4 ms·
As the father of two young children with another on the way, this is a deep fear of mine. Putin has shown himself to be willing to murder people and leave his s
by silexia 5y ago
As the father of two young children with another on the way, this is a deep fear of mine. Putin has shown himself to be willing to murder people and leave his signature on the killings by using rare nuclear poisons only he has access to. What if Putin say, "You are killing Russian children in Ukraine, we will kill your children with a genetically modified virus in Britain and the United States"?
We may be at total war and not even know it yet.
- t0bia_s 5y agoFear is agenda of news. Keep that in mind and do not let them justify any evil by that.
- ulrikrasmussen 5y agoI am in no way an expert, but this scenario sounds really implausible to me. Using a contagious virus as a weapon seems like a strategy that would sure backfire at some point when the virus eventually finds its way to your own country.
- acidoverride 5y agoIt would likely backfire, but not by literally shooting yourself in the foot. If the virus is indiscriminate, and still useful as a weapon, then the host country weaponizing it, will have an anti-dote or vaccination at the ready. When the virus finds its way back to your country, your citizens are already immune. But coronavirus can be made to discriminate. Militaries have been researching gene-targeted coronaviruses. They can just plug the data people volunteer to Chinese DNA-testing companies into a supercomputer and create a virus which discriminates on race and age, before deciding who to make really ill.
- adrianN 5y agoI know of no natural virus that discriminates based on race and I suspect it's really hard to find a smallish set of genes that let you discern, say, Europeans from Russians with high accuracy. I'd like to see some papers about gene-targeted viruses, because I don't believe that they're realistic.
- acidoverride 5y ago[flagged]
- mateo1 5y agoAlthough there could be and perhaps have been cases of biological weapon skirmishes, this really doesn't look like one of them. Also try not to anthropomorphize entire countries and large organisations, it makes for a really naive analysis.