But warfare has always been an offensive/defensive battle. Offense has seemed to have the advantage for a while, and random violence in a free society has a huge advantage as well. 1K seems easy. 10K takes some skill. 1000k seems unlikely without a very contagious bug with just the right incubation time.
1k seems easy? That is, killing 1k people? That seems possible, but not easy. At very least it deserves a "takes some skill and a huge amount of dedicated planning".
I started replying, but I just don't think it's worth it. I have no particularly brilliant idea here, and likely you'd still just disagree, but I don't see mileage in giving people ideas about this on the internet just so we can chat.
A Ph.D student in neuroscience shot at least 50 people at a showing of the new Batman movie. He also appears to have released some kind of gas from a canister. Because of his educational background this person almost certainly knows a lot about molecular biology. How long will it be (if ever) before a typical bio-science Ph.D will have the capacity to kill, say,a million people?
Edit: I'm not claiming that this event should cause a fully informed person to update on anything. Rather I was hoping that readers of this blog with strong life-science backgrounds could provide information that would help me and other interested readers assess the probability of future risks. Since this blog often deals with catastrophic risks and the social harms of irrationality and given that the events I described will likely dominate the U.S. news media for a few days I thought my question worth asking. Given the post's Karma rating (currently -4), however, I will update my beliefs about what constitutes an appropriate discussion post.