Slashdot Mirror
Urgent Needs To Prepare For Manmade Virus Attacks, Says US Government Report (theguardian.com)
A major U.S. government report warns that advances in synthetic biology now allow scientists to have the capability to recreate dangerous viruses from scratch; make harmful bacteria more deadly; and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body. The Guardian reports: In the report, the scientists describe how synthetic biology, which gives researchers precision tools to manipulate living organisms, "enhances and expands" opportunities to create bioweapons. "As the power of the technology increases, that brings a general need to scrutinize where harms could come from," said Peter Carr, a senior scientist at MIT's Synthetic Biology Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The report calls on the U.S. government to rethink how it conducts disease surveillance, so it can better detect novel bioweapons, and to look at ways to bolster defenses, for example by finding ways to make and deploy vaccines far more rapidly. For every bioweapon the scientists consider, the report sets out key hurdles that, once cleared, will make the weapons more feasible. The Guardian references a case 20 years ago where geneticist Eckard Wimmer recreated the poliovirus in a test tube. Earlier this year, a team at the University of Alberta built an infectious horse pox virus. "The virus is a close relative of smallpox, which may have claimed half a billion lives in the 20th century," reports The Guardian. "Today, the genetic code of almost any mammalian virus can be found online and synthesized."
The report calls on the U.S. government to rethink how it conducts disease surveillance, so it can better detect novel bioweapons, and to look at ways to bolster defenses, for example by finding ways to make and deploy vaccines far more rapidly. For every bioweapon the scientists consider, the report sets out key hurdles that, once cleared, will make the weapons more feasible. The Guardian references a case 20 years ago where geneticist Eckard Wimmer recreated the poliovirus in a test tube. Earlier this year, a team at the University of Alberta built an infectious horse pox virus. "The virus is a close relative of smallpox, which may have claimed half a billion lives in the 20th century," reports The Guardian. "Today, the genetic code of almost any mammalian virus can be found online and synthesized."
CRISPR makes it easier for ISIS to create a doomsday virus, but at the same time the tech makes it easier for us to respond to threats like this. If the No GMO activists force us to recuse from using CRISPR because of this potential use, all it does is prevent us from fighting back. Could this perhaps be their original motivation?
Reality is there are quite a lot of racial differences in DNA (unique identifiers) .. First nation/peoples who learn to target race(and use it) will rule the world and all the empty buildings.
My money is on the Asians.
Hello, Adolf! Is that really you after all these years?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
"A major U.S. government report warns that advances in synthetic biology now allow scientists to have the capability to recreate dangerous viruses from scratch; make harmful bacteria more deadly; and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body".
Translation:
For many years the US government has been pursuing research into biological warfare, which it believes would help it to overcome adversaries (like Russia and China) that cannot be defeated by brute force. It is now achieving some success, and realizes that as volumes are ramped up and large-scale manufacture gets underway, some leakage is inevitable.
Therefore it makes sense to lay the basis for blaming any such leakage on "terrorists". Which is, of course, absurd as ISIS actually works for the US government. (They are cheap, expendable, and can commit atrocities without any risk of blowback against the USA).
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body
In the specific case of viruses, it's counter productive. As some hyper dangerous viruses have shown like Ebola, it you kill your host, you won't have a host into which to reproduce anymore.
Viruses aren't full autonomous life forms, their just simple genetic code (recipes that need an actual host's cell with cellular machinery to interpret the code and produce more viruses).
The "evolutionary target" that most viruses aspire to become (i.e.: the fittest mutant that are selected by natural selection) isn't ebola, it's the common cold : a virus that is relatively benign and doesn't harm the host too much, so it can safely keep replicating in a still-alive host, and can have the time to find other alive hosts to which to transmit (while leaving as much alive hosts as possible for a potential future new round of infection by a new variant)
If some mad scientist create some lab monster that produces lots of lethal toxins, that synthetic virus is at a high risk of killing the host without having had any chance to spread.
With bacteria, the problem is similar but in reverse : bacteria are autonomous life forms - cells that multiply on their own. They basically don't need us (beyond a few disease-inducing bacteria that rely on bodies for environment (relative warmth) and food).
Whatever weird dangerous gene the mad scientist sticks into them, that poison isn't necessary to achieve what it basically wants (to multiply).
So, unless these poison-producing genes are somewhat linked to some critical biochemistry needed by the bacteria, there will be no evolutionary pressure to keep producing the poison (quite the opposite : due to the way they replicate their genome (=single origin) bacteria tend to lose useless gene. Less bullshit genes = less times spent in replicating that bullshit)
(also, if the bacteria needs some environment for potential victim (say, again warmth) the same logic as with virus applies (a dead host won't be producing any warmth anymore).
The first infected victim with a synthetic bug will die, but over lots of generation, the bacteria will eventually lose the poison-producing gene because it will be able to replicate faster (and thus over take the slower replicating bacteria that have more bullshit gene) (*).
So yeah, a few mad scientist could try to CRIPR their way in clandestine lab to build super-bugs with ultra-killing genes, but if these monsters kill too fast, they won't stand a long term chance.
It will suck for the first few patients who get sick, but the bugs will have a hard time taking over the world.
---
(*) - conversely, that's why antibiotic resistance started to become "a thing" only recently when antibiotics started to get used on large scale (by the agricultural industry, by over prescription, etc.). Before that large scale antibiotics use, there's any pressure to justifiy the bacteria keeping the extra genetic material coding for the resistance (e.g.: the plasmid carrying beta-lactamases).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Iâ(TM)m more scared of nature to be honest. Especially Chinese people sleeping with birds seems to spread many new flus
WE are all dead.
The Sky Is Falling, and we must ... we must ... we must ... Honestly, We don't have the slightest idea what to do about this even at the conceptual level. Much less the practical level.
If we are lucky, the threat will be ignored. If not, we'll do something stupid, absurd, and counterproductive that provides no actual security. Anti-viral theater.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
It's really not a problem, just use OpenBSD, they're invulnerable to Spectre now, and the put security as a top priority (only two remote holes in the default install in a long time!), so you're probably safe.
Oh, what? Like human viruses? What is the bs doing on Slashdot I'm going to write a nastly letter to Logan.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
There's a comic called "Genocide man" about a world where open source extended to biology as well, which brought many changes, including deadly man made plagues. It is a rare known gem that I highly recommend.
http://www.genocideman.com/?ca...
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
Your software is just fine - well written, functional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine by mmell February 17, 2017
(APK's work), I've flat out said it's good by BronsCon February 11 2016
his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant August 10 2015
his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg September 25 2015
I like your host file system by Karmashock September 09 2015
I do use APK's host file on all my systems at home by OrangeTide December 01 2017
I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017
* See subject: Best part is this Linux 64-bit model is faster & more efficient (does 2x the work in 1/2 the time)
APK
P.S.=> Enjoy a faster/safer/more reliable internet... apk
Shades of "Burning Chrome"
Custom-tailored viruses. I should read that story again.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
...that is an strange name for a Virus :)
Of course, you will never include yourself and your kin as the recipients of those "harsh but necessary measures".
Personally (as I think we've blown our civilization(s) up in past millenia/eons) I think they're nano-machine weapon remmants of wars we had AGES ago albeit constructed on genetic machines instead of electro-mechanical ones!
(Evidence on earth suggests past civilizations in anecdotes from iirc, Aristotle (or was it Socrates or Plato) on "Atlantis" OR in physical form, the "Biminy Road" on the floor of the ocean on the way to Cuba (iirc) + TONS more (Aztec/Mayan/Incan (not sure which) stone glyphics etc. of things that look like MODERN helicopters, guys riding on what looked like "jet cycles", VIMANA from India's legends (along w/ missiles), & even legends like Ragnarok from Norse myth, etc. - et al)
* ... & like a paper I wrote up in academia, they're a SIMULATION of "full-blown life" in genetic nuclear material that wants to replicate & SURVIVE (what life does) & PROTECTS itself via evolving vs. threats to it also - my paper was about how computer viruses are a "new form of 'life'" (of a sort)... one that I suspect was a weapon that TURNED on us (both 'enemy parties' like mustard gas did on the Germans in WWI), & now we are actually IMPROVED from "fighting that fight" vs. them in the "current version" of humanity & acquired immunity (ala "War of the Worlds" type thought).
APK
P.S.=> Take that for what you will, rib on me IF you like, but "there ya are" for what it's worth based on speculation (but evidence that also backs it to a degree)... apk
The US have been experimenting on these sort of things for quite some time. They recently apologised for injecting Guatemalan detainees with STDs including syphilis https://www.nytimes.com/2010/1... One can only assume that this science has continued, but in a more clandestine manner.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Your software is just fine - well written, functional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine by mmell February 17, 2017
(APK's work), I've flat out said it's good by BronsCon February 11 2016
his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant August 10 2015
his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg September 25 2015
I like your host file system by Karmashock September 09 2015
I do use APK's host file on all my systems at home by OrangeTide December 01 2017
I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017
* See subject: Best part's the Linux 64-bit model's faster & more efficient (does 2x the work in 1/2 the time, literally)
APK
P.S.=> Enjoy a faster/safer/more reliable internet... apk
The thing is, armor and sword evolve in lockstep, and in nature, a virus's "goal"- as determined by the virii we get more of and end up "keeping around"- is reproduction, which obviously involves something that is not lunatic levels of lethal.
We are nowhere close to the lethalality limit of viruses, because viruses spent billiona of years figuring out how to survive, with the death and sickness side effects. We have never seen a virus that is a weapon, and if we are ever so unfortunate, the changes to what is left of society will be massive.
The planet can probably sustain a lot more, 50 billion perhaps, if we use the land area more thoughtfully, and rethink our whole attitude to consumption, energy efficiency, and waste processing and recycling. With everyone living like the average American schmuck, it will certainly not work.
New attitudes and policies in all these areas could reduce consumption and production of waste per person to a fraction of what it is now.
If your point is to directly strike and not count on the weapon's own built-in capability to spread.
(I.e.: you count on spreading viruses that will kill the host immediately without much chance of spreading further)
why waste resource making *bio* weapon in the first place?
Chemical warfare has been a reliable way to kill in scary gruesome ways already known and put to large scale use at least one century ago (yperite in WW1).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Uh, no. TFA specifically references the total synthesis of poliovirus--and reproduction in the total absence of cell machinery.
Viruses do not *require* cellular machinery. This was shown back in 2002.
You mean compared to the two and half billion killed by tobacco, lead in gasoline, vaccination shortages, rampant pollution and artificial food crises under capitalism?
Another crude understanding of the problem. It does correctly recognize there *IS* a problem.
The "measures needed" are developments to third world shitholes. Turns out that when you do those, the birth rate plummets. Treat equality, education, human rights, poverty, shit like that, and the rate quickly dips to even, or less still. I'll be first to bat when the sjws lose perspective, but helping women in places that really need it has a significant birth rate effect, less dependency and access to normal careers, egalitarian stuff.
various new diseases that our immune systems don't know how to handle.
By definition our immune systems doesn't know how to handle disease (be it new or not) with a few exceptions,
because our immune systems relies on adaptive immunity (with a few exceptions where the innate immunity can wipe a couple of pathogens).
Our body have evolved not to handle only *known* pathogen (which would have been a pretty stupid strategy : such animal would be only 1 mutation away by a known pathogen to evade the innate immunity and wipe out the innate-only animal. Such animal would have been unfit and would have gone extinct if they ever hapenned to exist).
Our body have evolved to be able to handle any unknown pathogen as long as they can survive long enough for the adaptive immunity to kick in, actually adapt and come up with a solution to wipe out the attacker.
Works pretty well most of the time (most of the time, you don't even get sick, a few of the time you get sick but manage to fight off the infection. Only a few pathogen that have evolved ways to fuck up the adaptive immunity - e.g.: HIV fucks up the lymphocyte - or hide away -e.g.: rabbies achieves evasion by burrowing into the hard-to-access nervous system)
And vaccination is basically just giving a "practice target" to the adaptive system to practice its adaptivity against and come up with an efficien wiping-out solution, before an actual occurrence of a disease.
Its leveraging the same natural adaptive process that your body does every day against any upcoming as of yet unknown disease it encounters (and on some bad days, while already having caught and being sick from said just-yer-encountered disease).
Your white blood cells are literally encountering crazy amount of new compounds every days and inventing new anti-bodies against them. Vaccination is just adding yet another compound on the list, because one day, you might encounter a pathogen with said compound on its surface that could make you sick.
the semi mad ones have been doing it since the 1930s by using mouse brains and other animal tissues to grow or weaken the viruses used in vaccines. And in the process, transferring animal viruses into the human population causing various new diseases
There is very little scientific research showing actual problems caused by vaccination. (e.g.: the "autism caused by vaccine" paper was retracted due to being actually bullshit).
There is huge amount of litterature showing the actual benefits of vaccination (you can spend days hunting for meta-analysis about vaccinations on search engines like PubMed).
I'm not aware of serious peer-reviewed scientific article showing that vaccine are a vector of animal viruses jumping to human hosts (again, please concentrate on serious scientific journal, that will anounce retraction if an article turns out to be bonker. Not click-baity random websites).
The documented jump-over-species barrier are usually caused by combination of environmental exposure (e.g.: people working knee-deep in animal excrement) and by chimerisation due to co-infection (e.g.: a pig on a farm with dubious hygiene managing to get infected both by some bird-exclusive influenza and a human-compatile influenza. There's quite some research into this. Again rely on scientific publication from reputable sources.)
So at that point you have to admit that the "cancers are caused by all the weird mouse-brain-vaccine-hybrids" doesn't sound a very compelling theory.
Or that absolutely the whole planet is in a conspiration to hide the fact from you personally.
Vaccines are safe, they are among the most well studied modern medicine.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Overpopulation consumes more resources and produces more environmental toxins. I asume rates grow exponentially as population grows. Overpopulation is the biggest man made impact on accelerated climate change, over fishing/hunting, and air, water and soil pollution. Reset is needed, sadly only the richest of the rich will be playing after the reset.
Disease, starvation or war. Overpopulation will sort itself out one way or another.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
With everyone living like the average American schmuck, it will certainly not work.
Luckily, it's only really americans that do that.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
they can target muslims exclusively. What's that - Islam isn't a race - how about you stop calling people who hate Islam racists then
Of this one biologist who developed this new strain of bacteria with these cool new genes that made it immune to very powerful antibiotics. A colleague wanted to try some experiments on it, so he wrote and asked for a few cells. "NO", the original developer replied. In a written letter he detailed how it was too dangerous to share this work. Undaunted, the second biologist carefully cut up the response letter, put the fragments in a petri dish with nutrients, grew a culture, and used antibiotics to filter out all but the new strain of bacteria.
Moral of the story: This stuff gets everywhere. It's worse than a glitter bomb. Your terrorists need nation-state resources and top of the line gear to avoid self-infection.
Ob reference: Frank Herbert, author of "Dune", also wrote "The White Plague".
This has been obvious for years, but you do not talk about it, especially in a press release. This is one of those rare cases where security through obscurity matters because while the big players will understand these ideas already, there are plenty of idiots out there who will not start thinking this way on their own. And you don't hand idiots keys to kill lots of people just for your own press or CV.
Genocide yay duck off
Last month it was Anonymous Cashews. Then it was Tardeau Lardeau. Last week it was The Fat Bastard. This week it is cre1mer and A Fat Bastard. Next week it will be cdre1mer.
FatCashewsLoveMe should stick to one login and "polish" that turd as best as he can.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Unfortunately, when you bring those societies up to the level where their birthrate plummets they are also consuming resources at the same rate as the better off societies are now. And you cannot change that because it's not a societal thing, it's an animal thing. As animals at our core we all want the same thing, plentiful food, a safe warm place to sleep and the opportunity to procreate our brains out. A global pandemic is the short solution to this and the idea of a man-made plague fits that need. Not only would it take out a major part of the population but as a man-mad plague there would ab a vaccine ready for the chosen to have before the plague was released. It's so logical that it seems unreasonable.
> Disease, starvation or war. Overpopulation will sort itself out one way or another.
Indeed, but human overpopulation is causing the anthropocene mass extinction event, so we're currently taking out most complex species along with us.
Bioweapons are not the solution to the biosphere destroying problem of human overpopulation, because people will just go quiverfull to not let them there scientists tell them what to do.
The only solution to human overpopulation I can see is if something like the anthropogenic climate change induced collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet suddenly kills several billion people, which might make people realize that human overpopulation caused problems like anthropogenic climate change, the anthropocene mass extinction event, habitat degradation and destruction, factory farms, industrial fishing, etc. is a real problem, and that massively reducing our unsustainable overpopulation is the only thing that can fix it (except possibly for super general AI, which is more likely to be an existential risk rather than a solution).
During the cold war we all worried the world would end due to a nuclear war but I was wrong. Synthetic virus wars will destroy us.
To what end ? Why more people living worse lives ?
Just keep dropping a fresh batch into whatever area you are targeting..
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
Earth is on its way to 10 billion. All of the growth is in economically, culturally and technologically unproductive areas of the planet. Can a virus be engineered to target those areas?
Yes, this is harsh and horrible. Worse yet, if these designer viruses can be made to target certain races, then Progressives can finally achieve results the eugenics movement promised in the 1920s. Only this time they'll say its for the environment rather than wanting to get rid of imbeciles.
The millennials are turning out to be libertarian not socialistic; individualistic not conformist. Millennials will sound the death knell to the hysteria among the left now - and the Republicans have been turning Libertarian and away from Social Conservatives. As of 2008 1/2 the Republicans / Conservatives under 30 were OK with gay marriage. Now, ten years later, it's pretty close to half the Republican party.
That battle has been won. But that's not a good thing to Progressives as one must be outraged at all costs.
The American Left is going through it's Communist Cultural Revolution (as the Chinese did in the 1960s). They've jumped the shark and millennials are not going to save them. Nope. Millennials are going to bury them.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
This is all totally FUD. Do you honestly think the left-wing nutjobs at the UN will let this through?
As much as I support inflicting the most pain and suffering to the enemy (it's a fucking war, not a daycare center), I recognize this won't fly, since all bioweapons are banned already anyway.
This might explain Fermi's Paradox
Table-ized A.I.
Where did you get your 100+ million Indians? not even close
Why do you constantly just make shit up? You must know I'll spend the 5 seconds to prove you are wrong...
Create it again and release it on an International airplane ride.
Your immunization is up to date?
See subject & via APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux h t t p : / / a p k . i t - m a t e . c o . u k / A P K H o s t s F i l e E n g i n e F o r L i n u x . z i p (remove spaces between characters & download).
Yields more security/speed/reliability/anonymity vs. any SINGLE solution (99% of threats = hostnames vs. IP address (that most firewalls use)) more efficiently/FASTER + NATIVELY 4 less!
(... Vs. "Bolt on 'MoAr' illogic-logic" competitors slowing you, hosts speed you up 2 ways (adblocks + hardcodes u spend most time @) vs. competition loaded w/ bugs (DNS/AntiVir) + their overheads (messagepass ('souled-out' to advertiser addons) + filtering drivers) & their complexity leads to exploitation).
* Created in FreePascal/Lazarus 1.8.2 using GTK3 on OpenGL 3.1 via KDE Plasma desktop on Kubuntu 18.04 plus patches.
APK
P.S.=> Enjoy - it's much better vs. the Windows model on many fronts (speed & efficiency (plus new "merge" feature))... apk
Your software is just fine - well written, functional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine by mmell February 17, 2017
(APK's work), I've flat out said it's good by BronsCon February 11 2016
his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant August 10 2015
his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg September 25 2015
I like your host file system by Karmashock September 09 2015
I do use APK's host file on all my systems at home by OrangeTide December 01 2017
I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017
* See subject: Best part's the Linux 64-bit model's faster/more efficient (does 2x the work in 1/2 the time)
APK
P.S.=> Enjoy a faster/safer/more reliable internet... apk
While it is difficult to determine exactly how many Natives lived in North America before Columbus,[6] estimates range from a low of 2.1 million[7] to 7 million[8] people to a high of 18 million.
Try again, where did you get your 100+ million native American Indians from?
And as we have seen in many documentaries made in Hollywood, do not spend to much in your underground layer that is a single point of failure. Also do not wait for some melodramic release.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Hello, Adolf!
The nice thing about a final solution is that you only have to use it once. If we could get these libtards to let go of their "the impoverished are people too" nonsense, we'd be in business.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Thanos did nothing wrong.
There really isn't any means to " prepare " for it.
You won't know the signature for it until after it is released. We can combine a payload with any number of existing pathogens altered just enough so the body won't know what it is, until it's too late.
You can't prepare for this any more than you can prepare for the next computer virus that has yet to be released.
Sounds to me like we need to get Rainbow Six in on this. Don't they have experience dealing with eco-terrorists using bioweapons?
Hitler didn't even try to exterminate the Jews. He was a fucking Jew plant, for God's sake. But the idea of exterminating anyone who has ever benefited directly from Jew nepotism is a good one.
You mean compared to the two and half billion killed by tobacco, lead in gasoline, vaccination shortages, rampant pollution and artificial food crises under capitalism?
For many Progressives who think we should cull the overcrowded world population, this would be a feature of capitalism. So stop complaining.
We already had iterations of this game.
I'm not usually in favor of censorship, but shouldn't virus dna be controlled the same way nuclear secrets are?
We have a resovour of millions of people who can't afford to see a doctor. They won't go unless it is clear that whatever they have is life threatening. Many more who could just afford a doctor won't go because sick days are either unpaid or carry an unwritten penalty come review time.
If a bioweapon is released in the right areas we could be swamped before we even notice.
Get with the times, can we please be pc about this. :P
AQ will not do it because of religious reasons.
What religious reasons? Are you making up shit again Windy?
The problem is not that the virus or bacteria is so bad that it will kill everyone anywhere.
The problem is that pretty soon anyone will be able to make them.
It will take 1 person hours to days to make something lethal and new to silently kill neighbors or the immigrants or the government official down the road. It will take months for 10's of highly-skilled scientists to figure out what happened, if it's even possible.
No warlord uses nuclear bombs. They use AK-47's: cheap, available, easy to use, and lethal. Warlords rule most of the developing world.
It is unstoppable. You can track nuclear materials, but all these materials and technologies are commonly available for good use.
The only solution will be biological enclaves for the wealthy -- for a short time.
Again with baseless accusations, yet you wonder why I still like to point out your lies...
Buy a clue WindBourne.
Rhino virus does NOT spread around the globe.
I think WindBourne just discovered the cure for the common cold, just travel to another country and the virus won't be allowed in. I think it's because the virus doesn't have a passport and gets sent home.
Maybe you can explain exactly how it works if I'm wrong?
Pointing out WindBourne's lies isn't offtopic, it fits any topic he lies about, which is just about all of them.
But there will always be "impoverished" people. If you remove the bottom 10%, there will still be a bottom 10%. Look at the USA. People below the poverty line live in an air conditioned apartments, with a welfare phone, a tv, hot running water, and get fat on sugary foods. Oh that kings 200 years ago had such luxury!
And don't joke about "only have to use it once." We got to as many people as we have today, because people reproduce. Kill even 99.99% of the worlds population and in a thousand years we will be right back where we are.
If you really want to limit the population of a species, I think the predator prey relationship is what you're looking for. We need some top level, human hunting predator to keep the population in check. Preferably sharks that are drawn towards low pressure air vortecis acting on the water, with laser beams for eyes.
Sarcasm aside, if you really want there to be less people, you can do your part by offing yourself. But in all honesty, there will tend to be more of the people who reproduce more. And a society that is adverse to the death and killing of its citizens will tend to be stronger than one that does not.
Whoa dude, you have been watching too many science fiction or conspiracy theory sites.
We know where they come from. I remember as a kid it was usually the swine flu. That's because in third world countries they would raise pigs and ducks/fowl together. It would mutate a bit and take off, and come over here. Same thing today. Sometimes stuff remains dormant in people until they become old and weak, then it can infect and escape and start all over again.
Just mother nature.
I blame religion for over population.
I propose a simple rule. You can have kids or religion. If you want one you have to give up the other.
If you infect people in an area, those people won't immediately fall dead. They will move about and die slowly. People won't know if they are infected too. It would cause chaos.
So definitely *NOT* a fast-burning virus that infect{s} the people exposed to it immediately {killing them} in a gruesome way" as you proposed above.
But something that spreads insidiously.
What you don't want is a bioweapon than can spread indefinitely. Those are the kinds of things that can get out of your control quickly and end up turning on your own forces.
Which brings us back to the main topic of discussion :
- increasing the lethality of virus won't help doing that. If people start dying immediately, it won't move slowly, it will kill immediately a couple of people and then to move further due to absence of next victims in the immediate vicinity.
Basically : you don't want to CRISPR-in some extra deadly stuff into you virus.
- instead you could take a historically deadly virus that has spread wildly in the past, but was eradicated thank to vaccination, and mutate and/or tweak its surface antigens until it's not recognizable at all by the older antibodies. Then you make a vaccine against this new virus and keep it secret and vaccinate all your soldiers (and your civilians if possible, but at that scale it's going to be hard to keep the vaccine secret). You spread it on your target.
Basically: you want to do what europeans managed to inflict to amerindian using smallpox (which the indian had never seen before and lacked anti-bodies).
If you don't have the resources to mutate your own virus, it's even easiers: Do the "underdog influenza" - try to pick one of the minor emerging influenza strains that isn't predicted to go into the upcoming seasonal flue and isn't included in the latest vaccine mix that the WHO recommends and that vaccine maker cover.
Simply grow that one and make your flu vaccine against that one using usual methods.
(That regularly happens when WHO and the vaccine makers mis-predict which virus eventually does the seasonal flu. Except you do it on purpose and weaponize the mis-predicted virus strain).
As a bonus :
- the disease won't necessarily kill everyone immediately (smallpox might be fatal in adult but flu generally isn't as frequently) you seem more humane, while at the same time overloading the health care network of your adversary who'll have to divest resources from the war effort to handle the overcrowded hospitals.
- eventually new (non-secret) vaccine can be created against the new virus and/or people will end-up developing an immunity, so by the time the war is over, the new virus won't pose any large-scale world-problem.
You only need to have enough new viruses and secret vaccine to cover the period of war, while at the same time ramping up your own vaccine production against whatever your enemy throws at you. Basically playing bilateral cat-and-mouse with viruses.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Actually, flu is indeed the best bio-weapon.
It's a virus that constantly mutate, new strains coming up constantly (see overcrowded regions with livestock you mention).
Pick a minor variant that isn't predicted by WHO and vaccine manufacturer to become spread, and isn't thus on the list of variants covered by the upcoming seasonal flu vaccine.
(e.g.: pick-up a minor variant that was quickly squashed and didn't get beyond a single farm, thanks to quick treatment of the farmer and quick killing of the sick livestock)
Cultivate that one, and secretely make your vaccine against that one. Vaccinate your troops with your secret vaccine, spread the "alternate-flu" on your adversaries.
Bonus point, as flu isn't extremely fatal, thus your enemy will have to divert resources away from war effort to take care of the over-flowing hostpitals.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Unlike publications in journals :
- books don't undergo peer review
- books don't have a mechanism for retraction
(i.e.: You could publish whatever shit you want, as long as it's not pure libel and/or xenophobic hate-incitement.
As long as it sells, there will be a publisher ready to print, no matter how close the content of the book is to what is currently considered truth).
Books done by professional journalist are a good way to attract attention to some problem, but problems needs to investigate using scientific methods.
i.e.: it's interesting if a journalist mention "that one study about {horrible thing} being caused by vaccines ! that THE BIG PHARMA INDUSTRY don't want you to hear about !"
But if no other studies has managed to replicate the same result, it's worth shit.
If a study turns out to have been done shodily (data manipulation) it can be retracted.
Non-disclosed conflicts of interest can be added at a later point of view.
In the scientific world, you need replication, multiple studies (all done as peer-reviewed professional publication).
(Because a fluke can always happen)
Then you need meta analysis : also peer-reviewed article that take the time to review all the various published studies up to there and look what's the most often found out come.
You might found out that further studies mostly showed NO such {horrible thing} effect, there was one other result but it was due to the scientist having b0rked the data and got retracted, and only handful had actually the research receiving money from BIG PHARMA, the huge remaining part of studies are actually legit.
Science's final opinion : it's safe. End of story (or at least until new data comes out and is replicated and is meta-analyzed)
Publisher's opinion : hey, the books sells ! keep the printing machine working !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
When someone says "Vaccines are safe,,," I find it fruitless to debate the issue on an Internet forum.
Sorry, I'm from medical professional background, I'm aware of the problems that anti-vaxers are causing to population health (herd immunity is what I'm talking about) and thus I tend to over-react.
But I invite you to do a little more digging. A book called Plague, by Kent Heckenlively and Judy Mikovits PHD is a good place to start.
And of course, there is so much more out there if you are willing to look.
Unlike publications in journals :
- books don't undergo peer review
- books don't have a mechanism for retraction
(as long as it sells, it will get printed)
I'm not saying that this peculiar book is shit (haven't read it), I'm just saying that there's no way to easily know if any book in your hands contains known shit.
Books can bring attention to some not well enough considered problems, but problems needs to investigate using scientific methods.
The traditional sources (such as PubMed) may not show you the whole story. The medical research in this area has not always been controlled by the most ethical people, as Plague will spell out very plainly.
Yes, but did the articles get retracted following proof of result falsification or plain clumsiness b0rking the data analysis ? (as the famous "vaccine causes autism" article got).
Did the missing conflict of interest got added where due ?
Did further attempts to replicate the result fail to reproduce them ? (One study's result is interesting, but replication is key point, other wise you might be facing a random fluke without knowing it).
What did meta-analysis determine is the general trend when reviewing all the published literature about a subject ? (That is the golden standard).
I'm not saying that science never makes mistake (it does).
I'm saying that science has methods to eventually self correct mistakes.
That's why I'll rely more on what I read in scientific publication rather than in best-sellers.
To set the record straight, I am not anti vaccine. They can be a life saver.
Not only to you but to people around you who failed to develop immunity (the whole concept behind herd immunity).
But I am very much against the aggressive vaccine schedule today's children in the US endure. I am also against combination vaccines like DTAP, MMR, etc.
Keep in mind that your body is constantly exposed to a flux of new pathogens (viruses, bacteria, etc.) or of mutation in your body that needs to get eliminated (thing that would have had become cancer if your immune system didn't keep them in check).
Even if you're not feeling sick, your body is constantly fighting aggressor, successfully (this success is the reason why you're not constantly sick despite the constant exposure).
You only get sick once in a while when your body has managed to fight of the pathogens quickly enough.
(Think of all the time you cut yourself in a non-sterile environment, say while preparing food, while working in your garage, etc. but didn't got an infection, only local redness)
Even against a single target (a single attacking pathogen, against a single vaccination) your body will produce multiple antibodies. You don't produce a single anti-body against disease X, you produce several different antibodies which will all target various parts (e.g.: different surface glyco-proteins) of the targets. You neighbor with the same vaccine might produce different anti-bodies (but which will also manage to stick on the same target, but maybe at other parts).
DTAP, MMR might sound scary to you, because it's *multiple target* in the same shot.
- From the point of view of your body which is used to constantly fight of aggression, it's just business as usual. (Not much different from that other non-infected cut you got a few days ago while garden
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
but rather just the natural terrors that have arisen from places like The Congo and how the world is horribly unprepared for a repeat of the 1918 Flu Epidemic.
Indeed the flu is a good exemple (well save for the high mortality which was due to europe being post-war).
All it takes is WHO and the vaccine manufacturer to mis-predict which emerging new virus strains are likely to show up in that year's seasonal flu and produce a vaccine that's thus useless.
And by random chance that missed strain being sufficiently different from anything else, so very few people happen to still have good antibodies laying around.
And as the flu isn't destructive, it won't immediately kill the first couple of patient and then stop spreading for lack of finding new victims within sneezing range.
It will instead spread slowly, taking over the whole population.
Once people start to get sick and overcrowding doctor's waiting rooms and hospitals, society will be slowed down at a crippling pace and won't work as nicely.
(Who's gonna save you from your house burning down if all the firefighters are sick at home in their beds ?)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]