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NancyLebovitz comments on The map of global catastrophic risks connected with biological weapons and genetic engineering - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (14)
Ok, lets me be a devil advocate. The map is about future possible biowepaons created using genetic engineering, not exiting.
Lets imagine that a rogue country created 100 different pathogens with 50 per cent lethality each which seems to be possible with current technologies. These pathogens include different variants of flu, smallpox, anthrax and so on, total 100 species.
Than the rogue country send 200 letters with mixture of all these pathogens in each large city in world.
In result there will be multipandemic with mortality 1- (0.5 power 100) = 0,99999... Such multipandemic would wipe out most of humanity and survivors will die of starvation.
By playing with incubation periods and different environment carriers, as well as adding artificial fungi infections which are known to wipe out species, this rogue country could make such multipandemic very difficult to stop. The map include many more ideas how make such multipandemic even stronger. All these means that we should take such possibility seriously and invest in its prevention.
The survivors will not all die of starvation-- there will be stored food, and there are people who know how to do low and moderate tech agriculture, not to mention hunting and gathering.
I think you've talking about something that will end most of our civilization, not the human race.
If all fields will be covered with anthrax and botulism producing environmental organisms, agriculture will not be possible... By remote groups of people I meant people in Antarctica Polar station or undocked ships. The final result will depend of ability of dangerous agent to cover large distances by air. (birds could do it and they are transmitting birds flu).