DEA releases designer plagues

Plague / Epidemic

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) develops and spreads several designer plagues worldwide, targeting coca and opium plants. Governments of Chile, Ecuador, and Afghanistan collapse.

In early 1991, a powerful bio-agent swept the coca plantations of South America, turning the lush fields into brown and festering pulp. Simultaneously, a suspiciously similar bio-agent swept through the poppy fields of Central Asia, wreaking havoc with the opium production of the region. Their economies practically wiped out, the drug lords of two continents set out to uncover who was responsible.   As later revealed by investigative Media Tesla Johanneson, the Gang of Four was secretly responsible for releasing these bio-agents as part of a long-range plan to destabilize the governments of several key South and Central American countries (as well as a significant portion of central Afghanistan) for their own gain.    To complicate matters further, in late 1999, Johanneson discovered that the CIA had diverted a portion of the proceeds from illegal weapon sales to fund groups of SouthAm separatists attempting to overthrow the legal governments of Chile and Bolivia. This was supported by the Gang as both nations had massive reserves of lithium (Chile = 7.5 million tons, Bolivia = 9 million tons), a vital mineral used to produce electronics and of which the U.S. had a depleted supply. And while the economies of these drug-producing nations did rely heavily on drug income, their very sovereignty was now also under attack.