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Biological War
  • Published: 4 August 2026
  • ISBN: 9781911742036
  • Imprint: Torva
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $36.99
Categories:

Biological War

A Scenario

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
4 Aug 2026
Hardback
30 Aug 2026
EBook
30 July 2026
Audiobook
30 July 2026
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There is an invisible weapon among us. By the time you know you are a victim, it has turned you into a killer. A blistering new non-fiction thriller from the Baillie Gifford shortlisted author of Nuclear War (200k copies sold).

A lab accident, a bio-attack, a global pandemic, and the collapse of human society. In this essential new book, based on dozens of new interviews with experts with high-level political, governmental, medical, and military responsibility, Annie Jacobsen examines this very scenario.

It would be only a matter of days before the infrastructure built to handle this gravest of situations would be in a battle for survival. The fallout: mass death, societal breakdown, widespread insurrection, anarchy, and a plague-ravaged wasteland that no longer resembles modern civilization.

There is no mushroom cloud, no shock wave or blast. Instead, the scenario that could end the world as we know it begins with something so small and malicious, that when used for evil, only evil can result.

This is what could happen; a roadmap to the hours, days, and weeks following the release of a biological agent, that serves as the most essential, forward-looking journalism in preparation for urgent societal upheaval.
  • Published: 4 August 2026
  • ISBN: 9781911742036
  • Imprint: Torva
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $36.99
Categories:

About the author

Annie Jacobsen

Annie Jacobsen is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–finalist in history The Pentagon’s Brain, the New York Times bestsellers Area 51 and Operation Paperclip, and other books. She was a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Times Magazine. A graduate of Princeton University, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.
portrait photo of Annie Jacobsen

Also by Annie Jacobsen

Nuclear War
Operation Paperclip
Phenomena
The Pentagon’s Brain
First Platoon
See all

Praise for Biological War

Read this book. It is a better briefing on the problem than the one we received in Downing Street six years ago.

James Phillips, Spectator

A persuasive and unnerving argument.

New Yorker

A scrupulously realistic book about the inconceivable…This is important work...Biological War is an indictment of the weapons programs that created our discomfiting reality, and of a leadership that has allowed it to continue.

New Yorker

This book moves like a meteor… Biological War is a heavily researched book about contagious and potentially civilization-ending pathogens…That so many were willing to talk to her, and have their names affixed to this book, indicates the esteem in which she is held.

New York Times

Biological War: A Scenario will scare your pants off, but in a deliciously readable fashion.

Boston Globe

It's gripping and very, very scary how this scenario plays out.

Transfer Orbit

Graphic and sobering . . . Jacobsen is back with another scenario that promises to be even more ghastly and perversely thrilling than [Nuclear War: A Scenario].

Killian Fox, Observer

Horrifying . . . a good read

Jacob Aron, New Scientist

A terrifying account of what lurks on the nightmarish fringes of reality, written with the pace of a Hollywood thriller.

Press Association

Energetic, detailed and disturbing . . . an engrossing, plausible book

The Economist

Very effective . . . you might argue that her books on nuclear and biological warfare establish a new genre we might call New Fear Unlocked . . . all too credible . . . the author's timing is impeccable.

Sunday Times, Book of the Week

A compelling and deeply unsettling examination of how biological warfare could shape the next global catastrophe . . . Biological War is difficult to put down, but it is even harder to stop thinking about once finished.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, Literary Review

Intriguing . . . Jacobsen is a first rate researcher

Irish Independent