How do you envision technology 50 years from now?

[Starglider]

I agree with Stuart. A biowarfare catastrophe is the second most serious existential risk. It's just a question of when someone is crazy and determined enough to implement a full-blown release. Climate change and resource depletion are serious issues but relatively minor by comparison.

The single most serious existential risk is of course seed AI, because that has a good chance of sterilising the planet rather than just setting humans back 500 to 5000 years. Ironically, it is also IMHO the best hope for a way to truly neutralise the biowarfare threat.

Speculation about such trivialities as what consumer electronics might exist strikes me as fairly pointless. You would have failed trying to predict current devices in 1958, and you would have failed to predict 1958's devices in 1908. Even if you assume 'sufficiently advanced technology' that you only have to imagine what the device can do, not how they do it, there's too much scope for cultural change that will change the entire context of the problem.

[Serafina]

I agree with Stuart. A biowarfare catastrophe is the second most serious existential risk. It's just a question of when someone is crazy and determined enough to implement a full-blown release. Climate change and resource depletion are serious issues but relatively minor by comparison.

Well, it definetly IS a serious threat. But i do not think that anyone with enough resources to do such a project (goverments or rich companies) is going to do it, as there is no practical reason to do so.
And all people insane enough to do it are very unlikely to have the resources/knowledge.

[Stuart]

My point is that bio"weapons" are not viable weapons. You can not use a no-vaccine 100% infection 97% fatality bioweapon without wiping out your population, too.

Firstly, suggesting that bioweapons are not viable flies in the face of history. They have been used repeatedly, sometimes to little effect, sometimes very effectively indeed. In the latter category we can put the Soviet use of bioweapons against German equine transport in WW2 that had a serious impact on German logistics capability. There are unconfirmed reports that a Russian biological attack on the flanks of the Stalingrad salient was a significant factor in achieving the breakthrough that isolated Sixth Army. The Japanese extensivley used biological warfare in China from 1937 - 45, again with significant effect, So, claiming that the biologicals are not viable weapons flies in the face of human experience.

Secondly, your point would be correct if the likely users of these weapons actually believed that back-infection would take place. They don't. They believe that their God will protect them. I have been told, quite seriously, by a senior Saudi Arabian officer that they do not fear attack by Russian or American missiles because Allah would not allow the "holy places" to be destroyed. We are not dealing with people who have a rational mindset here. They honestly believe that they will be protected from the consequences of their actions. In any case, such groups have no compunction about killing large numbers of their own people if it means killing their enemies as well. Hence the term "involuntary martyrs".

Even more rational powers (note the comparative element there) disregard the probability of back infection although they do so on more practical grounds. One is that since the use of biologicals would be part of a strategic exchange, the contact between the user and the recipient would be non-existant, limiting the chance of back-wash. Also, virulence tends to decay so that by the time any back-wash did occur, the disease would be a shadow of its original self. Also, since the use would be part of a strategic exchange, back-wash is a minor consideration anyway comapred with the rest of the damage .

The difference to nuclear weapons is that you can scale down nuke usage. You CAN use small nukes, only a few, only hit certain targets etc.

Sorry, that's flat wrong. You cannot - repeat cannot - carry out limited nuclear exchanges. The idea that such exchanges were possible dates from the early 1960s and had been thoroughly disproven by the late 1970s. Any nuclear exchange, once started, will escalate to a full strategic exchange with terrifying and uncontrollable speed. Wer'e talking, at most, a very small number of hours and probably much less than that. Everybody in The Business knows that, nobody takes limited exchanges seriously. Nobody even plans them because we all know that our opposite numbers know that. We both know that limited exchanges will escalate to a full exchange so why bother with the intermediate steps? There's a saying in the business that describes it perfectly "one flies, they all fly". The response to a single launch is that we empty the arsenal in their general direction (of as much of the arsenal as it takes to ensure the launching state ceases to exist as a functioning entity). The only way that process can be stopped is if the single missile fired (the "one flies") is shot down.

Such things are not possible with high-grade bioweapons. You will kill your enemy, but you will also kill yourself.

Not necessarily, not according to the beliefs of the likely users who wouldn't care anyway.

Another difference: The main barrier in the creation of bioweapons is knowledge, not equipment. For nukes, its the other way round (of course, you need both). To build a nuke, you need big facilites (and the more nukes, the more facilites you need). But to build a bioweapon, you need a lot of experts - in difference to nukes, you have to do a lot of research all over again.

I'm sorry but that is wrong again. The knowledge needed to create a bioweapons facility is easily available and getting started is very easy indeed. Pretty much anybody can do it although there is an excellent chance they'll kill themselves doing so. And the likely user states are not short of access to people who have reasonably high-level qualifications. Check, for example, the number of doctors and PhD-level engineers who have found their way to the ranks of various non-state operators.

Creating a high-grade, doomsday bioweapon is not an easy task. Illnesses that are highly fatal tend to be quick in killing their victims. Diseases without notable symptoms tend to be so weak that the immune system is not working hard.

Wrong again I'm afraid. I've got a standard four-drawer filing cabinet in my office that contains a file on each disease that has been examined for use as a biological warfare agent. All four drawers are full. You are misunderstanding the comment about disease fatality; the ideal is a disease with a long incubation period where the patient remains symptom-free but is infectious/contagious. Once symptoms manifest themselves, its irrelevent how quickly the patient dies. So, its that long incubation period that's needed since that ensures the disease will be widespread before the symptoms are manifested.

Of course, there are expections from those rules - but creating something that combines high fatality, high infection rate and a long incubation time AND can be effectively delivered (you have to start on a larger scale, otherwise you CAN isolate the disease) is more than a bit challenging.

Nope. Done deal. Such things already exist and its not hard to make them. The trick is to make them and live.

Again, my main point is that there is no real reason to want such a weapon, unless you are a blind fanatic.

In case you haven't noticed, blind fanatics is what we are dealing with (in one or two cases quite literally blind fanatics). But all the great powers and ambitious powers maintain stocks of weapons of mass destruction. Teh US uses primarily nuclear but countries that don't have nuclear arsneals for whatever reason find bio very attractive. Again, you're arguing against reality here. You are saying that there is no reason to want them yet nation-states demonstrably can and do.

Well, it definetly IS a serious threat.

Well, we're getting there

But i do not think that anyone with enough resources to do such a project (goverments or rich companies) is going to do it, as there is no practical reason to do so. And all people insane enough to do it are very unlikely to have the resources/knowledge.

Again, you are arguing against reality. Countries are developing these weapons, lots of them. There are very practical reasons for doing so otherwise they wouldn't be. And the people most likely to use such wepaons do have both the resources and the level of knowledge necessary. Saying you "do not think" isn't very meaningful when arguing against a proven extant reality,

[Serafina]

Well, you are right on most points (no surprise, really).

However, your examples of the usage of biological warfare are not what i meant. I am merely debating about an "supervirus" capable of wiping out a great amount of humans, by the virtue of high mortality, infection and incubation time.
Of course there are limited bioweapons. But each has to be researched again (of course, you profit from experience).
Having a disease killing horses does not give you a disease killing humans.

And the question is: Do people who are irrational enough to not believe back-infection the knowledge to create a completly new disease? Getting the equipment is not difficult, we agree on that. but bioengineering is a little bit more complicated than putting feature a and feature b together.
If they do, lets hope they have a shred of sanity left.

Even under the best conditions (say, the US attacking eurasia or vice versa), with great oceans etc. between the attacker and recipient, there is no way to be sure the disease will not reach the attacker. You do not need thousands of sick people to reach the attacker, you only need one of them. The longer the incubation of the disease, the higher the risk this will happen and that you are unable to identify the threat.

I'm sorry but that is wrong again. The knowledge needed to create a bioweapons facility is easily available and getting started is very easy indeed. Pretty much anybody can do it although there is an excellent chance they'll kill themselves doing so. And the likely user states are not short of access to people who have reasonably high-level qualifications. Check, for example, the number of doctors and PhD-level engineers who have found their way to the ranks of various non-state operators.

Well, you CAN set up a bio-laboratory in you backyard, if you want. But tampering with already known stuff and creating a new disease are different things.


Everything else, i am willingly conceiding - after all, you DO have superior knowledge (and i am propably glad i do not posess this specific knowledge, should make sleeping easier).

[Sky Captain]

Is`t biological agents very weather dependent, for example too much UV, too much heat or cold killing of your pathogens before they have chance to infect sufficient amount of people to cause disaster.

Also climate is a factor - naturally evolved viruses or bacteria are more or less adapted to specific climate zone.

These problems might be somewhat solved with genetic engineering however developing a real doomsday supervirus which is adapted to most of Earth climates, is very contagious, has long incubation period, cause high lethality, has no effective treatment and is sufficiently resistant to various weather factors might be too much of a task for group of lunatic fanatics.

[Ryan Thunder]

Stuart appears to (if unintentionally) make a good case for devastating a large portion of the third world, by virtue of the fact that they can develop bio-weapons and be crazy enough to think they're immune to them.

I don't like that, but what else are we going to do with them?

[Broomstick]

These problems might be somewhat solved with genetic engineering however developing a real doomsday supervirus which is adapted to most of Earth climates, is very contagious, has long incubation period, cause high lethality, has no effective treatment and is sufficiently resistant to various weather factors might be too much of a task for group of lunatic fanatics.

Really? Sounds like some strains of smallpox to me. Thank goodness that's extinct - oh, wait, no it's not, there are still samples in deep freezers in both Europe and North America. Gee, hope no Bad Guys ever get ahold of those....

Worse yet, smallpox has been used as a bioweapon during the the European exploration/expansion phase a few centuries ago. Granted the technique wasn't very sophisticated (giving blankets with dried pus and other infectious crap on them to indigenous peoples) but something killed off a lot of natives during that time period.

Since Roman times plague (both THE plague Y. pestis as well as other diseases) have been used as bioweapons. Typically, by using catapults and trebuchet type launchers to throw diseased carcasses (both human and animal) over castle and town walls.

Bioweapons are far from unthinkable.

[Coyote]

... it does suggest that small hunter-gatherer groups would survive. However, the Nations didn't have the massively interdependent and complex societies that we do. That means when our society goes down, it is going to go down very hard indeed. After all, think of a small group from The Nations. They're mostly self-sufficient and independent. If they lose 95 percent of their people, they still have the resources to keep going (although they genetic diversity will take a real hit). Now imagine a small American town that has suddenly been reduced from 10,000 people to 500 and has no access to outside resources. Sure, they have a lot of local supplies stored up that will keep them going ...Winter's coming (you can bet that the bioattack will be timed to make sure that's the case) food's running out and none is coming in from outside.

...I've done a lot of work on this over the years (primarily concerned with the after-effects of nuclear attack but the same basic logic applies) and one effect has been a certain level of contempt for survivalists.

So out of curiosity, what would a 'survivalist' worthy of the name need to do? Would the stationary types even be viable, or would nomadism be needed?

I have also assumed that "typical" survivlists are the types that will 'survive' a localized event, say, a severe storm, in unprecedented levels of comfort: a generator and some fuel, an off-road vehicle, and GPS's, radios, etc along with a stock of food. Basically, 72 hours to maybe a week before it's all used up, although they'll still have their LL Bean fleece.

I'm thinking a real survivalist that has an actual chance would be in a house that's off the power grid and doesn't rely on plumbing; grows his own food, hunts his own game or has some livestock... the only thing he'd need to worry about is (eventually) genetic diversity. Otherwise, he could survive without "the grid" for years.

For someone who doesn't have acces to that life (or doesn't want it), what sorts of choices would they face? I was thinking their choices were to either accept death quickly, or skip all the preliminaries and fantasies about clinging to civility and just skip right to the animal phase and start killing, plundering, moving on, and cannibalising when the need arises...

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

So... we never have to worry about animals darting into the path of a vehicle

Given the horrific numbers of roadkill produced by human drivers each year, I'm unconvinced a networked, computer-guided vehicle would do worse than the humans.

(you do recall a couple of geese causing problems with an airliner, recently, don't you?)?

We're probably not going to get rid of human pilots. I just propose getting rid of most of the human drivers. Flying cars are something best left in sci-fi, and my assumptions revolve around the fact that nobody in their right minds will mass-market them fifty years from now.

There will NEVER be any sort of storm debris in the street? Never any potholes? Never any floodwaters? You sir, are FAR more an optimist than I am.

Ideally, we'd be using the cameras everywhere to help our putative centralized traffic-director guide vehicles around storm debris or floodwaters. Unless there's enough damage that city infrastructure is no longer working. In which case only emergency responders and public services people ought to be out, and you've got much bigger problems than what to do with errant traffic.

But, consternation over computerized traffic-control seems to make the assumption that streets of the future have just as many privately-owned vehicles as the streets of today. However, in a world where overall resource consumption must be drastically reduced to remain within tightening energy budgets, the private automobile has a future roughly as sunny as that of the passenger pigeon. Cities will likely become more, and more built around mass-transit, and less around the assumption that most people will be driving two ton kinetic missiles out to the distant suburbs.

Yes, there will likely be people who will have occasion to drive small urban runabouts, and yes, in an admission that these vehicles may have occasion to leave the city's network, and must be parked and driven from side streets into the main roadways, manual controls will be installed. However, there will likely be considerable effort to minimize the number of these vehicles on the road, and mandates that they automatically change over to automated network management upon joining the main roads, where the bulk of traffic will be automated buses and trucks. As part of that private-vehicle reduction initiative, I expect licenses will become much harder to get. Not like it is these days where you can effectively get them at Disneyland.

[Sky Captain]

These problems might be somewhat solved with genetic engineering however developing a real doomsday supervirus which is adapted to most of Earth climates, is very contagious, has long incubation period, cause high lethality, has no effective treatment and is sufficiently resistant to various weather factors might be too much of a task for group of lunatic fanatics.

Really? Sounds like some strains of smallpox to me. Thank goodness that's extinct - oh, wait, no it's not, there are still samples in deep freezers in both Europe and North America. Gee, hope no Bad Guys ever get ahold of those....

Worse yet, smallpox has been used as a bioweapon during the the European exploration/expansion phase a few centuries ago. Granted the technique wasn't very sophisticated (giving blankets with dried pus and other infectious crap on them to indigenous peoples) but something killed off a lot of natives during that time period.

Since Roman times plague (both THE plague Y. pestis as well as other diseases) have been used as bioweapons. Typically, by using catapults and trebuchet type launchers to throw diseased carcasses (both human and animal) over castle and town walls.

Bioweapons are far from unthinkable.

Well, I was thinking about some genetically engineered super plague like Stuart mentioned with 95 or 97 mortality rate. Smallpox IMHO is far from that, after all humans lived with it for hundreds of years and survived. Although I have no doubt smallpox outbreak today would be major disaster if not contained quickly.

Anyway you don`t even need a dedicated biological attack. Even an outbreak of a particulary virulent type of flu could cause major problems.

[Broomstick]

Well, I was thinking about some genetically engineered super plague like Stuart mentioned with 95 or 97 mortality rate. Smallpox IMHO is far from that, after all humans lived with it for hundreds of years and survived. Although I have no doubt smallpox outbreak today would be major disaster if not contained quickly.

You are somewhat incorrect.

Typical smallpox has "only" a 30% fatality rate (nevermind the scarring in the survivors), but "flat" type smallpox is 90% fatal and hemorrhagic smallpox approaches 100%. For weapon purposes, Bad Guys would try to isolate the more deadly variant, then release them.

Anyway you don`t even need a dedicated biological attack. Even an outbreak of a particulary virulent type of flu could cause major problems.

Indeed. The 1918 pandemic is estimated to have killed 50 million in less than a year. With today's transportation system such a flu would only spread faster and would probably have a much higher death toll.

[Junghalli]

I just going to address the OP because I can't be arsed to read 4 pages of discussion.

Let's see, within 50 years ... computer will probably have advanced considerably. Automation will be more advanced and ubiquitous, and computers in general will be more ubiquitous in our lives. I wouldn't be surprised if we'd be in the process of watching the gradual demise of non-computer media (television, radio etc.) as they get absorbed into one thing together with computers.

Hopefully we'll have addressed the energy problem by now, and will have largely phased out fossil fuels in favor of more sustainable forms of energy like nuclear. Cars may be largely electric by then.

I would expect considerable medical advanced to have been made. We're already starting to play around with regenerating/replacing simple organs like trachaea without transplants, using stem cells. By 50 years from now I could see this being advanced enough to allow replacement of organs and limbs, making the need for transplant organs and limb prosthetics largely a thing of the past. I'd also expect considerable strides to have been made in the field of genetics, chiefly in actually understanding the way the genome functions. I'm cautiously optimistic that treatments that delay the onset or symptoms of aging may be hitting the market by this point (limited life extension). At least I really hope this happens, because I want to still be alive to benefit from life extension technology when it's developed.

Edit: one other thing: I wouldn't be at all surprised if by this point we had confirmed the existence of a life-bearing world beyond the solar system. We're already planning a telescope capable of detecting them out to 50 light years to go up in 2015 (ESA's Darwin Mission). Not precisely a technological advance, but it will change our perspective on things.

[Samuel]

Stuart appears to (if unintentionally) make a good case for devastating a large portion of the third world, by virtue of the fact that they can develop bio-weapons and be crazy enough to think they're immune to them.

I don't like that, but what else are we going to do with them?

This is why we have the board- to keep people from saying things like that in public. Here is a hint- if your goal is to prevent individuals from having nothing to lose, killing everyone they know, destroying their society, and depriving them of a future is an exceptionally poor way to do so. You don't even nee a fanatic now. Just a person with nothing left to lose, and you just made several million of them!

Also, official thread theme song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv6mPgta ... re=related

[Modax]

Come on. If biowarfare was as easy as you say, why did Al Qaeda have to resort to crashing airliners into the WTC, instead of unleashing an airborne ebola strain on the world? Better yet, why couldn't Iran or North Korea use the 'fact' that they have developed such weapons as leverage in negotiations? If it were so easy, why wouldn't Hezbollah issue an ultimatum to Israel: 'stay out of lebanon or we'll unleash smallpox.' ?

[Kanastrous]

Here is a hint- if your goal is to prevent individuals from having nothing to lose, killing everyone they know, destroying their society, and depriving them of a future is an exceptionally poor way to do so.

What's frustrating is that there are societies bent upon doing that to themselves, insisting that what they are doing is good and righteous and proper all the way, leading to the same consequences as if we'd done something, to them.

[Guardsman Bass]

That is indeed true and it does suggest that small hunter-gatherer groups would survive. However, the Nations didn't have the massively interdependent and complex societies that we do.

Although they obviously aren't as advanced as we are now, the Native Americans (and particularly the Southeast and Northeastern Native Americans) were not small groups of hunter-gatherers - they were fairly large, agricultural societies. Most of them continued to be agricultural societies (the Plains Indians being a bit of an exception) right up to the point when they were displaced westward, even after losing 19 in 20 people on average.

That's what makes me think society will rebound, at least to an early 19th century level (assuming the Great Bioattack happens).

That means when our society goes down, it is going to go down very hard indeed. After all, think of a small group from The Nations. They're mostly self-sufficient and independent. If they lose 95 percent of their people, they still have the resources to keep going (although they genetic diversity will take a real hit). Now imagine a small American town that has suddenly been reduced from 10,000 people to 500 and has no access to outside resources. Sure, they have a lot of local supplies stored up that will keep them going (although not as many as one might think, these days stores don't keep the huge inventories they used to - typically a supermarket has enough good on hand to keep going for 72 hours). But what happens when all that stockpiled food and supplies runs out? It may take a month, it may take three or six but those supplies will run out. Winter's coming (you can bet that the bioattack will be timed to make sure that's the case) food's running out and none is coming in from outside.

After winter kills off a bunch of them, they try their hands at farming. Many of them probably have done gardening to some limited extent (particularly if they are suburbanites), and they can read - it's not as if all the books on agriculture have been burned.

The problem is that even doing basic engineering is hammered - one might have a machine shop but where does the feedstock come from. I've done a lot of work on this over the years (primarily concerned with the after-effects of nuclear attack but the same basic logic applies) and one effect has been a certain level of contempt for survivalists. Our society is so interlinked and so mutually self-dependent that its collapse will be all-embracing. As I said before if we're lucky, we'll go back to the 17th century level of society.

I'm a bit more skeptical of the 17th century concept. The population in question has some serious disadvantages (they're not used to farming and survival without the technological and societal edifice to support them), but they also have some major advantages, including rapidly-degrading cars (but there are parts to scavenge, and they'll have a strong incentive to be as creative as possible in getting them working), literacy, some remaining technological forms of communication and the knowledge to make them (it's not that hard to build a radio), and so forth. Those are very useful for organizational purposes.

Secondly, your point would be correct if the likely users of these weapons actually believed that back-infection would take place. They don't. They believe that their God will protect them. I have been told, quite seriously, by a senior Saudi Arabian officer that they do not fear attack by Russian or American missiles because Allah would not allow the "holy places" to be destroyed.

With all due respect, Stuart, I think that's bullshit. For all your Saudi guy's comments about how God will not let the Holy Places be destroyed, I notice that the Saudis have not exactly let the quite-rational defenses go to waste, and when they've been threatened with a real security threat (including from Saddam, who did have weapons like the above), they put their trust in real weapons system and tactics, up to the point of allowing a group of infidels to set up bases in the Holy Land.

I'm not doubting that these guys have irrational ends and motivations ("recreating the Caliphate" and so forth, as well as an afterlife for martyrs). But they've been quite rational in their tactics. The very fact that Al-Qaeda (a group of Islamic extremists if there ever was one) resorted to terrorism attacks and unconventional warfare shows that they have a very strong realization of where their weaknesses lie, and what methods might be best for achieving those aims. I very, very much doubt that unleashing a bioweapon that could potentially kill everyone (including most or all of the faithful - irrational ends, rational tactics again) is something they'd like to do. A smaller scale bioweapon, like Anthrax as it is and so forth? Maybe.

We are not dealing with people who have a rational mindset here. They honestly believe that they will be protected from the consequences of their actions. In any case, such groups have no compunction about killing large numbers of their own people if it means killing their enemies as well. Hence the term "involuntary martyrs".

Yes, but I doubt they want to kill all of their own people in the process.

Then why haven't they done it so far? As you mentioned, there are medical doctors in Al-Qaeda, along with sympathizers who would have knowledge of this stuff - and that's been the case for, what, the past 15 years? Why haven't we seen more of this stuff floating around?

I think you are over-estimating the "irrational muslim fanatic" factor. Like I said, they have irrational ends, but rational tactics.

Even more rational powers (note the comparative element there) disregard the probability of back infection although they do so on more practical grounds. One is that since the use of biologicals would be part of a strategic exchange, the contact between the user and the recipient would be non-existant, limiting the chance of back-wash. Also, virulence tends to decay so that by the time any back-wash did occur, the disease would be a shadow of its original self. Also, since the use would be part of a strategic exchange, back-wash is a minor consideration anyway comapred with the rest of the damage .

I'd be curious as to see what the Cold War major powers' rule of these things were (i.e. when the Soviets and US would use them). Presumably, if you end up doing a full nuclear exchange, most of civilization is already a goner - bioweapons would just be icing on the cake.

[Samuel]

I'd be curious as to see what the Cold War major powers' rule of these things were (i.e. when the Soviets and US would use them). Presumably, if you end up doing a full nuclear exchange, most of civilization is already a goner - bioweapons would just be icing on the cake.

There is more to the world than US, USSR, China and Europe you know. This was in a previous thread- why would we be nuking Latin America, Africa and the rest?

[Guardsman Bass]

I'd be curious as to see what the Cold War major powers' rule of these things were (i.e. when the Soviets and US would use them). Presumably, if you end up doing a full nuclear exchange, most of civilization is already a goner - bioweapons would just be icing on the cake.

There is more to the world than US, USSR, China and Europe you know. This was in a previous thread- why would we be nuking Latin America, Africa and the rest?

I was referring to civilization as a whole - and as Stuart pointed out, you don't have to kill everyone to cause civilization to collapse. Wiping out the most technologically advanced and productive areas on the planet might be enough to tip the balance.

I wasn't questioning that bioweapons wouldn't kill tons more people.

[Samuel]

I'd be curious as to see what the Cold War major powers' rule of these things were (i.e. when the Soviets and US would use them). Presumably, if you end up doing a full nuclear exchange, most of civilization is already a goner - bioweapons would just be icing on the cake.

There is more to the world than US, USSR, China and Europe you know. This was in a previous thread- why would we be nuking Latin America, Africa and the rest?

I was referring to civilization as a whole - and as Stuart pointed out, you don't have to kill everyone to cause civilization to collapse. Wiping out the most technologically advanced and productive areas on the planet might be enough to tip the balance.

Actually, bioweapons cause a collapse by getting every society. A nuclear exchange would leave many societies untouched. Although I'm not positive, I think that Latin America has enough of its home grown industry to easily survive.

[Broomstick]

Come on. If biowarfare was as easy as you say, why did Al Qaeda have to resort to crashing airliners into the WTC, instead of unleashing an airborne ebola strain on the world?

Because no one really knows the wild reservoir of ebola, you'd have to isolate it from an outbreak. Then you have to keep it alive and culture it. Then there is the problem that ebola is so virulent it "burns out" - there's not a long enough incubation period, and it kills quickly. An area gets hit, gets quarantined, then it's over quickly. Also, ebola is not airborne - latex and bleach will stop it from spreading by preventing contact with infected bodily fluids. It's a horrific disease, but not really the best choice for bioweapon.

Better yet, why couldn't Iran or North Korea use the 'fact' that they have developed such weapons as leverage in negotiations? If it were so easy, why wouldn't Hezbollah issue an ultimatum to Israel: 'stay out of lebanon or we'll unleash smallpox.' ?

Because Hezbollah doesn't have smallpox. Neither does Iran or North Korea. So far as anyone knows, the last remaining samples are at the US's CDC facility in Atlanta, Georgia and wherever Russia is storing the samples leftover from the Soviet Union. There are NO other stocks of smallpox anywhere in the world, outside of those it is extinct. I hope it stays that way.

Airplanes, on the other hand, are common as dirt. Getting a pilot's license in the US is relatively cheap compared to the rest of the world, so foreign students in US flight schools is nothing unusual (my local airport has turned about two dozen pilots for China in the past year or so and we're Nowhere Special, Indiana). It also has the advantage of not likely to destroy their own population.

[Kanastrous]

Also, ebola is not airborne - latex and bleach will stop it from spreading by preventing contact with infected bodily fluids. It's a horrific disease, but not really the best choice for bioweapon.

Ebola Reston was found to have propagated when aerosolized. Close enough to airborne, to be scary.

[Modax]

Because Hezbollah doesn't have smallpox. Neither does Iran or North Korea. So far as anyone knows, the last remaining samples are at the US's CDC facility in Atlanta, Georgia and wherever Russia is storing the samples leftover from the Soviet Union. There are NO other stocks of smallpox anywhere in the world, outside of those it is extinct. I hope it stays that way.

Airplanes, on the other hand, are common as dirt. Getting a pilot's license in the US is relatively cheap compared to the rest of the world, so foreign students in US flight schools is nothing unusual (my local airport has turned about two dozen pilots for China in the past year or so and we're Nowhere Special, Indiana). It also has the advantage of not likely to destroy their own population.

Yes, that's exactly my point. Bioterror can't be as easy as Stuart is saying, because if it were, it would happened already. So instead they bomb trains and hijack airliners.

[General Zod]

Because Hezbollah doesn't have smallpox. Neither does Iran or North Korea. So far as anyone knows, the last remaining samples are at the US's CDC facility in Atlanta, Georgia and wherever Russia is storing the samples leftover from the Soviet Union. There are NO other stocks of smallpox anywhere in the world, outside of those it is extinct. I hope it stays that way.

Airplanes, on the other hand, are common as dirt. Getting a pilot's license in the US is relatively cheap compared to the rest of the world, so foreign students in US flight schools is nothing unusual (my local airport has turned about two dozen pilots for China in the past year or so and we're Nowhere Special, Indiana). It also has the advantage of not likely to destroy their own population.

Yes, that's exactly my point. Bioterror can't be as easy as Stuart is saying, because if it were, it would happened already. So instead they bomb trains and hijack airliners.

Bioterror isn't that difficult to pull off for a few million dollars, but the problem is as a weapon it's not terribly predictible. The chances of fucking yourself up along with the enemy are rather high, so most people with those kind of resources aren't insane enough to result to Bio-WMDs.

[TimothyC]

Actually, bioweapons cause a collapse by getting every society. A nuclear exchange would leave many societies untouched. Although I'm not positive, I think that Latin America has enough of its home grown industry to easily survive.

Except for the fact that the Russians, being those lovable, paranoid, rational people that they are, would in all likely hood, send a few ICBMs toward the capitals and major military-industrial centers of the remaining Second/Third/Fourth world nations.

Yes, that's exactly my point. Bioterror can't be as easy as Stuart is saying, because if it were, it would happened already. So instead they bomb trains and hijack airliners.

The search tool is your friend

[Modax]

So Al-qaeda camps in north africa are getting sick with the black death, probably due to extremely poor sanitation and lack of antibiotics. Are you insinuating that this strain of plague is actually a CIA bioweapon or something? I doubt it, but I never said that the West didn't have this capability, only that the terrorists don't.