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Bio-Weapons That Eat Ammunition and Fuel
1gor writes: "This article in The Observer mentions Pentagon's plans to use genetically modified bugs that 'eat' the enemy's fuel and ammunition supplies without harming humans (they also want to to pacify the enemy by spraying Valium). Imagine an escaped virus destroying the Earth's oil reserves and its whole industrial potential? Curiously, the military may implement the environmentalists' ultimate dream!"
That requires that someone have a good idea every once in awhile. With nothing to compare it to, it's simply an idea.
Succesful use of genengineered bugs have been used "in the field" with oil spills. Naturally while the USA will have this initially, as time goes on others will get it. The USA will just have to stay 1 step ahead in order to continue to use this stuff.
"Sarge, I gotta immunize my ammo first before I hit the front lines."
As in biology, there may be infection, immunization, reinfection with altered strain, re-immunization and so-forth. Might be kinda fun
..........FULL STOP.
"A supertanker has crashed off the shores of San Francisco, producing the largest oil spill in history. Desperate to avert an ecological--and public relations--disaster, a multinational oil company releases an untested virus designed to break up the spill. A virus that spreads like wildfire on the wind, destroying anything made of petroleum-destroying gasoline in automobile tanks, plastic, nylon, the very fabric of modern civilization itself."
-Summary of Ill Wind, by Kevin J Anderson.
One of my favorite post apocalyptic science fiction novels. Awesome read. Coolest part is that most guns can now fire exactly once, if they were already loaded, because the lubricant inside has turned to glue.
Austin is more fun than Dallas.
Valium is pretty expensive to produce let alone spray over large areas ..
.. they are easily and cheaply produced .. since it is a weed it spreads very quickly - grows well in tropical climates .. and has muliple uses ..
..
I would suggest dropping massive amounts of Cannabis sativa seeds
In fact there is a very real possibility that this approach could turn the enemy into a bunch of friendly peaceful pot smoking farmers
This is, of course, how Michael Crichton's original bestseller The Andromeda Strain ended when it was written almost a quarter century ago. As this review so aptly notes, TAS is still ahead of its time. Perhaps it's worth a quick (re)read?
Nuclear power is an environmentalist's dream. they're just too busy protesting about the word nuclear they don't see it.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Clearly oil serves a great many needs, fueling your car being just one of those needs. To claim without basis that a group of people dream of the worlds oil stocks becoming unusable is to reveal your own bias against this group.
Ahh, my favourite rhetorical recipe, the tautological soffle.
Once again Timothy couldn't let something by without stupid editorializing.
Very few environmentalists want us to drop off a petroleum-based economy precipitously. It will take a few years for the excess 5 billion people to die off as the population returns to what's supportable in a pre-mechanical society, and they won't go quietly. You'll find few trees and few wild animals outside of the remote Canada and Siberia.
What we want is wise use, not no use. E.g., it's better to have 30% of the car fleet using hybrid gas/electric motors with 80 MPG, not 30% of the fleet monster SUVs with <15 MPG while the idealistic zero emissions cars are <1% of the fleet because few people are willing to buy cars that can never go more than a few hundred miles.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
ok. worse case scenario this stuff becomes uncontainable and renders all the world's oil resources useless. Great idea. wrong. I can't say how wrong and awful and catastrophic this would be. I'm as big an environmentalist as the next guy but, this is just ludicrous. oh no problem we'll jsut switch to renewable or nuclear resources. wrong. its not that easy. if you think it is you live in a dream land. I have no problem with nuclear but, there is one or two little problems with the idea of just switching over. Commerce would end for one. for two, in case you weren't aware of this but there are no nuclear engineers anymore. nuclear science has taken a significant hit in recent years. there are very few people studying to be nuclear scientists/engineers. so if all the gas was gone there would be no one to just switch us over. I can't say enough how bad an idea it would be for something like this to happen and get loose. In some utopian fantasy it might be a great thing for the earth but for those of us who live here it would be a disaster of biblical proportions. I won't even get into the social unrest you would have to deal with. Oh and if you're thinking Wind power? well the best windmills come from Europe. How would you get them here without diesel engined ships? Put them on nuclear carriers? how do you get them to the dock? horsecart? how do you get them to North Dakota? mushers? big picture folks thats all I'm saying.
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Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
This has already been going on for years now. Several companies now do this for toxic waste/Superfund/oil spill sites. There are LOTS of strains of bacteria and fungi that are 'customized' for different wastes; usually engineered from strains already surviving on the existing waste. Has not seemed to get out of hand though this was an initial concern (and could conceivably happen).
And you can get yours here!
PHase III PDM-7 Microbial Cultures. Visa and MasterCard accepted. Call for pricing.
"PDM-7 Microbial Cultures contain a blend of live, synergetic, all natural ATCC (American Type Culture Collection) Class I Bacteria. These bacteria were specifically chosen for their accelerated ability to metabolize Petroleum Based Products, Greases, Fats, Food Particles, Hair, Cellulose, and Detergents, converting them into carbon dioxide and water."
Don't rub them on your head.
Or here!
Or here!
Or here!
Although I'm sure I'll get flamed for this. There have been quite a few proposed solutions to problems like the power problem that may not have gotten quite the attention they deserved due to reasons quite different from their viability. Some of these have included Viktor Schauberger (web resources on him aren't nearly as good as the print books available, check amazon.com), and although a bit cliche, Nicola Tesla.
Anyway, empires have crashed before, sudden catastrophic change has much historical president. I'm not worried about the power going out. We'll survive.
Cheers, Joshua
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
Imagine an escaped virus destroying the Earth's oil reserves and its whole industrial potential? Curiously, the military may implement the environmentalists' ultimate dream!
Let me clue you in on what it is that the fuel eaten by these bacteria (not viruses) eventually breaks down into - water and carbon dioxide. This is a more controlled form of a process better known as FIRE.
Flame of yet another kind: Timothy, you are an idiot. Even as a joke that was a grade A stupid thing to say. It reflects poorly on you as an editor and as a human being. If you don't know the difference between a virus and a bacterium shut your cornhole.
We, Environmentalists, object to gasoline being burned (turned into Carbon Dioxide) faster than it is deposited in peat marshes and such. I don't want to rehash the global warming argument here, so don't y'all even start.
The fact that the gasoline, while burned, does useful work, instead of, say, fueling the growth of a manmade organism, does not bother anyone.
You can find out more about Hydrocarbon Utilizing Microbes (HUMs) here. The document is fully accessible to a non-scientist. The people at Brooks Air Force base, who are/would be (?) developing these fuel eating microbes for offensive use have already made use of them in a peaceful context. Again, the press release is non technical. Personally, I find this to be admirable work - they're using them to clean up petrochemical contamination of soil and groundwater, which is an underappreciated ecological problem. I'm not terribly worried about these organisms going out of control and eating the world's petrochemical reserves. They exist in nature already in various forms and have not done that.
The New Scientist has an older article about the fuel eating bugs, or, more specifically, about the circumstances surrounding the release of documents discussing the bugs; I think this may have come up on slashdot before but I searched just now and didn't find it. The sunshine project also has an article about there efforts to get the documents released.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
you wrote: 'Have a global convention (we'll see if Geneva is booked) where we 're-initalize warfare'. Something like "So do we all agree that from now on we'll only use bow-and-arrows?. Is that okay with everyone?"'
:)
sounds good. you first.
jon
-- http://www.cerastes.org
"All research is good, all knowledge is good"
;-) has tried to nail down ideas like knowledge and truth for several millenia. It seems likely "we" have struggled with it for longer than we have records. This isn't simple stuff, and it's not taught in science, math, or computer courses.
As a person in the research business, I'm not so sure that all reasearch and knowledge is good. Defining "research" is hard, and some people have "crossed the line" -- think of Nazi science research on people in prison camps. Clearly that was not good.
As for knowledge, is it ethical to use knowledge gained from those prison camp experiments? Almost everyone says no. This suggests that the statement "all knowledge is good" is not true; my off-the-cuff opinion is that it is an oversimplication with important exceptions.
Maybe we could say that Wisdom is good, and with wisdom, knowledge is good. But that depends on defining wisdom, and we'd probably end up with a tautology when we did that (wisdom == whatever it takes to make knowledge good). These aren't just semantic problems. There are records which suggest our species (I'm making an assumption here
-Paul Komarek
The unfortunate problem is that there is no current alternative to oil. If you look at the raw number of BTUs being consumed, there is nothing that will even come close. This is going to be a big issue for people to deal with. The alternative to oil currently isn't clean. It's coal. There's lots, and lots, and LOTS of coal. Coal, unfortunately, is nasty stuff, containing trace elements of just about everything.
Take a look around sometime, and just try an imagine the sheer volume of oil and the amount of energy it represents. The processing of energy drives our entire civilization, and in it's current form, that means the processing of oil.
The only other (currently) possible alternatives are nuclear technologies, be they fission, hot, or cold fusion. This is possibly the saviour of the planet, but the environmentalists are hell-bent to stop nuclear research and testing at all costs. Solar, wind, and wave power can make contributions but the infrastructure and maintenance required make these unrealistic alternatives.
Thermodynamics is harsh stuff.
..don't panic
Nuclear radiation or spent rods? The prior isn't an relative issue since coal plants release exponential magnitudes more radioactive material than nuclear power plants. The latter is a strange issue; the "spent" rods are actually have more potential energy than the new, or pure uranium rods.
;)
There are many atomic derivatives of uranium fission, not the least of which is plutonium. It is very possible, indeed much easier, to reach critical mass with spent rods than pure uranium rods. (technically, all you have to do is smash them together). You can put a pure uranium rod into a pool, and nothing happens, but if you put spent rods in the pool it glows blue/green (ala Cocoon, the movie) for a day or so. (YMMV)
The point would be that there is a harvestable energy source in "spent" rods, that can be remanufactured. Thermodynamics of course comes into play, and there are stil residuals, but nevertheless, the waste from one nuclear chamber is potential fuel for another. There are marginal returns in many cases, nevertheless the eventual breakdown leads to non-radioactive materials.
I only know this because I worked at a nuclear power plant; this is what I soaked up.
Cheers
They are part of the italicized text, and so, part of the original submitter's comments.
Nazi research on the Jews, specificly research pretaining to the effects of low presures and temperatures on the human body was the foundation of our space program (and our ability to develop the a space suit).
Japanese research into the effects of various viruses/bacterium on the human body in unit 731 (frequently considred a great deal more vicious than the Nazi research) yeilded results which the US would keep secret until the 1980s for use in our own biowarfare programs. (Hypotheticly ending in 1972).
This is to say nothing of more engineering related research done by the Nazis such as balistic rocketry (space program), jet engines, and hydrogen based power plants for submarines (precurser to the modern fuel cell? I'm not sure on that one).
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
i said "no affect on the enviornment" because 1) in all urban areas wires are in place and panels are installed on roofs. and 2) in nature the only places panels are installed are in deserts because of the high amount of light there, so there is no very large impact by installation.
Also, its not about having 1 giant streak, its about massive decentralization in places were it wouldn't have a large affect.
Only dead fish swim with the stream...
Allow me to repair your ignorance. It is actually NOT possible.
A nuclear explosion requires a certain (high) concentration of fuel, as well as a certain ratio of volume to surface area - or it doesn't happen. This is why making a nuclear bomb is actually very difficult. In a fission reactor, the material isn't concentrated enough, and it isn't unstable enough. Further, the material isn't in one large chunk - it's separated into rods. And further, there's no mechanism for imploding the reaction material to reach critical mass. So no, actually, despite what you read in old sci-fi, it's not physically possible for a fission reactor to explode. Take the rods out, overheat the thing, whatever. The ABSOLUTE worst is that it gets really hot and melts - which is very bad, but very rare, much rarer than a coal or gas explosion (so the overall risk is lower).
The only major nuclear disaster in history is Chernobyl, which was not a nuclear reaction but a chemical reaction; the graphite coolant caught fire. The graphite reactor was a bad design, and all reactors today are water-cooled. Further, Chernobyl had no containment building to speak of, and was run by idiots.
People speak of Three Mile Island as if it was some kind of disaster, but it didn't hurt anybody or anything. The worst that happened from TMI was the destruction of the reactor itself (which is a bit of a disaster alone, since those things cost billions).
A complete meltdown is a disaster, but not the end of the world. It would be nothing like the destruction wreaked by even a small nuclear weapon.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
I mean something called bio-diesel. Apparently, Mr Diesel (Rudolph?) who invented yon diesel engine originally planned for it to be used on vegetable oil, and it got sidetracked for petroleum. And bio-diesel is far less polluting, easy to produce (about as difficult as home brewing beer), and, depending on your country's excise etc, can be cheaper than petro-diesel.
But for me the truly funky thing is that it can be made from *used* cooking oil: how's that, just empty out the chip pan and brew a bit 'o' diesel. And it makes your car smell like chips instead of icky hydrocarbons. Any vegetable oil will do, so a variety of crops can do the trick on a large scale, which makes it renewable as well.
Oh, yeah, and most diesel engines can run it *without* modification, or with only very minor mods. I know of someone who's gone to bio-diesel on his farm: he goes to the local fish and chip shop and relieves them of their old oil (and they used to pay someone to take it away, so they're happy) and makes enough bio-diesel to keep all his farm equipment running. No engine mods, bugger all pollution, and that there oil kept out of the ocean. Truly funky.