"Tom Gauldin" wrote in message
...
Our lawn in Raleigh had a good deal of Mica in the soil. It was in a
layer
about 2' down, but the cut for the basement exposed a lot on the north
side
of the house. It then became incorporated in the topsoil there. At times
of the day, direct sunlight would beam between a gap in the roofline-
creating a sunbeam between two shadows. I noticed when mowing that the
air
"sparkled" in the sunbeam, and it was again apparent when mowing at night,
using headlights.

The mica particles were so fine and light that they drifted around much
longer than ordinary dust or dried clippings- they almost seemed to
"float"
in the air for long after I would have finished mowing and disturbing
them.

Months ago, during the Anthrax terrorism, I read an article somewhere that
stated Anthrax needed an aerosol-type of carrier to be an effective
weapon.
As I recall, the article mentioned some finely milled clay as the
dispersal
agent. To me, that's nuts, since clay "wets" easily and clumps. I always
thought that Anthrax, milled with mica, would be far more effective than
Anthrax milled with any type of clay. To this day, I always wondered if
the
"clay" article was some disinformation put out to possibly stop somebody
from using something else

I wouldn't put it past the US government to spread a little disinformation
during the post-wtc terrorist paranoia. Remember this is the government that
is instructing people on how to survive a bioweapon attack (about as
effective as the old duck-and-cover technique - its only good if your on the
edge of the attack and know its coming). The US gov uses just as much
propaganda as any other.

Clay wouldn't be too bad a dispersial medium under ideal conditions, very
dry air and fine grains, but no terrorists likely to use it in those
conditions. Anyway, anthrax isn't as nasty as the media portray it. Its very
hard to produce, and then direct contact with the spores is required to be
infected.

Of course, with a little TB and a few petri dishes you can easily enough
make the perfect superbug, an almost untreatable highly infectious and
deadly disease. But keeping it under control would be a problem. Perfect if
you just want to cause mass chaos or blackmail the government, but not much
good for anything else.