Comment by Balgair | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Balgair | Hacker News Reader

Nitpicking: Designing new viruses or bacteria for a neo-plauge is less likely than a 'bad-actor' getting their hands on enough uranium for a dirty bomb. Nukes are relatively easy to understand and make, get enough U238 together and it pretty much goes boom. Little Boy just shot 1 half at the other sub critical half. Blammo. Viruses are not that easy, as the cell is complicated beyond all measure. It's as if we dug up a 4 billion year old self replicating and evolving machine out of the lunar dust in '69 and brought it back for study; we have basics, nothing more at this point, not even a theory beyond Darwinian evolution really (yes, it has advanced a lot recently, but still, it's primitive). Nature is INCREDIBLY better at viruses, so much better than anything we have. If we could engineer viruses like nature could, and exploit the vectors in the way that nature does, a lot more diseases and human frailties would be solved by now. Stem cells are just the beginning here. We have a LOT more to learn about viruses before anyone, even state backed groups, can make a plague in their basement. Heck, we have smallpox saved away precisely because it is so virulent and we haven't been able to make anything so potent since. It took the entire world decades to get rid of it. The methods it uses are of great interest to us for therapeutic purposes maybe. Who knows if there even are any. In the end, viral vectors of human suffering are doing just great on their own now, us trying to make a more terrible one is very far off.

How would a virus immediately lethal to 100% of it's hosts ever survive long enough to be selected for?

There is a natural limit on selection like this. A lab doesn't have the limit because it's product is not constrained by natural selection.

> Designing new viruses or bacteria for a neo-plauge is less likely

Humankind has been genetically engineering organisms for most of our existence. Corn originally looked like grass. Chickens were lean, tough, and could fly. Dogs have been transformed from generalist survivors into purpose-built machines breed for beauty, farm work, and everything in between. The avocado, of all things, is a fantastic example of how capable we are at creating something which shouldn't really exist.

Doing the same with bacteria isn't that much harder, if you've got time and a few basic tools. Our manipulation of the genes directly only makes the process faster.

True, but the viruses and bacteria, once out of Dr. Doom's lab, will evolve themselves. A virus that kills all the hosts is not a good virus. It has to be just the right amount of deadly and contagious to survive. Look at ebola, that is super nasty stuff, but it kills so quickly that it is hard to make it widespread. I'm not gonna say it is impossible, but it is a lot harder to do that you'd think. Living things tend to want to stay that way, and viruses tend to want to replicate. Kills all the hosts is not a good way of doing that.

Not really true. A virus that kills the host too quickly is not going to spread. A virus that kills the host quickly but not before it spreads, IS going to spread. There's no saying what a virus 'wants'; they just happen, and they do what they do. If Ebola became airborne, then most of us would die, then Ebola would die (from lack of hosts), and that's just a pity for Ebola. But there's nothing that stops such a scenario from happening, least of all what Ebola 'wants'.

To expound on this point, to a virus or bacteria, a human is just as good as a monkey or dog or jellyfish. It's a place to replicate and live. Similar with viruses as technically they are not alive. All these Dr. Doom kinda things have to compete with the common cold, the e. coli, and all the other things that live on the earth and in your guts. That is not an easy environment to survive in.

Can you expand on the avocado stuff, or do you have a source? Sounds pretty interesting.

The avocado stuff its not really true. The avocado shouldn't exist, because the animal that propagated its seeds went extinct a long time ago (if the term "Megafauna" comes to your mind when you think about that, you are not misguided), but wasn't created by humans, in the same way that corn or wheat are, because the avocado survived even when there were no humans around to propagate its seeds.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-the-avocado-s...

If nukes are so easy, how come Iran, with all its oil wealth, is still not there? It remains a difficult state actor play.

Relatively easy, i.e. compared to viruses.

They are easy from an 'intelligence required' perspective. They are difficult from a logistics perspective.

The hard part is not in knowing how to construct the actual bomb. The hard part is enriching the requisite quantity of a fissile material.

That's why the US and Israel went after Iran's enrichment facilities with Stuxnet.

Stuxnet, for one. Also, the realization that having a nuclear weapon when you're Iran is a terribly bad idea, from a diplomatic standpoint.

Being caught making one is a terribly bad idea. Having one (or more) would be an enormous plus from a diplomatic standpoint especially after a test, having them in undisclosed locations and too many to knock them all out in one strike is even better. Not that that's a world we should prefer to live in but history has shown that the quickest way to increase your diplomatic clout as a nation is to join the nuclear club.

The tech is (relatively) easy, it's getting that materials that is (fortunately) hard. But there is enough of it in enough places with imperfect oversight that it is a source of concern.

Yes biology is complicated. But we are starting to understand it reasonably well,and more importantly ,we're starting to design it even without understanding. For example, there's a company that produces microbes that create certain materials(genomatica), and uses evolution(with the goal being yield per bacteria) to evolve much more efficient strains - even without deeply understanding how the cell work.And i believe they're leading the industry in yield.

Another such example is screening massive number of chemicals to see what works and turning that to medicine.

So it's not hard to imagine a group with ill-intent, that uses some of the almost infinite variety of tools biology researchers have, and being successful in creating a serious biological threat.

I'm just going to say what should be obvious: One is not going to be able to engineer a dangerous plague that will wipe out the human race in one shot. One would have to do experiments, and those experiments will be noticed, because people will get sick and die.

I did get lucky and design, from first principles, a 4-fold increase in enzyme activity once, but I am not sure that is something I could repeat.

I'm not from the field, but is it that hard, for a reasonably well funded organization, to build a safe lab ?

Holy cow yes. Sterile environments are a big deal. Try holding one for a day, let alone a work week or a year. People screw up all the time, and bacteria, being pretty much invisible, are real tough to ferret out. Let alone all the actual non-sterile stuff you want to do in one. Think a clean room with bunny suits, that is the type of environment you need just to get a start on figuring out Dr. Doom type viruses and all that awful mumbo-jumbo. It takes a lot of energy, time, and resources to just get off the ground.

I do not think you need a safe lab to produce a viable weapon grade virus.

Here is basic outline: start with existing virus that has strong desired traits and known strains that mutated to resist antibiotics. Example traits include spread model, incubation length, and lethality.

Establish or take over a remote site that has little to no interaction with outside world. Remote corners of Africa and South America come to mind, there are plenty of secret illicit drug farms in the jungle. [0]

Infect the sample population with target disease, give it a few days, and slowly start to drip in countermeasures gradually increasing the dose. Idea is similar to how diseases we get anti-biotic resistant strains in the first place - people do not complete the full course of drugs and are left with weakened, but also with a strong selective pressure that benefits against strains that have resistance against drugs person was treated with.

Take samples when you have desired output and continue with new group of people.

To account for people who are immune to a particular disease repeat this with a different disease, potentially one that can advantage of weakened immune system.

Once target disease(s) are ready distribute them in population centers.

Now there are few obvious cons I can think of:

1. If secret about this leaks out, military reaction form rest of the world would be swift.

2. Hiding something like this is hard, and get's exponentially harder as group grows.

3. There is a strong chance something like this was tried already and failed. Possibly because I am grossly underestimating immune system.

4. To keep initial phase of developing secret initial group must be small, to spread it effectively dissemination group must be large.

[0] Another potential avenue is partnership with a supportive state such as Syria, North Korea, or Iran.

Without a safe lab how do you propose those running the operation won't kill themselves?

Basic precautions like light protective wear[0] and heavy dose of anti-biotic. If that does not work - great our virus now can jump protective wear, anti-biotic is no help, and there are less lose ends. Of course there needs to be some kind of full hazmat extraction team team that understands virulence of what they are dealing with in order to clean up. In case of state with lose morals helping this might be easier because you could use prison as a site and have full hazmat personal safe from prying eyes.

[0] not a full hazmat, just some protective wear over mouth, nose, ears, and eyes.

it is impossible to build a safe lab that with a high level of assurance will produce a biogenic weapon that will kill, say, more than about 10,000 people.

> One is not going to be able to engineer a dangerous plague that will wipe out the human race in one shot.

I believe that what you said is true, plus we could say that the fact that we haven't been exterminated with a plague makes us not so much experienced (as a race) on how detect whenever such situation will lead to being wiped out

I feel that HIV/AIDS is our only experience, at least that I'm aware of

We haven't been eradicated before, no, but battles with things like bubonic plague and smallpox and polio (and, yes, HIV/AIDS) are likely to be good case studies for such a scenario. Bubonic plague and smallpox in particular were pretty devastating to the populations they affected.

> One is not going to be able to engineer a dangerous plague that will wipe out the human race in one shot. One would have to do experiments, and those experiments will be noticed, because people will get sick and die.

We should still institute safety protocols suitable for a really-bad-case scenario.

"I did get lucky and design, from first principles, a 4-fold increase in enzyme activity once, but I am not sure that is something I could repeat."

But you do not have to repeat it. If there is even a small chance that a person trying would achieve something similar, someone with ill intent could get lucky.

1. I am just throwing numbers here, but let's say 1 out of a 1000 people is a scientist, that approximates to 7.2 millions of scientists alive.

2. Let's say one in a thousand of them are working on something that could be weaponized.

3. That leaves us at 72 thousand people.

4. Let's say one in a 1000 of them would consider releasing doomsday device if they could invent it to watch world burn, that takes it down to 72 people.

5. So we are left with 72 people who are working on something that with extraordinary lucky breakthrough could be weaponized that would weaponized if they managed to achieve that.

6. All those number above are just incredibly crude estimates, but I think they illustrate the fact that such scenario is possible.

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