On Biohazard, I forgot to tell you how to get it.
for the Kindle edition on amazon.com
and
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Biohazard-ebook/dp/B0031RS5DI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342369408&sr=8-1
for the same book on amazon.co.uk
I own the hardback issue already.
edited 15th Jul '12 9:24:27 AM by TamH70
You know, it wouldn't actually take that much to deflect it. We wouldn't need to blow it up. Think about how miniscule the Earth is in space, and you'll understand why we would only need to put it a fraction of a degree off-target.
Smile for me!
So if getting smacked by a giant meteor is unlikely, and nuke war isn't quite the same, what WOULD cause the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction we're supposed to survive?
Hey, giant meteors have happened before.
And there's always Yellowstone...
Smile for me!
Or some whackjobs getting hold of the designs for the old Russian 100/100 genetically engineered viral agents, making them and deploying the fuckers.
At every major international airport in at least two continents.
(100/100 = 100% lethality/100% communicability, and yep, those fuckers existed/still exist in some labs. Delete as applicable to stop yourself screaming)
Hang on, won't a 100% lethality virus kill the patient before s/he can spread it?
Only if it has an extremely fast incubation period.
So why haven't they been destroyed yet? I mean we keep things like smallpox around because we might need a vaccine someday but if this thing is that lethal what good would a vaccine do?
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Hum... Now you're just giving me terrible ideas. 
You may thank the heavens that I gave up being a biologist.
edited 15th Jul '12 4:07:12 PM by IraTheSquire
The 100/100 agents were an "oh shit, the Rodina is fucked but we are not going out without taking those capitalist pigs with us" kind of deal.
True fact, while the rest of the world was celebrating the end of the variola virus, or smallpox in the wild, Russia was making TONNES of the stuff for deployment in SS 18 Satan missiles. And smallpox is one of the most lethal threats that humanity ever faced. Russia made the fucker worse.
There is scary bio weapons for people, but is there anything like that for plants?
One of the things that are supposed to happen is a die off of plants too I think.
theoneguy
@ Tam: Thanks for that, I haven't had my paranoia button/ pushed in a while.
edited 20th Jul '12 3:48:59 PM by theoneguy
Read the "Biohazard" book. If anything, I was understating the case. Another good primer for doomsday weaponry is called, funnily enough, "Doomsday Men - The Real Doctor Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon". Available here
Otherwise known as "How close H.G. Wells came to killing all of us. And I mean all of us".
There's no guarantee on detecting it. We almost got hit by an asteroid recently that would cause that level of extinction and we got barely a month's warning. We don't have sufficient infrastructure to detect all possible objects.
Launching nukes at it is a very American solution where you guys like to blow everything up. It's also basically the worst idea ever.
The best solutions are typically a gravitational tow (requires years of warning time) or attaching ion thrusters on the asteroid itself to guide it out of the way. Russians are doing the latter solution for a potential asteroid and were asking for help. That mission is slated for much later though.