Concocting Viral Apocalypse: Catastrophic Risk and the Production of Bio(in)security.

The post-9/11 era featured an unprecedented expansion of global biodefense initiatives. This essay chronicles the rise of biodefense by tracking biological risk construction across political, scientific, and cultural rhetoric from the late 1990s to the present. It maintains that the production of bio(in)security entails two interlocking rhetorical operations—framing biological threats as catastrophic risk and enlisting the specter of viral apocalypse—that license technological solutions to imagined vulnerabilities. The essay concludes by considering the implications of such rhetoric for public health and national security. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]