Annie Jacobsen: How One Lab Leak Ends the World in 6 Days

**Annie Jacobsen** (0:00)
Covid had a 1% death rate, 1%. Pneumonic plague, you get it, and you don't get antibiotics. Inside of 24 hours, you're dead, with 100% case fatality rates.

**Brian Keating** (0:11)
Is it up to us, and what can we do?

**Annie Jacobsen** (0:13)
I'm talking to presidential advisors, secretaries of defense, Stratcom commanders, epidemiologists, directors of Operation Warp Speed, people who have their hand on the pulse. He gave me this line, which just floored me. He said, you know, Annie, in a large scale biological attack, there's nothing you can really do to prevent it. You can only handle mitigating extermination. Essentially, a kid in a basement with the help of a computational system, an AI system like Claw could potentially make this kind of bioweapon. And that's the fundamental danger. Bio is very, very, very different. I take readers from outbreak to anarchy in six days. Instead of being home under the covers, not infecting people, you're out disco dancing in a very crowded place. And you're essentially in the middle of a super spreader event. That's straight up dark-hearted evil. If there is a lab leak, if the outbreak can be shut down in the first 12 to 24 hours, you can actually prevent the dystopian ending. But once it's 24 hours, once it's 48 hours, 96 hours, it's out of the bag.

**Brian Keating** (1:25)
What scenario scares you more, nuclear war or biological war?
Quick thing before we start, most of you watching this aren't subscribed. If you've ever gotten something out of one of my conversations, subscribing is a single thing that decides whether guests like Annie say yes to the next pitch. The scenario book that you've written this time is also kind of in the similar genre as your previous book, which is just some of the, I call it hard science fiction. You call it science fact. I agree, except up to the point when there's actually a disaster that's going to take place in this book.

**Annie Jacobsen** (1:58)
I sometimes say in my tweets in such a spoiler alert, it has a dystopian ending.

**Brian Keating** (2:05)
That's right.
For those 10 of you out there who haven't read Nuclear War, you will have two treats in store for you because these books are both incredibly historically accurately researched. You're a journalist, you're trained as a journalist, you actually do the hard work of being a journalist. But you see it from the eye of a storyteller, you write for television. I guess the first place I'd like to start is, yeah, with what you're not supposed to do, which is to judge a book by its cover. I want you to take us through this incredible new book, Biological War Scenario. Tell us about the cover, the title, and the subtitle, which is just a scenario.

**Annie Jacobsen** (2:41)
Well, it's a beautiful cover and I have to give credit to the art department for that. You've been to a lot more radical places around the globe than I have. You've been to a continent I haven't been.

**Brian Keating** (2:52)
Yet. We may take care.

**Annie Jacobsen** (2:53)
Yet. Biological War Scenario follows in the vein of Nuclear War Scenario. Not that I expected to write a follow-on book. Although when I was reporting Nuclear War, a number of my sources said to me, Annie, you have to look at bio next. These are people who work in counterproliferation, a fancy word for God forbid, we need to make sure that this kind of an existential threat doesn't happen.
They're similar in terms of the title and the front, but, oh my goodness, they are different, new animals, they are different scenarios. One note on your science fiction versus zombie and stack, what I like to say is it's hypothetical. It's a hypothetical scenario based on war gaming that is done at the Pentagon. You will note, I list my sources in the front of the book, not the back. My first six books have the sources in the back. But I want readers to realize because I am now writing scenario, that this is who she spoke with. So you realize I'm talking to former presidential advisors, secretaries of defense, Stratcom commanders, epidemiologists, directors of operation Warp Speed, people who have their hand on the pulse, if you will.
One of the individuals in this book, I was fortunate to interview, was retired Colonel Tom Erhardt, who worked in the Pentagon for a very famous office there, called the Office of Net Assessment, inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense. It was run for decades by a guy called Andy Marshall. They called him the Wizard. The war gaming was done in there is deeply classified. But Colonel Erhardt helped me to understand what it is, how it works, and most importantly, he gave me this line which just floored me and became a lot of the scenario, which is when he said, Annie, in a large-scale biological attack, there's nothing you can really do to prevent it. You can only handle mitigating extermination.