U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is demanding Moscow provide all the details on Darya Shipilova's death.

Background: 28-year-old Shipilova, Russia's latest patient zero, worked in the "Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East." Check the map. Irkutsk appears to be a long way from everywhere.

Except it's not.

Presumably, Shipilova died from pneumonic plague. But maybe she didn't. According to the Russian bureaucrats responsible for investigating her death (Federal Service for the Oversight of Consumer Protection and Welfare, Rospotrebnadzor), "No micro-organisms associated with the employee's professional duties were detected in samples taken from the patient."

Bureaucrats usually avoid facts.

Dead certain fact: We live in The Age of Proximity.

"The Age of Proximity" paraphrases a column I wrote in January 2007 that argued technology has "downsized" our planet.

That isn't news. Technology has been extending and intensifying human physical contact since human beings invented the wheel, rowed boats and saddled camels.

Boeing 747 freighters flying flowers from Kenya to garden club ladies in Houston boosts the bottom line of African farmers. Tankers shipping crude from Saudi Arabia to Europe? Basically the same thing. Connecting entrepreneurs in isolated corners to lucrative markets is the Age of Proximity's plus side.

Unfortunately, deadly bugs and big jets present a challenge. With the advent of long-range aviation, contagious disease can move from local to global in hours. The rapid spread of disease delivered by air connections is an Age of Proximity downside.

Microorganisms can kill en masse, and they are much cheaper than a nuclear device. Bubonic plague was a weapon of mass destruction for medieval Europe. The terrible flu pandemic of 1918 and 1919 killed over 2 million people.

Which takes us back to the Irkutsk and Shipilova's possible death by pneumonic plague, a transmissible pathogen military experts call a potential biological weapon.

Shipilova worked in a known biological weapons lab. The COVID-19 epidemic and the downright misleading governmental responses to the epidemic definitely shape global responses to Shipilova's death.

We confront the obvious: Tony Fauci, an American bureaucrat, lied to the world about his role in coronavirus research. In 2026, before the U.S. Senate, Fauci repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment, dodging questions about how he spent U.S. taxpayer funds and his knowledge of Wuhan experiments.

The senators investigating Fauci are convinced financial evidence ties Fauci directly to the Wuhan lab that spawned, enhanced and then released the deadly COVID-19 virus that killed millions. (My belief: Accident. Preventable accident. Chinese labs are notoriously sloppy.)

October 2026: Shipilova's individual death illustrates what military analysts call "capabilities-based threats" to humanity.

Rogue nations and terrorists can't wage all-out war on great powers like the U.S. But with mass casualty weapons, they can kill hundreds of thousands and cause huge economic loss.

Nuclear weapons remain the biggest threat — which is why the Trump administration obliterated Ayatollah Iran's nuclear program, and Japan and South Korea field credible preemptive forces built to destroy North Korea's nuclear missiles.

Chemical and biological weapons are non-nuclear. Unfortunately, they can be as deadly as nukes.

Agro-terror, closely associated with other forms of "bio-terror," illustrates how difficult it is to defend against terror assaults.

Terror attacks on food resources and production threaten farm animals, plants and the food supply chain. Britain's bout with foot and mouth disease (FMD), which began in February 2001, is an object lesson. FMD infects hooved animals. Ultimately, Britain had a few thousand confirmed FMD cases, but nearly 3 million animals were destroyed in the effort to contain the epidemic. U.S. cattle feedlots, with up to 10,000 animals packed into a small space, are undeniably a target.

During the Cold War, Russian imperialists (wearing Soviet Communist masks) experimented with anthrax (also called woolsorter's disease) as an agro-terror and anti-human bioweapon. April 2, 1979: Inept labbies released "aerosolized anthrax spores" from a research facility in Sverdlovsk. An estimated 100 people died, in the immediate area.

When did the rest of Planet Earth learn about it? As best as I can tell, 1992, though CIA might tell you more. Alas, anthrax spores can survive for years, and as long as they survive, they pose a risk of deadly infection.

To find out more about Austin Bay and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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