Comment by unsupp0rted
6 hours ago
Another aspect of a WW3 is that people- pretty much ALL people everywhere- who have nothing to do with the war will find their lives threatened or completely changed by it.
I'm less concerned about nuclear escalation than about biological escalation.
It's quite hard to destroy the human world with nukes: you can only blow up big chunks of it, maybe take out enough power plants and supply chains to drop us into a multi-decade or multi-century dark age, or maybe cause a nuclear winter, although the actual risk of that is unclear.
Whereas a year into a major war a kid in his/her basement can release something that is functionally the end of the human species.
We currently have no real safeguards against this. If we ever have descendants, they'll think we were insane during this time period and they'll be right.
"Whereas a year into a major war a kid in his/her basement can release something that is functionally the end of the human species."
How?
If a a virus is so deadly, everything it touches dies soon, it would not spread quickly but die out. If it is very contagious .. but very, very slow incubation time, so it infects the whole world, before becoming a deadly disease ... then I would say it is far beyond the possibility of a basement workshop to remotely design anything like this. I doubt the professional state labs can create something to wipe out humanity. Dramatically disturb? For sure. Covid was not really deadly in comparison, but already problematic.
Disagree: Most people live in areas dependent on the supply chain. And when the supply chain gets disrupted they aren't going to go peacefully. And there will be enough mobility that areas that could be self-sufficient get hordes descending on them.
You'd like this book - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After
There’s no chance a kit in a basement can produce a biological weapon that will be successful.
Oh? A lot of the old-style genetic coders got dumped on the market cheap. The sort of stuff a microbiologist could use to synthesize smallpox. The technique has been demonstrated, although on a harmless virus. The market has shifted to outsourcing to big companies (who carefully check every order against known dangers) that have much higher capital costs but much lower per-letter costs, but that didn't invalidate the old lab bench techniques.
Seeing what people can do with a home made wet lab on youtube, I’m not so sure
You’ve got me curious. Examples?
2 replies →
> a biological weapon that will be successful
I think he meant one of these:
1) Biological agent, but not meant to be a weapon.
2) A biological weapon, but one that fails catastrophically.
Oh yeah?
https://theconversation.com/an-illegal-bioweapons-lab-was-fo...
https://abc30.com/post/illegal-reedley-biolab-connected-lab-...
Here's a paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.17154
> It's quite hard to destroy the human world with nukes
what about bio weapons? smallpox in the americas, for an example of many at the page below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indi...
Isn’t that their entire point?
Smallpox, which the only remaining samples exists in a couple of secure facilities controled by superpowers for use making vaccinations in case they are wrong about their only being a few samples controled by superpowers. Everyone with an ounce of sense knows bioweapons infect both sides and nuetral parties who are no longer neutral once you infect them. It like mustard gas but worse no one other than suicidal terror groups want them and they dont have the facilities equipment samples or knowhow.