Variola major, or smallpox, is considered by many epidemiologists....

...to be the worst disease ever to affect humankind. Depending on the strain,the mortality rate can run as high as one hundred percent. Variola is as infectious as the common cold and spreads like wildfire.

Even those who survive are physically scared for life. Smallpox causes one of the most frightening and terrible deaths known. It commences with high fever, muscle pain, and vomiting. A rash develops, covering the body with, hard, distended pustules,often forming on the tongue and palate.

In its fulminating form,the pustules merge to form a single pustule-like covering to the victim's entire body. The blood leaks out of the vessels into the muscles and organs,and the eyes fill up with blood and turn bright red.

The symptoms of the disease are often accompanied by acute distress in which neurological changes cause the victim to suffer an overwhelming feeling of suffocating terror, a dread of impending doom. All too often, that fear becomes reality.

The World Health Organization has stated that a single case of smallpox appearing anywhere in the world would be a "worldwide medical emergency of the highest order" and would require " a complete and total quarantine of the region combined with an emergency 'ring of vaccination' program as containment.It seems likely that significant military force would be required to implement an effective quarantine of infected areas"