Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

An ordinary man who's a biological warfare scientist comes up with a new virus that affects the aliens. Dang, Hollywood has done that one!

Yes they have, and it bugs the hell out of me. It's problematic for suspension of disbelief because it's too implausible. We are nowhere near the point where we can reliably engineer a virus with 100% predictability of effects on human biology, now you want to throw alien biology at it and expect it to be both highly contagious and highly lethal without decades to study said alien biology?

The movie Independence Day was a great story until they got to the end and had the human's win by having a human hack an alien computer network to shut down the alien's shields.

Pissed me off an ruined the story line. The only thing that saves the movie is that it's a TBU effects movie and you don't expect a great story in a TBU movie.

PS TBU=Things Blowing Up

Don't need to engineer one from scratch, just try out what we have and then boost one that seems to work well.

The end of War of the Worlds where the aliens fell prey to and Earth virus by mere happenstance is plausible.

Even what you are suggesting should require years if not decades of effort and at least several failed attempts. As a solution to an alien invasion that will be over with humans being wiped out in a matter of days or weeks, it is a highly implausible solution.

Even the common cold genre of virus could be potentially deadly to an alien species with no natural immunity or defenses developed. The measles and chicken pox virus was as deadly as small pox to natives with no natural immunity or resistance to them. All those germs mankind has built up natural resistances to, the aliens would not have the same resistances.

Even the common cold genre of virus could be potentially deadly to an alien species with no natural immunity or defenses developed.

True, but that is happenstance not something deliberately engineered to affect the aliens.

However, even that is problematic in a modern sense. It assumes two highly improbable conditions.

1. That the alien's biochemistry is similar enough to our own to be infected at all by Earth bound viruses.

2. That an alien race capable of interstellar travel would not already be aware of such risk and/ or would fail to take the appropriate precautions, such as operating in environment suits or environmentally sealed vehicles.

Edited to add:

Make that three highly improbable conditions.

3. That an alien race capable of interstellar travel would not have equally advanced medical technology and wouldn't be capable of treating themselves for infection by our diseases and / or capable of developing vaccines faster than we can throw new engineered viruses at them.

Sure, but dealing with alien junk will be a problem because it's ALIEN!

Earth diseases work on us because they are based on the same basic bio-chemistry.

If the alien junk is that alien it's implausible that it could affect us at all. The same thing works in reverse for earth diseases affecting the aliens.

The issue isn't just advanced medicine. Assuming that the aliens can be effected by diseases from other worlds, any race with any significant experience in interstellar travel would be aware of this and would have established bio-hazard protocols to avoid exposure. Environment suits to avoid bio-contamination don't necessarily require advanced medicine.

The engineering may be as simple as just breeding a lot, or quickly breeding a stronger strain. And the time frame you take to do it will be part of the authors choice to use.

Any time frame less than several years would be implausible.

There are other gases readily available that are effective in open environments, the Mustard gas from WW1 being a well known option.

You simply have no idea how much mustard gas had to be used to be that effective. It's actually liquid at room temperature and puddles of it were left on the ground, which froze over winter and soldiers lost feet because they stepped on the frozen puddles in the spring when the ice began to thin.

Simply put, all the available evidence from actual field use put chemical weapons less efficient than conventional weapons. Nerve toxins like Sarin were developed because Mustard gas and it's ilk are actually rather expensive money wise compared to conventional weapons at the quantities that had to be used.

They were looking for something that could produce mass casualties without having to be used by the ton. The effort was an abysmal failure.

ust to jump in here mid-fight but, "War of the Worlds" didn't conclude with scientists 'inventing' a plague to wipe out the martians. Instead, they fell victim to common human viruses they had no immunity to.

I believe that is exactly what I said.

Sorry, DS. I read the first three or four unread comments and felt forced to reply before reaching your comment.

???

Apology accepted, but the accompanying explanation makes no sense. You replied to and quoted my comment.

What I said applies to the aliens trying to use bio-warfare on us as much as it does to us trying to use it on them.

It's impractical and far more inefficient than then a military blow everything up invasion without years spent studying our bio-chemistry.

Even human on human, engineered chemical and biological warfare have never proven to be as effective as they are claimed to be on a theoretical basis.

Take for example the use of Sarin gas by the Syrian government against internal rebels a few years ago prior to the whole ISIS mess.

In theory a couple of pounds of Sarin gas would be enough to kill everyone in New York City. Syria dropped half a ton of it on a few 10s of thousands of rebels and created less than a thousand casualties.

I made my case by pointing out 'Idiocracy', the movie.

No, you didn't. Do you really think it's even remotely plausible that an alien race that goes down the Idiocracy route would be capable of maintaining interstellar travel?

The ability to use a technology does not automatically imply the ability to maintain or repair said technology.

True, but the lack of the ability to maintain it does imply the lack of the ability to create more of that type of technology. Once you are in that state, the technology will inevitably be lost to attrition.

In some of Isaac Asimov's stories he has societies where they've lost the ability to maintain or create technology, but before that happened the technology reached a stage where it maintained itself

You would still loose ships over time to severe accidents that result in total loss, with no means to replace the ships.

Such a situation might last for centuries, but the technology will eventually be lost. In the long term, no other outcome is possible, unless you posit sentient machines that can make more of themselves. In which case, you are completely outside of the Idiocracy scenario.

That's providing they didn't get self-repairing automated spaceship factories operating before the breakdown in knowledge.

Nope, that might extend the decay from centuries to millennia, but it won't stop it. There will be events catastrophic enough to cause the loss of factories.

The only way for such a scenario to sustain indefinitely is to have sentient self replicating machines, but then you don't end up with an Idiocracy, you end up with machine rule and a machine civilization.

To be perfectly honest, I find Idiocracy itself to be highly implausible.

Who is keeping the power grid running?

Who is manufacturing the goods in the giant box store?

It can't be the people on display in the movie.

To be perfectly honest, I think in a real Idiocracy scenario, we would be back to stone age within 2 generations.

It's absurd to think that any alien race would know about any virus that exists on Earth.

I can just see it, the common cold and measles and small pox and Ebola, etc have no effect on them, but they're wiped out by, dutch elm disease.

BTW I agree with you, if Terran diseases effected them at all, they would most likely not have any immensities to the specific diseases that have evolved on Earth, having evolved separately, think smallpox and native Americans, and so be effected by them immediately, though it might not be obvious immediately, and even so by random chance a few of them would be immune, so it, or more likely they, wouldn't wipe them out completely. OTOH, if their biology is completely different, as would seem most likely, no Terran disease would effect them, but they would get no nutrition, and might be poisoned by any plant or animal they might try to eat. Note, that would only apply to biological entities, minerals and chemicals they would have in common and would, or should, know the effects of.

but they would get no nutrition, and might be poisoned by any plant or animal they might try to eat.

True, but you would expect them to be prepared for that as well.

I agree with you, if Terran diseases effected them at all, they would most likely not have any immensities to the specific diseases that have evolved on Earth, having evolved separately, think smallpox and native Americans, and so be effected by them immediately

Actually, I don't quite agree with this. I think any alien race that could get here over interstellar distances would be aware of the possibility of that and have in place appropriate bio-hazard protocols.

That may be, but then, chances are, exposure to anything, especially any living thing, would expose them to anaphylactic shock!

Again, it seems highly implausible to me that any alien race that could get here across interstellar differences would not understand and implement basic bio-hazard protocols to protect against that sort of risk.

Edited

the story was about a Martian invasion, so it wasn't about experienced space travelers, but about neighboring states invading those near them, and how they often don't plan on how their actions will play out.

Which is why the ploy works for War of the Worlds, but wouldn't work for a more modern story involving interstellar travel.

No Plan survives contact with the enemy is the version I'm most familiar with.

I've also seen: The first casualty in any battle is the plan.

Somewhere I heard the first casualty in war is the truth.

The major communist newspapers were Isvestia (Information in Russian) and Pravda (truth). There was a saying there is no Isvestia in Pravda and no Pravda in Isvestia. Reporting government statements particularly in wartime has those problems.

sorry, hitting enter seem to cause an echo.

To continue my ill-judged diatribe, and again citation required, Somewhere I read there have been only 2 years man has been on this planet where there has not been a war somewhere.

Again from my confused brain comes the song tag, "They're rioting in Africa..."

Thank Bing for the lyrics from the Kingston Trio
They're rioting in Africa, they're starving in Spain.
There's hurricanes in Florida, and Texas needs rain.
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls.
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles.
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch.
And I don't like anybody very much!

But we can be tranquil, and thankful, and proud,
For mans' been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud.
And we know for certain that some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off, and we will all be blown away.

They're rioting in Africa, there's strife in Iran.
What nature doesn't do to us, will be done by our fellow man

is the parenthetical one at the end of the third law a footnote? If so, what does it say? Sometimes the escape hatches are in the footnotes.

Assuming any species would install similar safeguards, note that there's a good chance their egos might not foresee the chance that their AI might choose to allow that species to simply die out by benign neglect.

There is also the issue of the flaw in the three laws of robotics raised by Asimov himself in I Robot.

Specifically, what happens when the robots decide that the biggest threat to humans is humans?

You're right, I did.

Sex God who's brilliant and apparently caring in bed, but a total misogynistic ass the rest of the time.

and the overall abusive guy with submissive women falling over him for more abuse...

'Too good to be true' is the point of 'erotica'.

It is a superhero story, so right off the bat throw 'true' out the window. Then a superhero in the world of true would either be destroyed or WORSHIPPED and have a 'too good to be true' sex life better than the sex life we imagine movie stars and athletes to have.

I accept the overnight criticism but not the too good to be true sex life one.

Must be that english is not my language but I was relating the criticism of an erotica writer on sol and not my own. But that's a moot point as I was interested in superheroism as a literaly device vs mind control and magic as a poor surrogate flamish debate 😁

It's random chance. We mostly don't see the changes that are actively harmful, because they don't survive (two requirements, don't kill the carrier too soon, and get passed on to the next generation), but some of the ones that aren't too harmful but aren't particularly helpful either stick around as recessives or facilitate traits that have no effect on survival, e.g. hair, eye, and skin color. Occasionally one of those recessives turns out to be helpful as the environment changes, for example being hetrozygous for sickle cell trait helping prevent sleeping sickness.

how those mutations occur despite the fact DNA is very robust and resistant to mutations in general

Pretty simple, for sexual reproduction. The generation of the gametes containing half-sets of chromosomes is meiosis, and an early phase of this pairs up the matching chromosomes then splits and rejoins them to shuffle the genetic material (so each of the resulting pair contains bits of each of the originals). If this split happens in the coding region for a gene, there's a good chance that the coding after the rejoin won't match either of the parent chromosomes - a mutation. Thus, not only does sexual reproduction allow rapid selection of beneficial mutations, it also generates them. Most split-and-recombine will happen in junk DNA, or between regions which are identical, so the mutations still won't be common, but much more common than for asexual reproduction.

Darwin is a city in Northern Australia where there isn't much to do, so they decided to mutate and evolve. Its a theory.

Darwin is a city in Northern Australia where there isn't much to do, so they decided to mutate and evolve.

More a case of drink & stay drunk. Or stoned. Or both.

Getting drunk on alcoholic beverages or stoned on drugs may affect their chromosomes and thus when reproducing cause mutation? Or maybe its the bright sunshine and hot weather that causes changes. One reason natural selection favors dark skin in hot sunny places and white (or pink) skin in Northern climates like Scandinavia. And blonde hair.

Skin color may give natural advantages to light colored skin when it is hard to get enough sunshine to give you sufficient vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin. When you get plenty of sun there is no advantage to looking European, and problems with sunburn our darker skined relatives escape. Given enough time, more than languages evolve.

I doubt he said much about the mechanism of this, DNA hadn't even been discovered when he wrote his famous book, though people would have been familiar with the idea of inherited traits, children resembling parents and such.

Not to mention thousands of years of animal and plant breeding for specific traits.

Darwin's major contribution was that he said it happened in nature (NATURAL selection) as well as in husbandry and horticulture (artificial selection).

You probably aren't a happy camper when political campaigns start. There are lots of candidates claiming they have all the answers and very little evidence to back up their claims.

claiming they have all the answers and very little evidence to back up their claims.

How do you tell if a politician is lying?
-Check to see if their mouth is moving!

That is not always true. Sometimes they are singing or brushing their teeth.

I suspect evolution isn't done with homo sap, Now the internet is here, we can have e volution, like e mail.

IANA scientist, but I would have thought that the mutation rate stayed the same after an extinction event, but there would be a lot more uncontested niches to occupy, with fewer predators thus leading to the surge in speciation.

I think I understand what speciation is, but its not a word I hear everyday. Not any day, until today. Should we discuss speciation speculation?

IANA scientist but I would have thought that the mutation rate stayed the same after an extinction event, but there would be a lot more uncontested niches to occupy, with fewer predators thus leading to the surge in speciation.

IANA scientist either but I beg to differ. "Define "the present rate". In my lifetime I have seen human changes such as body size (an increase in height as one clear example - when I was young a 6 foot man was a giant, now they are commonplace - my father-in-law's father was 4 foot 10 according to his army records). I put that down to availability of food and improved medicine.

Humans are mutating all the time. With the coming of horses then carts then machines then electronics we are losing the inate physical strength which our ancestors developed. I see in the old folks a memory store far beyond that of many younger persons. Some (I heard this from Theosophists) reckon that although we acknowledge five senses (smell, taste, sight, hearing, feel) there are perhaps as many as fifteen such as time (bodyclock), direction (that little lump of iron just above the nose), the sense of potential danger etc. which we are losing but which our hunting ancestors needed. Our bodies are adapting to different foods but perhaps too slowly leading to diabetes B etc.

Add to that the nature of the extinction event - did it let off radiation? After the nuclear tests on Christmas Island; fifty years later it was found that the surviving wildlife had changed, often becoming gigantic compared to their earlier norms. Ergo I suggest that mutation WILL CONTINUE and probably accelerate

Exactly what is poor nutrition? Not enough food/calories is one thing. Not enough or not the right vitamins (Scurvy, anyone, without vitamin C) might be poor nutrition. A diet of pizza, carbonated soft drinks and perhaps beer, and low end fast food hamburgers seems to be a lot of teenagers diet, at least once they escape the family dining room where they are required to eat at least one vegetable, some of the time. We are still getting our share of tall kids. Maybe its the preservatives and hormones in foods?

How do you make a hormone? Tell her you don't have any money. You can lead a whore to money but you can't make her think. I can remember more bad jokes sitting here keyboarding than when in conversation. I remember when it was called typing.

A diet of pizza,.......seems to be a lot of teenagers diet, ....once they escape the family dining room where they are required to eat at least one vegetable, some of the time. We are still getting our share of tall kids. Maybe its the preservatives and hormones in foods?

Joking? Saw an article about some woman who had just had a new £35,000 (perhaps USD 50,000) kitchen installed. She admitted that she had never had a meal at home and couldn't cook!

Yes, I also suspect additives and preservatives°° are having deleterious effects. I try to avoid any preprepared foods but even raw farmed fish could be loaded with hormones..

°° a preservatif is a condom - thought you might like to know.