58
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
58 points (100.0% liked)
World News
22032 readers
29 users here now
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
For US News, see the US News community.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I've always felt that biological warfare is a really stupid idea for everyone involved. Like, stuff like nuclear and chemical weapons is not nice, but the effects are relatively localized. With biological warfare though, there is no way to absolutely contain the pathogen and to prevent its spread in your own population.
Stupid, evil and risky sure. But nothing will ever be as effective at absolutely and surely decimating the opposition. Vaccines / Antidotes and very careful, deliberate and sinister targeting while limiting ability to mutate can mitigate most of the MAD aspects making a far more terrifying weapon than nukes in how virtually guaranteed to end a nation, continent, planet you can make them.
Pathogen design is reaching a level where it might be feasible to target it against a single physical trait.
Like: if no proper encoding found in the RNA for insulin producing cells, induce some pancreas cells to produce insulin.
Or: if blood cell presents AB+ markers, induce apoptosis.
There are over 40 blood type types identified so far, and new ones keep getting added... plus hundreds of other types of cell markers... which should let one create a genocidal pathogen against a very closely delimited population (plus some collateral damage, but when has that stopped anyone?).