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[Tack]

There's also the thing they could probably send a bioweapon back at you, depending on the length of the war, whether by weaponising it themselves or just smuggling sick people and samples into you own territory.
Now everyone can be sick.
What joy.

Reminds me of my old Rome: TW campaigns.
"One of your spies has caught the plague!"
'Give him a holiday! I'm thinking... Greece!'

[wierd]

Insects don't have an adaptative immune system. That's why fungi are so lethal against them. You don't find such pervasive infections in immunocompetent humans.

Not true. There are some rather nasty tropical fungal species that cause persistent, tenacious infections even in healthy humans.

www.dermnetnz.org/fungal/systemic-mycoses.html

That's just one of three classifications of fungal infection. There are others-- these ones just happen to spread all through the body, which makes them more interesting from the discussion's point of view.

Besides, the argument against "competent scientists" is a misleading one. At the current rate of price reduction and equipment refinement of biotechnology solutions, it is only a matter of time before you can make super ebola in your kitchen, much like you can hack a cellphone on your weekend.

When that happens, the doors are opened to religious crazies, and general purpose nutters of all types. These include people who have simply decided to become powerfully misanthropic, and who's objective is not to conquer the world, but to end it. Think less government takeover, and more Unibomber-- with biologicals instead of bombs.  Other contenders are religious extremists who believe their god will protect them in the ensuing plague, etc.

The real argument is that an engineered plague of this complexity would be unlikely to be made successfully on the very first try. It would likely require significant revisions and testing to properly tweak the biochemistry to be just right to cause the desired panopoly of symptoms.  If you consider the religious extremist angle, then they are going to be either sacrificing themselves religiously for the work, or abducting "heathen sinners" for experimentation. In the case of Unibomber type crazy, you have run of the mill serial killer behavior, with death by zombification being the MO.

Either case could create a zombie apocolypse, if the right motivating circumstances and enabling features are present, but the lack of a very tightly confined and properly isolated/sterilized work area means that the resulting pathogen will likely not be "perfect", and is likely to escape before being "finished." 

[Tack]

Isn't there a fungus or wart which turns people's skin to bark?
That's pretty gnarly. (Geddit?)

Edit: but yeah I can see ecoterrorism or a "nature strikes back" theme being the biggest players in the deathfungus game.
Sadly anything higher-order than fungus can't attach and grow fast enough to inconvenience living animals, so the strangler fig of doom is out.
I thought vampiric fungus would be interesting. Bloodmoss style.

The base idea I'm hunting for here is something which will topple and rehabilitate a city as quickly as possible. In case you want to replace it with arable farmland or something.
(For those who haven't played The Last Of Us- that fungus does work.
Parts of the city are full-on junglescape)

[Amperzand]

If the goal is to remove and replant a city as quickly as possible, I'd think a pretty good option would be to drop a few superheavy thermobaric bombs on it, then just flyover with planes full of water, seeds, and fertilizer for a couple days.

[wierd]

indeed. That's why I suggested the misanthropy angle. the goal is to persistently hazard humans, because of hatred of humanity/human society.

The other angle is "destroy corrupt society so god can come." religious angle, with "god will protect you!" as the bullwark against collateral damage. (in their minds anyway.)

The third is the enactment of a perverse fantasy from a mentally ill but otherwise brilliant mind. (serial killer angle.)

All three could produce the catastrophe, and all are dangerously real threats as the barrier to entry for the technology gets lowered.

[Parsely]

-then just flyover with planes full of water, seeds, and fertilizer for a couple days.

That's horribly inefficient. Agriculture will never be that easy.

[Amperzand]

Not agriculture so much as "put as many random plants into this area as possible, as quickly as possible".

Should probably be augmented with parachute-mounted saplings with their root-bulbs encased in damp compost, and any seeds dropped as paper bags filled with damp compost and a mixture of self-complementing seeds.

[wierd]

It's basically what happened to the canary islands.  Random transplanted plant and animal species, settling into a viable biosphere.

at least I think it was the canary islands anyway..... my brain, just not what it used to be. (probably fungus.)

[Parsely]

Not agriculture so much as "put as many random plants into this area as possible, as quickly as possible".

Should probably be augmented with parachute-mounted saplings with their root-bulbs encased in damp compost, and any seeds dropped as paper bags filled with damp compost and a mixture of self-complementing seeds.

Are there any studies on how quickly animals and bugs and whatsuch would repopulate this hypothetical built-up area? It's an interesting idea at least.

[Amperzand]

The best data I can think of would come from Mount Saint Helens in Oregon, and Chernobyl, which needs no introduction.

Mt St Helens being a good example of plants returning after devastation, and Chernobyl being a good example of plants taking over inhabited areas.

Given my proposed first step of thermobaric bombing, I think it would bear more resemblance to Mt St Helens than Chernobyl, since most buildings would presumably have been leveled by the blasts.

[Tack]

Wouldn't thermobaric bombing glass the ground?
I have no idea what a thermobaric bomb is but it sounds thermo.

[Parsely]

Wouldn't thermobaric bombing glass the ground?
I have no idea what a thermobaric bomb is but it sounds thermo.

A thermobaric bomb just makes a really hot explosion by setting the air on fire. It's not nearly hot enough to turn the ground to glass though. The damage that bombs can do to the earth should not be understated however.

[GiglameshDespair]

Not agriculture so much as "put as many random plants into this area as possible, as quickly as possible".

Should probably be augmented with parachute-mounted saplings with their root-bulbs encased in damp compost, and any seeds dropped as paper bags filled with damp compost and a mixture of self-complementing seeds.

Are there any studies on how quickly animals and bugs and whatsuch would repopulate this hypothetical built-up area? It's an interesting idea at least.

If you did go ahead with the seed bombing idea, perhaps you could put eggs for relevant insects in or on the compost? Likely soil samples would contain small eggs anyway.

Fish can be airdropped into lakes. For larger animals, you might drop cages with parachutes that open on the ground, or it might be a while before larger wildlife spreads to the centre of the zone. If you did airdrop animals, you might want to wait a while to introduce predators, so prey species have a peroid to establish themselves well.

Not saying it'd be a good idea, but I'm sure it could be done.

[Jimmy]

Believing a terrorism group would have the materials or ability to effect a genetic mutation required to culture and deliver fungal species as a weapon of mass destruction is based on a highly flawed false premise and displays a clear lack of understanding about microbiology.

I've already given previous examples of terrorist groups that attempted similar strategies. The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo tried to utilize botulinum toxin as an aerosol based bioterror weapon on at least 3 occasions between 1990 and 1995 and failed due to poor manufacturing process and failures with their aerosol delivery technique. Their group was far more successful in using sarin gas as a chemical agent in their notorious 1995 Tokyo subway attack.

Culturing a weapons grade fungal species isn't anywhere near the same as jailbreaking your phone over the weekend. The two are about as comparable as building a bicycle in your garage from a kit vs. constructing a fully working Model 3 Tesla. The materials and skill required to perform this simply don't exist outside of very small, specialized locations, utilizing the skills of teams of people who have years of specialized training within their field. The likelihood of a doomsday cult arising with the skills and materials to create a fungal bioweapon is about as likely (if not far less likely) as one that has the ability to create a nuclear weapon instead.

[ChairmanPoo]

Besides, a fungal bioweapon wouldn't work all that well in  most people.

If your hypothetical terrorist group is determined to wipe out diabetics it might kind of work, but there are probably easier ways to do that.