Ken Alibek describes (in Biohazard) a time he was called into the lab to handle a problem:
I stripped my clothes off and stuffed them into one of the lockers lining the walls. Then I walked into a second room, where a young nurse sat behind a desk. I had a nodding acquaintance with her outside the lab, having seen her walking her large dog, and was embarrassed at first to appear before her naked. But she always maintained a businesslike air as she wordlessly stuck a thermometer under my armpit and examined every inch of my body, including my teeth and gums. Any sign of bleeding from a cut or bruise, even from a nick while shaving, was grounds for barring further entry.
The buzz of the ventilators grew louder as I passed through the next rooms, picking up the separate items of my anti-plague suit: white socks and long johns, hood and cotton smock, respirator, goggles, boots, and gloves. The entire procedure was reversed on the way out, although the gloves were always the last to come off. Even with long practice, I never managed to complete the process in under fifteen minutes. That night, I was faster than usual.
[…]
The air pressure in the pipeline feeding one of the tularemia rooms had begun to drop precipitously. A technician had been working there an hour or so before, but she had gone home. She may have forgotten to reset the valves.
[…]
I opened the door and took a few steps inside. It was pitch black. I reached back, groping in the darkness for the light switch. When I finally hit the switch and looked down, I found I was standing in a puddle of liquid tularemia.
It was milky brown—the highest possible concentration. The puddle at my feet was only a few centimeters deep, but there was enough tularemia on the floor to infect the entire population of the Soviet Union.
[…]
I was only two feet or so from the doorway, but I was trapped. If I tried to back out I would bring the disease with me into the corridor—and, potentially, into the rest of the zone.
[…]
I poured the solution over my boots. He handed me more bottles as I moved backward, tiny step by tiny step, pouring all the time.
[…]
The change in air pressure must have caused the culture to escape through the filter system.
[…]
I tried to imagine what might have happened if I had lost my footing on the slippery floor.
[…]
When we regrouped in Zone One, I advised Nazil and the others to take the antibiotics we had on hand for emergencies.
[…]
It didn’t occur to me that such a minor mishap would need to be relayed up the chain of command, but the KGB chief in Kirov had called his bosses in Moscow, who called Kalinin early that morning.
By then, the story had become hopelessly mangled.
[…]
I had told Nazil and the others to take antibiotics, but for some inexplicable reason I hadn’t taken any myself.
[…]
By the time I’d left Building 107 that night, I had been completely disinfected. I must have caught the disease in a matter of seconds, between leaving the sanitary passageway and entering the shower. But how? Then it came to me. I must have brushed my face while taking off my mask and hood. A hundred cells, an amount smaller than a speck of dust, would have been enough to infect me through an imperceptible cut or scratch.
[…]
Tularemia can be inhaled or ingested or contracted through bites or scratches. It rarely passes directly from person to person, but it can be carried by fleas, ticks, rats, and other rodents and can enter the bloodstream through minor abrasions. The disease is marked by a sudden onset of fever and chills, often followed by an incapacitating headache. As soon as it enters the body, the bacteria will begin to multiply locally, gradually spreading to lymph nodes and distant organs, including the liver and spleen.
Even after successful antibiotics were developed in the 1940s, tularemia was considered an ideal weapon for the battlefield due to the speed with which it could overwhelm an opponent’s medical resources, leaving hospitals and physicians unable to cope with a flood of patients in need of constant treatment.
If taken immediately, antibiotics can contain the spread of the disease and kill invading bacteria in a matter of days. The later the drugs are administered, the longer a victim will suffer. Particularly acute cases have been known to linger for months.
Tetracycline was thought to be the best antidote for tularemia, but I had no way of knowing how well it would work against the strain we had produced in our lab. In exceptional cases, certain highly virulent strains are capable of overcoming ordinary antibiotic treatment and can be fatal.
I called a friend’s wife, a physician at the local hospital, and told her I needed tetracycline urgently. Under normal circumstances I would have required a prescription, but in a small town it was easy to cut corners.
“How much?” she asked, without registering the least surprise.
Calculating quickly, I asked for three times the customary dose. There were advantages to Soviet secrecy. I would have had a hard time getting that amount of tetracycline in the United States without a good explanation. I told her not to tell anyone.
I wanted a high-impact, crash dose. If it didn’t work, I’d have to check myself into the hospital. Self-treatment had its limitations.
[…]
By the end of the day, my fever had begun to drop. I stayed home the next day, after calling in with a cold. By Wednesday or Thursday, three days after my exposure, I was better, although I continued to take high doses of tetracycline for the next ten days. I was able to return to work the following Monday.