How hard is it to build your own weapon of mass destruction? Roger Brent, a geneticist who runs a California biotech firm, is one of a growing number of researchers who believe that a bioterrorist wouldn’t need a team of virologists and state funding. He says advances in DNA-hacking technology have reached the point where an evil lab assistant with the right resources could do the job.

Every hands-on gene hacker polled during writer Paul Boutin’s DIY project estimated they could synthesize smallpox in a month or two.