26 replies to this topic

[Balloon guy]

And if my uncle was irrational and feelings oriented she would be my aunt.

[Balloon guy]

My first thought when I see things like this is: 'If God doesn't destroy the earth, man will'

Quote

A deadly strain of bird flu with the potential to infect and kill millions of people has been created in a laboratory by European scientists – who now want to publish full details of how they did it.The discovery has prompted fears within the US Government that the knowledge will fall into the hands of terrorists wanting to use it as a bio-weapon of mass destruction.Some scientists are questioning whether the research should ever have been undertaken in a university laboratory, instead of at a military facility.The US Government is now taking advice on whether the information is too dangerous to be published.

[Dubey]

That sounds like the plot of every infection based end-of-the-world movie ever made.Didn't they learn anything from hollywood?

[LongLiveYorke]

Dubey, on Tuesday, December 20th, 2011, 12:09 PM, said:

That sounds like the plot of every infection based end-of-the-world movie ever made.Didn't they learn anything from hollywood?

No. Unfortunately most of those scientists, due to a clerical error, actually got their advice from Bollywood. So, they're going to release the virus in the middle of a giant musical number featuring lots of elephants and head-bobbing.

[Balloon guy]

LongLiveYorke, on Tuesday, December 20th, 2011, 9:21 AM, said:

No. Unfortunately most of those scientists, due to a clerical error, actually got their advice from Bollywood. So, they're going to release the virus in the middle of a giant musical number featuring lots of elephants and head-bobbing.

Gupta

[SilentSnow]

Balloon guy, on Tuesday, December 20th, 2011, 9:18 AM, said:

My first thought when I see things like this is: 'If God doesn't destroy the earth, man will'

I'm actually not too concerned about a "deadly virus" scenario.We are designed(by evolution ) to be really good at killing viruses. Also, viruses have a mathematical problem. If they are too deadly then it is very hard to spread them. They act as a simple poison. A truly dangerous virus would have to be extremely contagious, have a very long incubation time, yet somehow also be completely deadly. I'm not a virologist, but I would guess these three factors directly work against each other and are extremely rare combined. As a third factor, microbiologists seem to be fairly incompetent in general at designing stuff, so it's not like you can expect some weirdo to be able to design an earth ending virus even if they wanted to. I think a long slow collapse into primitivism or a brutally repressive regime due to resource depletion/environmental destruction is the most likely civilization ending threat.

[timwakefield]

SilentSnow, on Tuesday, December 20th, 2011, 1:36 PM, said:

I think a long slow collapse into primitivism or a brutally repressive regime due to resource depletion/environmental destruction is the most likely civilization ending threat.

Asteroid collision should be pretty high on the list too. Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck are both too out-of-shape to save us next time.