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Two years after that day in September, the world is still worried about terrorism. In London this month government and emergency-services officials staged an elaborate — and chillingly realistic — mock chemical attack on the Underground. But will our cities ever be really prepared to cope with terrifying scenarios like a "dirty bomb" or a smallpox outbreak? There's help on the way. A variety of companies and laboratories are rushing to produce technologies that address our deepest post-9/11 fears, and many will come online in the next year or two. "There isn't going to be one big breakthrough, one killer app," warns Katrina Heron, former editor of Wired, who, along with David Kuhn, is co-editing a book for HarperCollins on science and technology in the age of terrorism.

She's right — there will be many, many projects spearheaded by teams of scientists and engineers seeking to head off an array of potential threats. This much you can count on: some will be elaborate but ineffectual (can you say Maginot Line?), some will be all hype, but some will improve our sense of safety. Because terrorists can pick targets anywhere, counterterrorism has to defend everywhere — from airports to office buildings to cargo ships to hospitals. So get ready for the next wave of high-tech defense: radiation detectors, Internet safeguards, handheld anthrax "sniffers." There's no panacea, but in a world of ancient hatreds, modern shields still have their uses. Here's what's next in three key areas:

AIRPORTS
Expect more big changes at air terminals — probably at the security checkpoints. The screening devices that currently check your bag and the beeping gateways you walk through are best at finding suspicious metal objects only. Soft explosives, such as plastique, can slip right through. In an age of suicide bombers, that's a fatal shortcoming. QinetiQ, a British firm specializing in military and aviation security, is marketing technology for a machine that uses "millimeter microwave" technology, similar to what the U.S. military already uses to "see through" walls, to examine passengers for everything from explosives to ceramic weapons to glass or plastic vials. Another British firm, Smiths Detection, is now selling a device that scans airborne particles from passengers' clothing and skin for traces of explosives. This device might have detected the PETN and TAPT explosives in Richard Reid's shoes when he boarded an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001 in an attempt to blow it up.

As for checked luggage, devices that inspect it now at airports use X rays and C.T. scans to signal the possible presence of explosives. If they turn up something suspicious, a human handler has to open the suitcase and poke around inside. But within the next year, InVision, a Newark, California, manufacturer of baggage-screening devices, plans to begin selling machines that marry existing baggage scanners with devices that use "X-ray diffraction" technology. When a bag is found to contain something suspicious, the specialized scanners can zoom in on the indicated area and analyze the suspect materials, all with the suitcase closed.

BIOTERRORISM
This is the area where defenses most need a quick fix. Smallpox vaccines haven't improved much since the 1960s. Until 9/11, few drug companies felt the economic impetus to develop costly antidotes to all-but-conquered infections and ailments. Viagra was a sexier sell. Smallpox was considered to be a "market you hope will never exist," says Alan Goldhammer of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

President Bush kick-started the U.S. effort to improve medical defenses against biowarfare by launching Project BioShield last January. Its aim is to make Washington the guaranteed buyer for vaccines and drugs to combat bioterrorism. If it gets under way as planned — Senate passage still awaits — billions of U.S. government dollars will be available to develop, purchase and stockpile those drugs over the next 10 years. The British government has already ordered up 60 million doses of vaccine to inoculate the population in case of a smallpox attack. The exact amount of the U.S. stockpile remains unclear, but when the House approved Project BioShield in July by a vote of 421-2, it moved to cap the figure at $5.6 billion over 10 years, not the $6 billion Bush had first sought.

That sounds like a lot of cash, but when it can cost, say, $900 million to develop just one drug, according to the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, money goes fast. The standard drug-approval process in the U.S. poses a problem, and Washington hopes to reduce the time and expense by simplifying the approval process for pharmaceuticals useful against bioterrorism. Because things like radiation poisoning or plague occur rarely, it's difficult to find human subjects to test new cures. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has eased the rules for bioterrorism-related drugs in America, allowing tests to be conducted entirely on animals, though a human test to establish safety is still required.

Some companies are making progress with vaccines and treatments. Anacor Pharmaceuticals, a Palo Alto, California, start-up launched in 2001 with $21.6 million of Pentagon and venture-capital money, is conducting animal tests for antibiotics to treat anthrax and other bioterrorism agents. And DynPort, a company based in Frederick, Maryland, has developed a faster-acting anthrax vaccine that by next year is expected to complete Phase I clinical trials, in which a substance is tested on healthy volunteers to evaluate its safety in increased doses. Current anthrax vaccines require 18 injections over six months. That's too slow to defend against a sudden widespread outbreak or to permit people to return safely to contaminated homes and workplaces, where spores may linger for years.

A few months ago, DynPort moved a new smallpox vaccine through a Phase I test — a hurdle several other companies have cleared in recent months with their own vaccines. And DynPort's vaccinia immune globulin, VIG, which has completed the second of its three Phase I trials, could make smallpox vaccines more useful by countering their potentially dangerous effects, which include infection and even death.

Other companies are working out ways to limit the wave of terrorism that a bio-attack could set in motion. At Los Alamos and at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, scientists have developed an air-quality testing unit the size of an ATM. When installed in subway stations, airports, arenas or convention centers, these devices sample the air and submit it to tests in a self-contained laboratory. Within an hour, they can report the presence of anthrax, smallpox or other pathogens. Smiths Detection has a portable version of this technology that could be installed in a van and driven to, say, a pop concert or political rally to monitor the air for signs of radiological, chemical and biological substances.

An hour-long wait for an analysis may not seem like a lightning response. But it's far better than allowing the invisible killers to linger undetected for days, exposing ever more people to infection. Also, it makes it possible for newly infected people to seek prompt treatment. "You can usually treat things like anthrax fairly well within the first day," says Richard Langlois, senior biomedical scientist at Livermore. "Once you have symptoms, it's very difficult."

PORT SECURITY
Few scenarios fray the nerves of counterterrorism planners more than the prospect of someone sneaking a nuclear warhead such as a dirty bomb aboard a cargo container headed for a port. All the world's major ports are vulnerable. To ensure that those containers aren't used to smuggle in nuclear terrorism, American customs agents often track ships before they leave foreign ports, using computers to keep tabs on their cargo. Some containers have electronic lids that will indicate if they have been tampered with en route. And when suspect vessels approach U.S. ports, the Coast Guard can intercept and examine them.

The European Union is stepping up its use of satellite and aerial surveillance to counter this threat. The E.U.'s Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) system is being adapted to track commercial ships that make suspicious changes in speed or direction, which might indicate an attack. "If a group of terrorists hijack a ship or are on board preparing it for an attack, GMES would give us the chance to find out before the strike was actually launched," says Fabio Fabbi, spokesman for the E.U.'s research commission in Brussels.

All the same, "the ports and sea cargo are our most vulnerable areas right now," says Lester Boeh, a vice president of Varian Medical Systems in Palo Alto, California. Varian produces high-energy X-ray systems that the company says can penetrate 43 cm of steel, giving customs inspectors a view of what's hidden behind the thick walls of a cargo container. An important next step would be to make the detection technologies faster and smaller. At Livermore, scientists developed and recently licensed a device called RadScout. Designed to detect trace amounts of radiation, it's a battery-powered, lunch-box-size handheld detector that customs officers could use to inspect suspicious containers at close range.

Will these innovations make the world safer? Don't forget that Maginot Line. And with terrorists, it's a never-ending contest. We close the old gaps; they probe for new ones. They thrust; we parry. In some ways, we've only just entered the fight. If nothing else, we'll soon be better armed.

• RICHARD LACAYO
• Expect bold innovations to cope with terrorism