h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Mankind has always shown great innovation in designing new ways to slaughter one another, and many great advances have been made in creating either offensive or defensive weapons (eg: atomic bombs to nuclear power).

Terrible and nightmarish as it may be, the fight to defend one's nation from genetic warfare attacks will cause massive advances in the fields of genetics and biology. There is a good side to every disaster, but let us hope that we don't learn fast the hard way.

Yes, but what about a genetic arms race? For every weapon developed, a counter is created, and then a new weapon is developed to overcome the countermeasure and so on. This is especially true in relation to Biological warfare where the line between offensive and defensive research is very blurred.

The thing with arms races is that no-one ever seems to win them, or lose them (Although we've only ever had one). Both sides wind up a cold war being exactly equal in terms of weaponry of mass destruction, and because of this, a war between these two states becomes impossible, or merely quite unlikely.

Countries with homogenous ethnic cultures are most at risk for these types of weapons. The sooner everyone gets busy cross-breeding until we all look like Philippinos, the sooner these weapons will be obsolete.

Recent trends in warfare have been towards the more accurate type of weapon - so I would think that genetic weapons are already obsolete.
..also, the only country I've heard of with an even remotely homogenuous gene pool is Iceland...so unless the "cod war" starts again, I think we'll be OK.

I would have to disagree with your assessment of the Cold War, though. It is over, and there was a winner. The arms race was really a way of putting pressure on both economical structures to perform. The free market of the US managed to outperform the socialist model of the USSR, but since they had to keep pouring money into things like weapons and space exploration, they were forced to take money away from key infrastructure things, until the whole system collapsed. True, the country would have collapsed on its own eventually, but the arms race greatly accelerated that collapse, and now we can all breathe a little easier, while Russians try to sort out their own mess over a couple of lattes at a Starbucks in Moscow. And nobody got hurt.

No one got hurt, try telling that to all the E. Germans shot whilst trying to get into W. Berlin, or those sent to the gulags because they had the wrong idea of what communism was all about, the soldiers and civilians (of all sides) in Korea and Vietnam and a number of the african conflicts (essentially conflicts of the two major superpowers)
The list can go on. At least most conflicts now have less chance of developing into a full scale MAD scenario.

I agree completely, but we did win, and at least Europe didn't have to glow in the dark, and green people didn't have to sell glow in the dark t-shirts saying- visit radioactive Belgium or some such...Except of course for Chernobyl, granted...

All of that radioactivity still floating around could not be good for weapons of this nature because of mutation, bet hey, when has that stopped an arms proliferation.

One thing that scares me though is the potential of the new generation of weapons utilising nanotechnology. They can be specifically targeted, right down to the internal organ of the individual I would imagine...Though they don't yet exist (officially) they will be here in about 20 years...

No-one got hurt? Apart from the millions who died as a result of proxy wars and interventions in palces like Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Angola, Latin America and so on and so on.

Yes - but what of the millions that were saved by there not being a major European war? There aren't really any what-ifs here because we have no idea what would have happened were it not for the arms race.

Hang on. I realise this has got a litle off thread (i.e. genetic weapons), but are we actually saying here that arms races (and we have had more than one)are a good thing?

No he's saying that it's ok for millions of people in developing countries to be killed and maimed, to still have the after effects of unexploded ordinance many decades after the conflict, just because europe didn't get oblitterated.

Not at all - I'm saying we cannot know what would have happened had there been no cold war and hypothesising that there might have been a war in Europe.

I also don't believe that the cold war was won - what was won was the battle between economic models rather than us outspying and outpropoganda-ing them.

Returning to the tpoic in hand, I notice above that someone said that the trend in weapons research is towards greater accuracy and therefore genetic weapons are already obsolete. I would strongly contest this. What could be more accurate than a weapon which could (if we accept the hypothetical possibility- I do) be tailored to target a gentically specific population? I concede that this may not be useful in the traditional view of warfare a la Clauswitz, but with the growing frequency of ethnic-based conflict, it may be of extreme (and horrendous) utility. Consider a future scenario based upon the former Yugoslavia in which highly developed genetically programmable plagues were available. Or another genocide like WW2 or Rwanda- a budding mass murderer might not have to bother rounding up massacring his victims, rather he might just release an infectious but discriminating weapon into the population. I realise these are extreme and remote possibilities but one has to consider the possibilites regardless.

by the way, if you are interested in biological warfare/weapons in general have a look at my site http://members.netscapeonline.co.uk/hannahgreg1

It seems i've started something here.
If you want to know about WWIII, watch World War 3, a german movie. it's excellent.
the only use a genetic weapon would be is against an alien species.

why?

How?
(i.e. how would we know enough about their genetics)

Because we're all too similar, my dna (not DNA) is only a few fractions of a percent different to yours. We share many gene sequences (most) with other creatures. If you build a weapon which targets a certain sequence, then you'll just as likely kill yourselves as those who you want to kill.
Anyway there are much easier ways to kill using biology. Just manufacture a few grams of the ebola virus for example and release it into a crowded downtown area...

The ebola virus is a naturally occuring genetic weapon which is "accidentally" targetting humans - it obviously isn't fatal to its host but when it attacks us it is...
Whilst real life is not as simple as the "outbreak" film makes it out; finding the host population would help in the search for a vaccine.