BWOT

It seems that there many also be a Biological War On Terror. The Black Death has made an appearance at an al Qaeda training camp located in Algiers.

At least 40 al-Qaeda fanatics died horribly after being struck down with the disease that devastated Europe in the Middle Ages.

The killer bug, also known as the plague, swept through insurgents training at a forest camp in Algeria, North Africa. It came to light when security forces found a body by a roadside.

The victim was a terrorist in AQLIM (al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb), the largest and most powerful al-Qaeda group outside the Middle East.

It trains Muslim fighters to kill British and US troops. Now al-Qaeda chiefs fear the plague has been passed to other terror cells — or Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

Also known as Bubonic Plague or simply "The Plague", this disease is transmitted through insect bites, such those given by fleas, who feed on an plague infected host (such as a rat). The flea bite then transmits the deadly microbe to a human host.

It is called bubonic plague because the early signs of the disease are buboes (bubo is Greek for "groin") which are swollen, infected lymph nodes - they appear as large blisters near where the flea bite occured.

Bubonic Blisters or "Buboes"

Centuries ago, medical practice was to lance and drain the buboes which only placed the sufferer at greater risk of infection and actually helped spread the disease faster. Other preliminary symptoms included fever, headache, bloody diarrhea and nausea/vomiting.

The following is from eMedicineHealth:

Plague is a term applied to an infectious disease that spreads easily and, without antibiotics treatment, can be fatal. The plague has caused more fear and terror than perhaps any other infectious disease in history. It has killed nearly 200 million people and has produced monumental changes, such as marking the end of the Dark Ages and causing the advancement of clinical research in medicine.

Although still debated by historians, the plague has been responsible for multiple epidemics and at least 3 great pandemics (epidemics that are spread over a large region or multiple sections of the world).

The first plague pandemic spanned from the Middle East to the Mediterranean basin during the 5th and 6th centuries, killing about half the population of those areas.

The second pandemic struck Europe between the 8th and 14th centuries, destroying nearly 40% of Europe's population.

The third pandemic started in 1855 in China and spread to every major continent.

[...] Pandemics have succeeded in spreading the plague to every major continent, with the possible exception of Australia. Unlike smallpox, the plague cannot be wiped out. It lives in millions of animals and on billions of the fleas that live on those animals. The plague is a disease of the desert, the steppes, the mountains, and the forest.

In the US, an average of 18 cases per year has been reported during the last few decades. These cases are the mildest form of the illness, and they occur mostly in the Southwest. Prairie dogs of the southwestern plains had once died from the plague. A certain type of squirrel may be vulnerable to contracting the plague in some western states, such as New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and California. Only one case of imported plague has been reported since 1926.

Outside the United States, the World Health Organization has reported an annual average of 1,666 cases from 1967-1993. The number of actual cases is probably much higher because many countries fail to diagnose and report the plague. The following countries have reported the most cases of humans infected with the plague since 1979 (in order of most reported cases): Tanzania, Vietnam, Zaire, Peru, Madagascar, Burma, Brazil, Uganda, China, and the US.

As the disease progresses, other symptoms appear that indicate the presence of septicemia, which occurs when the plague bacteria enter the bloodstream of the victim. These symptoms also include the fever, headache, bloody diarrhea, nausea/vomiting as above, but now also include rapid pulse and delirium.

Bubonic plague is most deadly when it invades the lungs, (pneumonic plague). Ten to twenty percent of plague victims will develop pneumonic plague and of this population, seventy-five percent will die even when receiving treatment. It is a miserable way to die as the symptoms indicate that you probably drown in your own juices.

Taking into account the questionable hygienic practices of Islamic terrorists, this disease could be very effective in reducing the population of these vermin.

The Black Death:
God's Biological Thermobaric Bomb delivered by the flea, God's F-16.