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[Rolan7]

On happy, I love being bundled up in a blanket all day.  An ambient 70 degrees has nothing on a near-freezing temperature with proper protection.  For one thing, every drink of water or beer is nearly ice-cold.

And the wind blew hard all last night, but not quite hard enough to knock out the power.  Times like this remind me why I moved to the mountains...

[Graknorke]

My friends and I are playing oldschool Runescape.
God this game is satisfying.

[scrdest]

On happy, I love being bundled up in a blanket all day.  An ambient 70 degrees has nothing on a near-freezing temperature with proper protection.  For one thing, every drink of water or beer is nearly ice-cold.

And the wind blew hard all last night, but not quite hard enough to knock out the power.  Times like this remind me why I moved to the mountains...

Oooh, I *love* cold outside + blanket too. And wind. Best served at night, so you can sleep comfortably knowing everything outside The Blanket Zone couldn't.

[Spehss _]

Darude - Sandstorm came on on a Twitch stream and twitchchat is just spamming dududududuudududududdududu.

Quality community.

[hops]

There is one major drawback to biological weapons. Yes, they spread autonomously, but the problem is, you've got to balance two things you want that are inversely related - infectivity and lethality.

The 'best', as far as weaponry is concerned, bioweapons are the least effective ones in terms of range once used - because carriers die before they can infect too many others. The most dangerous disease has long-ass latency, so it would lay low and infect a bit before killing, but even then, killing the host is just not evolutionarily beneficial to any biowarfare agent in the long run.

what about a disease that turn people into nukes?

[scrdest]

There is one major drawback to biological weapons. Yes, they spread autonomously, but the problem is, you've got to balance two things you want that are inversely related - infectivity and lethality.

The 'best', as far as weaponry is concerned, bioweapons are the least effective ones in terms of range once used - because carriers die before they can infect too many others. The most dangerous disease has long-ass latency, so it would lay low and infect a bit before killing, but even then, killing the host is just not evolutionarily beneficial to any biowarfare agent in the long run.

what about a disease that turn people into nukes?

JESUS, I SAID I'M WORKING ON IT, IT'S HARD, K?

[GiglameshDespair]

Umm I think those people are going to run short lives, there is quite a bit of radiation if they don't avoid the pockets, and I they're living where the above mold grows they will die in minutes

Most of the people living never left since the disaster, so they probably know where to avoid (typically equipment and materials buried in the cleanup.) People don't live in the sarcophagus, no. Remember that it's so dangerous there you can have guided tours through the exclusion zone.

Basically, avoid the hotspots and you're fine. Maybe it'll raise your cancer risk living there, but then again, so do a lot of things. Humans can be surprisingly resilient to radiation.

-true-

Oh, I agree, it could kill off humanity, or at least cripple it enough to dismount civilisation. But I was merely talking about the whole obliterate the surface aspect.

Probably should have made that clearer, but it was why I didn't mention the effects of radiation or fallout, etc.

Didn't Russia USSR have enough bioweapons at one point to kill the human population over several times, or were those different non-nuclear weapons?

Seems doubtful. I'd ask for a source, there.

[KingofstarrySkies]

hey guys

guys

you're welcome

[Tawa]

...I just got here and why are we talking about bioweapons in the happy thread?

[Orange Wizard]

Because Bay12.

[Sirus]

Because we're apparently not on enough watchlists as it is.

[Arcvasti]

...I just got here and why are we talking about bioweapons in the happy thread?

Bioweapons don't make you happy? What's wrong with you?

[GiglameshDespair]

Maybe we're happy we haven't all died to bioweapons?

Hard to run a fort with smallpox.

[Tack]

Alternatively, don't kill the host but make her (also him, but less important) infertile.

Because this:

The most dangerous disease has long-ass latency.

We'll assume that you're able to make a designer disease which can proliferate amongst hosts, render them infertile and have few other symptoms.
The biggest problem with that weapon is when it inevitably gets back to you.

We'll go with the most obvious, first- Say the enemy knows that you're the one who dropped this fuckoff bomb on them. First thing they're going to do is go to war with you. Now, it doesn't matter if you're invading them or they're invading you, either way their infected soliders are going to be 'interacting' with your infected soldiers. You'd be surprised how many diseases have managed to cross no-man's land in the past.

Secondly, bioweapons, like Neutron bombs, are designed to be 'discriminate killers'. That is- they kill a lot of humans and leave a lot of infrastructure behind- so that when you invade/colonize, you've got barracks for your men and crops for your farmers, all waiting to go.
First issue there- you're going to have a city full of people, who may not yet realize that they're sterile.
Which is fine, you don't have to take over that settlement, you can just wait out the generations and hope that this new disease doesn't cross to your country.
But just in case you managed to push them out/win the war, you've now got a country filled with sterile PoW's and civilians, who still might be infectious- again causing issues for your own country.


A standard bioweapon would be more useful in a terror attack, too.



... Yes I have thought way too much about this.

A Chinese Officer here once on exchange produced the standard line about how the Chinese could lose 500 million people in a nuclear war and keep going with the survivors. So his hosts got out a demographic map (one that shows population densities rather than topographical data) and got to work with pie-cutters using a few classified tricks - and got virtually the entire population of China using only a small proportion of the US arsenal. The guest stared at the map for a couple of minutes then went and tossed his cookies into the toilet bowl.

Holy Crap.

[Itnetlolor]

Because we're apparently not on enough watchlists as it is.

How many are we yet to be on? I'm looking for a high score.