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Comment by ginko | Hacker News Reader

Now splice this into the genome of black mold and release it in a coca-cola bottling plant.

Less fun, PET is heavily used in medical devices including implants. There's a huge cut to life expectancy if it becomes a secondary food source for something like an engineered MSRA strain.

More reason to be furious at plastic peddling billionaires. They made us hostages. We still have to stop them, but it's going to hurt even more.

Eh. Thinking plastic would last forever was probably a reasonable assumption at the time. I doubt it was the billionaires making that design call. Though in hindsight maybe we should have known better, given the history of lignin and natural waxes.

Though especially given the history of lignin, we probably have millions of years before medical devices being eaten by microbes becomes a widespread problem that anyone seriously needs to worry about. There's bigger fish to fry right now.

> Thinking plastic would last forever was probably a reasonable assumption at the time

That's... not what I'm mad about at all.

Don't laugh, someday a terrorist or hacker may engineer a fast-eating critter, and half our stuff will become useless in a year. Termites learned to work with gut microbes to speed up wood munching, a home-owner's biggest nightmare.

That's still kind of funny in a existential hysteria kind of way.

Humans are pretty adaptable. If half our stuff did become useless do you think that might put a damper on rampant consumerism?

It would increase consumerism since everything would need to be replaced on a periodic basis

With new plastics full of chemicals that the bugs won't eat.

Everything? I think instead, we'll just stop making most things out of plastics. We have longer-lasting, more durable materials than plastics already, for when you want something that will actually survive decades or generations. They're metals and woods and stones.

Some things, like wire coatings, will still likely need to be plastic and will become disposable. But most uses of plastic for long-lasting goods will just stop using plastics. Goods will get much heavier, but more durable.

Woods? If wood can survive so can plastic in this hypothetical world. Just keep water away from the plastic.

Sounds like "Mutant 59"

The Andromeda Strain!

Or Peter Watts' Starfish, since it's from the deep sea

There's one significant detail about Behemoth missing...

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