A Russian Lab Worker Is Dead After a Possible Plague Exposure. We Should Be Terrified of What May Happen Next.

4 min readA 28-year-old Russian lab worker died from pneumonic plague in October after allegedly mishandling a test tube at a Siberia biodefense research institute.Soviet scientists created antibiotic-resistant plague chimeras by genetically engineering Y. pestis with myelin toxins during the Cold War bioweapons program.Author Annie Jacobsen imagined a catastrophic scenario where engineered plague escapes a Siberian facility and spreads globally, collapsing modern society.On October 2, 28-year-old Russian lab worker Darya Shipilova died from pneumonia. According to unconfirmed reports from local Russian media, Shipilova was reportedly exposed to a form of pneumonic plague (Yersinia pestis) after mishandling a test tube containing the pathogen at the Anti-plague Research Institute of Siberia, a specialized biodefense research laboratory in Irkutsk.Pneumonic plague has a relatively long history as a biological weapon. Its first recorded use in warfare comes from the 14th century, when Tatars hurled the bodies of plague victims over defensive walls in the Crimea. In the 20th century, biological warfare researchers learned how to make the plague much more deadly through genetic engineering. By mixing genes from myelin toxins into Y. pestis, Soviet scientists at the secret biowarfare research agency Biopreparat were able to create a so-called chimera, in which the characteristics of two different organisms were combined into a single deadly new strain.The weaponized form of pneumonic plague that Soviet scientists created in the late 1980s was doubly deadly because when it was treated with antibiotics—the standard response to infections by plague, which is bacterial—the resulting release of myelin toxin would cause paralysis. Biopreparat created other Y. pestis chimeras, including one using Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis that would kill victims treated with antibiotics within about a week.Fortunately, these weapons were never deployed before the fall of the Soviet Union. But according to Annie Jacobsen, author of the 2026 book Biological War: a Scenario, the Irkutsk lab where Darya Shipilova was reportedly exposed to pneumonic plague is the equivalent of a Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) facility—the second-highest level of pathogen containment security.In Biological War, Jacobsen asks readers to imagine what would happen if a sophisticated, genetically engineered form of pneumonic plague were accidentally released from a Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) facility in Siberia called the State Scientific Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR—or simply Vector for short. Jacobsen’s scenario is remarkably similar in some ways to what occurred in real life in Irkutsk on October 2: a single lab worker releases a strain of genetically engineered Y. pestis, and soon dies. But the ensuing consequences are far worse than what has so far occurred in real life.First, efforts to stop the plague’s spread by quarantining its first victims prove futile because the measures are enacted too late. Because the engineered plague has been designed to produce symptoms in its victims only several days after the initial infection, travelers who came into contact with the pathogen in Russia are soon spreading it around the world through airports and cruise ships. And because of the secrecy surrounding the development of biological weapons, the Russian authorities also fail to alert other nations to the impending risk. It’s only when the plague begins to spread inside the United States that officials and health agencies here begin to understand the nature of the threat.But by then, it’s too late.The weaponized pneumonic plague spreads through the air from victims once they begin to suffer from its acute effects, which in Jacobsen’s hypothetical scenario occurs most spectacularly on Los Angeles’s Skid Row after a premed student who’d been exposed to the plague in Russia volunteers to provide free treatment there. Unlike the bubonic plague, which causes suppurating sores to erupt on the skin, pneumonic plague causes hemoptysis, or coughing up blood from the lungs. As Jacobsen describes it, on L.A.’s Skid Row the situation quickly spirals out of hand: “The stench is rancid, the bodies grotesque.” In one patient, the hemoptysis initially “displayed as red and frothy.” But soon, “it resembles syrup. His lungs are filled with fluid, and he can’t draw enough oxygen.”But even when national security and health officials realize that the deadly pneumonia epidemic is being caused by Y. pestis, they’re unable to effectively respond. The weaponized pathogen has been specially engineered to resist treatment by antibiotics. All who come into contact with the plague are irreversibly infected, and after the initial incubation period of several days, the symptoms are irreversible.Soon, the infected population swells beyond the control of medical responders and even police. In Jacobsen’s account, society itself soon breaks down, as thousands of incipient plague victims riot through the streets of Los Angeles, burning and looting everything in their path. As the plague spreads, it kills thousands, then millions, and as it does so, the infrastructure of modern society collapses.In the end, only the Federal Government’s very last lines of defense hold: the “Devolution of Operations Plan” goes into effect to preserve continuity of government from bunkers and secret locations, while the Pentagon’s 18,730-strong Weapons of Mass Destruction Response Forces tries to maintain order amid the catastrophe.In Jacobsen’s scenario, things don’t work out well for America—nearly everyone dies. Hopefully the results of the recent incident at Irkutsk won’t be quite as terrifying.Shawn Gorman is Deputy Editor of News for Popular Mechanics. Before joining Pop Mech, he specialized in academic reading for educational testing. His diverse academic background also includes time spent as a lecturer and librarian at institutions such as the University of Kentucky, SUNY, and Harvard University. Shawn holds a Ph.D. in Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures from Boston University, an M.A. from The Ohio State University, and a B.A. in History from the University of Oregon. His favorite subjects to explore include computer science, physics, math, and biology. He lives on a medium-sized cat ranch in Easton, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two daughters.