Comment by unsupp0rted
12 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.
> 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 ..
This is a made up equilibrium that actually does not need to exist in nature.
Viruses and bacteria can in fact be both extremely, extremely contagious and extremely, extremely lethal.
> If a a virus is so deadly, everything it touches dies soon,
Trivially: you actually can have a virus that kills everything it touches not soon. Nothing in biology or chemistry or physics prevents it.
> Viruses and bacteria can in fact be both extremely, extremely contagious and extremely, extremely lethal.
Sure, but those two things would tend to work against it becoming a pandemic— unless it managed those two things but also kept its host healthy enough for long enough before becoming lethal to adequately spread it.
2 replies →
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
> 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.
Urgh. "No tests, no prototypes".
Imagine trying to write "Hello, World" but there's no programming language. The compilation cycle takes a week. And you can't actually control where the program runs. And also the storage device will be destroyed by light, air, and other programs on your computer if you don't handle it just right.
It is very very clear when people with no molecular biology experience start talking about biology, because it's clear you all have no idea what any part of the process looks like.
Even the vaunted DNA synthesis machines...only synthesize DNA. Which will be completely destroyed if you so much as breathe at it the wrong way (in fact don't breathe on it at all). And that's like step 2, because step 1 is "grow up a candidate organism in sterile conditions, isolate and characterize it".
That stupid longtermism movement is god damn obsessed with this concept, and it's stunning how clueless they are.
Covid, ahem, could have been designed in a lab to be an "ideal" bioweapon. As far as viruses go it approximated just about the best bioweapon we could have made with current technology.
- very deadly
- asymptomatic spreading for a couple days
- spreads easy
- no tests/vaccine (early on)
It did kill a lot of people, that's for sure, and caused a huge disruption. But was far less disruptive, imo, than e.g. a nuke in multiple big cities would have been, even if the death toll was similar.
> very deadly
Covid wasn't "very deadly" at all.
This paper puts some numbers around that, looking at death rates before a vaccine was available.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S120197122...
Without a vaccination, it killed 12.9% of people who were infected, killing mostly older people and people who had multiple pathologies (eg. hypertension).
It was too contagious and not nearly virulent enough to be an ideal bioweapon.
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?
yes, i think you're right that such was the point, and i misread it.
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.
There are a lot of suicidal terror groups in the world
2 replies →
You mean the same smallpox that ran rampant in a world without vaccines and failed to destroy the world, and was still present while a humans fought a bunch of conventional wars?