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Annie Jacobsen’s new scenario-style book lays out a nightmare many in Washington would rather ignore: a biologically engineered catastrophe that could collapse cities and economies in weeks. She has spent years interviewing Pentagon planners and national security figures to build a playbook of what could go wrong—and why our country should be waking up right now.
This isn’t idle speculation confined to the op-eds; Jacobsen has been talking to mainstream hosts about these risks for months, bringing her reporting from the margins into the center of the debate. Her conversations with national commentators make clear that the danger is being taken seriously by people who understand national security.
Don’t let anyone sanitize history: COVID-19 hit communities and supply chains in ways most Americans still haven’t fully processed, and early pandemic estimates placed the case fatality rate around figures that terrified hospitals and governments. Those blunt numbers are part of why even a pathogen with modest lethality can shred social order when the infrastructure that keeps America fed, healthy, and governed is stressed.
Jacobsen and others are sounding the alarm about modern genetic tools that can make pathogens more transmissible or more deadly, and about opaque research programs where the line between defense and risky manipulation is blurred. This isn’t science fiction; it’s the messy reality of gene editing and gain-of-function debates that have been bubbling in policy circles for years.
Worse, the government has already war-gamed apocalyptic biological scenarios—and the playbooks expose painful trade-offs: who gets medicine first, when to shutter cities, and how to maintain order when people panic. Those simulations should have left us better prepared, but what Jacobsen reports suggests we still have yawning gaps that elected leaders must answer for.
Let’s be blunt: Washington’s answer to crisis too often slides between bureaucratic secrecy and theatrical panic, and neither protects the American people. Conservatives should not cower from hard truths—our responsibility is to insist on accountability, transparent oversight of risky research, and clear lines of authority when lives are on the line.
Patriotically speaking, this is a fight for the future of our country and our freedoms. We must demand that risky lab work be regulated under visible, enforceable standards, that supply chains for medicines and protective gear be rebuilt onshore, and that emergency plans preserve constitutional liberties while protecting lives.
Local communities and churches, not just distant bureaucrats, must be part of the solution: preparedness at the neighborhood level, robust support for first responders, and honest education about risks will blunt panic and save lives. It’s time for citizens to push their representatives to stop hiding behind secrecy and start delivering concrete protections.
We are a nation of hard-working Americans who won’t sleep while potential threats to our children and livelihoods go unaddressed. Call your leaders, demand transparency, and insist on a proactive, common-sense defense against biological catastrophe—because preparedness is patriotism, and complacency is the luxury of those who don’t have to bury the dead.
