[unsupp0rted]

Another aspect of a WW3 is that people- pretty much ALL people everywhere- who have nothing to do with the war will find their lives threatened or completely changed by it.

I'm less concerned about nuclear escalation than about biological escalation.

It's quite hard to destroy the human world with nukes: you can only blow up big chunks of it, maybe take out enough power plants and supply chains to drop us into a multi-decade or multi-century dark age, or maybe cause a nuclear winter, although the actual risk of that is unclear.

Whereas a year into a major war a kid in his/her basement can release something that is functionally the end of the human species.

We currently have no real safeguards against this. If we ever have descendants, they'll think we were insane during this time period and they'll be right.

[XorNot]

> Whereas a year into a major war a kid in his/her basement can release something that is functionally the end of the human species.

Urgh. "No tests, no prototypes".

Imagine trying to write "Hello, World" but there's no programming language. The compilation cycle takes a week. And you can't actually control where the program runs. And also the storage device will be destroyed by light, air, and other programs on your computer if you don't handle it just right.

It is very very clear when people with no molecular biology experience start talking about biology, because it's clear you all have no idea what any part of the process looks like.

Even the vaunted DNA synthesis machines...only synthesize DNA. Which will be completely destroyed if you so much as breathe at it the wrong way (in fact don't breathe on it at all). And that's like step 2, because step 1 is "grow up a candidate organism in sterile conditions, isolate and characterize it".

That stupid longtermism movement is god damn obsessed with this concept, and it's stunning how clueless they are.

[Otterly99]

It is so frustrating indeed reading about these wildly exaggerated biological claims.

The whole synthesis pipeline requires so much specific equipment and knowledge that at your kid in his/her basement would actually need a whole lab. By the way, good luck purchasing any consumable on sigma from your basement without accreditation. And I hope you have deep pockets because cell medium is expensive.

[lukan]

"Whereas a year into a major war a kid in his/her basement can release something that is functionally the end of the human species."

How?

If a a virus is so deadly, everything it touches dies soon, it would not spread quickly but die out. If it is very contagious .. but very, very slow incubation time, so it infects the whole world, before becoming a deadly disease ... then I would say it is far beyond the possibility of a basement workshop to remotely design anything like this. I doubt the professional state labs can create something to wipe out humanity. Dramatically disturb? For sure. Covid was not really deadly in comparison, but already problematic.

[totetsu]

These are plenty of people worried about this. Just one example https://openai.com/index/preparing-for-future-ai-capabilitie...

[orbital-decay]

This type of research requires experimentation (mostly failures) on extremely complex real-world equipment. Same with the nuclear weapons. AI being able to magically figure it out without experimental grounding is pure and absolute fantasy, used by companies like OpenAI and Anthropic as a justification for monopolizing AI R&D. In a sense it's not surprising this idea comes from rationalism-adjacent folks, as rationalism is mostly about the idea that experimentation is irrelevant and you can infer anything using just logic alone.

[KPGv2]

> In a sense it's not surprising this idea comes from rationalism-adjacent folks, as rationalism is mostly about the idea that experimentation is irrelevant and you can infer anything using just logic alone.

Yeah IIRC Yudkowski famously said something about a super intelligence could derive the theory of gravity correctly by seeing only three frames of a video depicting an apple falling from a tree. This is the same Less Wrong nonsense, rejecting how vital and irreplaceable experimentation is.

There's an infinite number of explanations for the location of an object in three equally time-spaced instances. Not to mention limitations of the measuring equipment itself.

[Otterly99]

There has been a lot of research into discovering new physics (starting by discovering old physics) since the last 5-6 years and it always require:

- A lot of high-quality data - Some careful design - (Not always) some external knowledge to guide the solutions

And this is using specialized NNs for physics, where you often know underlying equations. Kind of crazy that some people are so delusional about that.

[totetsu]

Okay, I’m inclined to agree there.. but I can’t find the reference now, I also read that the worry is that the complexity required is coming down fast, and while maybe it’s not going to happen in a basement , there could be a small scale lab, not subject to rigorous certifications and checks that offers crisper as a service, and ai could be used to .. just perturb a protein a little bit so it doesn’t trigger some known virus black list, and people could just be ordering things online.

[dennis_jeeves2]

>rationalism is mostly about the idea that experimentation is irrelevant and you can infer anything using just logic alone.

Thanks for putting it the way you did. I didn't knew it was meant be that way, but it sort of confirms my suspicion that people who use the term 'rational' and 'logic' loosely often to dismiss an opposing view never really seek experimental results before having a point of view.

[unsupp0rted]

Viruses are perhaps the 3rd or 4th thing down the list of scary biological things people might make in their basement to end the human world.

[estearum]

> If a a virus is so deadly, everything it touches dies soon, it would not spread quickly but die out. If it is very contagious .. but very, very slow incubation time, so it infects the whole world, before becoming a deadly disease ..

This is a made up equilibrium that actually does not need to exist in nature.

Viruses and bacteria can in fact be both extremely, extremely contagious and extremely, extremely lethal.

> If a a virus is so deadly, everything it touches dies soon,

Trivially: you actually can have a virus that kills everything it touches not soon. Nothing in biology or chemistry or physics prevents it.

[kcplate]

> Viruses and bacteria can in fact be both extremely, extremely contagious and extremely, extremely lethal.

Sure, but those two things would tend to work against it becoming a pandemic— unless it managed those two things but also kept its host healthy enough for long enough before becoming lethal to adequately spread it.

[card_zero]

I looked into this once, it depends on how splashy the death is. A virus that made people explode instantly into a fine mist of airborne virus particles could be perfectly adequate for a pandemic (although holding off until help arrives might work even better).

[lukan]

"A virus that made people explode instantly into a fine mist of airborne virus particles could be perfectly adequate for a pandemic"

And what existing virus comes close to this trait?

[Closi]

I think we can safely assume that OP was picking a bit of a ridiculous hypothetical example to make a point that it’s possible for something to be deadly and transmissible, although in nature Baculovirus in Caterpillars has a similar mechanism (encourages their host to eat a lot, then climb to the top of a plant so when it turns to ooze it infects others) or cordyceps although both of these aren’t as highly transmissible as they hypothetical explode virus.

But the Black Death mixed high contagion and high mortality as an actual example that shows they aren’t mutually exclusive.

[estearum]

> unless it managed those two things but also kept its host healthy enough for long enough before becoming lethal to adequately spread it.

I am clearly referring to this specific scenario. There is nothing in chemistry or biology or physics that prevents it.

[LorenPechtel]

Disagree: Most people live in areas dependent on the supply chain. And when the supply chain gets disrupted they aren't going to go peacefully. And there will be enough mobility that areas that could be self-sufficient get hordes descending on them.

[zikduruqe]

You'd like this book - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After

[LorenPechtel]

Haven't read it, from what Wikipedia says it sounds quite optimistic. Maybe more realistic back when it was written. I also wonder at the President dying when Air Force One went in--there's good reason it's impossible to jump from civilian airliners, but I would be amazed if Air Force One lacked some means of emergency egress--I'm not talking ejection seats, just a door.

[Imustaskforhelp]

(I don't know too much about nuclear level situations so I can be obviously wrong perhaps but here's my take on it)

> supply chains to drop us into a multi-decade or multi-century dark age,or maybe cause a nuclear winter, although the actual risk of that is unclear.

It's defintiely gonna be a hard life if WW3 ever happens but I think with hydroponics and other advancement, a localized community can still have chances of making sense of things.

It definitely wouldn't be this life where we can eat almost anything but it won't be starvation either, hopefully.

For water, we might have to do reverse osmosis or boiling+condensing to remove radiation.

The biggest issue to me seems energy. Solar energy might be hard to get if nuclear storms are made over any region which I do think iirc can even stay till decades.

Temporarily Windmills and then primarily Hydroenergy is still possible tho but it might take some time to rebuild it if it got destroyed by Nuclear attack so energy to just produce food/water is possible but everything to me feels like it would be strictly rationed. You might have some spare energy for Radio.

I am not sure how food is gonna be distributed, perhaps a new system of work would be designed within community where community gives food and you give what the community might need to get work done.

I feel like though we are gonna slowly improve our Energy situations and as we do that, society can progress back to say a mathematician who can work on theorms which might require computers/energy and just computers in general back.

The quality of life would drop but I would consider tho that the people already in war-struck regions where they don't know if they are gonna be the next target of a messy war have their Quality of life significantly dropped as well.

Now the virus point is something that I don't exist similar to Lukan's comment tho.

[NetMageSCW]

There’s no chance a kit in a basement can produce a biological weapon that will be successful.

[LorenPechtel]

Oh? A lot of the old-style genetic coders got dumped on the market cheap. The sort of stuff a microbiologist could use to synthesize smallpox. The technique has been demonstrated, although on a harmless virus. The market has shifted to outsourcing to big companies (who carefully check every order against known dangers) that have much higher capital costs but much lower per-letter costs, but that didn't invalidate the old lab bench techniques.

[denkmoon]

Seeing what people can do with a home made wet lab on youtube, I’m not so sure

[runjake]

You’ve got me curious. Examples?

[denkmoon]

Thought Emporium is basically wizardry to me, https://youtube.com/@thethoughtemporium

[subscribed]

OMG, thank you so much. I watch Nile's wizardry with awe and joy, and this will be another level.

Thank you

[runjake]

Thank you for responding. This is so cool.

[M95D]

> a biological weapon that will be successful

I think he meant one of these:

1) Biological agent, but not meant to be a weapon.

2) A biological weapon, but one that fails catastrophically.

[esseph]

Oh yeah?

https://theconversation.com/an-illegal-bioweapons-lab-was-fo...

https://abc30.com/post/illegal-reedley-biolab-connected-lab-...

Here's a paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.17154

[mlsu]

Covid, ahem, could have been designed in a lab to be an "ideal" bioweapon. As far as viruses go it approximated just about the best bioweapon we could have made with current technology.

- very deadly

- asymptomatic spreading for a couple days

- spreads easy

- no tests/vaccine (early on)

It did kill a lot of people, that's for sure, and caused a huge disruption. But was far less disruptive, imo, than e.g. a nuke in multiple big cities would have been, even if the death toll was similar.

[drnick1]

> very deadly

Covid wasn't "very deadly" at all.

[laughing_man]

The base variant killed millions of people. It wasn't the Black Death, exactly, but it was pretty dangrous.

Now, if you want something that will keep you up at night:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npf-B5Av7aQ

[thfuran]

It was too contagious and not nearly virulent enough to be an ideal bioweapon.

[eszed]

GP put "ideal" in inverted commas, and qualified with "best we could make with current technology". I doubt they disagree with you.

[femto]

This paper puts some numbers around that, looking at death rates before a vaccine was available.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S120197122...

Without a vaccination, it killed 12.9% of people who were infected, killing mostly older people and people who had multiple pathologies (eg. hypertension).

[thfuran]

That’s 12.9% of hospital inpatients. All estimates I’ve seen for infection fatality rate — that is, mortality rate among all those infected — place it around 1–2%

[cthalupa]

Something that contagious that kills ~13% of people infected is something I would argue is quite deadly.

Especially when half of adults in america are hypertensive.

[thfuran]

It doesn’t kill 13% of people infected, only about 1%. Just look at the number of cases reported compared to the number of deaths. That paper was reporting 13% mortality rate among those admitted to the hospital, not among all those infected.

[jjtheblunt]

> It's quite hard to destroy the human world with nukes

what about bio weapons? smallpox in the americas, for an example of many at the page below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indi...

[kgermino]

Isn’t that their entire point?

[jjtheblunt]

yes, i think you're right that such was the point, and i misread it.

[smegger001]

Smallpox, which the only remaining samples exists in a couple of secure facilities controled by superpowers for use making vaccinations in case they are wrong about their only being a few samples controled by superpowers. Everyone with an ounce of sense knows bioweapons infect both sides and nuetral parties who are no longer neutral once you infect them. It like mustard gas but worse no one other than suicidal terror groups want them and they dont have the facilities equipment samples or knowhow.

[laughing_man]

>Smallpox, which the only remaining samples exists in a couple of secure facilities controled by superpowers...

I used to believe that, too, until the Russians found a few vials in a random storage cabinet. The fact is we have no idea how many samples exist and where they all are.

Fortunately, we already know how to make a smallpox vaccine.

[piperswe]

Not only that, but we have currently functioning distribution networks for pox vaccines. AIUI, the MPox vaccine is just a smallpox vaccine that happens to also work for MPox.

[estearum]

There are a lot of suicidal terror groups in the world

[jacquesm]

A good chunk of Christianity would turn around to bring about the rapture in a heartbeat if you let them. Death cults come in all shapes and sizes.

[estearum]

Yep! I count sects of Christianity among those groups and you're right that there are many more just waiting for the right situation and leader to really push them into full blown eschatology.

[XorNot]

You mean the same smallpox that ran rampant in a world without vaccines and failed to destroy the world, and was still present while a humans fought a bunch of conventional wars?