An official United States report in 1993 concluded that whereas a 12.5 kiloton atomic bomb exploding over a city might cause up to 80,000 deaths, just 100 kilograms of anthrax spores could kill between one and three million people.
After the Second World War the development of biological weapons assumed a relatively low priority in the arms race. But recent advances in biotechnology have made possible the more efficient production of increasingly destructive viruses and bacteria.
Developments of this kind mean that the threat of biological weapons is very real in today's post-Cold War world.
Professor Malcolm Dando of the Department of Peace Studies has examined the proliferation of biological weapons and international efforts to control them. His findings have recently been published in a book entitled Biological Warfare in the Twenty First Century, summarised in the New Scientist. Professor Dando has also acted as a consultant to the BBC television programme `Assignment' on this subject.
His work shows that hopes for a more peaceful world following the conclusion of the Cold War were premature. As the tension between East and West has declined, the potential for an equally threatening arena of conflict between North and South has evolved.
Biological weapons could provide an increasingly attractive means to progress this conflict, not least because they are relatively cheap to produce. Moreover, their use is not currently controlled by international verification procedures such as those which apply, for example, to nuclear arms.
This fact was shockingly illustrated in 1991 during the Gulf War when Saddam Hussain is known to have backed an offensive programme using anthrax spores and botulinum toxin which could have been used against the Allied Forces.
But a way forward exists to ensure that these terrible weapons are never used again. Following the third review conference of the Biological Weapons Convention in 1991, government experts were given a mandate to develop a legally binding verification protocol that would apply to each of the 133 nation states which participate in the Convention.
Many complex political, military and economic barriers stand in the way of a successful conclusion to this initiative. But Professor Dando believes it can succeed if the North and South co-operate honestly and generously. In a genuine bid for peace the advances in bio-technology could be used for development rather than destruction, for example through a `vaccines for peace' programme, or by sharing knowledge in order to improve agricultural production.
The last decade of the twentieth century has been described as a `window of opportunity' in the campaign for arms control. Professor Dando is convinced that governments, the military and above all the general public, must take advantage of this opportunity by keeping up the pressure for multi-lateral disarmament. In this way the spectre of a biological Armageddon in the next century could be avoided.
Following sixteen years of military dictatorship under General Pinochet, a time of many abuses of human and civil rights, democracy was at last introduced to Chile in the early 1990s.
Over the past three years Professor Ken Medhurst and Jenny Pearce of the Department of European Studies have studied the effects of this dramatic change, sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council. To gauge the Chileans' reaction to democratisation, they have interviewed hundreds of people.
In the course of their travels in Chile, which ranged from the deserts of the North to the Antarctic conditions of the South, they talked to people from every different sector of society; from politicians and military leaders to workers and Indian peasants; from Pinochet himself to the man who tried to assassinate him.
Professor Medhurst and Jenny Pearce found that democratisation had improved the quality of life for Chileans in fundamental ways that should not be underestimated by those of us accustomed to civil liberty. For example, the ominous `knock on the door', which could lead to the convenient disappearance of political dissidents and other `troublemakers,' has all but ceased to exist despite the fact that Pinochet still acts as a semi-autonomous commander-in-chief of the army.
This basic freedom, combined with a flourishing civic culture and an economy that is rapidly gaining strength, have created an atmosphere of optimism and satisfaction among the predominantly city-based `elite' classes; business people, professionals and the well-educated.
But the Bradford researchers discovered very different reactions among the poorer sectors. Many had risked their lives in the campaign for democracy and welcomed it, but unlike the elite classes had failed to reap the material benefits of the new regime. Even conservative estimates suggest that well over a third of the Chilean population are chronically poor. Facing the bleak prospect of long term unemployment, they expressed a sense of disillusionment and alienation.
Comparable studies in Chile have tended to concentrate on the reactions of the elite classes to the introduction of democracy. By extending this survey to include a much wider cross-section of society, Professor Medhurst and Jenny Pearce have uncovered the true complexity of the situation.
The tradition of the Balkan `sworn virgins' has existed in Albania for centuries. Sworn virgins are women who, as children or adolescents, give up their female identities and vow to become male. Accepted and even revered in their communities, they take on the lifestyle, appearance, and rights of men.
This fascinating custom has been investigated at first hand in remote villages in North Albania. Antonia Young, Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies, attached to the South East European Studies Research Unit interviewed five of the `virgins'.
She finds the popularity of the custom, which stemmed originally from a shortage of adult males, has revived in recent years; one reason for this is the return of the blood feud to the Northern Alps.
Antonia believes that this revival also throws an interesting light on the role of Albanian women generally; a role that has changed dramatically since the fall of communism.
In post-communist Albania equal opportunities for women, which had been enshrined in communist law, have been steadily eroded. Women no longer receive equal pay and the number of female deputies in the People's Assembly has fallen from 40 in 1975 to nine in today's government.
The women of Albania have responded to these changes in a number of ways. In remote rural communities age-old traditions such as that of the sworn virgins offer some women the chance to enjoy the same privileges as men. In the cities new women's movements have been formed; groups like the Democratic League of Albanian Women organised by former exile Flutura Hasko.
Antonia Young's studies show that equal opportunities no longer exist for women in post-communist Albania. But using a variety of very different strategies women are proving that they have every intention of subverting this situation to win back their rights.
The fall of the Soviet Empire in 1991 was hailed as a victory for democracy and the beginning of a new period of freedom for the Russian people. Yet this epoch-making change unleashed market forces on a nation that was signally ill-equipped to deal with them after 70 years under a communist regime.
The impact of these forces on Russian women and the survival strategies they formulated have been evaluated by Dr Sue Bridger of the Department of Modern Languages, with funding from the Leverhulme Trust.
She has visited the area in and around Moscow several times over two years with colleagues Dr Kathryn Pinnick and Rebecca Schmidt, to gain first-hand accounts of women's responses to change.
Their findings, scheduled for publication later in the year in a book provisionally entitled 'No More Heroines? Russia, Women and the Market' make sobering, but also inspiring, reading.
In particular, Dr Bridger's team has focused on the interaction between women and an institution new to Russia, the voluntary self-help agency. Many are run by and for women. One of the agencies whose members the team has interviewed is a business start-up training and advice shop called 'Guildia'.
Although women's path to new enterprise is severely hampered by extortionate interest rates and organised crime, the researchers believe that success rates could be improved if like-minded groups in the West shared their expertise with bodies such as Guildia.
Agencies like Guildia are only a drop in the ocean in the battle to bring stability and a measure of prosperity to women of the new Russia. Fundamental economic change is required for long-term effects to take root. But Dr Bridger's research has shown that voluntary agencies are an important step in the right direction.