That is an interesting piece of work, it makes me wonder what happens if they escape the lab and into the soil around the building. What happens if these guys turn the topsoil into a giant conductive sphere. It will probably do wonders for the RF noise floor, considering everyone would be standing on a giant ground plane.
Fortunately the ground is already a giant ground plane.
Sort of and sort of not, it is an infinite (for all intents and purposes) a sink for charge, but its conductivity is low and its dielectric coefficient fairly high. As a result its reflectivity to electromagnetic waves is mixed. If it were to become much more conductive, its reflectivity would become much much higher and more uniform. RF energy would just bounce back up into the air on its way.
How much cooler/scarier would lightning storms then become?
If the ground can hold considerably more charge near the surface can get to the point of ground lightning becoming considerably more common?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light
"The X-ray diffraction analyses suggest that the
metallic-like conductivity of G. sulfurreducens pili can be attributed
to the packing of aromatic amino acids with a characteristic
spacing of 3.2 Å, which enables effective -orbital overlap and
electron delocalization."