Forget nuclear weapons, here's the REAL DANGER keeping experts awake at night

As gene editing becomes cheap and effective, all terrorists need is one mad scientist.

Air raid sirens warn the residents of Tel Aviv that a rocket is inbound, fired from terrorist positions across the border. Residents deftly take cover, not knowing where it will land. It comes down in a residential neighborhood, then nothing happens...

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) -- A Tel Aviv resident is whispering a prayer of thanksgiving after a terrorist rocket landed outside his home, but didn't explode. A team from the military will soon swarm the area and clear away the debris. He hopes that while he's gone on a business trip to the United States, his government will do something to punish the terrorists responsible for launching it.

Later that evening, he boards a packed flight for New York. A day later, he is shaking hands and doing business in a tall office building. That evening, his hosts take him out on the town where they celebrate their deal. Feeling tired, possibly because of jet lag, the businessman takes the crowded subway back to his hotel.

The next morning, he awakes feeling ill. Sneezing and coughing violently, he skips his flight and checks into a hospital. He is having difficulty breathing. His lungs are filling with liquid. His nose bleeds a little. He is admitted and soon falls unconscious. He's in an intensive care ward before doctors realize what's happening. He has an incredibly deadly strain of flu, and he is about to die.

But this unfortunate businessman is not the only person with this particular flu. His neighbors in Tel Aviv have it, and have been spreading it across the city. And now it is spreading across New York. It will take months and millions of lives later before experts piece together what happened.

What happened was terrorists put doctors to work editing genes and creating a new strain of the flu. Deadly, like the Spanish Flu of 1918-1919, but even more contagious, the doctors figured out how to make it contagious while minimizing the onset of symptoms for maximum effect. Within days, experts will know this was an engineered disease.

The ability for humans to engineer diseases has been around for about a century, although most of our attempts have been crude. Only recently with gene editing becoming simple and cost effective, has the ability to engineer a disease become feasible.

With the right equipment, and the right mad scientists, there is nothing that can stop terrorists from engineering the ultimate biological weapon. Such diseases would spread easily, and often without detection, delaying the onset of symptoms until the victims is sure to have spread the disease. Then, the illness would be debilitating, swift and deadly.

Ebola, Zika, the flu, can join smallpox and anthrax as deadly killers. With smallpox believed eradicated, nobody is vaccinated against the disease any longer. This makes smallpox a very attractive weapon. Supposedly only a couple samples of the disease remain on the planet, but what if a new version could be engineered?

Unfortunately, there are no good plans to prevent something like this from happening. Governments have developed coping plans to deal with outbreaks once they start, but aside from sealing borders and developing crash treatment programs, there is little that can be done to prevent such an evil.

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