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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class. It's a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Welcome to This Day in History Class, where

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Speaker 1: we bring you a new tidbit from history every day.

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Speaker 1: Today is April second, nineteen. The day was April second,

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine. In the Soviet city of spurt Looksk

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Speaker 1: or modern day Yuckaterinburg, people began getting sick with fevers, coughing,

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Speaker 1: and vomiting. A deadly plume of anthrax spores have been

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Speaker 1: released from a military microbiology facility, causing at least sixty

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Speaker 1: four people to die in ninety people to be hospitalized.

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Speaker 1: At least that's what was revealed to have happened after

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Speaker 1: the incident. For years, the Soviet Union claimed that meat

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Speaker 1: tainted with anthrax was responsible for the outbreak and denied

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Speaker 1: that an accident had happened. The anthrax leak, which caused

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Speaker 1: an epidemic that lasted into May, has been called the

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Speaker 1: biological chernobyl Anthrax is an infectious disease caused by the

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Speaker 1: bacterium Bacillus anthraxes. The bacterium produces spores that can lie

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Speaker 1: dormant and soil for decades. People can be infected in

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Speaker 1: a few ways. Cutaneous anthrax occurs when a person touches

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Speaker 1: an affected animal or animal product. People can get a

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Speaker 1: gastro intestinal anthrax infection from eating an infected animal, but

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Speaker 1: the deadliest type of anthax infection is pulmonary or inhalation,

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Speaker 1: which has a fatality rate in people who are not

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Speaker 1: treated with antibiotics. When a person breathes in a high

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Speaker 1: concentration of anthrax spores, the bacteria multiply and produced toxins.

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Speaker 1: Then the infected person starts to experience symptoms like a

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Speaker 1: shortness of breath, cough, body aches, fever, bloody, vomiting, and fainting.

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Speaker 1: Because antax spores are easily found and produced in our

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Speaker 1: microscopic they are an ideal weapon for bioterrorists. The spurret

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Speaker 1: Loft leak wasn't an act of bioterrorism. It was accidental,

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Speaker 1: but it harmed and killed many people. Nonetheless, in nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy two, most countries signed the Biological Weapons Convention, which

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Speaker 1: banned the development, production, and use of biological weapons. The

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Speaker 1: Soviet Union was one of the signatories, but the convention

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Speaker 1: didn't fan bio weapons defense research, and it did not

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Speaker 1: institute a compliance and monitoring body. In October nineteen seventy nine,

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Speaker 1: a newspaper in West Germany random report that said there

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Speaker 1: had been a germ accident that cost thousands of deaths

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Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union, and in early nineteen eighty that

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Speaker 1: same paper reported that in April nineteen seventy nine, there

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Speaker 1: had been an explosion at a secret military installation near

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Speaker 1: spurt Loofs that released anthrax spores into the air. There

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Speaker 1: was word that Soviet miller Terry had made efforts to

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Speaker 1: decontaminate the area. Once the scores were released, the news

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Speaker 1: spread around the world. In U s intelligence soon discovered

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Speaker 1: that there were signs of an accident at the bioweapons

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Speaker 1: facility Compound nineteen and spurt looksk Plus. The Soviet Defense

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Speaker 1: Minister Ustinov had visited the city at that time. The

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Speaker 1: US accused the Soviet Union of violating the ban on

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Speaker 1: the use of biological weapons, and in return, the Soviet

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Speaker 1: Union accused the US of intensifying tensions between the two

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Speaker 1: states and waging psychological warfare on the Soviet Union. The

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Speaker 1: Soviets maintained that tainted meat was the reason an anthrax

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Speaker 1: outbreak had happened, and many Western scientists believed them doubting

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Speaker 1: the accusation that there had been an accidental anthrox release,

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Speaker 1: including biologist Matthew Messelsson, who the CIA asside to examine

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Speaker 1: the evidence from intelligence sources. The Soviet Union held strong

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Speaker 1: to their story that meet had been tainted, and the

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Speaker 1: Reagan administration continued to accuse the Soviet Union of violating

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Speaker 1: the Bioweapons Convention. But finally, in nine after the Soviet

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Speaker 1: Union had dissolved, Russian President Boris Yelson admitted to US

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Speaker 1: President George H. W. Bush that the outbreak was in

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Speaker 1: fact a bioweapons accident, and it did originate at the

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Speaker 1: military facility. Yeltsen said, he told Bush the following, we

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Speaker 1: are still deceiving you. In Mr. Bush, we promised to

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Speaker 1: eliminate bacteriological weapons, but some of our experts did everything

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Speaker 1: possible to prevent me from learning the truth. It was

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Speaker 1: not easy, but I outfoxed them. I caught them red handed.

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Speaker 1: I found two test sites. They are inoculating tracts of

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Speaker 1: land with anthrax, allowing wild animals to go there and

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Speaker 1: observing them. Yeltsen promised to give the families of the

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Speaker 1: people who had died in the outbreak pensions and said

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Speaker 1: that Russia would follow the Bioweapons Convention. But more information

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Speaker 1: about the Soviets biological warfare operations came out a year

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Speaker 1: after signing the nineteen seventy two convention. The Soviet Union

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Speaker 1: had created bio Preparat, a civilian program that employed fifty

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Speaker 1: thousand people across fifty two facilities to manufacture biowarfare agents.

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Speaker 1: The program's deputy director, whose name is now ken Alabek,

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Speaker 1: defected to the US in nine and told what he

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Speaker 1: had heard about the incident in the book bio Hazard.

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Speaker 1: According to a Labec, compound nineteen produced tons of powdered

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Speaker 1: antax every year to release from ballistic missiles. According to

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Speaker 1: this account, a technician had removed a clogged filter and

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Speaker 1: it wasn't replaced until too late. A breeze carried anta

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Speaker 1: scores to a nearby ceramics factory, infecting the workers, who

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Speaker 1: were mostly men, and killing many of them within a week.

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Speaker 1: To make the tainted meat lie look more credible, the

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Speaker 1: Soviets shot stray dogs, arrested market food vendors, and bathed

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Speaker 1: victims bodies and chemical disinfectants. The KGB disposed of hospital

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Speaker 1: records and pathological reports, but all the activity just spread

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Speaker 1: the spores. More people within two and a half miles

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Speaker 1: of the factory were infected and died, and animals even

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Speaker 1: farther than that were affected. Yellsen let international inspectors into

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Speaker 1: Spurt Lofts to investigate the incident, as the Soviets had

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Speaker 1: refused to let investigators in when the news first broke.

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Speaker 1: Autopsy slides of the infected victims showed evidence not of

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Speaker 1: intestinal anthax, but of inhalation anthrax, which can take weeks

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Speaker 1: to show symptoms, and the families affected all lived down

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Speaker 1: whend of the bioweapons facility, which pointed to an air

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Speaker 1: assault of inhalation anthrax being the culprit. In New research

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Speaker 1: suggested that the anthrax strain at Spurt Lofts was close

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Speaker 1: to natural strains, so the facility was probably not genetically

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Speaker 1: engineering anthrax that was antibiotic or vaccine resistant. I'm Eaves,

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Speaker 1: Jeff Coote, and hopefully you know a little more about

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Speaker 1: history today than you did yesterday. Get more notes from

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