A Pandemic Cookbook

There are two distinct ways that the next engineered pandemic could be created.

The first is that some rogue individual scientists creates a pandemic virus in their garage using existing technology. There are many thousands of life scientists that had the skills to do this and it is relatively easy to achieve with minimal off the shelf equipment. As we have seen with COVID-19, such a virus could kill millions of people.

The second possibility is a lab leak from one of the many dozens of laboratories there are attempting to create deadly new viruses as part of our bio-defense initiatives. Such a virus could be far more dangerous then COVID-19 and could kill billions of people.

This paper describes methods and techniques that can be used by both routes. Note that while it might appear to be a technical cookbook, there is nothing in this paper that is not already already known by most life scientists. The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness of the stunning technology that is now freely available at minimal cost.

As of 2025 there is no meaningful regulation of this extremely dangerous technology.

The garage disaster

It is now common for Synthetic Biology scientists to “3D Print” DNA based on just a computer file and some chemicals. The technology requires complex chemistry using sophisticated machinery rather than literally 3D printing. However, there are several companies that now provide a mail order service for custom DNA at modest cost, neatly packaged in a plasmid.

To test the availability of custom DNA [Esvelt24] set up a bogus lab with a dubious mailing address. He then mail ordered a cocktail of the deadliest viruses from each of the providers. They were all duly delivered, with only one company querying the request.

DNA sequences of deadly pathogens can be easily downloaded from public databases, mainly GenBank. Ebola, Smallpox, Nipah are all there.

A better choice might be to recreate a novel virus that has already been published. For example, H5N1 Bird Flu has a very high mortality, but it is still does not support human to human transmission. But Ron Fouchier [Kaiser19] successfully engineered H5N1 to be airborne transmissible, and the detailed changes to the DNA can be found in his paper. [Redfield24] suggests that would be an easy way to create a garage-made pandemic.

One then needs to reassemble the DNA into a complete virus. This is not trivial, but there are many thousands of Ph.D.s that have the necessary skills. The required restriction enzymes can be easily purchased, along with some vero cell culture.

For details of Golden Gate Assembly see the DEFUSE proposal, which even contains companies and pricing for necessary restriction enzymes [Bruttel24] For other detailed instructions see [Noyce18].

Finally, one needs an animal “model” that is similar to humans to test the virus on, and to allow it to evolve into something truly infectious. Fouchier used ferrets, but Ralf Baric has since created humanized mice that have human ACE-2 receptors for a perfect match. They can be purchased at modest cost from a Chinese company.

The work needs minimal equipment beyond glassware, temperature baths etc. It could be done in a garage by leaving the door open for bio safety, and maybe an exhaust fan. Or one could simply rent space in one of the many fully equipped community bio-labs. There are now many thousands of Ph.D.s that have the required skills [Esvelt22].

Having created the virus, one can fly around the world seeding populations everywhere.

Every step of the creation of a new virus is perfectly legal. There are no regulations and no oversight. There are proposals in the USA to regulate federal funding for reckless virology, not not even proposed legislation to prevent someone working in their garage (beyond maybe town planning regulations). There are no known proposals let alone laws outside of the USA except, possibly, in China.

The blatant lies told by Virologists about the origin of Covid-19 also provide a golden opportunity for false flag operations. A hostile power such as Russia could seed a virus near a western virology lab. The credibility of virologists is so low that it would be difficult to disavow, which encourages the attack. The virus need not be particularly potent to have a strong political effect.

The mainstream research disaster

A week after the September 11, 2001 attacks, weaponized anthrax spores were mailed to US senators and others, resulting in the deaths of 5 people. This was immediately classified as bio-terrorism and assumed to be from foreign agents. As a result President Bush massively increased funding for bio-defense. The US Department of Defense was concerned about bio-weapons treaties, so instead $3? billion was instead given to Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Health (NIH) which lacked such concerns. This produced a large industry with dozens of bio-defense laboratories obtaining grants.

A substantial part of this research is to produce novel viruses that could be used against us. As a Chinese general said (name?) “You cannot make a shield without arrows to test it against.”. The technology available to do this has advanced dramatically over the last few years.

An effective bio-weapon would have the following properties:-

• Be airborne.
• Have a long symptomless but infectious period. 
• Evade and possibly attack the immune system.
• Ideally can lie dormant in some individuals for long periods.
• Eventually be pathogenic or fatal.
• Might be selective.

“Airborne” means that it can survive and spread in the air as tiny, individual particles that can stay suspended for long periods and so travel large distances. Examples include SARS-2, Measles or just Flu. This is in contrast to most other viruses which need to remain in droplets of water, and so cannot travel far and can be defeated with simple masks.

When a cell becomes infected with a virus, it produces Interferon which then activates bodily defenses. It is the Interferon that produces the common symptoms of runny nose, temperature, and lethargy, not the virus itself. SARS-CoV-2 has an ORF-8 gene whose purpose is to attack Interferon, which is why the virus has an infectious but symptomless period of several days. Advanced techniques could extend that period to weeks or months, greatly facilitating the spread of such a virus.

The virus must evade the immune system. For example, the SARS-CoV-2 spike is coated with sugar molecules that make it difficult for antibodies to detect. It also contains some small inserts from HIV. With advancing technology, it might well be possible to produce a virus that totally evades our immune system in which case vaccines would be completely ineffective.

A well designed virus might lie dormant for many years like Herpes or Chickenpox. This would make it difficult to screen as it would constantly reoccur from infected individuals.

The virus must eventually be pathogenic and either kill or disable its sufferers, possibly by causing cancers which are difficult to treat. For example, the human papilloma virus causes cervical cancer.

The James Bond movie “No Time to Die” was fiction, but virologists routinely use restriction enzymes to match very specific segments of DNA. It would be theoretically possible to match fragments of human DNA that only occur in certain racial profiles and then use that to alter the pathogenicity of a virus.

An alternative strategy is to design a virus which is deliberately sensitive to some unlikely cure. One could then treat one’s own population before a hostile population could develop the treatment on their own.

Viruses are not designed ab initio, but rather are created by combining parts of other viruses creating “Chimeras”. For example, SARS-CoV-2 contains the main “backbone” from an undocumented virus, an RBD on the spike from a different virus and a human furin cleavage site. So constructing a novel virus largely involves combining the most dangerous aspect of existing viruses.

Having engineered a candidate virus, one then needs to “serial passage” it though a suitable “model” animal. This involves deliberately infecting one set of animals, and then have them infect other animals, repeatedly. Over time, the virus naturally evolves to be much more infectious. SARS-CoV-2 was probably passaged through Baric’s humanized mice which he had given to the WIV.

The need for reform

It turned out that the Anthrax attacks of 2001 we’re not the work of some evil terrorist organization or a foreign government but were in fact released by Bruce Ivins, a virologist working at America’s Fort Detrick bio-defense laboratory. The NIH funding after 9/11 has created many more bio-security laboratories than in 2001, and thus many more people that have access to deadly pathogens.

US Senator Rand Paul has proposed legislation to create a review board to oversea USA Federally funded reckless virology. However, the legislation is weak, with few enforcement provisions [Legislation]. It does nothing to prevent a garage based disaster, and little to prevent virologists engineering a super virus.

But even with the strongest measures, we are only likely to be able to delay the next lab-engineered pandemic. We need to urgently prepare defenses.

The first step is detection of a possibly slow acting virus. This can be done through wastewater and monitoring airports etc.

If a novel pandemic is found or suspected, then quarantine was fairly effective for Covid-19 in some countries like Taiwan and Australia. However the next virus might be far more difficult to control so better measures are needed. For example Australia quarantined in hotels with workers going out into the community at night, but we need open air quarantine facilities located far from population centers.

Bureaucrats will mindlessly follow rules, so the rules need to be worked out very carefully in advance. For example, the USA forced hundreds of passengers from numerous flights to wait in one stuffy room for COVID-19 testing, thus almost guaranteeing the spread of the disease.

When the WHO declared COVID-19 was not airborne they also greatly improved the airflow and sterilization within their own offices. This was a wise move because sterilizing air in crowded places can greatly reduce the spread of an airborne disease. There are also germicidal low-wavelength lights, which appear to be harmless to humans. We need urgently to have such measures widely adopted in all our buildings and in particular crowded spaces. This needs to be done well in advance of the next pandemic because we may not become aware of it until infected individuals are already amongst us.

We also need to stockpile material such as effective N95 masks or better, and not the basic surgical masks that are useless against an airborne virus.

Conclusion

Modern synthetic biology technology is stunningly effective. Life scientists routinely mail order fragments of DNA and manipulate genomes. But with this new power comes great danger that it will be misused.

Concern about misuse have been repeatedly ignored since the Asilomar conference in 1975. The global disaster that was Covid-19 should have been a wake up call to the world, but Life Scientists successfully suppressed the lab origin of the disease and so avoided any recognition of the danger. This has led to the current situation in which this extremely dangerous technology is completely unregulated.

Strict laws are needed to try to prevent another lab made pandemic. Life Scientists have proven to be completely unable to self regulate, and indeed they deny that the problem even exists. Regulation needs to be external, and enforced with the force of law and explicit penalties.

The wide availability of synthetic biology technology means that even the best legal framework may fail to prevent another pandemic. The next pandemic might be far, far worse than Covid-19. So it is also essential that we prepare for it with techniques such as proper air filtration and safe quarantine.

It would be a great pity if Virologists exterminated humanity before the artificial intelligence robots could replace us.