improvised B-weapons

[Al Nobel]

This is an idea i had a few weeks ago.Why not cultivating your own disseases? You´re immun and can work without the risk of infecting yourself.I´m thinking of a virus like influenca (which kills several thousend people each year),an bacteriological infect or a sexuall dissease.
The first problem would be to isolate the correct germ out of your blood (or out of other body fluids).What belongs to a virus you could use antibiotika to elliminate all bakteriological germs in your probe.In regard to bacterialogical germs its much more difficult to isolate them without proffessional and expensive laboratory equipment.
The secound problem would be to cultivate a virus (cultivating bacteria is pretty easy).During my two biology semester I´ve heard about methods of implanting a virus into raw eggs to cultivate it.
Any suggestions?

[zeocrash]

I had the same idea a few months ago, when i was on my back with flu. I believe duck eggs are used for the culturing of virri. in executive orders by tom clancey they use minced monkey kidneys for culturing ebola (sounds plausible), and i remember that in world war 2 the japs used slices of meat to culture virii on. so i suppose that you could use any form of meat, i'm not sure which parts would work better.

[MrSamosa]

To determine which part of meat to use for culturing, I would imagine that it would require some research of the virus to be cultured. For example, Rabies seems to like to dwell in the brain, so maybe using brains to culture would work best. It would probably vary from Virus to Virus, and also maybe by the meats of animals which are more susceptible to infection by said virus than others. Monkeys, as we all know, are very susceptible to carrying the Ebola virus, and it therefore seems plausible that they would use a minced monkey kidney.

Of course, I don't know a damn thing about Microbiology, and I'm just taking guesses :p .

[Machiavelli]

The problem with virii is that they can't reproduce, they need to insert their genes into living cells which then produce copies of the virus.
Therefore you use either living organisms like chicken embryos, guinea pigs etc or cell cultures.
Growing bacteria is far easier, you just need the right strain and a growing medium which consists of stuff like agar, flour, various sugars and maybe some additives like minerals or antibiotics.

The big problem with both cultures comes after you harvest them, because you get a big amount of sludge which you need to centrifuge or filter, dry and maybe purify somehow along the way.
Then you have to mill your product and maybe improve it by applying coatings that block UV rays, prevent the particles from sticking together or even applying immuno-inhibitors. And you always need to try to avoid killing your precious microorganisms through too much heat, mechanical stress, light, chemicals or bad karma.

It's kinda similar to chemical agents, most of the work comes after you've obtained your killers.
That is unless your happy with a crude mediocre weapon.

[zaibatsu]

If a virus is found in brains, then you must culture it in brains. Virii don't reproduce, instead they use other cells to produce more virii. They are found in specialised tissue because they are adapted to that type of cell's protein synthesis. Thought that might be useful :)

[Imperial]

Basically, virii aren't cells. There is debate as to whether they are really alive.

What they do is insert their genetic material into a certain cell type and thus create copies of themselves. Different virii have different protein shells surrounding their genetic information, and these proteins are attracted to different proteins on different cells. Diseases like Mad Cow disease or Rabies would best be cultured in nervous (not necessarily brain) tissue, and diseases like Hepatitis would best be grown in blood (fresh blood). It is true that eggs are an excellent culture medium for many different virii, especially things like influenza, which was originally a poultry disease anyway. They contain many different cells which are currently reproducing, and a nice crop can be grown from them.

The main problem when working with pathogens is safety. Culturing the pathogens is easy enough using the media mentioned by me previously, but the issue is preventing transmission to yourself or your friends. This is why I do not recommend growing diseases; when I came down with the flu I used some of my mucous and some duck eggs to create more flu virii. I ended up getting sick when I checked the cultures a few weeks later, even though my experiment was a success. Unless you have the proper tools (i.e. special suits, gloves, coats, etc.) and sterilisation facilities, growing diseases can be just as harmful as it is fun. I would never consider trying more harmful pathogens than the flu, etc. without the correct equipment, for nobody would want to infect themselves.

[Arthis]

Of course, when growing diseases we suppose you have the required safety material.
Stop being affraid by anything. We take our precautions. And you may suppose too that none of us has tried to devellop bacteriological weapons (only in our dreams ! ;)).

If one is skilled to make cultures then why wouldn't he ? I think we can make our own production and safety systems to do that. Sterile box with gloves attached to the box (as in MI2, if you can't see), an admission system that can be remotely sterilised, etc...