4 ms·

The coming decade the answer is obvious -- something biological. It can be moved with e.g. sales of consumer products into a country. Consider a contagious pla

by berntb 10y ago

The coming decade the answer is obvious -- something biological. It can be moved with e.g. sales of consumer products into a country. Consider a contagious plague with an incubation time of a few days put into fresh food imported into a set of countries -- it will not be stored in dusty warehouses for weeks before reaching the population. Large states should be able to do something similar now (this might need a start up time, since the biological weapons research was closed after the cold war) and soon major terror organizations or rogue states might be able to. Will counter measures (creating vaccines quickly, etc) be ready before alQ have similar capabilities? I have no clue. The first targets would probably include geographic areas with the universities/agencies that could do something about this type of attack anyway. (Frankly, I'm surprised that I needed to write that. With increasing technological possibilities the power to do harm increase too. If the power to stop harm increase slower...)

jcranmer 10y ago
Ebola is one of the deadliest viruses. Its kill rate is only about 90%. Most biological agents would be less lethal. Delivery of biological agents on the sort of scale that could threaten the human race requires at the very least missile delivery (countering missiles once they've launched is hard), and then it's dicey: there's so many pockets of low-density population, and if you decide not to target a country, that country can very easily close its borders to protect itself (cf. the Ebola epidemic). It is much, much easier to kill off the human race using nuclear weapons. And I'm not sure that's possible.
- berntb 10y ago
  I'd note a simple possible solution to the Fermi paradox: A physics experiment that is logical to do, will discover new physics -- with really big and unexpected results. Or something like that. It seems something kills (or hides) civilizations. The weaponized diseases were worse than anything natural (e.g. optimized to get a really toxic immune system reaction and so on). And multiple ones could be used at the same time, with different spread mechanisms and incubation times. But about Ebola -- I have no clue if the kill ratios can be engineered to not go down for a fast spreading disease. (And if I did, I would not be able to talk about it, of course.) Those militarized diseases are easily enough for an economical (/civilization) collapse, that would take the world at least generations to recover from. Which is bad enough, but is no extinction of course. I don't know if nuclear weapons are on the table again, despite that they are spoken about in Russia -- it is probably just psychological warfare (maskarovka), everything new from there seems to be a smoke screen. But how hard would it be for Iran or North Korea to build a Cobalt bomb, the doomsday machine out of Dr Strangelove?

by berntb 10y ago

jcranmer 10y ago

Ebola is one of the deadliest viruses. Its kill rate is only about 90%. Most biological agents would be less lethal. Delivery of biological agents on the sort of scale that could threaten the human race requires at the very least missile delivery (countering missiles once they've launched is hard), and then it's dicey: there's so many pockets of low-density population, and if you decide not to target a country, that country can very easily close its borders to protect itself (cf. the Ebola epidemic). It is much, much easier to kill off the human race using nuclear weapons. And I'm not sure that's possible.

berntb 10y ago
I'd note a simple possible solution to the Fermi paradox: A physics experiment that is logical to do, will discover new physics -- with really big and unexpected results. Or something like that. It seems something kills (or hides) civilizations. The weaponized diseases were worse than anything natural (e.g. optimized to get a really toxic immune system reaction and so on). And multiple ones could be used at the same time, with different spread mechanisms and incubation times. But about Ebola -- I have no clue if the kill ratios can be engineered to not go down for a fast spreading disease. (And if I did, I would not be able to talk about it, of course.) Those militarized diseases are easily enough for an economical (/civilization) collapse, that would take the world at least generations to recover from. Which is bad enough, but is no extinction of course. I don't know if nuclear weapons are on the table again, despite that they are spoken about in Russia -- it is probably just psychological warfare (maskarovka), everything new from there seems to be a smoke screen. But how hard would it be for Iran or North Korea to build a Cobalt bomb, the doomsday machine out of Dr Strangelove?