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On October 17, 2004, a Thai smuggler wrapped the two small crested eagles from Tibet in cotton cloths. Then he placed each bird into a 60-centimetre (24-inch) wicker tube, making sure the raptors had room to breathe. With the tubes hidden in his hand luggage, the avian transport boarded Eva Airways Flight BR0061 from Bangkok to Vienna, along with 128 other jet-setters.
The smuggler was on a business trip. A Belgium falconer had ordered the birds for $17,000 and the avian entrepreneur had promised to make the delivery in Antwerp.
But a random drug check at Zaventern airport in Brussels uncovered the illicit cargo.
Given that bird flu had already killed 32 peasants and chicken handlers that year as well as millions of chickens and 83 tigers at Thai zoos, customs officials quarantined the birds and tested them.
When both eagles proved positive for H5N1, authorities slaughtered 700 parrots and canaries in quarantine facility.
Authorities then tracked down the smuggler (importing diseased species is not a crime) and put him in an isolation ward at the Antwerp University hospital for four days.
The veterinarian who tested and killed the infected eagles developed conjunctivitis, a common flu symptom, just two days later.
Doctors put his entire family on anti-viral drugs.
"We were very, very lucky," admitted Renee Snacken at Belgium's Scientific Institute of Public Health in Brussels.
"It could have been a bomb for Europe."
Authoritive and wide-ranging, Pandemonium is a clear-eyed guide to instability, unpredictability, and the hidden biological terrorists on our doorstep.
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"While the powers that be worry about drug trafficking, a far more dangerous form of surreptitious international movement is taking place - the inadvertent trafficking in lethal pathogens, the result of moving humans, animals, and goods at a mad pace throughtout a globalized economy ... Andrew Nikiforuk's well-researched and well-written catalogue of horrors suggests that we may be fast approaching the point of no return in an impending global public-health catastrophe."
- William Leiss, O.C., Ph.D. FRSC, McLaughlin Centre for Population Health Risk Assessment, University of Ottawa
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Reviews
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- Armies don't stand a chance against biological invaders
- October 14, 2006 | Waterloo Record - www.therecord.com
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Books - Review
- Reading about health can act as cure for fear
- October 12, 2006 | Georgia Straight - www.straight.com
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Books - Review
- 'Pandemonium' Details Our Plagues
- September 28, 2006 | The Tyee - thetyee.ca
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Books - Review
- Hidden health terror
- September 3, 2006 | Calgary Herald - www.canada.com/calgaryherald/
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"We're not prepared to question the things that we need to question" - Review
- Human idiocy, the deadliest plague
- September 2, 2006 | Globe and Mail - www.theglobeandmail.com
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"It's bracing, scary stuff. And the problem is, it's real" - Review (subscription)
- Feeding the fever
- September 2006 | Canadian Geopgraphic - www.cangeo.ca
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"Any given chapter of the book might serve as the prologue to a science fiction story about the end of the world" - Review
- Why panic later?: Beat the pandemic rush today
- August 27, 2006 | Edmonton Journal - www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/
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"It's essential, though decidedly frightening, reading in an age of effortless air travel and trade" - Review
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Books by Andrew Nikiforuk
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Andrew Nikiforuk is a journalist and author of three books, including Saboteurs, a Governor General's winner for non-fiction.
His website is at www.andrewnikiforuk.com.
Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig's War Against Big Oil
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- Winner of the 2002 Arthur Ellis Award for Best True Crime
- Winner of the W.O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize
- Finalist for the 2002 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction
- Finalist for the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Nonfiction
At Trickle Creek in northern Alberta, Wiebo Ludwig thought he?d buffered his tiny religious community from civilization, but in 1990 civilization came calling. A Calgary oil company proposed to drill directly in view of the farm?s communal dining room.
Ludwig hadn?t realized his land ownership didn?t include mineral rights. He wrote letters, petitioned, forced public hearings, and discovered the provincial regulator cared little about landowners.
After the oil company accidentally vented raw sour gas, Ludwig?s wife miscarried. Nearby parcels of land were clear-cut. Ludwig?s northern boundary became a highway for semi-trailers loaded with drilling equipment. Seismic crews raced up and down his road. More sour gas wells popped up. People defending their property rights gradually turned into monkeywrenching terrorists.
Hostilities began with nails on the roads, sabotaged well sites, and road blockades. They culminated in death threats, shootings, and bombings. The Mounties recruited a Ludwig acolyte as an informant, and in an attempt to establish the man?s credibility the RCMP itself blew up an equipment shack at a well site.
Ludwig was eventually charged with 19 different counts of mischief, vandalism and possession of explosives and later convicted on five charges.
While he was out on bail, joyriding teenagers went to Trickle Creek at four o'clock one morning. Someone fired at one of the pickups, killing 16-year-old Karman Willis. Despite a lengthy investigation, the RCMP has not laid charges.
This is a taut, careful work of nonfiction that reads like a thriller and raises unsettling questions about individual rights, corporate power, police methods, and government accountability. The reader comes to question whether Wiebo Ludwig can be dismissed as a zealot. And to ask: What would I have done in his shoes?
Reviews & Interviews
"The most important non-fiction book released in Canada this year."
– Calgary Herald
"Saboteurs presents a grisly catalogue of the effects of hydrogen sulphide and flaring…Nikiforuk privides an eloquent and persuasive voice for all downwinders."
– Globe and Mail
"Andrew Nikiforuk does a masterful job of taking the reader, step-by-crucial step, through an extremely complex story. He builds a real mystery thriller out of a slice of someone's life – a difficult, acrimonious someone, but someone nevertheless."
– Wayne Skene, Edmonton Journal
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About the Author
Andrew Nikiforuk
is the author of three previous books, including Saboteurs, which won a Governor General's Award for non-fiction. His first book, The Fourth Horseman: A Short History of Plagues, Scourges, and Emerging Viruses, won critical acclaim in Canada, the United States, and Britain. An award-winning journalist, he has written for Maclean's, Saturday Night, and Canadian Business magazines.
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