It's Christmas Eve, 2019.
All is quiet, all is still- except in the skies above Earth.
High in orbit over our planet, giant spaceships full of brain-eating aliens loom over our
helpless world.
The Zeti Reticulians are finally here, and they've come to harvest a bounty in delicious
human brains.
But the war for our planet doesn't start with a bang, it starts with... nothing.
The evil alien ships simply hover in orbit, silent and completely out of the reach of
our weapons.
They make no demands, take no hostile action against us.
Just... sit there.
All attempts to communicate with the aliens are ignored, and after the initial terror
subsides, over the course of the new year humanity gradually becomes accustomed to their
presence.
Then it happens, eight months after their arrival.
An elderly woman develops a cough and a fever.
She assumes she has the flu and so largely ignores it, but her symptoms begin to grow-
she experiences nausea and body aches, her head swims, and she is having bouts of loss
of consciousness.
As she checks herself into an emergency room, across the country a teenage boy comes down
with the same symptoms.
Doctors are at a loss to explain what is wrong with the old woman, and later in the day doctors
on the other side of the nation are equally baffled by the strange symptoms of the teenage
boy.
The next day there are five more victims.
A week later, there are a thousand more.
The United States military sends bio-experts and quarantines emergency rooms across the
country- something is affecting humanity, and it's clear that whatever is going on,
this is just the tip of the iceberg.
The Zeti Reticulians have finally launched their attack.
Except they launched their attack almost a year ago when they first arrived.
Tiny soda-can sized containers were dropped from orbit all around the world.
Small enough to be mistaken for meteorites by ground-based space monitoring radar, they
never raised suspicion amongst the world's militaries.
But upon entering the atmosphere the small containers released a fine mist- a genetically
engineered synthetic virus, perfectly constructed to attack human DNA.
The synthetic virus gradually spread across the world, and slowly went to work on our
genetic makeup, directly manipulating and changing the DNA of each host it infected.
It was programmed to work slowly, so as to do most of its damage before being discovered...
before humanity could realize it was under attack and develop a cure.
Now, it's too late.
The synthetic virus has been altering human DNA for nearly a year, and now it activates
specific proteins to create physical changes in our bodies.
Our brains grow to five times their normal size, far too big for our slender necks to
support them.
Humanity keels over, unable to pick themselves up due to the weight of our massive brains-
which unfortunately are only physically larger, and not more intelligent.
Then, with a buffet of helpless, delicious, engorged brains waiting for them, the Zeti
Reticulians finally descend from space, and begin to feast.
The previous scenario is clearly science fiction, and merely an example of one of the many ways
that an alien intelligence far ahead of our own technological progress could invade the
earth and conquer us without ever firing a shot.
Except in this scenario, one where the aliens use a synthetic bioweapon to cripple humanity,
the technology needed for this global apocalypse is very much already in human hands- or at
least nearly so.
The United States military prides itself on being the premier fighting force on the planet,
and regularly invests into brainstorming new, possible threats and how to counter them before
they even appear.
In 2018, the Department of Defense turned its attention towards a new, and very realistic
future threat- the threat of synthetic biology.
Synthetic biology is nothing more than the development of techniques to artificially
manipulate existing biology.
This can range from the creation of artificial viruses, to directly manipulating how biology
operates within a living host.
Both of these applications have incredible promises for making the world a far, far better
place.
An artificial virus for example could be programmed to heal genetic damage, reversing the effects
of radiation poisoning and even curing, or outright preventing cancer.
It could even be programmed to attack other viruses, a sort of magic-bullet that one could
be injected in to seek out and destroy other malicious viruses.
Manipulating how our own biology works, or that of an animal, would mean that we could
potentially 'hack' our bodies to produce more nutritious milk for babies, helping fight
infant malnourishment in impoverished areas.
We could hack ourselves to heal faster from wounds, or create clotting agents that work
much more rapidly to help seal major bleeding faster.
Synthetic biology is basically like turning on hacks in a video game, and it could bring
a giant revolution in the human condition where disease, cancer, and even aging are
all things of the past.
Like many things though, it also has a much, much darker side.
Those same tools could be used to directly attack humanity, and the results of such an
attack could be absolutely devastating.
A synthetic virus could for example, be programmed to attack our DNA, much like in our opening
scenario.
Potentially, such a virus could alter our DNA completely, causing untold changes in
our bodies- or it could simply be programmed to cause damage to it, resulting in an explosion
of cancer across the population.
Normal viruses and bacteria could be hacked so as to overcome our current resistances
to them, or become resistant to our medical treatments.
The measles for example could be hacked from within to become resistant to our vaccines-
although to be honest anti-vaxxers are already doing a good job of ruining our future by
refusing to vaccinate.
The common cold though, a ubiquitous virus that affects almost all of humanity, could
be hacked to cause far more severe symptoms in sufferers.
A common cold virus could be given traits from the AIDS virus, resulting in a highly
communicable disease that spreads via coughing and destroys the immune system of anyone infected.
Our own biological processes could be hacked from within- in 2014 outlets around the world
ran the story of Matthew Hogg, a man who's own body turns sugars and carbohydrates he
ingests into ethanol.
This means that he can produce alcohol from something as simple as a sandwich, or from
drinking a coke, and is very often drunk because of it.
While this may sound awesome for anyone who hasn't grown out of the frat boy stage, the
reality is that this condition has ruined Hogg's life- and the United States military
is worried that terrorists could hack all of us to create the same effect, bringing
entire nations, if not the world, to its knees.
For the US and other governments facing terror threats- which is pretty much everyone at
this point- the threat is very real.
New gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR have made it possible for even do-it-yourself
biologists at home to tinker with editing genes.
CRISPR is actually shorthand for CRISPR-Cas9, and CRISPRs are actually specialized stretches
of DNA.
Cas9 is an enzyme that scientists have learned to use as a sort of molecular scissors, and
can cut strands of DNA in a way that lets researchers edit DNA as they see fit.
CRISPR technology was adapted from the natural defense mechanisms of bacteria and single-celled
organisms.
By using RNa and various different types of Cas proteins, these organisms fight back against
invading viruses by destroying the DNA of the attacker, which is actually a pretty metal
thing to do.
Each CAS protein targets a different segment of DNA, and gets to work severing the virus’s
strands of DNA.
In human and animal applications, scientists simply ‘tag’ specific portions of DNA
they want to snip out and let loose a Cas protein to scissor it free.
The DNA of an organism can thus be edited, and manipulated in ways that science doesn’t
fully understand yet.
As the basic building block of all biology though, editing an organism’s DNA is going
to have profound consequences for its behavior, or its very biology.
The propagation of such a powerful technology has thus created a terrifying possibility
for global governments- what if terrorists used synthetic biology to create bio superweapons?
There would be little if any defense against such a weapon, and an attack would be all
but impossible to detect.
Vaccines to synthetic viruses could take years to develop, if any is developable at all,
and by then the damage would be done.
The good news, if there is any in this story, is that these threats are still a few years
away from being realistic- though nobody denies that in time, they will be a certainty.
Right now though there are several barriers to terrorists seeking to create a bio weapon
which are simply insurmountable.
Firstly, synthetic biology is not as easy as alarmist reports would make it seem.
Yes, the powerful gene-editing tool CRISPR makes it easier for do-it-yourself biologists
to tinker with biology, but the barrier to successfully creating a working artificial
virus requires a significant amount of technical expertise and resources both.
Currently it takes the full-time resources of entire international companies to even
begin to probe the secrets of gene-editing, and they are still very far away from any
true breakthroughs.
Without such expertise and resources, it's incredibly unlikely a terrorist would be able
to create a working bio-weapon, at least yet.
As with many technologies, the future could make such a development easier to accomplish,
and the propagation of knowledge will bring the needed technical expertise to gifted individuals.
It's still unlikely that a terror group could carry out a successful bio-terror attack on
a large scale.
Simply put, biology is very difficult to control, and any synthetic weapon would then have to
face a slew of different factors when released into the general population.
Everybody's personal biology is just a little different from each other, the virus would
have to react to a population that is in varying levels of health, and have their own small
genetic mutations.
Then there's the response by the medical community, and in effect a terrorist would be pitting
their bio weapon against the combined weight of the global medical community's expertise.
While unlikely, such an attack is not impossible, and we should definitely not be resting on
our laurels believing ourselves to be safe.
Prior to September 11th, 2001, only a handful of people in the United States- which were
all ignored by the authorities- believed that any group of terrorists could launch a decisive,
major terror attack targeting numerous American cities at once.
Then Al-Qaeda struck, killing thousands, and causing billions in economic damage to the
nation.
The intents and capabilities of extremists should never be underestimated, and while
the current threat of a major bio-terror attack with an unstoppable germ or virus is extremely
negligible, it doesn't mean that it will always be so.
We still have a few years to go before terrorists would be capable of launching such an attack.
Right now it’s unfeasible, almost ridiculous to think that a group of self-funded terrorists
could have the budget, equipment, and technical expertise to create a synthetic plague to
devastate mankind with, as it takes international companies millions of dollars to make the
smallest breakthroughs in the field of gene editing.
However, the future is one great big unknown, and there’s simply no knowing just how easy
a future technology could make gene editing.
Perhaps in the future you’ll be able to hack yourself with some DIY genetic engineering
and a few thousand dollars, no different than consumers hack their own phones, cars, and
other electronic items for convenience.
The best we can do is work to regulate these dangerous technologies, and try to find a
way to stamp out the root cause of terrorism before it can become a true global threat.
Do you think the world is ready for a major bio-terror attack?
Tell us in the comments!
Now go watch Weapons So Terrible They Had To Be Banned From War.
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