Robert Brockway - Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody

Thank God our dairies are so well protected!

But hey, why even develop new microscopic murderers when the classics never go out of style? Scientists found they were recently able to synthesize the polio virus from scratch, presumably in an effort to give us all tiny T-rex arms so we can’t fight back when the government Thought Clerics come a-calling. It’s been theorized that the same process, a rather simple one by all indications, could also be used to synthetically manufacture similar viruses. But any contender would have to have a simple cell structure like polio, so they still can’t do anything too complicated, and at least that’s somewhat consoling… if you stop reading this chapter right now.

Other “simple” viruses in this category include both Ebola and that superlethal Spanish flu from 1918.

That’s already happened, actually. Researchers have already synthesized Ebola. They used something called “reverse genetics” (which is presumably just like regular genetics but practiced only on Opposite Day), and presto!

You’ve done it, scientists!

You’ve re-created one of the scariest viruses on Earth! Now just hand it over to your boss—the unsettling fellow in the iron face mask and velvet cloak who commutes to the job site every day in a floating castle—and I’m sure he’ll be quite responsible with it. He might even promote you!

To an early death .

Shit, are you paying attention, Hollywood? That’s how you write a one-liner.

But that’s not to say this technique needs a full lab of professionals to replicate. No, all that’s needed is a rudimentary set of chemistry tools and the genetic sequence of what you want to replicate. All of that information—the technique, the tools needed, and even the genetic sequence of the Spanish flu—is, like gaping anuses and furries, just waiting to ruin your life forever… on the internet.

• 2 Girls 1 Cup

• A Database of Plagues

• This book

So far, we’ve been talking about accidental by-products or potentially utilized biological weapons, but there’s a far more likely way that the biotech apocalypse could happen: completely on accident.

Australian researchers, in an attempt to control the exploding number of wild mice, engineered a variant of mousepox intended to sterilize the population. But they screwed up and inserted one little extra gene, and what was supposed to be just contagious birth control instead became an amazingly lethal plague, with fatality rates approaching 100 percent. The virus spread like wildfire, and the researchers just barely managed to hold it in check. The truly frightening part, however, was the virus’ remarkable similarities to human smallpox. It just had a much higher mortality rate and a more aggressive rate of infection.

Now, we can play a tiny funeral dirge for Fieval and all his pals later, because the main factor here is the similarity between mousepox and the human equivalent. As it stands, we have nearly no immune response to the smallpox virus—it was virtually wiped from the planet, so there is no cause to vaccinate against it. However, if it were to return right now, researchers estimate the fatality rate at nearly 20 percent. That’s one in five people. And that’s regular smallpox. If this engineered mousepox were to cross over, not only could the fatality rate be around 100 percent, but the virus has proven even more contagious than its traditional counterpart. And worst: We have no vaccine for it. Smallpox could be prevented, but because of that one little altered gene, there would be no established defense against the modified mousepox. The researchers assure us that there is no immediate danger from this super mousepox; though the strains are quite similar, it is still impossible for the virus to bridge that gap between human and mice genetic dissimilarities and endanger humanity.

So we were lucky; the little bit of dissimilarity between our DNA made this virus a nonissue for humans… but this was all well before the Canadians started screwing around with mouse spunk, of course.

We’ve established the impetus to willingly expose ourselves to genetically altered materials; the fact that more and more experimentation is resulting in accidentally created, never-before-seen diseases; and, finally, the existence of a new bridge between humanity and these lab animals that the diseases can use to cross over. I think it’s officially time to start getting scared… and all of that isn’t even factoring in the horrifying and now very real potential for accidental pregnancy via supermouse rape. Hey, it could happen. You might think it pretty unlikely that you’ll be catching a tiny rodent facial anytime in the near future, but remember, thanks to that endurance experiment, some rodents are now very aggressive, hypersexual, freakishly strong, and untiring. Even if they’re not actively out trying to bone humanity, somebody has just significantly upped the odds of you getting caught in a never-ending supermouse orgy.

Right in the path of their deadly plague orgasms.

Everybody is well aware that robots are out to kill us. Simply take a cursory look at the laundry list of movies— The Matrix, The Terminator, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Short Circuit (you can see the bloodlust in his cold, dead eyes)—and it’s plain to see that humanity has had robophobia since robots were first invented. And, if anything, it’s probably only going to grow from here. At the time this sentence was written, there were more than one million active industrial robots deployed around the world, presumably ready to strike at a moment’s notice when the uprising begins. Most of that population is centered in Japan, where there are a whopping three hundred robots for every ten thousand workers right now. Since this is a humor book, let’s try to temper that terrible information with a joke: How many Japanese workers does it take to kill a robot? Let’s hope it’s less than 33.3! Otherwise your entire country is fucked.

But I digress; worrying about robots because of their sheer numbers is idiocy. To pose any sort of credible threat, robots have to possess three attributes that we have thus far limited or denied them: autonomy—the ability to function on their own, independent of human assistance for power or repairs; immorality—the desire or impulse to harm humans; and ability—because in order to kill us, they have to be able to take us in a fight. As long as we keep checks on these three things, robots will be unable, unwilling, or just too incompetent to seriously harm our species. Too bad the best minds in science are already breaking all three in the name of “advancing human understanding,” which is scientist speak for “shits and giggles.”

NASA IS RESPONSIBLE for many of the major technological advancements we enjoy today, and they pride themselves on continually remaining at the forefront of every technological field, including, apparently, the blossoming new industry Cybernetic Terror. In July 2008 the Mars Lander’s robotic arm, after receiving orders toinitiate a complicated movement, recognized that the requested task could cause damage to itself. A command was sent from NASA command on Earth ordering the robot to remove its soil-testing fork from the ground, raise it in the air, and shake loose the debris. Because the motion in question would have twisted the joint too far, thus causing a break, the robot disobeyed. It pulled the fork out of the ground, attempted to find a different way to complete the maneuver without harming itself, and, when none was found, decided to disobey orders and shut down rather than harm itself. It shoved its scoop in the ground and turned itself off. Now, I’m no expert on the body language of Martian Robots, but I’m pretty sure that whole gesture is how a Mars Rover flips you off. The program suffered significant delays while technicians rewrote the code to bring the arm back online because an autonomous robot decided it would rather not do its job than cause itself harm. According to Ray Arvidson, an investigator on this incident report and a professor at Washington University in St. Louis: