site, or a warm site. These are classified facilities. We are not allowed. And we are not allowed to know where they are. Yeah. This sort of shadowy government goes off there and hunkers down to take control of the government so that government can continue. When I found out about this plan, I mean, I was stunned. Yeah, yeah. So for me, I have a real quick question for you. Basically, you have a VIP list to get to the bunker. Now, am I thinking about that correctly? That's exactly right. Okay. That's not even a metaphor. That's actually the actual reality of it. Got it. Are you on the list? I am not on the list. I promise you. Who do you think is on the list? Jared? Tiffany? I mean, I think we could do a whole podcast about who's on the list. I know how he feels about Ivanka. What? Well, I mean, when I heard she has her bunker in Albania or bought the island in Albania, you know, it really made me think, wow, if she's already on the list, what does she need the Albanian island for? What do you think she needs it for? That's a longer podcast. Okay. Do you think J.D. is on the list? Well, what happens to the VP and the POTUS is a different lane because they are, the Secret Service will do everything they can to keep them from dying. So, but there are stand-ins for them on the devolution plan in the event that they do die. So he is on the list then technically? He's on like two lists. Okay. Does he get to bring his favorite couch? Maybe it's pre-set. The society will have to repopulate. I would guess that's already set up in the hot site, warm site, or cold site. Understood. Do you think COVID made people more open to the warnings that you're laying out in this book or has it made us more complacent? I think people will be really surprised when they read biological war scenario. I think they really will because I think quickly you figure out like, oh my God, COVID was nothing. COVID could have been this incredible sort of, you know, warning for all of us. Like, okay, what do we, wow, we know it can happen and what do we do next time? But in fact, we have the opposite. We have this complete fracturing of public trust. And we also know that despite billions and billions and billions, I'm going to say it one more time, and billions of dollars being spent on biodefense. I write about the programs. Very briefly in the books, you don't get bored. All this money spent and we were completely caught off guard with COVID. What does that even mean? Where's the money? Well, if you think of the government as a giant risk manager, how do you think it's managing the risks that you lay out in this book? I take it poorly. Very poorly. That's why I was particularly surprised about the devolution plan because it's kind of like, okay, the shit's going to hit the fan, but we're out of here. And that is a very serious program that involves a lot of architecture and pre-planning. Okay. And so again, that's another vote for like, well, if you guys have a plan, how about a plan for us? That's great. See, so I want to end this kind of in a somewhat, we've gone down an anxiety rabbit hole that's leading you to the bottom of your pill of SSRIs. That kind of pill bottle of like, let me just get that last one here. That way I can fall asleep here because I'm terrified. But what I also want to do is give people an opportunity to be hopeful or have a sense of agency. What can I do in this scenario? You've clearly laid out the devolution plan and the VIP list. It's basically like a town nightclub for the elites. You're not invited. Well, you may be invited, but I'm certainly not invited. For all of us that aren't on the VIP list, for either the hot room, the cold room, and the third room that I forgot, what should we do with this information that we now have? I mean, certainly any of the preppers that I talk to, the answer to that is, well, exactly, you guys should be listening to our podcast, right? But short of that, short of going the prepper route, I think, and it may sound a little dated, but I really believe information is king. Call me an eternal optimist. I am. Even though I write these doom and gloom scenarios that scare a lot of people. Yeah. Again, the point is not. It's not panic. It's pressure. Like, when you have information, you know how to behave. I just really believe that. I think what you've done is you've transmuted it into something positive. You know how Stephen King writes these fucking terrifying books about clowns that kill children and all sorts of fucked up stuff? But then in every interview, he's like, pretty happy. And he's not a dark person. Yeah. I mean, I am not a dark person at all. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's because you put all the anxiety into the pages, and then you were like, you deal with it.com. That is a good way to put it. That's a good website. That's my theory. Yep. After our last interview, I don't know if you saw this. We got a lot of comments about your unique ability to describe terrifying things in a very soothing tone. Are you familiar with what ASMR is? I am recently because I've been told about it. Yes. So if you're down, I would love to do a thing called Apocalypse ASMR with Annie Jacobson. Are you down? Let's do it. Let's do it. I'd like to finish with a segment we're calling Apocalypse ASMR. R with Annie Jacobson. Almost immediately after signing the Biological Weapons Convention Treaty, the Russians began pursuing exotic biological weapons using techniques made possible by recombinant DNA. It was a sprawling, illicit, classified biological weapons program on the other side of the world. That's bad. Parts of his lungs are beginning to rot and die. Sepsis is setting in. He can't clean up after himself. Bloody, plague-infected vomit sticks to the aircraft sink and floor. The stench is rancid, the body's grotesque. When one of the officers moves a pile of garbage to better photograph one of the deceased person's faces, a flood of fluids erupts all over him. The odor is overwhelming. nearby on the linoleum floor a woman writhes in agony her skin mottled with red spots a man bends over and hurls up what looks like pieces of lung it's a piece of your frothy spit them cover the floor frothy people people are slipping and falling into it a mixture of pus dead white blood cells proteins and other cellular debris the material is infectious it reeks of decay he trips falls tumbles down the stairs how has this happened he came for the lobster tails and jacked up the linoleum floor a woman writhes in agony her skin mottled with red spots japanese whiskey instead he got infected with genetically modified pneumonic plague all he wanted was lobster and now he got plague next time you go to rep lobster just remember you might get plague thank you thank you annie jacobson hey folks you can now watch hmdk on spotify if you're subscribed to spotify premium you don't get any spotify ads on my video this episode is brought to you by chat gpt hey it's bill simmons from the bill simmons podcast have you guys heard about chat gpt work it's the new way to use chat gpt for bigger multi-step projects and when you need more than just answers give chat gpt work access to your apps and files and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets slides and structured reports get started at chat gpt.com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans tammy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college that's why she shops at bj's wholesale club saving up to 25 off grocery store prices beef jerky microwave meals laundry pods even they can't screw up have you met my kids and with bj's gas she gets there for less they call me the road warrior this is your home road warrior mom home of the save join for just twenty dollars at bj's.com slash mesquite and save ten cents per gallon for six months open soon limited time offer new members only bj's home of the save