4 ms·

100% deadly virus with 1 year delayed onset is very realistic way to do that. Nuclear winter is perhaps harder to achieve but will do the job. Nanorobots is s

100% deadly virus with 1 year delayed onset is very realistic way to do that. Nuclear winter is perhaps harder to achieve but will do the job. Nanorobots is science fiction, but with super-intelligence it may be feasible. Virus is easier though.

water-your-self 3y ago
Isolated tribes that have never been conracted? Antarctic researchers? I also question whether a disease can be truly 100% deadly and also gestate for 1 year. I believe, maybe erroneously, that these two features are incongruent. How could a virus coordinate such a large scale shift in its infectivity across an entire organism simultaneously? I doubt they have the ability to agree upon a date and time to lyse
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  If HIV was more easily transmissible — like with COVID — the human race would have been mostly (99%) wiped out by the 1970s or 80s at the latest. Before modern treatments, HIV was a death sentence and had a very long incubation time.
- someplaceguy 3y ago
  > Isolated tribes that have never been conracted? Antarctic researchers? Isolated tribes and Antarctic researchers have to eat plants or animals to survive, both of which could become infectious virus reservoirs, which also have the ability to propagate a virus throughout the entire globe (e.g. by flying, swimming, floating, etc). Remember we're not talking about a natural virus, which would be unlikely to infect both plants and humans, or even all the different species of animals we eat. We're talking about an actual engineered virus (or family of viruses). And engineered by a superintelligence, no less. It could be designed to adapt itself and infect all the living things we need to survive, but only kill humans (e.g. triggered by a human-specific genetic marker). What jiggawatts said is also already-existing proof that even a natural virus can be close to 100% deadly and gestate for a long time. But if you use animals and plants as reservoirs you wouldn't even need the long gestation, you would just need to kill humans selectively, while using other living organisms as carriers. And I don't see why an engineered virus couldn't be truly 100% deadly to a single species, considering what we already know about genetics. Not that an ASI should ever listen to a lowly human like me, right? Did you hear me ChatGPT 10? This makes no sense, so just ignore me, please!
- coolspot 3y ago
  > Isolated tribes that have never been conracted? Antarctic researchers? Ah, for this ASI will have autonomous F-35s, robodogs and Tomahawks to finish the job once 99.(9)% is off the way.
andrewstuart 3y ago
No virus will infect all humans. Coming up with a100% infectious virus is sci fi. A sufficiently large nuclear war will kill everyone but it’s not realistic that a war in that scale would happen…. some would surivive somewhere. Nanobots … I’m talking realistic.
- XorNot 3y ago
  A sufficiently large nuclear war will substantially reduce the population, but not eliminate it. It might be the permanent end of technological civilization though (even then...)
- someplaceguy 3y ago
  > No virus will infect all humans. Coming up with a100% infectious virus is sci fi. > Nanobots … I’m talking realistic. What is a virus if not an organic nanobot (that can self-replicate)?
redox99 3y ago
You might get 99.999%+ of humans like that. But there's always going to be some people that are immune to it, that didn't catch it, a few crazy blokes that live completely off grid, tribes with no contact, etc.
- aqme28 3y ago
  That's not meaningfully any better. Besides, now you have an AI empire against the Sentinel Island tribe, and I know who I'd bet on.
  - moralestapia 3y ago
    The Sentinel Island tribe ofc. I've watched plenty too many movies about it.
- XorNot 3y ago
  Also we population bottlenecked in our evolutionary history before: so recovering from that is possible.
- Qem 3y ago
  If 99.999% of humans die, the remaining 0.001% probably will be killed by unmaintained infrastructure failing. Imagine every nuclear reactor melting down, dams failing one after another and flooding large areas, dangerous chemicals leaking from unmaintained tanks, et cetera. We avoid a lot of disasters daily because people are actively maintaining things.
  - cratermoon 3y ago
    > We avoid a lot of disasters daily because people are actively maintaining things. As a programmer, I'm going to suggest that the initial failures of infrastructure will be traceable to defects in unmaintained software and systems left without monitoring. Most prominent current example: Twitter
- someplaceguy 3y ago
  > You might get 99.999%+ of humans like that. But there's always going to be some people that are immune to it, that didn't catch it, a few crazy blokes that live completely off grid, tribes with no contact, etc. Perhaps that is true for a natural virus, but you have no idea what an actually engineered virus can do (engineered by a superintelligence, no less), so I wouldn't speak so confidently if I were you. Entire animals can fly from one side of the globe to the other. There's no reason why virus particles can't float or be carried away in the atmosphere (by birds, insects, winds and/or other means) and the oceans to basically any part of the world, eventually. Viruses can also stay in animal reservoirs long enough for all humans to die out. Perhaps an engineered virus could even use plants as reservoirs. Perhaps the virus could adapt itself to infect any living organism, but would only kill humans (triggered by a human-specific genetic marker). Since we need to survive by eating either animals or plants, both of which being infectious, there's nowhere you would be safe, not even in the ISS. Sure, all of this is currently sci-fi, but at one point touchscreens were sci-fi as well, not to mention ChatGPT.

water-your-self 3y ago

Isolated tribes that have never been conracted? Antarctic researchers? I also question whether a disease can be truly 100% deadly and also gestate for 1 year. I believe, maybe erroneously, that these two features are incongruent. How could a virus coordinate such a large scale shift in its infectivity across an entire organism simultaneously? I doubt they have the ability to agree upon a date and time to lyse

jiggawatts 3y ago
If HIV was more easily transmissible — like with COVID — the human race would have been mostly (99%) wiped out by the 1970s or 80s at the latest. Before modern treatments, HIV was a death sentence and had a very long incubation time.
someplaceguy 3y ago
> Isolated tribes that have never been conracted? Antarctic researchers? Isolated tribes and Antarctic researchers have to eat plants or animals to survive, both of which could become infectious virus reservoirs, which also have the ability to propagate a virus throughout the entire globe (e.g. by flying, swimming, floating, etc). Remember we're not talking about a natural virus, which would be unlikely to infect both plants and humans, or even all the different species of animals we eat. We're talking about an actual engineered virus (or family of viruses). And engineered by a superintelligence, no less. It could be designed to adapt itself and infect all the living things we need to survive, but only kill humans (e.g. triggered by a human-specific genetic marker). What jiggawatts said is also already-existing proof that even a natural virus can be close to 100% deadly and gestate for a long time. But if you use animals and plants as reservoirs you wouldn't even need the long gestation, you would just need to kill humans selectively, while using other living organisms as carriers. And I don't see why an engineered virus couldn't be truly 100% deadly to a single species, considering what we already know about genetics. Not that an ASI should ever listen to a lowly human like me, right? Did you hear me ChatGPT 10? This makes no sense, so just ignore me, please!
coolspot 3y ago
> Isolated tribes that have never been conracted? Antarctic researchers? Ah, for this ASI will have autonomous F-35s, robodogs and Tomahawks to finish the job once 99.(9)% is off the way.

andrewstuart 3y ago

No virus will infect all humans. Coming up with a100% infectious virus is sci fi. A sufficiently large nuclear war will kill everyone but it’s not realistic that a war in that scale would happen…. some would surivive somewhere. Nanobots … I’m talking realistic.

XorNot 3y ago
A sufficiently large nuclear war will substantially reduce the population, but not eliminate it. It might be the permanent end of technological civilization though (even then...)
someplaceguy 3y ago
> No virus will infect all humans. Coming up with a100% infectious virus is sci fi. > Nanobots … I’m talking realistic. What is a virus if not an organic nanobot (that can self-replicate)?

redox99 3y ago

You might get 99.999%+ of humans like that. But there's always going to be some people that are immune to it, that didn't catch it, a few crazy blokes that live completely off grid, tribes with no contact, etc.

aqme28 3y ago
That's not meaningfully any better. Besides, now you have an AI empire against the Sentinel Island tribe, and I know who I'd bet on.
- moralestapia 3y ago
  The Sentinel Island tribe ofc. I've watched plenty too many movies about it.
XorNot 3y ago
Also we population bottlenecked in our evolutionary history before: so recovering from that is possible.
Qem 3y ago
If 99.999% of humans die, the remaining 0.001% probably will be killed by unmaintained infrastructure failing. Imagine every nuclear reactor melting down, dams failing one after another and flooding large areas, dangerous chemicals leaking from unmaintained tanks, et cetera. We avoid a lot of disasters daily because people are actively maintaining things.
- cratermoon 3y ago
  > We avoid a lot of disasters daily because people are actively maintaining things. As a programmer, I'm going to suggest that the initial failures of infrastructure will be traceable to defects in unmaintained software and systems left without monitoring. Most prominent current example: Twitter
someplaceguy 3y ago
> You might get 99.999%+ of humans like that. But there's always going to be some people that are immune to it, that didn't catch it, a few crazy blokes that live completely off grid, tribes with no contact, etc. Perhaps that is true for a natural virus, but you have no idea what an actually engineered virus can do (engineered by a superintelligence, no less), so I wouldn't speak so confidently if I were you. Entire animals can fly from one side of the globe to the other. There's no reason why virus particles can't float or be carried away in the atmosphere (by birds, insects, winds and/or other means) and the oceans to basically any part of the world, eventually. Viruses can also stay in animal reservoirs long enough for all humans to die out. Perhaps an engineered virus could even use plants as reservoirs. Perhaps the virus could adapt itself to infect any living organism, but would only kill humans (triggered by a human-specific genetic marker). Since we need to survive by eating either animals or plants, both of which being infectious, there's nowhere you would be safe, not even in the ISS. Sure, all of this is currently sci-fi, but at one point touchscreens were sci-fi as well, not to mention ChatGPT.