A Biological Threat To The United States Postal System

By Gus Michalik 

Quote from the IRA “Today we were unlucky,” it said. “but remember, we only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky always.” (Times, 1984)

Abstract
The threat of using the United States Postal Service (USPS) letter mail as a delivery system, for disbursement of biological weapons is real. If all the conditions of the release are ideal, we could have a catastrophe both in lives lost and economic loss. By spending more revenue the postal service could mitigate their losses, if the USPS purchased more technology to detect specific agents.
Introduction
The purpose of this article is to bring awareness of how dangerous an attack using the postal service can be. Other than the anthrax attacks in 2001, the success rate has been very low, but, as we know, a terrorist only needs to be lucky once. Therefore, we must be aware of our vulnerabilities and spend more money on technologies to minimize our losses.
This article is going to examine the mortality rate in a scenario with the postal system being used as a conduit for a biological attack and letter mail used as the delivery system.  When investigating this process, we will have to address the movement of mail from the mailbox to the customer.
There is a standard mail workflow which is followed in the postal facilities.  To follow the complete mail workflow, from sender to receiver, each piece of mail must contain the full postal address of the addressee.  To begin the process, the mail tha...