• Hepatitis
• Hepatitis A
• Viral hepatitis

The disease has an incubation period that is relatively long for a biological weapon at 3-4 weeks but the onset of the disease is abrupt and victims become exhausted and develop jaundice as their livers lose function. Victims typically take about 10 weeks to recover. The disease is rarely fatal and victims have lifelong immunity.

The virus is quite hardy and can withstand relatively harsh chemical treatments and can survive outside the body for days. Hepatitis A is endemic in the Middle East and a number of Palestinian suicide bombers were identified as carriers of the virus.

• Classical swine fever
• Classical swine fever virus
• CSFV
• HCV
• Swine fever

• Dengue fever virus
• Japanese encephalitis virus
• Omsk hemorrhagic fever virus
• Tick-borne encephalitis virus
• Yellow fever virus

The disease resembles cholera in that it involves a violent diarrhea but differs in being accompanied by a fever and involving vomiting. The nervous system can also be affected. Infected sows may abort fetuses or farrow piglets with brain damage. Like many related viruses, it can cause hemorrhages.

The virus is killed by drying but can survive in a damp environment and in body fluids.

Treating the symptoms and use of dark glasses are often effective in treatment, although the disease will clear up by itself.

There are three viruses that cause conjunctivitis:

• Adenovirus 8
• Coxsackie virus 24
• Echovirus 70

Although it is not clear, it seems that Iraq was experimenting with the Coxsackie virus.

There are two major forms of the virus (types A and B) and the minor type C.

The viruses changes rapidly with each year bringing a different variant to the fore, however, vaccination programs coupled with effective surveillance of the virus have helped to limit its spread in developed nations. Apart from HIV and some of the hemorrhagic fever viruses, the influenza virus is the only virus for which antibiotic treatment is currently available in the form of amantadine. If the drug is taken immediately upon showing symptoms of the disease, it can reduce their severity and duration.

The Spanish flu outbreak of 1918-1919 should have warned anybody paying attention about the potential of biological weapons. In less than a year it killed more people than all the armies of the empires of World War I did with over 100,000 tons of chemical weapons and hundreds of millions of rounds of artillery shells. However, it is interesting to note that in comparison to the copious records, commentaries, memoirs and histories of the even more devastating pandemics of bubonic plague, science writer Gina Kolata was able to find relatively little was ever published about the Spanish flu pandemic when she researched a book on the topic. This may indicate that even a major attack with a biological weapon may go unnoticed if it is accompanied by, or is on the heels of, a major conventional war.

Samples of the virus that caused the Spanish flu epidemic have been recovered from victims buried in the permafrost. However, no significant differences have been detected between this strain and others.

Many of the wintertime agues and aches that people call flu are usually less severe infections than influenza, which still kills and can be more unpleasant than most people believe.

The agents is not well-characterized and their is no vaccine against. this mandates that it has to be handled only in Biosafety Level 4 laboratories.

• Legionellosis
• Pontiac fever

Although slow growing and difficult to culture, L. pneumophila is spread naturally by aerosols and is also relatively resistant to chlorination and to heat. After inhalation it can go on to develop a potentially fatal pneumonia. Pontiac fever is a milder form of the disease. The disease responds well to treatment with the antibiotics erythromycin or rifampin.

• Omsk hemorrhagic fever virus
• Russian spring summer encephalitis virus

The disease is an encephalitis that causes an unusual gait in animals that gives it its name. It is seen by some as the mildest of the tick-borne encephalitides but it can still kill livestock and humans not given proper supportive care.

The disease can be easily diagnosed by serology and a killed vaccine is available for animals.

• Rabies
• Lyssavirus encephalitis

• Australian bat lyssavirus
• Duvenhage virus
• European bat lyssavirus 1
• European bat lyssavirus 2
• Lagos bat virus
• Mokola virus

Lyssavirus is actually a group of viruses that show a great deal of similarity that leads to them often being called genotypes rather than strains or species. The group includes the causative agent of rabies (rabies virus). Rabies is an extremely severe disease of the central nervous sytem that affects any warm blooded animal and that will kill any victim that is not promptly treated with a course of vaccinations.

The symptoms are non-specific to begin with including malaise, fever, headache photophobia, loss of apettite, nausea and vomiting. Nervousness, apprehension and hallucination may follow with hydrophobia also being observed in may cases and accompanied by excessive lacrimation and sweating. Coma or paralysis follow with death coming within 2-7 days thereafter. Many members of the group are carried by bats and may be transmissible through air in aerosols of saliva. Other viruses in the group cause an encephalitis that will kill the infected animal. Rabies is the most lethal of these and the vaccine that Pasteur developed against the virus remains one of the early triumphs of microbiology. It is one of the few cases of a vaccine that is effective after the victim is infected. Although lethal and infective, lyssaviruses (rabies virus in particular) havelong and highly variable incubation periods (weeks to years). This argues against their use as battlefield weapons.

These viruses can spread from their bat reservoir to affect livestock and wildlife and occassionally to humans. In some cases they may be spread by mosquito bites.

These diseases are difficult to diagnose because the viruses do not reach appreciable numbers in the bloodstream, but are concentrated in the cerebrospinal fluid, which is more difficult to obtain.