Terror in Our Midst

The inability to control the migration of illegal and undocumented aliens into our country is not the weakest  point in our defense against enemy states and terrorist to harm the citizens of our country. One of the lessons learned from 9/11 is that those who would do us harm can live right here among us legally. What if someone was cleaver enough, determined and disciplined enough that he would be willing to live among us and require what is needed to poison our physical monetary supply. Would that not be the most brazen act of terror ever performed.In one stroke he could bring our economy to a stand still and sow fear through out the country.

Can you imagine the disruption and fear it would cause if someone found a way to infect our physical money supply. If some terrorist was cleaver enough to plant dollars infected with some biological, chemical, or bacterial agent in super markets, convenient stores, amusement parks, movie theaters and fast food restaurants .It wouldn’t have to be in every town or city. It could be just a few  strategically picked locations like Orlando, Fl., Las Vegas, Nev., Washington DC, Los Angles, Calif. and New York City. Million would be sick or dying in a matter of days. People would stop spending paper money.Vendors and store owners would be afraid to accept paper currency and everyone with a dollar bill on his person would be suspect once it was found to be the carrier. It’s not inconceivable that the total physical money supply would have to be recalled. This may sound like a science fiction scenario but before the destruction of the World Trade Towers ,so did that. What we have to understand  is that our enemies will go to any end to achieve their goal of weakening the confidence of the people in their government to protect them.

    What can we do to prevent such a scenario? In the short term, not much that is not already being done. After all the government already recognize that the use of paper currency is one of the factors in the spread of some illnesses. The public also should  be more aware of the potential of paper currency in the spread of disease. A problem that frequent hand washing can help to control.The one solution to this quandary is to eliminate paper money altogether. We could go to a total electronic or digitized monetary supply. The use of debit cards ,credit cards and  other digital instruments seems to be taking us in that direction. I think the the speed of this transition would dramatically increase in the event of an attack on our physical monetary supply. Moreover ,I think a scared public would demand it.