BSAA: The Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance in Resident Evil

The BSAA, short for Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, is the international force that fights bioterrorism in Resident Evil. It was set up after Umbrella collapsed and its bioweapons spilled onto the black market, with Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine among its founders. It is the organisation behind most of the later games' heroes, and by Resident Evil Village it has become something Chris no longer trusts. (Resident Evil 5; Resident Evil Village)

Where the BSAA came from#

The BSAA was born from Umbrella's death. Once Umbrella collapsed, its researchers and weapons scattered, and bioweapons started turning up in terrorist hands. Resident Evil 5's BSAA file explains that a group of pharmaceutical companies founded and funded the BSAA as a private anti-bioterror unit, partly to repair the drug industry's own name. (Resident Evil 5)

It started with eleven members, the "Original Eleven", including Chris and Jill, both survivors of S.T.A.R.S.. They had already spent years chasing Umbrella. The Umbrella Chronicles shows the two of them helping destroy Umbrella's last base in 2003, the job that brought this whole period to a close. (Resident Evil 5; Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles)

The early BSAA had little power. In Revelations, set in 2005, it is still a small group led by Clive O'Brian, competing with a US agency called the FBC. When the FBC's chief was exposed as having sold bioweapons to terrorists, the FBC was shut down and the BSAA took its place as the main anti-bioterror force. (Resident Evil: Revelations)

Under the United Nations#

Being private meant the BSAA had to ask permission to work anywhere. Resident Evil 5's files say it was brought under the United Nations, which gave it the right to act in member states. It was also split into regional branches, such as the West African branch that runs the Kijuju operation. (Resident Evil 5)

The BSAA uses two kinds of personnel. Special Operations Units, or SOUs, are the armed squads in grey and black gear. Special Operations Agents, or SOAs, work in pairs on investigations, which is what Chris and Sheva Alomar are doing in Resident Evil 5. (Resident Evil 5)

Its biggest operations#

The BSAA's history is mostly a list of outbreaks.

• The Spencer estate, 2006. Chris and Jill go to arrest Oswell E. Spencer and find Albert Wesker has killed him. Jill drags Wesker through a window and over a cliff, and is declared dead. (Resident Evil 5: Lost in Nightmares)
• Kijuju, 2009. A BSAA operation in Africa uncovers Tricell's bioweapons work and Wesker's Uroboros plan. Whole squads are wiped out by Majini infected with Las Plagas. Chris and Sheva kill Wesker in a volcano, and Jill is found alive under Wesker's control. The Resident Evil 5 story page covers it. (Resident Evil 5)
• Edonia and Lanshiang, 2012 to 2013. The BSAA fights the C-virus, first in an Eastern European civil war, then in the Chinese city of Lanshiang. Chris's team is nearly wiped out, and his partner Piers Nivans dies saving him. See the Resident Evil 6 story. (Resident Evil 6)
• New York, 2014. In the CG film Vendetta, Chris leads a BSAA unit against Glenn Arias and his A-virus attack on New York, with Leon S. Kennedy and Rebecca Chambers. The CG films page has more. (Resident Evil: Vendetta)

The Baker house and the turn#

Resident Evil 7 starts with a BSAA failure. Village's report on the Baker incident admits the BSAA had tried to stop the Connections moving their mould bioweapon Eveline out of Munich in 2014, and failed. Three years later Ethan Winters walked into the result. (Resident Evil Village; Resident Evil 7: Biohazard)

Chris arrives at the end of Resident Evil 7 working with a new, reformed Umbrella. In Not a Hero he leads a joint team into the salt mine after Lucas Baker. Afterwards, the whole incident was covered up. (Resident Evil 7: Biohazard; Resident Evil 7: Not a Hero; Resident Evil Village)

By Village, the BSAA is no longer the clean force it was. Chris works through his own unit, Hound Wolf Squad. BSAA troops arrive at the end of the game, and aboard Chris's helicopter his team unmasks a dead BSAA soldier and finds a bioweapon underneath. The BSAA had started fielding monsters of its own. The game closes with Chris heading for BSAA headquarters in Europe. The Village story covers it. (Resident Evil Village)

The BSAA in Requiem#

In Requiem, BSAA agents had gone back into the ruins of Raccoon City to investigate ARK, a hidden Umbrella lab beneath the city, and Leon finds out what happened to them: they're dead. (Resident Evil Requiem)

What Leon and Grace Ashcroft found down there is covered on the Resident Evil Requiem story page. (Resident Evil Requiem)