there was an attempt to release a deadly virus on my farm in Scotland. unfortunately for the perpatrator we are biologically immune to smallpox. this somehow caused an international incident requesting our execution. i wasn't aware that being immune to a deadly virus was a crime.
Uhm, Simon? You conveniently forgot something crucial. Viruses and bacteria tend to mutate rapidly and uncontrollably. This means that a bioengineered disease could easily lose its efficacy, or even wildly backfire. Lovely fearmongering you're sporting there. Don't do it again.
I majored in Biotechnology and during a course titled Bioterrorism, out of the 26 students, 25 of them came to the conclusion during debates that the worst biological terror attack isn't a pathogen that targets humans but one that dismantles the agricultural industry in a given country.
Sensible conclusion. That would be much more difficult to detect and trace, and with so many countries implementing sanctions on food lately I wonder if it's already being done. Yikes!
@wendychavez5348 The USA would have to spend far more than their entire military defense budget into the biodefense sector to make the country slightly more secure against pathogens than what it currently is. This is due to the flexible and untraceable nature of genetic engineered pathogens. Look up the NBACC, National Biodefense Strategy and Implementation Plan, NBAF (USDA), and all the money and effort it takes to run the programs and how those security measures were active during C*vid and the whole system failed in keeping the nation safe.
everything mutates, so releasing any bioweapon is a massive gamble, it might be engineered to only target your enemy, but once its out there, there is no telling who it is going to target next.
if they have thedata to sell. I have no idea what is or isn't credible, but probably most VPN providers do claim to not save individual customers' internet use data that could be sold.
I don't know how it works in other countries, but NordVPN admitted, that they will send the information they have on you to the government, if they ask them for it.
@@Jaysin412you can actually verify it if you know what you're doing, and people have done so. Case in point, Nord actually had a breach several years back (before they finished moving to 100% owned servers) and there was basically no data released
Mullvad vpn was recently raided by the Swiss police and they were left empty handed they didn’t have anything at all for them to even search, I don’t truly understand but Muddahar at SomeOrdinaryGamers posted a video about it a couple of weeks ago
This all started with a sense of humour, a catapult and a sick poor villager in the Middle Ages. We’ve been throwing infectious sick people over castle walls for hundreds, possibly thousands of years.
The visuals 😅 imagine having to front up for your civic duty as catapult fodder when you're down with a fever and flu. We humans may know the steps to infect our enemies, or our spouse at home, yet there was a collective tantrum about disease spread prevention methods in the latest pandemic.
Real question here. If there was a country or organization that had the technology to make this happen, what makes you think they'd let anyone know? We're constantly finding out that the military and such have been doing things decades before we even knew they were possible.
Are you not familiar with the ex soviet head scientist of bio weapons who defected to the west after he found out the USA had actually stopped making the stuff? He confirmed thousands of metric tons of anthrax, small pox, and marburg for certain had been produced under his watch. You think they really found and destroyed all of those weapons?
This doesn't always happen, but thanks to the internet, whistleblowers have the potential to reach more people. Downside: most of them will potentially be taken as conspiracy theorists. Sometimes though, what humans do is more horrifying than the crazy shit they imagine.
@@zachaliles Bots, TH-cam is hiding them automatically, but not fully deleting them. Also well. C-19 most likely came from a lab leak, (no coincidence it originated right next to a lab of virology doing Gain of Function research). Interpret that however you wish.
Uhm, Simon? You conveniently forgot something crucial. Viruses and bacteria tend to mutate rapidly and uncontrollably. This means that a bioengineered disease could easily lose its efficacy, or even wildly backfire. Lovely fearmongering you're sporting there. Don't do it again.
As someone with a Biochemistry BSc and some interest in this topic and gaming, the most terrifying scenario i can come up is the scenario of how Days Gone's pandemic started. In the game, a researcher breaks into a lab, unknowingly infecting himself, and passing the virus to others during a convention. The virus was insanely infectious and could be transmitted through basically everything.. Air droplets, fomites, sexual contact, saliva... In the game, it's said that the virus quickly spread through the world because of returning convention participants using airports. Well, a bioterrorist could simply infect himself (in a suicide-bomber kind of thing), and just stroll into a busy international airport. In there, he could simply act in a way to maximize contagion. Cough on people. Touch everything. Use the toilets. Take a taxi and infect the driver. A virus with a large asymptomatic, but infectuous period would be optimal. By then, high lethality and severity could kick in, easily overwhelming hospitals.
@@ProbablyNotLegit Yeah. My personal headcanon is that what Cloverdale wanted is what is seen in the true ending, but it ended up badly because the virus was incomplete. For me, THE «zombie» that is most likely/realistic. And the game itself was awesome on top. Loved the sciency bits about the Freakers sprinkled with the Nero storyline
I’ve long said that nuclear and chemical weapons are far less scary that bio weapons, as unless they are used on a large scale, the death tolls will be fairly limited, but one minor lab leak at a bio lab could cause massive worldwide deaths
An individually targeted bioweapon would be a bad idea, as the virus spread "harmlessly" though the population in search of its host there's a fair chance it could mutate on route.
One of the most interesting books I've ever read about a disease originally created for biowarfare is called "Bitten" by Kris Newby. Absolutely fantastic and well-researched. Even congress is using this research to help create more effective laws about tick-borne diseases
UW Madison along with U Minnesota have already created 4 New Tick disease's and Deliberately put These Diseased Tick's around Wisconsin and northern Minnesota !! 😠😡 Wasn't that Nice of Those Stupid Fukn PiecesOfSh!t to use Us as an Experiment Platform 😡🤬
I'm not sure that an immune response will ever stop radiation sickness or a few thousand degrees of temperature deviation, especially with the scale of a "nuclear war." The reality is that borders can be shut and isolation enforced, something akin to what happens in the film Outbreak. Nuclear warheads are a bit harder to stop from throwing inordinate amounts of heat and radioactive fallout everywhere. I think it would be very, very difficult, if not impossible, for any human or group of humans to realistically conceive a more destructive event than 2 nuclear powers going hot, at least currently. I would venture that blowing up the moon, with nuclear weapons, is the closest, and I am fairly certain that there simply isn't even remotely enough material to make this implementable. Even if it were, it's still nuclear war, but with the added bonus of destroying ALL life on earth, guaranteed, as tidal forces would scour the planet of life. Every remotely conceivable event that would outstrip an exchange of nuclear weapons would still involve the large scale use of those very same weapons, and would be even more effective in making mutually assured destruction the eventuality, with a greater likelihood of making the planet uninhabitable relatively quickly. Life has survived viruses for as long as they have been around. Extremely virulent pathogens burn themselves out too quickly to spread effectively, and if (hell even in spite of) it ISN'T that lethal, evolutionary biology WILL overcome it. Immune responses to viruses and the like are a perpetual arms race. If it weren't, we wouldn't exist.
Uhm, Simon? You conveniently forgot something crucial. Viruses and bacteria tend to mutate rapidly and uncontrollably. This means that a bioengineered disease could easily lose its efficacy, or even wildly backfire. Lovely fearmongering you're sporting there. Don't do it again.
@9:20 I just find it almost unbelievable that people/humans are really that devious and can be that desperate to kill someone they'd create an incurable virus/disease without considering the risk/possibility that it can eventually become indiscriminate.
I'm more and more convinced that we are our own Great Filter. We can't help ourselves. Our natural curiosity, crossed with those who wish to do harm, seems to make it inevitable we will do ourselves in at some point in the not too distant.
Luckily, there is one minor issue that biological warfare might have and it’s that it’s effectively uncontrollable. It’s still incredibly difficult to actually make something more dangerous than it gets by evolving, if something is too deadly then it can’t actually spread because it kills everyone first, and most importantly, especially with viruses which are the types of pathogens that actually can spread fast enough to be an effective weapon: they mutate a lot. It’s even if you design them one way they won’t stay that way
@@blackzero786 Yeah, something a little bit like that, and that is lower than most viruses. Coronaviruses are an uncommon type that actually have some form of correction capability to counteract them being so large for viruses and thus having much longer DNA (or RNA, I forget if coronaviruses are DNA or RNA viruses, im no immunologist myself). We were actually caught somewhat surprised by the rate of variation by COVID-19, but if there’s one thing you can count on in nature, it’s that you can count on nothing for certain
I'm not sure where he got the idea that using explosives would kill a meaningful amount of the biological material. The USSR/Russia, the US, France and the UK have all developed many kinds of low-explosive ordnance for effective delivery of biological agents. The Army found that filling a light bulb with an innocuous bacteria and dropping it onto the tracks of the NY Subway made for a very effective distribution throughout all of NYC. Planes were developed, as well, that would just mist the weapons like a cropduster. It's very similar to the mechanism attached to helicopters during the Vietnam War to spray Agent Orange.
@@nochannel1q2321 did you mean to respond to a different comment? I’m not sure where I mentioned explosives or talked about distribution of biological agents
I saw you’d uploaded, read the title and said aloud “Ah perfect” At this point Simon you’re practically my baby’s dad as he recognises your voice, I discovered your channels last year when I was pregnant and now when I put your videos on my 4 month old gets excited 😂 don’t worry he doesn’t look at the screen, just listens to the soothing voice 😂
Uhm, Simon? You conveniently forgot something crucial. Viruses and bacteria tend to mutate rapidly and uncontrollably. This means that a bioengineered disease could easily lose its efficacy, or even wildly backfire. Lovely fearmongering you're sporting there. Don't do it again.
How about a video on nuclear "contingencies" e.g. the UK's letters of last resort, Russia's Perimetr (aka "dead hand"), etc. The doomsday systems nations with nuclear arsenals have developed to ensure the nukes will still get launched even if the command structure to authorize them is already destroyed. (in the UK's case the sub commanders are pre authorized to launch if England goes quiet)
That’s wild af who said England was allowed to do that we need to have a chat the nukes these days aren’t real none of them we can’t have people shooting real nukes around how would we get the free labor from the poor there’s so many of them
lucky for us that in order for specifically viruses to work they have to not only attach at a receptor site, but also be accepted by a cell! it would be very hard to find a receptor that only one particular ethnic group uniformly has while also having no other defense mechanisms. especially on the level of cell chemistry, we’re way more alike than we are different ❤
What if certain cultures / races / political groups etc were less inclined to choose to be vaccinated? Maybe you could influence an enemy population to be anti vax by a persistent disinfo campaign over few decades?
@@keelo-byte Yes, but what if that results in just making the target nation or population a more hardened enemy? By removing the gullible useful idiots from the populace?
Close, but no cigar... MOST viruses require a receptor site and MOST enter the cell via endocytosis or similar actions... NOT ALL. The great thing about playing with viruses, is that they basically act as nano syringes, and if you choose the right one for the job, and you know what you're doing, you can load just about anything into them, most commonly genetic material. Usually, when playing with viruses, you can use the surface proteins(receptors) to your advantage to target certain cells. The cells you target can be broad or narrow, depending on what you want to do. But this is where the magic comes in. You can infect every living creature on earth with your creation, but if you did it correctly, only those with the genotype or other trait that you're targeting will be affected, all of the others just carry it and pass it along silently. We did experiments with these concepts in my biochem program. 2 strains of E-coli, 1 virus, make and insert an RNA strand, into the virus, that codes for the death of 1 strain but not the other... This can be used for good or evil or neutral purposes, just like a hammer...
@@joearledge Eukaryotes without a cell wall (non-plants) tend to use endocytosis, so viruses exploit the receptors that can initiate this. It is an easy in. Like using a stolen keycard. Prokaryotes and plants don’t use endocytosis, and are usually packing armor. So their Viruses and phages have to "drill the lock".
Or, jokily, a Bond ally. Just imagine the fun Bond would have if he had to join forces with "Dr Whistler" - the one-liners would almost write themselves!
Get a dog or a cat i did and it giving me more to look forward and live for also i started a food Forest witch also hive be something to look forward to and build 😀🙂😄
I bet many a civilization, not only on this planet, walked this same very path, and now it's not even a distan memory in a cryptic epic poem. *laughs in Fermi paradox*
Yep this is the stage. The nuclear age depended on an entire country deciding to end the world this will take only a few nutjobs with basic science no how to end humanity.
But no matter what happens to us our Golden disk on Voyager will go on into interstellar maybe even intergalactic space further than we could ever go for hundreds of billions of years if it’s lucky
Bats are reserviors for many, many diseases. That's why their systems are being studied to see if they can help humans also be less likely to die from certain diseases.
Uhm, Simon? You conveniently forgot something crucial. Viruses and bacteria tend to mutate rapidly and uncontrollably. This means that a bioengineered disease could easily lose its efficacy, or even wildly backfire. Lovely fearmongering you're sporting there. Don't do it again.
Truly, the human mind is the strongest tool, and the deadliest weapon, that we possess. When brought to bear, there is no power, nor law of man, that can stop it.
@@nothanks9503 so you haven't come across the months old news of a you-ess university lab developing the strongest strain yet?! Try searching on utube you might be able to find it
@@new_age_citizen yes, accidental. even if one decided for some strange reason to release a highly infectious not very deadly disease, rather than one that is very deadly but not very infectious so it can be used in a targeted way and not spread globally, you wouldn't do it in a giant city at the center of your own country, within walking distance of your country's main virology lab known for studying that group of viruses.
Zomboid IRL? In project zomboid there is the airborne straine that kills and turns most of the people around and you play as the few that are immune to it, or with the susceptible mod you can play as the not so lucky folk wearing a mask constantly and worrying about any form of CQC
I think it may be a common theme in life across the universe; when you have the power of knowledge of the fundamentals of life there will always be one to spoil the party.
No, not really. A lot of animal populations do the same thing. Simon even did an episode about how rats and mice were given an absolute utopia only for them to destroy each other for no freaking reason... then they all died.
Your part on genetically targeted bioweapons targeting a specific person or persons is a sub plot from the Metal Gear Solid series and the FoxDie virus implanted in Solid Snake to kill various people like the Darpa Chief, and some bad guys like Revolver Ocelot and Liquid Snake among others.
Great video Simon. Sad to see ultimately what is possible against other nations. Humanity's downfall could well be self destruction through technological progression
Since we dropped the nuclear bombs on Japan, its been more self destruction through technological advancement, than it has anything else. That's why we have the doomsday clock, it's not for meteor impacts, or climate change, but when are we going to kill our own species?
Oh it most definitely is because no matter how much we technologically progress evolution wise we're still the same stupid monkeys making the same stupid mistakes and being super self-destructive like every other animal species on the planet.
I was at McDonald's the other day and they couldn't take my order because the computers were down. I told them that cheeseburgers and fries predate the internet by quite some time, the girl at the counter was baffled, she had no idea what I was talking about🤣
And the cause need not be malevolence. A common soil bacteria might be modified to break down cellulose for the production of biofuels, which would be a handy use for all of the high cellulose plant waste we produce every year - but if leaked into the wild might attack all plant material.
There is a rgeory, amonst astrophysisists, of a 'great filter' (whic is one of the reasons why we haven't been able to see signs of civilisations across the galaxies); this is that developing civilisations encounter a particular barrier which prevents development into a space-faring race (or wipes them out before they reach that stage).. When you watch this video, and most others of this nature, you get the horrifying impression that we are hurtling rowards this point ourselves
Unfortunately, this will happen. Bye, bye mankind. Or, maybe, that is the best thing to happen to planet earth. Give all the other millions of species a chance to live, unmolested by humans.
Think about this scenario. An actor releases a pretty much non-fatal but very fast spreading disease (5th disease is a favourite for this) that has no vaccine or antibiotic. But being mostly non-fatal, now you have a group of very annoyed (and rather unwell people) who are now against those who failed to protect them. So, rather than killing, wouldn't an aggressor be better to be "illing"?
You have no idea how much I want to see a fully realistic (with ALL completely real analogues, including the bodies) recreation of the siege tactics where they would launch the dead/decaying corpses via siege machines (catapults and trebuchets) into a castle. I don't know why, but just the absurd, grotesque nature of it feels absolutely hilarious to me. I know that it wasn't intended that way, but you know for a fact that the dudes launching decaying corpses over castle walls would be laughing and saying "take THIS you sons of whores!"
The really scary part is that anyone who raised the possibility that the disease was engineered in a lab would be shamed as a conspiracy nut, fined or in the cause of Australia, sent to an internment camp.
@@thomasnunya1438 yes and we all should shame people who spread such ridiculous lies. The lab creation theory of Covid was literally debunked weeks into the pandemic. Its a simple mutation of the original SARS virus. Mutation always was a thing and unfortunately always will be a thing. No one is to blame for it.
The lab creation theory of Covid was debunked weeks into the pandemic. Sars-Cov-2 is a natural mutation of the original SARS virus. Natural mutation just happens unfortunately. No one is to blame for that because its unstoppable. What the governments did against it was the only way to slow down the spread. Lockdowns etc are very much legal in such cases where literally everyone is in danger. There was no other way to react to it.
I remember speaking to a bioweapons microbiologist in Moscow years ago. He told me the USSR managed to weaponise Tuluraemia, a waterborne organism, but still used against the Taliban. It killed all their donkeys and mules, and they now rely on motorbikes to carry weapons.
Have you read The Cobra Event by Richard Preston? Written in 1988, based on true technological possibilities though he deliberately altered some details so as to not give out a recipe for destruction (paraphrased from his Author's Note). Scary stuff. Yeh, I love science, though this sort of thing makes me glad it's not my first love.
Excellent book. The guy who defected near the end of the Cold War who ran Biopreparat wrote his own book about his work inside the program. I forget the name of author of Demon in the Freezer, but they have done a couple of fiction books that are pretty good too.
@@nochannel1q2321 Richard Preston was the author, he also wrote The Hot Zone, which was also a great book(on Ebola)…I believe it is Ken Alibek that was the Soviet defector. Lol yeah knowing about the biopreperat from the early-mid 00’s was pretty scary…Also as soon as Covid hit, was kind of thinking “who tf is editing viruses and letting them leak?!”
as a Indigenous person, I don’t know why, but this fucking scares me. My government literally want my people gone and they probably wouldn’t think twice about doing this.
The E. Coli Kit made me spit my drink out.... that is so insane given e coli has such issues with resistance already. I cannot believe out of everything they could have done to teach people how to irresponsibly play around with genetics they chose "lets contribute to bringing about a doomsday situation just a bit faster shall we" kits.
If the US followed international law everyone involved in gain of function research, bioweapons research, would be executed. It would set a very good precident. We haven't been the good guys for a while though.
We stopped being the good guys after like world war II, maybe even world war l. Considering how world war II was in part started by us blaming Germany for everything the first time around so they became even worse. Now anytime the US invades a country for democracy or anything.. they botch it worse than celebrity plastic surgery.
We signed the Bio Chemical Weapons Convention in the seventies and immediately stopped chemical weapons product and we're still not even close to having gotten rid of our chemical stockpile. USAMRIID (Army CDC basically) actively manipulates and develops biological weapons. They claim it's done solely to develop more sophisticated vaccines and antibiotics, but the fact remains that the only thing that differentiates that from an active biological weapons program is the quantity of material crated. I remember reading a terribly written book that described Iran beginning a biological attack on the US by sending about a dozen people, each with a device that looked like a can of shaving cream, to cities with massive conventions. They then activated the devices after finding places where they wouldn't be found and after a five or ten minute delay for the person to get clear the biological weapon was misted into the convention area. During the cleanup of the convention the empty shaving cream can would be discarded by cleaners and all of the people exposed would be moving around inside the country and their home countries and infecting many other people. That's fairly realistic and would require the biological material, ball mills to render the powder into a fine enough form to allow it to enter the deepest part of the lungs, then some clever packaging and basically a squirt top, a reservoir of material and a compressed gas canister at the bottom to propel the weapon into the air. Scarily realistic.
The problem with biological weapons are the unforseen mutations that can cause them to backfire. For that reason militaries and even terrorist organisations don't really think about using them.
for now yes. But if they can figure out a way to somehow target a specific people, or make their own people immune it could be devastating. I'm not smart enough to know if this is science fiction or something that actually may be possible one day, but nothing really surprises me anymore.
@@memyself898 Maybe they figured it out how to make certain modifications to pathogens, but there is a huge risk for such microorganisms to mutate and attack unintended targets. Living organisms are not a joke. It's enough to think about all the invasive species that where introduced to certain habitats,some accidentaly, some with the intention of combating pests. Or in the case of flue virus that constantly mutates and new vaccines must be prepared every year.
That's not really true, only RNA virusses are notoriously unstable mutation wise, however DNA virusses (such as smallpox) and bacteria are fairly stable. Your last sentence is definitely incorrect, militaries don't think about using them because they're banned internationally and they could suffer serious consequences even for researching them, let alone stockpiling or even worse actually using them. And terrorists definitely do think about using them, we've just been lucky thus far that none of them had the intelligence, funding, materials, etc needed for producing them. For example, Aum Shinrikyo mentioned in this video tried to release bacillus anthracis but failed to achieve any effects not because of the weather as Simon incorrectly stated, but because they had used the vaccine strain acquired from a veterinarian, as it was the only strain that was somewhat easy to get. And mind you Aum Shinrikyo had vast resources of up to €100 million and was comprised of many hundreds or even thousands of highly educated members, after all they succesfully managed to produce sarin nerve agent in the end. Both Al-Qaida and IS tried to acquire and unleash bioweapons too but thankfully have been too dumb to develop them.
But you could spread existing diseases e.g. measles to first nations people or bubonic plague from a rural area within a country to a city in the same country. We already use denial of treatment as a weapon e.g. Israel targeting COVID vaccination centers in Palestine, the US targeting a pharmaceutical company in Sudan or disallowing charities from delivering polio vaccine in Afghanistan
@@commentas3684 That's not really what the video was about, but yes, it's definately something that it's used to make target populations lives more miserable. Denying treatment and prevention can be just as bad as spreading deseases.
A question for the people that understand genes and stuff: with this “designer genes” thing, is it possible, at least in theory, to modify human genes to give them “super powers” like the tomato antifreeze gene mentioned in the video or a “super human” resistance to diseases or something like that? (Obviously not talking about flying or laser beams).
But which type it will be:night of the living dead slow moving zombies,wwz zombies that can RUN like psychopaths and CLIMB one another,CoD zombies that can use guns and reload?
Well unfortunately we might have tipped the scales far enough that the albedo (basically the proportion of light and heat that’s reflected instead of absorbed) of the Earth is low enough that even if humans all disappeared climate change would carry on anyway. Not to mention the whole trapped methane thing. The Earth is pretty good at fixing itself but it takes a while and would probably get worse before it gets better.
Imagine if a drug compnay bio-enginered a weapon,discovered the cure,then released it on the worlds population. You' basically have the entire species hostage
This is the main plot point of Dan Brown's book, "Inferno". [Spoiler alert] I thought it was an excellent solution to Earth's human overpopulation problem (as long as it remains completely random, that is... I'd never advocate for targeted sterilization of any specific group as all humans generally suck equally, so isolating a certain population is a ridiculous concept to me). Although if we fixed the broken education system in the US and other countries (which would also decrease the rates of poverty, religiously, and ignorance--all of which perpetuates high birth rates), there would be no need for a biological weapon like the one proposed in the book (although the fancy super cootie would be much faster). I have no doubt we'll find a clever and abhorrent biological method of mass destruction that will result in our ultimate demise. It's just a matter of time and hubris. The best and worst of humanity can often be found smeared inside of a petri dish.
The problem is not to many people in the world …humans are awesome there is nothing we can’t figure out ….the problem is stupid fucking people that think they are smart…..just because you can do something don’t mean you go ahead and do it
"The Cobra Event" by Richard Preston sounds quite similar to this, too. That was back in the 1990s, I think. Biowarfare has been a concern for decades. It's just the hypothesized methods that change. Yes, we're developing new tech all the time. But with new tech comes new roadblocks, too. I'll start worrying about it when verified evidence of its use is presented. I agree that fixing our education system would be a positive move. Especially to counter the impact of rampant religiosity and its hyper-fearmongering. Watching this video didn't necessarily horrify me. Watching "Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets" did.
@@astreaward6651 Holy crap, me too. In Shiny Happy People when they were talking about the IBLP pushing their "curriculum" into prisons and law enforcement training, my blood ran cold. Neo-fascist Christian Nationalism disguised as soft-spoken saccharine moral majority advocates popping out spawn every year for a decade? You can most certainly miss me with that shit. We've been killing each other with bioweapons since some caveman poked a poison dart frog with a stick and accidentally poked that same stick in his friend's eye. The caveman's homeboy didn't learn anything, but I bet our hypothetical primative amphibian assaulter did. Smallpox blankets, plague-infested corpses catapulted over castle walls, arrows tipped with snake venom, anthrax saboteurs sending contaminated mail in both world wars... it's nothing new. That being said, naturally evolving super cooties do scare the bejeebus out of me. A man-made cutie would most likely be created in tandem with an antidote. To do otherwise would be a level of stupidity and pathological hubris I can't begin to fathom. But we don't know what kind of fresh hell has been frozen under Siberian permafrost for a millenia. As the ice melts, all those newly thawed microorganisms will be born into a world where nothing alive today would have ever experienced them--a myriad of helpless immune systems to infect and conquer. No fucking thank you. Mega-corporations better hurry up and start hugging trees because our planet will kill us way before we have time to invent something that'll kill us instead.
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there was an attempt to release a deadly virus on my farm in Scotland.
unfortunately for the perpatrator we are biologically immune to smallpox.
this somehow caused an international incident requesting our execution.
i wasn't aware that being immune to a deadly virus was a crime.
I get you have to advertise, but claiming a VPN improves your privacy and security is just wrong.
Uhm, Simon? You conveniently forgot something crucial. Viruses and bacteria tend to mutate rapidly and uncontrollably. This means that a bioengineered disease could easily lose its efficacy, or even wildly backfire. Lovely fearmongering you're sporting there. Don't do it again.
@@samwamm85is this s reference to a film. It is clearly fantasty.
I majored in Biotechnology and during a course titled Bioterrorism, out of the 26 students, 25 of them came to the conclusion during debates that the worst biological terror attack isn't a pathogen that targets humans but one that dismantles the agricultural industry in a given country.
Sensible conclusion. That would be much more difficult to detect and trace, and with so many countries implementing sanctions on food lately I wonder if it's already being done. Yikes!
@wendychavez5348 The USA would have to spend far more than their entire military defense budget into the biodefense sector to make the country slightly more secure against pathogens than what it currently is. This is due to the flexible and untraceable nature of genetic engineered pathogens. Look up the NBACC, National Biodefense Strategy and Implementation Plan, NBAF (USDA), and all the money and effort it takes to run the programs and how those security measures were active during C*vid and the whole system failed in keeping the nation safe.
Yeah because a pathogen that can end the human species is nothing compared to losing a food crop.
Immagine spreading diseases like Mad Cow disease to animals
Germs don't care about borders though. Mankind has learned nothing from the Black Death, Syphilis, The Spanish Flu, or the "Coof."
everything mutates, so releasing any bioweapon is a massive gamble, it might be engineered to only target your enemy, but once its out there, there is no telling who it is going to target next.
You'd have to have an antidote/preventative ready. Or they may not care if it gets the whole population and use it to control the masses
If you are a mad man who has nothing to lose it won't matter
it's the same as nuclear weapons. Biological deterrence. But nuclear weapons don't leak though, that's what i'm worried about
Just so you know, with a VPN you're somewhat safe from being tracked - *until* your VPN provider decides to sell your data.
if they have thedata to sell. I have no idea what is or isn't credible, but probably most VPN providers do claim to not save individual customers' internet use data that could be sold.
@@Ass_of_Amalek key word there.... claim...
I don't know how it works in other countries, but NordVPN admitted, that they will send the information they have on you to the government, if they ask them for it.
@@Jaysin412you can actually verify it if you know what you're doing, and people have done so. Case in point, Nord actually had a breach several years back (before they finished moving to 100% owned servers) and there was basically no data released
Mullvad vpn was recently raided by the Swiss police and they were left empty handed they didn’t have anything at all for them to even search, I don’t truly understand but Muddahar at SomeOrdinaryGamers posted a video about it a couple of weeks ago
This all started with a sense of humour, a catapult and a sick poor villager in the Middle Ages. We’ve been throwing infectious sick people over castle walls for hundreds, possibly thousands of years.
Multiple thousands of years is correct. 🙃
Actually it started with Myass
We've....being the key word. Omly us...., the west, are willing to commit such atrocities. Proven time and time again. We're like a disease...
Where I come from, it's sport...
We call it Lob The Pukey Peasant.
I'm from England, we are weird.
The visuals 😅 imagine having to front up for your civic duty as catapult fodder when you're down with a fever and flu.
We humans may know the steps to infect our enemies, or our spouse at home, yet there was a collective tantrum about disease spread prevention methods in the latest pandemic.
Real question here. If there was a country or organization that had the technology to make this happen, what makes you think they'd let anyone know? We're constantly finding out that the military and such have been doing things decades before we even knew they were possible.
Are you not familiar with the ex soviet head scientist of bio weapons who defected to the west after he found out the USA had actually stopped making the stuff? He confirmed thousands of metric tons of anthrax, small pox, and marburg for certain had been produced under his watch. You think they really found and destroyed all of those weapons?
This doesn't always happen, but thanks to the internet, whistleblowers have the potential to reach more people.
Downside: most of them will potentially be taken as conspiracy theorists. Sometimes though, what humans do is more horrifying than the crazy shit they imagine.
What do you think Covid was? It causes genetic mutations in some people, once you’ve “recovered” things could still be taking place. ✋🏼 long hauler.
It says there are three comments but I don't see any of them. What's going on?
@@zachaliles Bots, TH-cam is hiding them automatically, but not fully deleting them.
Also well. C-19 most likely came from a lab leak, (no coincidence it originated right next to a lab of virology doing Gain of Function research). Interpret that however you wish.
2:50 - Chapter 1 - The history of biowarfare
5:35 - Chapter 2 - DIT Gene editing
7:55 - Chapter 3 - Designer genes
9:45 - Chapter 4 - Binary biological warfare
11:05 - Chapter 5 - Stealth viruses
12:00 - Chapter 6 - Host swapping diseases
12:55 - Chapter 7 - Gene therapy
14:00 - Chapter 8 - Designer diseases
16:15 - Chapter 9 - What stands between us & a genetically modified war ?
thanks.. Ignition [FR] n2?
Uhm, Simon? You conveniently forgot something crucial. Viruses and bacteria tend to mutate rapidly and uncontrollably. This means that a bioengineered disease could easily lose its efficacy, or even wildly backfire. Lovely fearmongering you're sporting there. Don't do it again.
2:49 - Chapter 1 - The history of biowarfare.
Thank you
As someone with a Biochemistry BSc and some interest in this topic and gaming, the most terrifying scenario i can come up is the scenario of how Days Gone's pandemic started. In the game, a researcher breaks into a lab, unknowingly infecting himself, and passing the virus to others during a convention. The virus was insanely infectious and could be transmitted through basically everything.. Air droplets, fomites, sexual contact, saliva... In the game, it's said that the virus quickly spread through the world because of returning convention participants using airports. Well, a bioterrorist could simply infect himself (in a suicide-bomber kind of thing), and just stroll into a busy international airport. In there, he could simply act in a way to maximize contagion. Cough on people. Touch everything. Use the toilets. Take a taxi and infect the driver. A virus with a large asymptomatic, but infectuous period would be optimal. By then, high lethality and severity could kick in, easily overwhelming hospitals.
Massively underrated game, yeah essentially viral gene therapy is what made the freakers
@@ProbablyNotLegit Yeah. My personal headcanon is that what Cloverdale wanted is what is seen in the true ending, but it ended up badly because the virus was incomplete.
For me, THE «zombie» that is most likely/realistic. And the game itself was awesome on top. Loved the sciency bits about the Freakers sprinkled with the Nero storyline
It's strange this has not been attempted yet, i'd see this in a movie
I’ve long said that nuclear and chemical weapons are far less scary that bio weapons, as unless they are used on a large scale, the death tolls will be fairly limited, but one minor lab leak at a bio lab could cause massive worldwide deaths
Well nuclear and some chemical too even on a small scale if you extrapolate the timeline out long enough
Or its deliberate release aka the con virus that the elites used as a social engineering tool enough said
Especially when 'cured' with everything other than the actual curative treatment
@@creativeideas012 what gender is your mother
We've already experienced that in recent years
An individually targeted bioweapon would be a bad idea, as the virus spread "harmlessly" though the population in search of its host there's a fair chance it could mutate on route.
Yeah, even in fiction that has been a plot point (FoxDie from Metal Gear Solid)
@@tinaherr3856 you mean plot twist?
@@nuovoaccount998 I mean, technically it is both.
One of the most interesting books I've ever read about a disease originally created for biowarfare is called "Bitten" by Kris Newby. Absolutely fantastic and well-researched. Even congress is using this research to help create more effective laws about tick-borne diseases
I'm going to look it up! Thanks 👍🏿
Thank you for the reference, just purchased 😊
Yea I hate this book. She makes half baked theories and searches for evidence to fit them.
UW Madison along with U Minnesota have already created 4 New Tick disease's and Deliberately put These Diseased Tick's around Wisconsin and northern Minnesota !! 😠😡
Wasn't that Nice of Those Stupid Fukn PiecesOfSh!t to use Us as an Experiment Platform 😡🤬
@@partlycloudy7707Could you explain further or link a source debunking these claims?
Story time with Simon is always so much fun! "Today I found out" there are more horrible things than full nuclear war.......
I'm not sure that an immune response will ever stop radiation sickness or a few thousand degrees of temperature deviation, especially with the scale of a "nuclear war." The reality is that borders can be shut and isolation enforced, something akin to what happens in the film Outbreak.
Nuclear warheads are a bit harder to stop from throwing inordinate amounts of heat and radioactive fallout everywhere. I think it would be very, very difficult, if not impossible, for any human or group of humans to realistically conceive a more destructive event than 2 nuclear powers going hot, at least currently. I would venture that blowing up the moon, with nuclear weapons, is the closest, and I am fairly certain that there simply isn't even remotely enough material to make this implementable. Even if it were, it's still nuclear war, but with the added bonus of destroying ALL life on earth, guaranteed, as tidal forces would scour the planet of life. Every remotely conceivable event that would outstrip an exchange of nuclear weapons would still involve the large scale use of those very same weapons, and would be even more effective in making mutually assured destruction the eventuality, with a greater likelihood of making the planet uninhabitable relatively quickly.
Life has survived viruses for as long as they have been around. Extremely virulent pathogens burn themselves out too quickly to spread effectively, and if (hell even in spite of) it ISN'T that lethal, evolutionary biology WILL overcome it. Immune responses to viruses and the like are a perpetual arms race. If it weren't, we wouldn't exist.
Uhm, Simon? You conveniently forgot something crucial. Viruses and bacteria tend to mutate rapidly and uncontrollably. This means that a bioengineered disease could easily lose its efficacy, or even wildly backfire. Lovely fearmongering you're sporting there. Don't do it again.
Not really
You can cure a disease you can't get a jab to stop being melted
Try to play plauge Inc and defcon.
@9:20 I just find it almost unbelievable that people/humans are really that devious and can be that desperate to kill someone they'd create an incurable virus/disease without considering the risk/possibility that it can eventually become indiscriminate.
Dude …really…. I mean how old are you???? Do we live on the same planet or your joking and i just feed right into it ???? Right
@@jayjay-gl4fj Boy, you really took that word "unbelievable" quite literally, seriously, and perhaps even personally, didn't you?
Need I remind you about the Cold War? The current political climate? Nukes? MAD? Russia trying to make a bioweapon from anthrax? Etc
@@k31thanyou did say it, as if you were super shocked.
@@simplylethul 🤭 I sounded super shocked? Compared to my comment, am curious as to what you think about how he sounded in his reply. 😅
I'm more and more convinced that we are our own Great Filter. We can't help ourselves. Our natural curiosity, crossed with those who wish to do harm, seems to make it inevitable we will do ourselves in at some point in the not too distant.
Luckily, there is one minor issue that biological warfare might have and it’s that it’s effectively uncontrollable. It’s still incredibly difficult to actually make something more dangerous than it gets by evolving, if something is too deadly then it can’t actually spread because it kills everyone first, and most importantly, especially with viruses which are the types of pathogens that actually can spread fast enough to be an effective weapon: they mutate a lot. It’s even if you design them one way they won’t stay that way
So something like 270+ Corona Virus Bat Variations?
@@blackzero786 Yeah, something a little bit like that, and that is lower than most viruses. Coronaviruses are an uncommon type that actually have some form of correction capability to counteract them being so large for viruses and thus having much longer DNA (or RNA, I forget if coronaviruses are DNA or RNA viruses, im no immunologist myself). We were actually caught somewhat surprised by the rate of variation by COVID-19, but if there’s one thing you can count on in nature, it’s that you can count on nothing for certain
I'm not sure where he got the idea that using explosives would kill a meaningful amount of the biological material. The USSR/Russia, the US, France and the UK have all developed many kinds of low-explosive ordnance for effective delivery of biological agents. The Army found that filling a light bulb with an innocuous bacteria and dropping it onto the tracks of the NY Subway made for a very effective distribution throughout all of NYC.
Planes were developed, as well, that would just mist the weapons like a cropduster. It's very similar to the mechanism attached to helicopters during the Vietnam War to spray Agent Orange.
@@nochannel1q2321 did you mean to respond to a different comment? I’m not sure where I mentioned explosives or talked about distribution of biological agents
@@lazydroidproductions1087 I responded to your OP as it was closely related to the video content.
Simon: “don’t write down your crimes”
Also Simin: “here’s how you can assassinate someone without any trace back to you”
I saw you’d uploaded, read the title and said aloud “Ah perfect”
At this point Simon you’re practically my baby’s dad as he recognises your voice, I discovered your channels last year when I was pregnant and now when I put your videos on my 4 month old gets excited 😂 don’t worry he doesn’t look at the screen, just listens to the soothing voice 😂
Now Simon will be inspired to start a children’s channel.
@@fredblonder7850 Why bother, when horrifying tales about weapons of mass destruction seem to do the trick just fine? 😆
Until his first words are genocide or anthrax 🤣
@@briandstephmoore4910hah. That made me chuckle.
Today I Found Out how to father children with women I've never met!
Never thought Simon could top the last video on doomsday scenario, but here it is!
Uhm, Simon? You conveniently forgot something crucial. Viruses and bacteria tend to mutate rapidly and uncontrollably. This means that a bioengineered disease could easily lose its efficacy, or even wildly backfire. Lovely fearmongering you're sporting there. Don't do it again.
How about a video on nuclear "contingencies" e.g. the UK's letters of last resort, Russia's Perimetr (aka "dead hand"), etc. The doomsday systems nations with nuclear arsenals have developed to ensure the nukes will still get launched even if the command structure to authorize them is already destroyed. (in the UK's case the sub commanders are pre authorized to launch if England goes quiet)
Perimeter *
I would watch a contingency’s video!!!
Thank you for all the videos Simon
That’s wild af who said England was allowed to do that we need to have a chat the nukes these days aren’t real none of them we can’t have people shooting real nukes around how would we get the free labor from the poor there’s so many of them
lucky for us that in order for specifically viruses to work they have to not only attach at a receptor site, but also be accepted by a cell! it would be very hard to find a receptor that only one particular ethnic group uniformly has while also having no other defense mechanisms. especially on the level of cell chemistry, we’re way more alike than we are different ❤
What if certain cultures / races / political groups etc were less inclined to choose to be vaccinated? Maybe you could influence an enemy population to be anti vax by a persistent disinfo campaign over few decades?
@@keelo-byte Yes, but what if that results in just making the target nation or population a more hardened enemy?
By removing the gullible useful idiots from the populace?
Close, but no cigar... MOST viruses require a receptor site and MOST enter the cell via endocytosis or similar actions... NOT ALL. The great thing about playing with viruses, is that they basically act as nano syringes, and if you choose the right one for the job, and you know what you're doing, you can load just about anything into them, most commonly genetic material. Usually, when playing with viruses, you can use the surface proteins(receptors) to your advantage to target certain cells. The cells you target can be broad or narrow, depending on what you want to do. But this is where the magic comes in. You can infect every living creature on earth with your creation, but if you did it correctly, only those with the genotype or other trait that you're targeting will be affected, all of the others just carry it and pass it along silently. We did experiments with these concepts in my biochem program. 2 strains of E-coli, 1 virus, make and insert an RNA strand, into the virus, that codes for the death of 1 strain but not the other... This can be used for good or evil or neutral purposes, just like a hammer...
@@joearledge Eukaryotes without a cell wall (non-plants) tend to use endocytosis, so viruses exploit the receptors that can initiate this.
It is an easy in. Like using a stolen keycard.
Prokaryotes and plants don’t use endocytosis, and are usually packing armor.
So their Viruses and phages have to "drill the lock".
@@NullHand lol yep, you nailed it!
I love how creative humans get when it comes to destruction 👍. Innovation is an understatement.
If you were a doctor your name would sound like a bond villain.. Dr Whistler
Or, jokily, a Bond ally. Just imagine the fun Bond would have if he had to join forces with "Dr Whistler" - the one-liners would almost write themselves!
Addituonally, the Soviet Union signing the bioweapons convention did not stop it from having a bioweapobs program, Biopreparat.
Same with America as always
Please don’t stop making videos. They are literally the only thing I have to live for right now.
Don’t forget about grilled cheese, they’re also worth living for.
Dude. There's much more to life than Simon.
@@sw9881not if u make them
@@sw9881grilled cheese with maple syrup and bacon. And a poutine on the side. You cant go worng with that combo
Get a dog or a cat i did and it giving me more to look forward and live for also i started a food Forest witch also hive be something to look forward to and build 😀🙂😄
Theres a whole episode of Fringe based exactly on the designer bioweapons spoken about.
I bet many a civilization, not only on this planet, walked this same very path, and now it's not even a distan memory in a cryptic epic poem.
*laughs in Fermi paradox*
Yep this is the stage. The nuclear age depended on an entire country deciding to end the world this will take only a few nutjobs with basic science no how to end humanity.
And all the ones on this planet in the past….
But no matter what happens to us our Golden disk on Voyager will go on into interstellar maybe even intergalactic space further than we could ever go for hundreds of billions of years if it’s lucky
God imagine if one of these got out and started a world wide pandemic.
2037
Like Covid 19
@@cclayton70that’d be a pretty crappy bio weapon considering that it only killed like one-half of one percent of the people it infected
@@gregbors8364 the real killer is still on the loose ,slowly day by day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@@debbiep.allison263 What? 🤷♂️
Bats are reserviors for many, many diseases. That's why their systems are being studied to see if they can help humans also be less likely to die from certain diseases.
Another terrifying video to lose sleep over! Thank you, Simon!
Uhm, Simon? You conveniently forgot something crucial. Viruses and bacteria tend to mutate rapidly and uncontrollably. This means that a bioengineered disease could easily lose its efficacy, or even wildly backfire. Lovely fearmongering you're sporting there. Don't do it again.
The fact that humans go this far to harm each other says enough about us as species.
Unfortunately anything that can be done, is done somewhere on this planet, regardlessly how dangerous it might be. 😟
And nobody wanted anyfuckingbody to do any of it!!!!!
Truly, the human mind is the strongest tool, and the deadliest weapon, that we possess. When brought to bear, there is no power, nor law of man, that can stop it.
No it’s done in China regardless of how dangerous it might be
@@Lauren_Cno a bioweapon is
@@nothanks9503 so you haven't come across the months old news of a you-ess university lab developing the strongest strain yet?! Try searching on utube you might be able to find it
Tom Clancy's The Division games is a good fictional source of how an EPPP can turn our society upside down quickly
And Rainbow six 1 and the novel that was based off.
the terrifying presence of accidental lab leaks 👀
Yes, Accidental🤫
@@new_age_citizen yes, accidental. even if one decided for some strange reason to release a highly infectious not very deadly disease, rather than one that is very deadly but not very infectious so it can be used in a targeted way and not spread globally, you wouldn't do it in a giant city at the center of your own country, within walking distance of your country's main virology lab known for studying that group of viruses.
Accident is not real…. Things happen when things happen for a lot of different reasons but they just don’t happen
And if it were intentional, they would probably want to make it seem accidental.
@@markzuckergecko621 no, they would want to make it seem natural, by releasing it within the natural range of such viruses, which they didn't.
Lets ask ChatGPT to tell use the base sequence for airborne rabies :D
Blackrock already did it. Catch up with the news
😂
Zomboid IRL? In project zomboid there is the airborne straine that kills and turns most of the people around and you play as the few that are immune to it, or with the susceptible mod you can play as the not so lucky folk wearing a mask constantly and worrying about any form of CQC
man airbone rabies would be devastating
When we were children, we were afraid of the monster under the bed.
Now that we are older, we know that we are those monsters.
r/im14andthisisdeep
@pmchad4828 thanks, I'm here all week.
Humanity it's only living being that works to destroy itself
I think it may be a common theme in life across the universe; when you have the power of knowledge of the fundamentals of life there will always be one to spoil the party.
@@beeftec5862 I totally agree with you and it's sad that's a reality
No, not really. A lot of animal populations do the same thing. Simon even did an episode about how rats and mice were given an absolute utopia only for them to destroy each other for no freaking reason... then they all died.
There are lots of ways to think about that…every thing that lives has to eat something that lives to stay alive….
@@jayjay-gl4fjbut the human doesn't kill another human to eat..
Well, between this, AI & mind reading tech, the future sounds virtually inhospitable for any groups of humans who don't like or trust one another.
ai is not scary at all, mind reading tech? when??
Anyone else wish the Syphon Filter franchise was still going? ☣ 🎮
Captain Trips... coming to a less than secure bio-weapons lab near you!
Loved that book
The first 80% was great, but in true king style he botched the ending. Literally dues ex machina.
Can you do an episode on the Orphanages in Romania during the communist era?
Please no.
Your part on genetically targeted bioweapons targeting a specific person or persons is a sub plot from the Metal Gear Solid series and the FoxDie virus implanted in Solid Snake to kill various people like the Darpa Chief, and some bad guys like Revolver Ocelot and Liquid Snake among others.
I can't believe I had to scroll this far to find a Foxdie reference.
Great video Simon. Sad to see ultimately what is possible against other nations. Humanity's downfall could well be self destruction through technological progression
Since we dropped the nuclear bombs on Japan, its been more self destruction through technological advancement, than it has anything else. That's why we have the doomsday clock, it's not for meteor impacts, or climate change, but when are we going to kill our own species?
Oh it most definitely is because no matter how much we technologically progress evolution wise we're still the same stupid monkeys making the same stupid mistakes and being super self-destructive like every other animal species on the planet.
I was at McDonald's the other day and they couldn't take my order because the computers were down. I told them that cheeseburgers and fries predate the internet by quite some time, the girl at the counter was baffled, she had no idea what I was talking about🤣
@@markzuckergecko621Imagine today's employees taking orders and pay with pen and paper 😂
It will Be !
And the cause need not be malevolence.
A common soil bacteria might be modified to break down cellulose for the production of biofuels, which would be a handy use for all of the high cellulose plant waste we produce every year - but if leaked into the wild might attack all plant material.
Humans are amazing. A cosmic horror waiting to be unleashed.
The cosmos will contain us me thinks but nicely put a cosmic horror waiting to be unleashed nice indeed
Thats why we dont visit the moon anymore. The intergalactic federation keeps us contained 😅
Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park) has an excellent book on this exact subject! Highly recommended!
Robert Heinlein wrote about targeted diseases in one of his stories back in the 1940s or 50s.
This whole topic is just like a mix between Resident Evil and Metal Gear all over it.
I was looking for a comment like this lol
I was gonna post, “FoxDie” anyone?
Future? I think that ship had sailed about 3 years ago.
There is a rgeory, amonst astrophysisists, of a 'great filter' (whic is one of the reasons why we haven't been able to see signs of civilisations across the galaxies); this is that developing civilisations encounter a particular barrier which prevents development into a space-faring race (or wipes them out before they reach that stage).. When you watch this video, and most others of this nature, you get the horrifying impression that we are hurtling rowards this point ourselves
Unfortunately, this will happen. Bye, bye mankind. Or, maybe, that is the best thing to happen to planet earth. Give all the other millions of species a chance to live, unmolested by humans.
I bet you're fun at parties.
@@markzuckergecko621Hah! I know, right?
It’s gonna be the best thing ever, I can not wait
Think about this scenario. An actor releases a pretty much non-fatal but very fast spreading disease (5th disease is a favourite for this) that has no vaccine or antibiotic. But being mostly non-fatal, now you have a group of very annoyed (and rather unwell people) who are now against those who failed to protect them. So, rather than killing, wouldn't an aggressor be better to be "illing"?
You have no idea how much I want to see a fully realistic (with ALL completely real analogues, including the bodies) recreation of the siege tactics where they would launch the dead/decaying corpses via siege machines (catapults and trebuchets) into a castle. I don't know why, but just the absurd, grotesque nature of it feels absolutely hilarious to me. I know that it wasn't intended that way, but you know for a fact that the dudes launching decaying corpses over castle walls would be laughing and saying "take THIS you sons of whores!"
Bulletin of the atomic scientists thinks this is a myth.
So basically if we're not careful we might actually see a real life Zombie Apocalypse.
What do you mean the Future of Warfare. Least we forget a two year lockdown.
The really scary part is that anyone who raised the possibility that the disease was engineered in a lab would be shamed as a conspiracy nut, fined or in the cause of Australia, sent to an internment camp.
Are you comparing the freaking corona to a bio weapon?
@@SCP-173peanutAre you going to shame him if he is?
@@thomasnunya1438 no? I believe everyone should have an opinion im just disagreeing with him
@@thomasnunya1438 yes and we all should shame people who spread such ridiculous lies. The lab creation theory of Covid was literally debunked weeks into the pandemic. Its a simple mutation of the original SARS virus. Mutation always was a thing and unfortunately always will be a thing. No one is to blame for it.
The lab creation theory of Covid was debunked weeks into the pandemic. Sars-Cov-2 is a natural mutation of the original SARS virus. Natural mutation just happens unfortunately. No one is to blame for that because its unstoppable. What the governments did against it was the only way to slow down the spread. Lockdowns etc are very much legal in such cases where literally everyone is in danger. There was no other way to react to it.
I'll definitely sleep better tonight... thanks Simon!
I remember speaking to a bioweapons microbiologist in Moscow years ago. He told me the USSR managed to weaponise Tuluraemia, a waterborne organism, but still used against the Taliban. It killed all their donkeys and mules, and they now rely on motorbikes to carry weapons.
Weren't their men being transported in large lorries as streamed on news channels?!
A bio-weapon microbiologist?
Simon, were they drilling again while you recorded this? Either that, or I'm hearing things.
Also, thanks for the nightmare fuel. Holy crap!
So I’m not the only one who heard that lol
@@benjaminchute1602 I think they are looking for a safe, but haven't been able to find it. Yet.
Can I be generally modified to leave this world?
I love you❤
Hurry and fix generally to genetically before the grammar police show up
I mean I suppose, but you'd leave earth the same way that all of us do eventually.
Have you read The Cobra Event by Richard Preston? Written in 1988, based on true technological possibilities though he deliberately altered some details so as to not give out a recipe for destruction (paraphrased from his Author's Note). Scary stuff. Yeh, I love science, though this sort of thing makes me glad it's not my first love.
You mean like cough cough
Holy shit, there are at least 10 sci-fi book plots in this video
Cure The Genophage, Let The Krogans Live
I was searching for this comment lmao
I’ve been terrified of this stuff since reading Demon in the Freezer in the early 2000s😳
Excellent book. The guy who defected near the end of the Cold War who ran Biopreparat wrote his own book about his work inside the program. I forget the name of author of Demon in the Freezer, but they have done a couple of fiction books that are pretty good too.
@@nochannel1q2321 Richard Preston was the author, he also wrote The Hot Zone, which was also a great book(on Ebola)…I believe it is Ken Alibek that was the Soviet defector. Lol yeah knowing about the biopreperat from the early-mid 00’s was pretty scary…Also as soon as Covid hit, was kind of thinking “who tf is editing viruses and letting them leak?!”
@@nochannel1q2321 Blackpox was also nightmare fuel😰
Genetically modified disease - kind of like Covid 😂
Just not at all. Sars-Cov-2 is a simple natural mutation of the original SARS virus. The lab theory was debunked weeks into the pandemic.
The first rule of Bio weapons is have a cure before you deploy it.
We've all seen the movies, it doesn't end well.
Absolutely correct my friend, so so true! Too obvious isn’t it lol
unless you have a cure
as a Indigenous person, I don’t know why, but this fucking scares me. My government literally want my people gone and they probably wouldn’t think twice about doing this.
at least you have the internet and youtube
The E. Coli Kit made me spit my drink out.... that is so insane given e coli has such issues with resistance already. I cannot believe out of everything they could have done to teach people how to irresponsibly play around with genetics they chose "lets contribute to bringing about a doomsday situation just a bit faster shall we" kits.
Love how Simon and other creators casually promotes internet piracy using VPNs lol
Well, isn't that about a Beatrice.
If the US followed international law everyone involved in gain of function research, bioweapons research, would be executed. It would set a very good precident.
We haven't been the good guys for a while though.
We stopped being the good guys after like world war II, maybe even world war l. Considering how world war II was in part started by us blaming Germany for everything the first time around so they became even worse. Now anytime the US invades a country for democracy or anything.. they botch it worse than celebrity plastic surgery.
We signed the Bio Chemical Weapons Convention in the seventies and immediately stopped chemical weapons product and we're still not even close to having gotten rid of our chemical stockpile. USAMRIID (Army CDC basically) actively manipulates and develops biological weapons. They claim it's done solely to develop more sophisticated vaccines and antibiotics, but the fact remains that the only thing that differentiates that from an active biological weapons program is the quantity of material crated.
I remember reading a terribly written book that described Iran beginning a biological attack on the US by sending about a dozen people, each with a device that looked like a can of shaving cream, to cities with massive conventions. They then activated the devices after finding places where they wouldn't be found and after a five or ten minute delay for the person to get clear the biological weapon was misted into the convention area. During the cleanup of the convention the empty shaving cream can would be discarded by cleaners and all of the people exposed would be moving around inside the country and their home countries and infecting many other people. That's fairly realistic and would require the biological material, ball mills to render the powder into a fine enough form to allow it to enter the deepest part of the lungs, then some clever packaging and basically a squirt top, a reservoir of material and a compressed gas canister at the bottom to propel the weapon into the air.
Scarily realistic.
Fauci funded gain of function research in a certain city in C h i n a where a C…. virus spread out into the world.
Hi Simon! When will the websites be updated so we can read the articles again?
Covid comments incoming:
Years of following and enjoying Simon's content and I am finally hearing the nearby construction clearly 😅😅
The problem with biological weapons are the unforseen mutations that can cause them to backfire. For that reason militaries and even terrorist organisations don't really think about using them.
for now yes. But if they can figure out a way to somehow target a specific people, or make their own people immune it could be devastating. I'm not smart enough to know if this is science fiction or something that actually may be possible one day, but nothing really surprises me anymore.
@@memyself898 Maybe they figured it out how to make certain modifications to pathogens, but there is a huge risk for such microorganisms to mutate and attack unintended targets. Living organisms are not a joke. It's enough to think about all the invasive species that where introduced to certain habitats,some accidentaly, some with the intention of combating pests. Or in the case of flue virus that constantly mutates and new vaccines must be prepared every year.
That's not really true, only RNA virusses are notoriously unstable mutation wise, however DNA virusses (such as smallpox) and bacteria are fairly stable. Your last sentence is definitely incorrect, militaries don't think about using them because they're banned internationally and they could suffer serious consequences even for researching them, let alone stockpiling or even worse actually using them. And terrorists definitely do think about using them, we've just been lucky thus far that none of them had the intelligence, funding, materials, etc needed for producing them. For example, Aum Shinrikyo mentioned in this video tried to release bacillus anthracis but failed to achieve any effects not because of the weather as Simon incorrectly stated, but because they had used the vaccine strain acquired from a veterinarian, as it was the only strain that was somewhat easy to get. And mind you Aum Shinrikyo had vast resources of up to €100 million and was comprised of many hundreds or even thousands of highly educated members, after all they succesfully managed to produce sarin nerve agent in the end. Both Al-Qaida and IS tried to acquire and unleash bioweapons too but thankfully have been too dumb to develop them.
But you could spread existing diseases e.g. measles to first nations people or bubonic plague from a rural area within a country to a city in the same country. We already use denial of treatment as a weapon e.g. Israel targeting COVID vaccination centers in Palestine, the US targeting a pharmaceutical company in Sudan or disallowing charities from delivering polio vaccine in Afghanistan
@@commentas3684 That's not really what the video was about, but yes, it's definately something that it's used to make target populations lives more miserable. Denying treatment and prevention can be just as bad as spreading deseases.
Why is this magnificent man, not on National Geographic or some other TV Channel?! .. you are brilliant Simon, simply BRILLIANT!
He's too chill, kicking back in a chair, it would make the bigwigs burst a blood vessel
@@forestspirit-ql4nv But that is what makes him so good.. he captivates people with his calmness and knowledge!
@@MistaLiir 100% but based on the track record of these shows they'll try and make him into something he's not because they think they know best
@@forestspirit-ql4nv Yeah, i see your point.. maybe this is for the better.. i mean, TH-cam.. not changing him..
We learned this in 2020...
A question for the people that understand genes and stuff: with this “designer genes” thing, is it possible, at least in theory, to modify human genes to give them “super powers” like the tomato antifreeze gene mentioned in the video or a “super human” resistance to diseases or something like that? (Obviously not talking about flying or laser beams).
Yes. Read up what has been modified in animal genes so far, same kind of things are possible (not just in theory) in humans
Yes it is possible, but science generally considers it to be unethical.
...whatever that means 🤣
Every day passes we are coming closer and closer to a zombie apocalypse 😏
But which type it will be:night of the living dead slow moving zombies,wwz zombies that can RUN like psychopaths and CLIMB one another,CoD zombies that can use guns and reload?
Best case scenario we get the mushroom people from the last of us.
Crazy zombies that can run and not feel pain, but could still be killed like a regular human.
@@naheleshiriki5496 at least those cant see you but can hear you
@@new_age_citizen if you had good aim you can snipe those bastards IF they are not in swarms
Hello Simon tomorrow I'm going America 😊I will stay one month after coming backto London until middle of october 😊
Sadly I can totally see this becoming a reality in the near future :(. Stay safe everyone.
Maybe we’ll get lucky and the nano machines will kill us first.
It already has, COVID 19
@@TlD-dg6ug I mean something more detrimental.
Bro thinks telling people on TH-cam to stay safe will keep 80iq Europeans from licking windows
@@user-vq9tq1wm3j it’s the thought that counts right :D
Recording this episode when you sound a little sick... You really go above and beyond
Here's to hoping this happens sooner rather than later so the rest of the planet can try to survive climate change
True, true….. ya its a different way of looking at it…. Hope i don’t get sick tho …..butt iv been pretty healthy so fuck it bring it on 🙂
Good lord you people are depressing. It's amazing how easy it is to manipulate stupid people into hating themselves.
Climate change has happened before, its nothing new to the planet, we're just accelerating the date.
Well unfortunately we might have tipped the scales far enough that the albedo (basically the proportion of light and heat that’s reflected instead of absorbed) of the Earth is low enough that even if humans all disappeared climate change would carry on anyway. Not to mention the whole trapped methane thing. The Earth is pretty good at fixing itself but it takes a while and would probably get worse before it gets better.
15:22 this example was in the Blacklist, already years ago.
Imagine if a drug compnay bio-enginered a weapon,discovered the cure,then released it on the worlds population.
You' basically have the entire species hostage
That is how they make vaccines. Take the germ, weaponize it, take it apart, see how it works and make a vaccine against it.
That is what happened jk lol
@@nothanks9503 LMAO if COVID was their secret weapon they didn't think it out enough.
Thing was basically a bad flu/Pneumonia
Or the plot to Mission Impossible 2...
@@myrlyn1250 Never watched it.
Great video simon, question any new biograhic video coming out?
Airborne rabies 😮
No, hemorrhagic fevers.
3:57 isn’t virus “DNA” technically RNA?
This is the main plot point of Dan Brown's book, "Inferno". [Spoiler alert] I thought it was an excellent solution to Earth's human overpopulation problem (as long as it remains completely random, that is... I'd never advocate for targeted sterilization of any specific group as all humans generally suck equally, so isolating a certain population is a ridiculous concept to me). Although if we fixed the broken education system in the US and other countries (which would also decrease the rates of poverty, religiously, and ignorance--all of which perpetuates high birth rates), there would be no need for a biological weapon like the one proposed in the book (although the fancy super cootie would be much faster). I have no doubt we'll find a clever and abhorrent biological method of mass destruction that will result in our ultimate demise. It's just a matter of time and hubris. The best and worst of humanity can often be found smeared inside of a petri dish.
The problem is not to many people in the world …humans are awesome there is nothing we can’t figure out ….the problem is stupid fucking people that think they are smart…..just because you can do something don’t mean you go ahead and do it
"The Cobra Event" by Richard Preston sounds quite similar to this, too. That was back in the 1990s, I think. Biowarfare has been a concern for decades. It's just the hypothesized methods that change. Yes, we're developing new tech all the time. But with new tech comes new roadblocks, too. I'll start worrying about it when verified evidence of its use is presented. I agree that fixing our education system would be a positive move. Especially to counter the impact of rampant religiosity and its hyper-fearmongering. Watching this video didn't necessarily horrify me. Watching "Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets" did.
@@astreaward6651 Holy crap, me too. In Shiny Happy People when they were talking about the IBLP pushing their "curriculum" into prisons and law enforcement training, my blood ran cold. Neo-fascist Christian Nationalism disguised as soft-spoken saccharine moral majority advocates popping out spawn every year for a decade? You can most certainly miss me with that shit.
We've been killing each other with bioweapons since some caveman poked a poison dart frog with a stick and accidentally poked that same stick in his friend's eye. The caveman's homeboy didn't learn anything, but I bet our hypothetical primative amphibian assaulter did. Smallpox blankets, plague-infested corpses catapulted over castle walls, arrows tipped with snake venom, anthrax saboteurs sending contaminated mail in both world wars... it's nothing new.
That being said, naturally evolving super cooties do scare the bejeebus out of me. A man-made cutie would most likely be created in tandem with an antidote. To do otherwise would be a level of stupidity and pathological hubris I can't begin to fathom. But we don't know what kind of fresh hell has been frozen under Siberian permafrost for a millenia. As the ice melts, all those newly thawed microorganisms will be born into a world where nothing alive today would have ever experienced them--a myriad of helpless immune systems to infect and conquer. No fucking thank you. Mega-corporations better hurry up and start hugging trees because our planet will kill us way before we have time to invent something that'll kill us instead.
And don't forget about Rainbow 6 the novel
The insect thing was in the X-Files movie. Also a very targeted disease was in an episode of TNG.
All these people getting gas lit by 3D gun manufacturing when this is actively being done.
Stuff like this shows how much work and creativity people put into killing each other
The terrifying warfare of the FUTURE?
(Looks at 2020-22)
You have an interesting definition of the word "future"
South Africa had a BIO Weapon's program called Project Coast... this all sounds like an operation call "The Black Bomb".
thanks Fauci for funding (with taxpayer money) Chinese labs to do just this..
I thought it was "just the flu" ?
Great another thing to worry about😂😂😂
The Netflix series Black Mirror touched on this
Max (Sepultura) said it best and said it decades ago. “Biotech is godzilla.”
Genetically modifying diseases. Do you want Kellis-Amberlee? Because that's how you get Kellis-Amberlee.
It hurt itself in its confusion!
It's probably this, if anything, that finally kills us all.