[ExI] virus scenario

[William Flynn Wallace]

All along our survivalists envisioned nuclear war, but this looks like a
more likely scenario.  The buildings and farms don't get wrecked in this
one, so our civilization would at least leave behind a beautiful corpse.

spike

It seems that I read awhile back that neutron bombs killed people but left
buildings etc.

As for the virus, we had many bioweapons before it.

bill w

On Wed, Apr 15, 2020 at 8:34 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] virus scenario
>
> robot at ultimax.com wrote:
>
> > Not that I think anybody will respond, because there never is, but:
>
> Your posts are filled with content.  It takes a while to think through and
> offer a response that makes sense.
>
>
> >...  But I have followed gene engineering for decades.  I can state
> from such personal knowledge that making this virus in a lab is beyond
> the state of the art.  Not really far beyond the state of the art but
> it is at least 5 years out and more likely ten years.  The showstopper
> would be designing the entry protein...
>
> ...
>
>
> This is not my area of expertise, but I have been thinking: we assume (I
> do)
> that this virus was not created in the lab, but rather that it somehow
> evolved there and infected a human there.  Or it somehow evolved in a bat
> and a lab worker sold the bat at the local wet market.  I have no idea on
> that pangolin business.  Or something happened, some clueless goofball with
> no harmful intent was poking around with genetic material, but I have
> little
> doubt that one of those scenarios is plausible.
>
> In any case, the virus exists now, and viruses can be preserved in dry form
> somehow (they can, ja? (help me out here if you know.))  Regardless of how
> the virus came about, a hell of a potential bio-weapon has now presented
> itself, and every country in the world has access to it.  Every country has
> the option now to isolate the virus and release it aboard an international
> flight or cruise liner on the last day of the voyage, causing global chaos
> once more.  We have no vaccine and no guarantee we will ever have one: we
> still don't have an HIV vaccine, ja?
>
> All along our survivalists envisioned nuclear war, but this looks like a
> more likely scenario.  The buildings and farms don't get wrecked in this
> one, so our civilization would at least leave behind a beautiful corpse.
>
> We are glad you are here Mr. Kennedy: we can sure use a biology guru among
> us right now.
>
> spike
>
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