Silent Death: The Threat of Chemical and Biological Terrorism

by Kathlyn Gay

An in-depth explanation of the ease of manufacture and distribution of lethal chemical and biological weapons and the terrorist organization that have access to them. The author also includes a discussion of deployment scenarios and defense strategies. A very hot current events issue sure to engage and inform.

128 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2001

About the author

KATHLYN GAY is the author of more than 100 books, including young adult books, encyclopedias, teacher manuals, and portions of textbooks. Most of her work focuses on social and environmental issues, culture, history, and communication. In 1983, her book Acid Rain was selected as an "Outstanding Book" by the National Council for Social Studies and National Science Teachers' Association. Silent Killers received the same award in 1988. Global Garbage: International Trade in Toxic Waste was chosen as a Notable Book for Young People in 1993. In recent years, Kathlyn Gay has collaborated with family members, sons Martin and Douglas Gay and daughter Karen Hamilton, on various books.

Reviews

[W. Brad "Zorknot" Robinson · Rating 2 out of 5]

The good: Lot's of great information on terrorism and counterterrorism in easily digestible little chunks. The information is sourced extensively; so I can easily look up more information. Also this was written just before 9/11, so it gives an interesting perspective on things. The book sources several predictions that ended up coming eerily true.

The Bad: There was a terrible math mistake I caught on page 80 where the author basically said that 500 multiplied by 0.2 equaled 250,000, which is very wrong. My guess is the author should have written that 500 DIVIDED by 0.2 PERCENT equaled 250,000, but somewhere it was written down wrong and the mistake never got caught.

Also, the book was written pre-9/11 so, chances are, much of the information is now obsolete.

The Ugly: The book is really 88 pages long with the rest of the 128 pages being appendix material. This is great for research, but maybe not so great if you're looking for an in-depth study of the subject. Also, it's YA, which isn't bad in itself, but the book addresses it's younger audience by every now and then defining terms that might be new to the younger reader. For people who have read a lot and don't need the terms defined, this is a bit annoying. I suspect it might come across as condescending even to people who don't know the terms. On the other side of things, the book uses a lot of unnecessary acronyms like BW for biological weapon. It explains them once and then never again, and so you have to flip back to remember what they're talking about. In a speech or something it might be worthwhile to use acronyms to save time...MAYBE. But in a written format I don't see any reason for that.

Overall I'll keep the book around for research until I find something better, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to anybody who is interested in studying the subject.

[Dawson B · Rating 1 out of 5]

I first picked this book up because I thought the main topic of the book was interesting and that it was a shorter book. Silent Death throughout the book is just talking about past attacks of biological and chemical weapons from places all around the world. The author tried to make hypotheses of the future attacks that she thinks might happen. I thought the author really wrote the book well but, it was too slow moving for my taste it did not really keep me interested so I mostly had to yell at myself to read this book and finish it. I really wished she just said Chemical Weapon or Biological weapon instead of saying BW or CW.
I would recommend this book too some of my friends but, I like more story of the attacks instead of just reading out the facts. I Think the readers that would like this book is readers at a slightly higher reading level than me

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book really gave lots of information on chemical terrorism

[Koren]

FUCKING CREEPY!