I say keep some of the virus, aboard a satellite in high Earth orbit. If it is needed by future researchers, it'll be there. And when the satellite eventually fails, it'll just harmlessly burn up in the atmosphere.

Smallpox as a biological weapon is old news, ebola is much more efficient. And who's to say there isn't still smallpox out there, watching and waiting for its time to return...

 DO NOT store it in orbit but rather in a secure vault/laboratory, along with other someday might be needed items, on the surface of the moon.  Reason for this location is simple, we can monitor the comings and goings of any would be visitor to the site in complete safety and have a goodly amount of time to take any actions needed to stop its return to earth.

We can't do that - what if we meet an alien race and decide we want their land? Whatever will we infect blankets with? Ebola is too fragile.

"Kept under tight security"? Kind of like all those classified documents that Wikileaks got a hold of? Yeah, I really don't trust the government or the WHO with this stuff.

I always find it interesting when we hear from experts that few countries could have smallpox. Ken Alibec, one of the leading Russian scientists who worked on the Russian biological program said in his book Biohazard, that the Russians taught many countries about biological agents, including smallpox.

It is a bacteria that has been on the earth probably longer than Man has, do we really want to destroy it completely? Isn't that kind of what the environmentalists don't want us doing with other species?

Assuming that the remaining smallpox organisms are absolutely known to be confined to a few controlled locations, they should not be destroyed. Admittedly, that assumption could be completely wrong.

That said, it is generally a very bad idea to destroy irretrievable scientific or other information. For instance, burning books in the dark ages - - -

Nothing in Creation is useless, although some things, like radiation, are very dangerous. Still, the humanity must trust God on this. God never does things for nothing! It isn't in His Nature. These "bad" things might be able to neutralize things like the atomic radiation. Who knows. There is an unknown use for these viruses, someplace. Of course, not in my place. I therefore advise to study and build an international storage facility 100 percent proof from things like tsunami, wars, human "predators." If such is possible, don't destroy the viruses. But make sure that they won't fall into the hands of a "Hitler" or a "bin Laden." Their spirits are still prowling somehere in the Universe.

@Desert

Radiation is not harmless, even typing on your computer or TV, or whatever gives out radiation. The only ones that do harms is because of a higher energy like X-Ray and even more feared and deadly: gamma ray. But you can you use the gamma ray to attack tumors and such to kill them.

I personally think we should destroy most of the samples and only kept very small (or one) into a typically neutral country (Sweden or Switzerland). This reduced the samples to a very small level and at the same time we don't have to worry about it. The main issue is that if we get rid of the samples, the chances of the smallpox virus being used as a biological weapon is high. It spread fast and we don't make much vaccines or anything much anymore. If I would say what disease would caused a downfall.. it would be the smallpox. We're so ignorant about it we don't even have a good steady supplies. Even the US don't have enough to give out to people if they started mass producing enough fast- only to around 30-45%.