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Comment by defen | Hacker News Reader

> In this scenario, the K/K ratio could be perhaps 3/1,000,000, assuming a 10-percent accuracy and only a single one-gram shaped charge per drone.

So you "only" need 10 million drones and 10 million grams of plastic explosive? An attack of that magnitude probably requires the resources of a nation-state, so I doubt it will happen. Targeted assassinations seem more plausible.

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I mean if you barred the doors to a theater and tossed a few gallons of bleach and vinegar in you could also just gas hundreds of people, but it doesn't happen.

We worry a lot about technology because the attacks sound novel, but not about the conventional ones which still (mostly) don't happen because the reality is that the actual logistical challenges of implementing them without security services noticing still hasn't fundamentally changed all that much.

I think the real limiter is people willing and stable enough to murder indiscriminately at scale in novel ways. Mowing down crowds of people with a truck is bizarrely recent, and the peak of mass murder is still one guy sniping at a concert from a nearby hotel. Everyone was relatively surprised that passenger planes could be used as destructive weapons.

The really effective means of mass murder I think would be subtle, though, and mass murderers don't seem to do subtle. E.g. leaving some radioactive material in an innocuous public place, worsening visibility at crash prone intersections, subtle and slow poisons mixed into food and drink…

Or maybe something like developing, manufacturing, and prompting a new pain pill, that gets millions of people addicted to opioids, thus ultimately resulting of millions of overdose death over a decade.

Death by obesity! Oh wait...

Really had to laugh out loud at this one. To point out the obvious and make my comment more substantive- this article is concerned about the type of murder that isn't happening, when corporations kill us off every day for money. Hello, freedom.

Agree with all that, but when it comes to synbio, the article is 100% right to raise alarms.

But even then, historical analogues haven't been exploited that often. We've had probably thousands of people with access to weaponizable Smallpox etc in the US and former USSR for many decades now and no one has made any known attempt to use it, sell it, ...

Now turn that thousands to millions and you’ll see where the problem lies.

>if you barred the doors to a theater and tossed a few gallons of bleach and vinegar in you could also just gas hundreds of people, but it doesn't happen.

Well during the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting the guy used homemade tear gas before killing 12 and shooting another 60. But you're right he didn't lock the doors. The 2016 Pulse shooter did lock the doors and killed 50 and shot an additional 50. So it's not as far fetched as you make it sound.

Cyberlockers are an example are they not? Criminals are killing people in hospitals by locking up hospital computers.

Fortunately hospitals do have "outdated" manual technology to keep running even when worst happens. Reliability is a key consideration. The records are also still kept on paper just in case. Triage is a possibility when truly overwhelmed.

The main resource is a thinking and resourceful doctor and nurse. They can improvise (in ways governed by law) if there is a real need, considering patient welfare first.

was going to make a similar comment. In their hypothetical scenario they conveniently skip passed the need to obtain/manufacture 10 metric tones of high explosive. I'd say it's not access to drones/AI that's the most frightening in this scenario, it's the access to massive amounts of high explosives. If 3 crazies can get their hands on that quantity of explosives, they don't need drones/AI. A few selectively placed trucks/cars loaded with explosives are a long standing tool of mass-murderers.

I amused myself with the math that results if our 3 crazies have to hand load 1g of shaped charge on each drone (assuming that you can't exactly subcontract out this "please make our killer drones for us and don't ask any questions). It came to a mere 4.75 years of 16 hour days for the 3 people, assuming it takes 30 seconds per drone. No time off for holidays.

It's pretty amazing that someone can spout off about this so confidently, with zero ability to do simple common sense back of the envelope calculations.

lol. And no weekends.

Not to mention that the fucking things will fall from the sky after ten minutes, because of our battery tech...

Yeah, the 3/1000000 case is kind of a pointless extrapolation. 3/1000 is way more threatening if those 1000 are local political/business leaders - you could cripple an entire city (or with careful timing, an entire state).

10000kg of explosives. Or 22,000lb for us Americans.

11 tons of high explosive.

Good luck with that.

First you program the 1,000,000 drones to mine for the raw materials. It's genius!

And if nation-states want to kill 10 million people, that's what nuclear weapons programs are for.

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