3 ms·

The thing is, some of the now known to be true conspiracy theories aren't any saner than the 'crazy' theories. One could easily say that creating the disease c

The thing is, some of the now known to be true conspiracy theories aren't any saner than the 'crazy' theories. One could easily say that creating the disease could be replaced with modifying the disease. Weaponizing a disease isn't exactly an impossible feat. Banned by international treaty, but since when has they stopped anyone? One could even say that the conspiracy that it was created by the government is a purposefully leaked theory to discredit the idea they weaponized it. Is it really any crazier than MKUltra, Tuskegee experiment, Manhattan project, or the planned Operation Northwood?

mc32 7y ago
I dunno but to me a bio weapon in the form of Lyme disease is a pretty lame weapon. I mean, what, hope like a few percent of Soviets would get infected and decades later have a disease develop in the infected people? Lyme is a terrible disease to have, but what value would it have as a weapon?
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  Perhaps the hope was to modify it into something worse. Not every weapon conceived and built is of value on the battle field. I also don't think the current iteration of the theory makes any sense for other reasons (especially the notion of creating a disease). But the idea of investing in germ and virus based biological warfare seems a very reasonable conspiracy theory, so I wonder to what extent the current Lyme disease is a modification of a more realistic one. Kinda like the whole gay frogs rant some conspiracy theorist went on about that has become slightly famous. If you dig into the actual story, there were chemicals causing the frogs to undergo sex change. Turning gay seems a simplified version of this (especially to those not well informed on LGBT specifics). As such, while the actual conspiracy theory was wrong in the same way 'the earth is a sphere' is wrong, the knowledge wasn't that far off the mark.
- eqdw 7y ago
  I agree with you, but just to play devil's advocate for a second as I've run out of JIRA tickets for the day: If you are a major world superpower, and you want to impede other powers from threatening you, but you want to avoid any kind of overt conflict, you might be interested in developing weapons that would slowly, over time, degrade a rival's ability to aspire towards greatness. Secrecy and plausible deniability would be most important, so something that is slow to take hold would be useful, since nobody would be able to trace it back to you. It doesn't even have to do anything in particular, it doesn't even have to target any specific thing. It just has to degrade their capabilities. So if, for example, you had a weapon that you could deploy completely undetected, that would, over the course of 20 years, cause widespread low grade health problems which cause the target nation's expenditures on healthcare to rise by 3 percentage points of gdp... well that degrades their ability to spend that money on military or other threats to your hegemony. That said, I think this particular conspiracy theory is stupid. What one of the above posters said is true: we have too much knowledge of the source and origin of Lyme for this particular one to be true. But, in general, I don't think that _a version_ of conspiracy theories like this are _laughably and obviously_ false
- JetezLeLogin 7y ago
  In addition to points by sibling comments, there's also the possibility that Lyme Disease wasn't the intended result, i.e. this was a failed attempt to create something more useful, more lethal, etc.

mc32 7y ago

I dunno but to me a bio weapon in the form of Lyme disease is a pretty lame weapon. I mean, what, hope like a few percent of Soviets would get infected and decades later have a disease develop in the infected people? Lyme is a terrible disease to have, but what value would it have as a weapon?

SkyBelow 7y ago
Perhaps the hope was to modify it into something worse. Not every weapon conceived and built is of value on the battle field. I also don't think the current iteration of the theory makes any sense for other reasons (especially the notion of creating a disease). But the idea of investing in germ and virus based biological warfare seems a very reasonable conspiracy theory, so I wonder to what extent the current Lyme disease is a modification of a more realistic one. Kinda like the whole gay frogs rant some conspiracy theorist went on about that has become slightly famous. If you dig into the actual story, there were chemicals causing the frogs to undergo sex change. Turning gay seems a simplified version of this (especially to those not well informed on LGBT specifics). As such, while the actual conspiracy theory was wrong in the same way 'the earth is a sphere' is wrong, the knowledge wasn't that far off the mark.
eqdw 7y ago
I agree with you, but just to play devil's advocate for a second as I've run out of JIRA tickets for the day: If you are a major world superpower, and you want to impede other powers from threatening you, but you want to avoid any kind of overt conflict, you might be interested in developing weapons that would slowly, over time, degrade a rival's ability to aspire towards greatness. Secrecy and plausible deniability would be most important, so something that is slow to take hold would be useful, since nobody would be able to trace it back to you. It doesn't even have to do anything in particular, it doesn't even have to target any specific thing. It just has to degrade their capabilities. So if, for example, you had a weapon that you could deploy completely undetected, that would, over the course of 20 years, cause widespread low grade health problems which cause the target nation's expenditures on healthcare to rise by 3 percentage points of gdp... well that degrades their ability to spend that money on military or other threats to your hegemony. That said, I think this particular conspiracy theory is stupid. What one of the above posters said is true: we have too much knowledge of the source and origin of Lyme for this particular one to be true. But, in general, I don't think that _a version_ of conspiracy theories like this are _laughably and obviously_ false
JetezLeLogin 7y ago
In addition to points by sibling comments, there's also the possibility that Lyme Disease wasn't the intended result, i.e. this was a failed attempt to create something more useful, more lethal, etc.