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Science Technology

Bio-Weapons That Eat Ammunition and Fuel 436

Posted by timothy from the mmmmm-ammunition-and-fuel dept.
1gor writes: "This article in The Observer mentions Pentagon's plans to use genetically modified bugs that 'eat' the enemy's fuel and ammunition supplies without harming humans (they also want to to pacify the enemy by spraying Valium). Imagine an escaped virus destroying the Earth's oil reserves and its whole industrial potential? Curiously, the military may implement the environmentalists' ultimate dream!"
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Bio-Weapons That Eat Ammunition and Fuel

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  • jesus (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    this is what is commonly known as a "bad idea"
    • That requires that someone have a good idea every once in awhile. With nothing to compare it to, it's simply an idea.

    • Re:jesus (Score:3, Informative)

      by jdriller ( 416280 )
      This has already been going on for years now. Several companies now do this for toxic waste/Superfund/oil spill sites. There are LOTS of strains of bacteria and fungi that are 'customized' for different wastes; usually engineered from strains already surviving on the existing waste. Has not seemed to get out of hand though this was an initial concern (and could conceivably happen).

  • This may work (Score:3, Insightful)

    by spineboy ( 22918 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @08:24PM (#3588749) Journal
    Succesful use of genengineered bugs have been used "in the field" with oil spills. Naturally while the USA will have this initially, as time goes on others will get it. The USA will just have to stay 1 step ahead in order to continue to use this stuff.

    "Sarge, I gotta immunize my ammo first before I hit the front lines."

    As in biology, there may be infection, immunization, reinfection with altered strain, re-immunization and so-forth. Might be kinda fun

    • Get yer microbes here! URL (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26, 2002 @09:06PM (#3588925)
      And you can get yours here!

      PHase III PDM-7 Microbial Cultures [phaseiii.com]. Visa and MasterCard accepted. Call for pricing.

      "PDM-7 Microbial Cultures contain a blend of live, synergetic, all natural ATCC (American Type Culture Collection) Class I Bacteria. These bacteria were specifically chosen for their accelerated ability to metabolize Petroleum Based Products, Greases, Fats, Food Particles, Hair, Cellulose, and Detergents, converting them into carbon dioxide and water."

      Don't rub them on your head.

      Or here! [igsinternational.com]

      Or here! [biolinks.org]

      Or here! [wik.net]
      • PHase III PDM-7 Microbial Cultures [phaseiii.com]. Visa and MasterCard accepted. Call for pricing

        Good stuff! I think I'm going to try some of their biological paint remover. I absolutely hate methelyne chloride (Zip Strip) and I have quite a bit of paint removal to do.

  • Funny... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They had this virus that eats oil for a long time, originially they wanted to use it to clean up oil spills, but they were afraid it would get into the oil supply back then too. So it did not get used.

    Now that it is the in national interests(AKA: someone can make serious dough) it can be used by the military. I wonder what the chances of it being used if there is another major oil spill if the military has it. God knows that the US military bases are among the worst polluters in the world.

  • Kevin J Anderson wrote this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by knodi ( 93913 ) <softwaredeveloper.gmail@com> on Sunday May 26, 2002 @08:26PM (#3588762) Homepage
    "A supertanker has crashed off the shores of San Francisco, producing the largest oil spill in history. Desperate to avert an ecological--and public relations--disaster, a multinational oil company releases an untested virus designed to break up the spill. A virus that spreads like wildfire on the wind, destroying anything made of petroleum-destroying gasoline in automobile tanks, plastic, nylon, the very fabric of modern civilization itself."

    -Summary of Ill Wind, by Kevin J Anderson.
    One of my favorite post apocalyptic science fiction novels. Awesome read. Coolest part is that most guns can now fire exactly once, if they were already loaded, because the lubricant inside has turned to glue.
    • Sounds like me someone doesn't really know a virus from a bacteria. A virus does not have a metabolism, hence it can not 'break up' an oil spill.
      I like science fiction, but not if the authors leave the science part out of it, and replace it with 'words that sound cool'.
    • -Summary of Ill Wind, by Kevin J Anderson
      Neil Stephenson's "Zodiac" also deals with such critters meant to clean up pollution. It's a damn good read.

  • Weapon? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by KH ( 28388 )
    According to the article,


    The development of these 'non-lethal' weapons angers campaigners who claim that they would breach international treaties on biological and chemical weapons.


    Is a chemical that tranquilize enemy still a weapon? Or, the bug that does not harm humans still a weapon? Is there a definition of weapon? These things are not only non-lethal, but not harmful in the sense that they don't even cause pain (well, for the case of the bug, it might cause a head-ache). I find this an interesting question. Does anything used by military against enemy become a weapon?
  • I wonder how long it would take to come up with a viable alternate energy resource? Maybe it's a catastrophe like that that would force us to discover the ultimate energy source? :)
    Dare we try? I think not! ;)
    • Sounds like the fringe environmentalist's dream--turn loose bugs to eat up all the petroleum and return us to the halcyon days of ... Leaving aside the question of whether past cultures had enough good points to want to live in them, what is the immediate result of the petroleum disappearing?
      • Reintroduction of coal power on a tremendous scale. This means getting any coal there is by any means necessary--strip mining, drafting you for pick-axe work, whatever.

      • Refitting strategic vehicles (trucks for food) with wood-burning internal combustion engines, which doesn't sound possible but was done Europe during World War II

      • Immediate and near-total deforestation as the present-day population resorts to past-era technologies to keep warm and cook their food

  • They would be dumb (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Tri0de ( 182282 )
    to at least not research it. All research is good, all knowledge and information is good; the application may be bad, but I have major contempt for people who say "we shouldn't look into this at all". Personally, once the internal combustion engine is a thing of the past the earth will be a much better place.
    And still can't decide which is the bigger mindfuck of a pacifier, broadcast TV or this Valium spray.
    • "All research is good, all knowledge is good"

      As a person in the research business, I'm not so sure that all reasearch and knowledge is good. Defining "research" is hard, and some people have "crossed the line" -- think of Nazi science research on people in prison camps. Clearly that was not good.

      As for knowledge, is it ethical to use knowledge gained from those prison camp experiments? Almost everyone says no. This suggests that the statement "all knowledge is good" is not true; my off-the-cuff opinion is that it is an oversimplication with important exceptions.

      Maybe we could say that Wisdom is good, and with wisdom, knowledge is good. But that depends on defining wisdom, and we'd probably end up with a tautology when we did that (wisdom == whatever it takes to make knowledge good). These aren't just semantic problems. There are records which suggest our species (I'm making an assumption here ;-) has tried to nail down ideas like knowledge and truth for several millenia. It seems likely "we" have struggled with it for longer than we have records. This isn't simple stuff, and it's not taught in science, math, or computer courses.

      -Paul Komarek

      • Re:They would be dumb (Score:2, Interesting)

        by cureless ( 35682 )
        I somewhat disagree.

        I would think that it's our obligation to use that knowledge. Not because we agree with how it was obtained, but because those people shouldn't have died in vain. It is, however, our duty to make sure research is done the right way. But if we learn something from "mistakes" it doesn't mean that knowledge is bad.

        I see more controversial the research in military weapons or tactics, which definately are going to be used for war/destruction.

        Take the knowledge that we might have "wrongfully" gained and start doing good stuff, solve cancer or something.

        cl
        • Well, here's my take on the Nazi research.

          Possibly unfortunately, the human subjects of Nazi research didn't necessarily die because of the research. At any rate, my believe is that you can't die well or die in vain. One can only live well or throw one's life away. Those people violated by Nazi "research" atrocities are still harmed, regardless of what we do with the knowledge gained.

          Since those people are still harmed, one might argue that we might as well do something with the knowledge gained. My belief is that using that knowledge *rewards* the researcher and the research. The research gets a citation, which is a big deal in scientifc work. The researcher is simulatneously cited. But that isn't the end of things.

          As a researcher, there is nothing I want more than to make a difference with my work. I face spectacularly bad odds, as most all research is crap. Even good research is 100% evolution, not revolution (the set of revolutionary research has zero measure, but please don't take me too literally on this =-). Thus the highest reward I can be given is evidence that someone is using my work. From this I concluded that using the Nazi research not only produces citations for the research and the researcher, but it encourages the researcher, those that facilitated the research, and those that envy the researher's success to continue their methods of research.

          I don't feel I'm stretching anything to make this argument. Many people fake research, hoping to get some good press (even if necessarily short-lived). People kill themselves because of failed research (plenty of examples of this). There are businesses, and even economies, built on scientific research (not to mention huge military budgets). My conclusion is that there are people who would repeat the Nazi research if they thought they could see their name in lights. Any lights. Think of the miserable researcher Dr. Seed.

          In summary, I think that some researchers can be compared to children when it comes to attention. Suppose a child discovers that the only way to get his or her parents' attention is to misbehave. No matter how negative the attention he or she receives, that attention is better than none at all. As an afterthought, I don't know why I'm making that last statement specific to children and some researchers, since it's probably true for all humans who can't get the attention they need.

          -Paul Komarek

  • valium .. too expensive (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jest3r ( 458429 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @08:34PM (#3588790)
    Valium is pretty expensive to produce let alone spray over large areas ..

    I would suggest dropping massive amounts of Cannabis sativa seeds .. they are easily and cheaply produced .. since it is a weed it spreads very quickly - grows well in tropical climates .. and has muliple uses ..

    In fact there is a very real possibility that this approach could turn the enemy into a bunch of friendly peaceful pot smoking farmers ..

    • Re:valium .. too expensive (Score:5, Funny)

      by Sentry21 ( 8183 ) on Monday May 27, 2002 @02:58AM (#3589871) Journal
      In fact there is a very real possibility that this approach could turn the enemy into a bunch of friendly peaceful pot smoking farmers ..

      The world has enough Canadians, try something new for a change.

      --Dan
    • Right. I'm sure the first instinct of soldiers witnessing the enemy drop tons of some kind of seed on their heads is "Hey! Let's cultivate these things, wait a couple of years for them to yield, harvest all the leaves and buds, dry them up, crumble them into a rolled-up paper tube, and start smoking! Wonder what'll happen?"

      If you invented some kind of transdermal cannabis gel, that might work. But half the soldiers would just become (more) paranoid and wary, and the other half would storm our camps looking for Doritos.

  • The Andromeda Strain (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cybrpnk2 ( 579066 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @08:35PM (#3588797) Homepage
    This is, of course, how Michael Crichton's original bestseller The Andromeda Strain [crichton-official.com] ended when it was written almost a quarter century ago. As this review [sqn.com] so aptly notes, TAS is still ahead of its time. Perhaps it's worth a quick (re)read [ebay.com]?
  • How so? All this means is that people to switch to electricity and nuclear power.
    • Nuclear power is an environmentalist's dream. they're just too busy protesting about the word nuclear they don't see it.
      • You are right that nuclear plants release very few pollutants, but their are two major problems with them. First, most of the plants don't extract all usable aspects from the uranium (not all, Eruope has a few plants that refine the used uranium and then extract more power from them), this causes us to be stuck with lots of used uranium rods.
        The 2nd major problem is that if a plant ever blew up, everything in the local enviornment would die.
        Solar power is so popular because it has no moving parts so it can last a long time, harnesses a power source that is basicly infinite, and (except for the manufactoring of cells) has no affect on the enviorment.
        • And what about all the nuclear we can't get rid of?
          Did I miss somthing or isn't this the main flaw in nuclear power?
          • I think the main flaw in nuclear power is the lack of discipline in power plant construction and operation. Coming from a state with a lousy history of both (Washington), I can say first hand that the principle problem with nuclear power is the involvement of weak humans.

            -Paul Komarek
          • Nuclear radiation or spent rods? The prior isn't an relative issue since coal plants release exponential magnitudes more radioactive material than nuclear power plants. The latter is a strange issue; the "spent" rods are actually have more potential energy than the new, or pure uranium rods.

            There are many atomic derivatives of uranium fission, not the least of which is plutonium. It is very possible, indeed much easier, to reach critical mass with spent rods than pure uranium rods. (technically, all you have to do is smash them together). You can put a pure uranium rod into a pool, and nothing happens, but if you put spent rods in the pool it glows blue/green (ala Cocoon, the movie) for a day or so. (YMMV)

            The point would be that there is a harvestable energy source in "spent" rods, that can be remanufactured. Thermodynamics of course comes into play, and there are stil residuals, but nevertheless, the waste from one nuclear chamber is potential fuel for another. There are marginal returns in many cases, nevertheless the eventual breakdown leads to non-radioactive materials.

            I only know this because I worked at a nuclear power plant; this is what I soaked up. ;)

            Cheers
            • The point would be that there is a harvestable energy source in "spent" rods, that can be remanufactured. Thermodynamics of course comes into play, and there are stil residuals, but nevertheless, the waste from one nuclear chamber is potential fuel for another. There are marginal returns in many cases, nevertheless the eventual breakdown leads to non-radioactive materials.

              So don't they do it. Is it REALLY more economical to store the bloody things for 10,000 years?
        • Your first point is an issue of implementation, and therefore isn't really valid against nuclear power in general. Your second point is just absurd "if a plant ever blew up," there are so many reasons that wouldn't happen its ridiculous to even think about it. Of course it could happen, but its also possible that your car's gas tank could spontaneously explode, but you don't spend too much time worrying about that, do you? There's way too much radiation paranoia in the US, its just not that big a threat. The real issue is heat pollution, but that's an engineering problem that simply requires adequate water reservoirs and cooling.

          Solar is not a viable solution for power, we just don't possess technology to obtain anywhere near the efficiency required. When someone designs a solar cell that is actually capable of converting a significant percentage of the sunlight that hits it to electricity, then there will be an alternative. Solar power isn't infinite eitherer, there is a very definite finite number of joules that fall on the earth at any given time, that amount would be sufficient to sustain our power needs if we had some way to convert enough of it, but we don't.

          • "if a plant ever blew up" yeah, the chances of that are insanely small, about the changes of a plane hitting the wtc. My point is that it is possible. A solar panel can't blow up, that is why it is better as an "enviornmentalist's dream" (see topic) than nuclear.

            As for efficiency, you're right, we don't have very efficient solar panels yet, but nuclear power hasn't given us electrocity too cheap to meter as was advertised. But, it's not like the world will switch over to solar overnight. As the technology gets progressively better, more and more people will start to use it.

            • Re:Environmentalist's dream? (Score:4, Informative)

              by timster ( 32400 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @11:53PM (#3589447)
              Allow me to repair your ignorance. It is actually NOT possible.
              A nuclear explosion requires a certain (high) concentration of fuel, as well as a certain ratio of volume to surface area - or it doesn't happen. This is why making a nuclear bomb is actually very difficult. In a fission reactor, the material isn't concentrated enough, and it isn't unstable enough. Further, the material isn't in one large chunk - it's separated into rods. And further, there's no mechanism for imploding the reaction material to reach critical mass. So no, actually, despite what you read in old sci-fi, it's not physically possible for a fission reactor to explode. Take the rods out, overheat the thing, whatever. The ABSOLUTE worst is that it gets really hot and melts - which is very bad, but very rare, much rarer than a coal or gas explosion (so the overall risk is lower).

              The only major nuclear disaster in history is Chernobyl, which was not a nuclear reaction but a chemical reaction; the graphite coolant caught fire. The graphite reactor was a bad design, and all reactors today are water-cooled. Further, Chernobyl had no containment building to speak of, and was run by idiots.

              People speak of Three Mile Island as if it was some kind of disaster, but it didn't hurt anybody or anything. The worst that happened from TMI was the destruction of the reactor itself (which is a bit of a disaster alone, since those things cost billions).

              A complete meltdown is a disaster, but not the end of the world. It would be nothing like the destruction wreaked by even a small nuclear weapon.
        • Nuclear power is an environmentalist's dream. they're just too busy protesting about the word nuclear they don't see it.

        People are funny about the term nuclear. MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) was first called NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance), but the name was changed because they were afraid that people would think they would get hard radiation from it. They didn't want to give that misimpression. X-Rays are pretty hard radiation, but MRIs are pretty innocuous, by comparison.

    • If you'll recall, the majority of the world's automobiles run on gasoline.
    • Considering that the insulation on many, if not most, electrical wires is made out of something made out of petroleum, anything that put the petroleum business out of business would put technology out of business.

      Petroleum is used to make so many things other than fuel that it's almost a sin to burn it, at least until we can grow more the way we can with trees. Not that I'm expecting that any time soon.

  • "Ultimate dream"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by monkey+typewriter ( 465096 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @08:41PM (#3588816)
    Curiously, the military may implement the environmentalists' ultimate dream!
    Sorry, what? Did you just pull that out of your arse? Which environmentalists are campaigning for the abolition of oil (as opposed to the unnecessary combustion of oil)?

    Clearly oil serves a great many needs, fueling your car being just one of those needs. To claim without basis that a group of people dream of the worlds oil stocks becoming unusable is to reveal your own bias against this group.

    • Well, what happens when those big tankers sink, they release all that oil. Id imagine it would be an enviormentalists dream to have a bacteria or whatever to get rid of all that oil from the ocean's waters. That would be my guess..

      • Re:"Ultimate dream"? (Score:4, Informative)

        by SEE ( 7681 ) on Monday May 27, 2002 @12:58AM (#3589629) Homepage
        Each year, more petroleum seeps up from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico into the world's oceans than in every human-caused oil spill in history combined.

        There are entire ecosystems near these oil seeps whose primary source of energy is not solar photosynthesis, but breaking down petroleum and natural gas.

        Yes, petroleum spills by people cause temporary and localized deaths of organisms and disruption of ecosystems, but they just aren't that big a deal in the overall scheme of things.
    • Fuelling a car with oil (gasoline actually, unless your engine is in pretty bad shape) is a horrid, stupid idea that everyone *should* be opposed to. Lubrication of a vehicle not powered by gasoline would be a problem, but you'd just have to re-lube with synthetics.

      The world's oil stocks being unusable wouldn't be a utopia instantly, but it would force people to stop destroying the environment for a profit. Chunks of ice the size of cities are falling off Antarctica more and more frequently, and I'm a huge fan of Vancouver, Montreal, and Amsterdam, just to name a few. Maybe an ecological revolution, planned or not, would be a good thing.

      --Dan

  • More stupid editorializing (Score:3, Informative)

    by coyote-san ( 38515 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @08:42PM (#3588819)
    Once again Timothy couldn't let something by without stupid editorializing.

    Very few environmentalists want us to drop off a petroleum-based economy precipitously. It will take a few years for the excess 5 billion people to die off as the population returns to what's supportable in a pre-mechanical society, and they won't go quietly. You'll find few trees and few wild animals outside of the remote Canada and Siberia.

    What we want is wise use, not no use. E.g., it's better to have 30% of the car fleet using hybrid gas/electric motors with 80 MPG, not 30% of the fleet monster SUVs with <15 MPG while the idealistic zero emissions cars are <1% of the fleet because few people are willing to buy cars that can never go more than a few hundred miles.

  • Can anyone ever see the big picture? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RestiffBard ( 110729 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @08:49PM (#3588847) Homepage
    ok. worse case scenario this stuff becomes uncontainable and renders all the world's oil resources useless. Great idea. wrong. I can't say how wrong and awful and catastrophic this would be. I'm as big an environmentalist as the next guy but, this is just ludicrous. oh no problem we'll jsut switch to renewable or nuclear resources. wrong. its not that easy. if you think it is you live in a dream land. I have no problem with nuclear but, there is one or two little problems with the idea of just switching over. Commerce would end for one. for two, in case you weren't aware of this but there are no nuclear engineers anymore. nuclear science has taken a significant hit in recent years. there are very few people studying to be nuclear scientists/engineers. so if all the gas was gone there would be no one to just switch us over. I can't say enough how bad an idea it would be for something like this to happen and get loose. In some utopian fantasy it might be a great thing for the earth but for those of us who live here it would be a disaster of biblical proportions. I won't even get into the social unrest you would have to deal with. Oh and if you're thinking Wind power? well the best windmills come from Europe. How would you get them here without diesel engined ships? Put them on nuclear carriers? how do you get them to the dock? horsecart? how do you get them to North Dakota? mushers? big picture folks thats all I'm saying.
    • I can hardly imagine the deprivation of a resource our people have used for scarcely a few centuries to be that catastrophic an event. Yes, we're very dependent on it, yes there would be lots of havoc and whatnot, but we'd get over it pretty quick. Nuclear is far from the only alternative available to us (btw, a buddy of mine is a nuclear engineer, and he would argue I'm sure with your statement, "there are no nuclear engineers anymore"). Not only are there some very sound agricultural power possibilities (hemp burns almost as hot as coal, not to mention the fact that the first deisel engine ran on peanut oil, so I'm sure the combustion motor will survive the end of the oil.

      Although I'm sure I'll get flamed for this. There have been quite a few proposed solutions to problems like the power problem that may not have gotten quite the attention they deserved due to reasons quite different from their viability. Some of these have included Viktor Schauberger [swipnet.se] (web resources on him aren't nearly as good as the print books available, check amazon.com), and although a bit cliche, Nicola Tesla.

      Anyway, empires have crashed before, sudden catastrophic change has much historical president. I'm not worried about the power going out. We'll survive.

      Cheers, Joshua

      • ok hyperbole. there are nuclear engineers. but there are not as many now as there once were. Many colleges are thinking of shutting down their nuclear sciences departments.

        I was unaware of the peanut oil connection but how fast can you grow a peanut?

        as for the admirable chareteristics of hemp I agree. Will your car run peanut oil now? will the furnace in your home burn hemp? Certainly many would survive. But also many would suffer greatly. Thats just not a chance I'm willing to take. Thats all I'm saying.

        And thanks for the info on peanut oil. I really had no idea. if I could I'd mod you a fascinating. :)

        • Really big peanuts (Score:3, Informative)

          by HKTiger ( 527586 )
          Ahem, this is something I know a tad about (no, not big peanuts, you there in the back snickering).

          I mean something called bio-diesel. Apparently, Mr Diesel (Rudolph?) who invented yon diesel engine originally planned for it to be used on vegetable oil, and it got sidetracked for petroleum. And bio-diesel is far less polluting, easy to produce (about as difficult as home brewing beer), and, depending on your country's excise etc, can be cheaper than petro-diesel.

          But for me the truly funky thing is that it can be made from *used* cooking oil: how's that, just empty out the chip pan and brew a bit 'o' diesel. And it makes your car smell like chips instead of icky hydrocarbons. Any vegetable oil will do, so a variety of crops can do the trick on a large scale, which makes it renewable as well.

          Oh, yeah, and most diesel engines can run it *without* modification, or with only very minor mods. I know of someone who's gone to bio-diesel on his farm: he goes to the local fish and chip shop and relieves them of their old oil (and they used to pay someone to take it away, so they're happy) and makes enough bio-diesel to keep all his farm equipment running. No engine mods, bugger all pollution, and that there oil kept out of the ocean. Truly funky.

      • We would "get over it" by returning to pre-industrial levels of living, up to and including pre-industrial levels of food output, food storage, and food distribution. In other words, a world previously capable of supporting 6+ billion can suddenly only support a couple hundred million. (And the sweeping plagues and lack of primitive-type distribution mechanisms may leave only tens of millions around the world. My local farmers could never support this area.)

        We wouldn't have time to switch. Food would cease to flow in a matter of days after such a catastrophe.

        At the most basic level, civilization is a method of distributing food and water, and removing waste. Disrupt those flows, and it's all over. No time to switch, no second chances, just riots in the street and massive plagues.

        Yes, we're very dependent on it...

        No, we're not just sorta "dependent" on it. We are " totally f*ing dependent on it for food, water, medical suppilies, shelter, everything, our very lives ". (Uncensor that mentally for my real point.) There's a difference!

        I don't think you adequately grasp the scales being dealt with here, and how thoroughly everything you touch is dependent on our petroleum culture. (And how much work and knowlege it will take to get us off of that culture.)
        • To reply to a bunch of people. There's a lot of angles to this.

          First off you don't allow this to get out of hand. A genetic defect could be built into such a bacterium (a virus isn't much good for eating oil)... say... an intolerance to a specific protein. Lace your oil with the protean save your supply. Either that or allow only X number of generations... I'm not sure how that works but I'm sure there's a way. This limits the amount of oil/whatever destroyed.

          Option 2 of course is design a bacterium that only eats diesel fuel or gasoline. That saves the crude oil.

          As for the qestion of how fast can you grow a peanut? 5 Months [nationalpeanutboard.com]. In comparison to the several million years for oil to form that seems like a good deal.

          Admittedly the destruction of the world oil reserves would suck tremendously. It would cause a period of inflation and other economic shock heretofor unheard of. But industrial civilization would survive.

          The idea of producing a bacterium that eats ammunition is infnitely more entertaining anyhow. Especialy one that could convert things like high powered military exposives into something significanly less stable :-)

        • In other words, a world previously capable of supporting 6+ billion can suddenly only support a couple hundred million. (And the sweeping plagues and lack of primitive-type distribution mechanisms may leave only tens of millions around the world. My local farmers could never support this area.)
          Your lack of knowledge of the world outside "your local area" is disturbing.

          I have lived in places in the past five years that sustain large populations using horses and ploughs to plant, and sickles and baskets to harvest. Horses and carts transport the food.

          I have lived in places where electrified trains (powered by coal fired power plants) provide 80% of the transportation of goods from country to city. And on New Year's Eve 1999 I knew I'd have transportation the next day no matter what, as there were coal fired steam engines standing by in major cities in the event of grid failure.

          Most of the population of this world is not directly dependant on gasoline! I would be surprised that if in the event of the disappearance of all natural oil reserves the world lost more than a few hundreds of million people in the time it would take to switch to alternate fuel sources.

          Get out of your American fucking backyard and realize that the rest of the world will not stop when there's no more gas for their Ford Excursion, lawnmower, powerboat, and RV generator.
        • Something that everyone seems to be missing is that it's not the fuel, we could change that in a matter of years, hopfully before ALL the oil was destroyed. but the PLASTICS that oil creates people. look around at the shit you have by your computer. how much is plastic?? most things are plastic now and this is done mostly by oil.

      • I think you're being very narrow-minded. A few centuries is a long time. Look how the world has changed. Yes it is physically possible to live without petroleum, but we wouldn't exactly make the switch smoothly. We are hugely dependant upon our own technological advances.

        Just imagine that all the oil and gas in the world disappeared right now. How will you heat your house tonight? If that's not an issue, how will you eat tomorrow? You'll probably have enough food on hand for a couple days, and maybe if you get to the store quickly you can grab some more. But, that will soon run out, and then what? No new food will be getting to the stores, because it all comes on trucks, and they sure as hell won't be able to convert them all to peanut oil, and find enough peanut oil quickly enough (keeping in mind any petroleum powered machinery won't work) to supply our entire civilization.

        Certain people, mainly farmers, would still have the skills and resources to feed themselves. I haven't the foggiest idea how to turn a cow or a pig into food. I'm sure that "scarcely a few centuries" ago, this was common knowledge. Even if I did know how, I live in a city, my 60x40' yard won't feed an animal, even if I could acquire one.

        Sure, there are other possible sources of fuel, but to think we could convert to them, even within a couple years, is doubtful. Totally losing petroleum would result in most of our population dying off. There's no way we could support our current population with the technology and machinery we have now, and there's no way we could convert it to some other fuel fast enough. It would set us back 100 years, and completely change our entire world.
      • Oh please.

        The only way we will get over it pretty quick will be if we die off in large numbers, which we may well do because we won't be able to bring food to market, or even grow enough food since we are dependant on chemical intensive agriculture that is based on petrochemicals.

        The rapid and complete depletion of our oil resources would lead to huge disruptions that I would expect would greatly cripple our ability to create and deploy replacement. In the US these days, Oil is principally a transportaion fuel, but that would probly be enough.
    • On the other hand, we've never cared before about things getting out of hand. Remember War Games? A no win situation with nuclear weapons. Same thing with this bugger. We develop and launch, then what happens when the other side catches one of em? They reverse engineer, duplicate/clone them, and then release them on us? Weapons are double edged swords (and double edged swords are weapons) they cut both ways.
    • Chance that these bugs become uncontrollable would almost be zero - remember, that we're GENETICALLY ENGINEERING a bug. It means, we can potentially make any "mod" to these bugs.

      If I were to implement this, I would control the life span of these bugs, and make them sterile before deploying. See, nowadays you have to have MEASURABLE effect on paper before putting a new weapon in use. In this case, it all boil down to controlled reproduction and aging of these bugs.
    • How would you get them here without diesel engined ships?
      This is Slashdot, so I'll throw techcnology at your arguement.

      One of the nice things about diesel engines is that they'll combust many things besides diesel fuel. vegetable oil, for one. Google biodiesel [google.com] for more information. I plan to road trip this summer with biodiesel in my TDi Golf IV.
    • Dude, how old are you? This sounds like it was written by a 12 year old. You say the same thing about 15 times.

      I don't think anyone thought it was a *good* idea to destroy all the Earth's oil reserves.

    • Geneticaly modified bacteria are already being used to clean up oil spills. The bacteria need light to work their magic so the current strains can't decimate oil in tanks and underground.

      Try google with "oil spill bacteria" for more info.

    • for two, in case you weren't aware of this but there are no nuclear engineers anymore. nuclear science has taken a significant hit in recent years. there are very few people studying to be nuclear scientists/engineers

      Uhh, maybe in your neck of the woods, but the rest of the world has made significant advancements, and you can find (for example) Canadian nuclear reactors across central Canada, in several European and Asian countries, and we're building a few in China. But I have to wonder who's building them, since all the nuclear engineers and scientists traded in their diplomas for taxi cabs...

      Your US==Alles worldview saddens and disenheartens me. Please learn before you speak. Sad thing is, this is far from the first time I've heard these silly statements from people on slashdot. Sadder still, it's far from the first time they've been modded up.

      If all the world's oil reserves were totalled... Well, we could always use the bioengineered fuels harvested from genetically engineered grains. Maybe they're not perfect yet, but they work. That would get us through in the short term, for sure.

      And maybe, just maybe, people would have to go *gasp* outside. I think this is exactly what the world needs. Walk to work, take your time, cycle. People have become so concerned with getting to where they need to be so they can go somewhere else. I think having to walk at least to/from the Skytrain station would maybe make people think about enjoying life, rather than rushing through it. Sure, it wouldn't be all peaches and cream, but it would sure be better than what we have now.

      Before FedEx, nothing needed to be shipped overnight anyway. Now, businesses can't live without it. The world needs to relax. Food for thought.

      --Dan
  • The Puppetters released a "Superconductor plague" which destroyed civilization on Ringworld. Of course, a plague that ate all the oil in the world *would* solve the oil, global warming and smog problems we have ...

    ttyl
    Farrell

  • Why not? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by no_choice ( 558243 )
    Imagine an escaped virus destroying the Earth's oil reserves and its whole industrial potential?

    Such a bug, were it possible to develop, would be a boon to mankind and the West in particular. Destroying the earth's oil wouldn't destroy our industrial potential, just force us to switch to the many other available energy sources a few decades sooner than we otherwise might (since the oil supply will be used up eventually in any case).

    Obviously the transition would be wrenching, but the benefits would be great. Global warming and air pollution would be greatly reduced, and, equally critically, the vast revenues that currently accrue to countries that are net exporters of oil would end. Since most of these revenues go to countries that are strategic competitors of the west and supporters of terrorism (Iraq, Saudi Arabia), ending them would be a good thing for us.

    • The unfortunate problem is that there is no current alternative to oil. If you look at the raw number of BTUs being consumed, there is nothing that will even come close. This is going to be a big issue for people to deal with. The alternative to oil currently isn't clean. It's coal. There's lots, and lots, and LOTS of coal. Coal, unfortunately, is nasty stuff, containing trace elements of just about everything.

      Take a look around sometime, and just try an imagine the sheer volume of oil and the amount of energy it represents. The processing of energy drives our entire civilization, and in it's current form, that means the processing of oil.

      The only other (currently) possible alternatives are nuclear technologies, be they fission, hot, or cold fusion. This is possibly the saviour of the planet, but the environmentalists are hell-bent to stop nuclear research and testing at all costs. Solar, wind, and wave power can make contributions but the infrastructure and maintenance required make these unrealistic alternatives.

      Thermodynamics is harsh stuff.
      • Ok... can someone PLEASE explain this to me. I've wondered about this for some time.

        The tides and thus the waves are caused by gravitational fluxes in the Earth Moon system. By harnesing wave power we take energy out of the ocean. Energy is dumped into the ocean by gravitational tides. Thus there is no danger of stoping the waves. This I get.

        But we know that "energy can neither be created nor destroyed." Consequently the energy has got to be coming from SOMEWHERE. Where? Is the moon slowing? How does this play out?

        More to the point.... how about Geothermal energy? I guess I just have a hard time reconsiling these energy sources (which seem to depend on gravity to feed them) with what we know about matter/energy.

        • Consequently the energy has got to be coming from SOMEWHERE. Where? Is the moon slowing?

          Yes. You're indirectly converting moon's energy into electricity. More directly, you're converting the tide's kinetic energy into electricity, and in doing that, you're pulling the moon back a little.

          The energy was originally put into the system (from our point of view), when somebody(*) put the moon far away from the earth, creating a gravitional potential.

          More to the point.... how about Geothermal energy?

          Geothermal energy comes from exploiting a heat differential. (It's basically the same principle as the steam engine, except that somebody already heated the water for you.) When you have gas in one place that is higher pressure or hotter than another place, the gas wants to move to the cooler/lesspressured place. So you make a push it push a turbine as it gets there.

          The energy was originally put into the system (from out point of view) when somebody(*) heated the earth up.

          (*)It was me. You're welcome.

    • I majored in chemistry, way back in the dark ages before most Slashdotters were born... One of my professors was very involved in petrochemical research, specifically wrt development of new medicines. His big fear was that by using up oil reserves as an energy resource, we were also using up the future of drug research.

    • "Destroying the earth's oil wouldn't destroy our industrial potential..."

      Do you have any idea how many things are made from petroleum? Insulation for wires, the clear part of CDs and DVDs, the lens for the lasers that read them, anything plastic in general, various medicines, and the list goes on and on. Perhaps some of that stuff can be made from coal instead, but how do we know that any complex hydrocarbons would be safe from these "bugs"?

  • Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis had a novel with this premise published all the way back in 1971: Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater. I have no idea how good it is, because I haven't read it, but copies are available online for the curious in the usual places.

  • ...when the first atomic bombs were tested, there was a serious question as to whether they could ignite a self-sustaining reaction in the earth's atmosphere, destroying it. The scientists literally took a calculated risk--their calculations showed the probability was low, so they went ahead. But they didn't know the answer for sure, until they went ahead and exploded a bomb, and the atmosphere didn't ignite.

    One of the early hydrogen-bomb tests, Bravo in 1954, turned out to have a yield 2-1/2 times higher than expected. Observers watched the fireball grow and grow. Some of them thought it wasn't going to stop and thought that perhaps the atmosphere had been ignited after all. But it hadn't; it didn't destroy the world ( it just contaminated the Marshall Islands and poisoned some Japanese fisherman).

  • How long would it take before the opposition would culture the genetically engineered bacteria , possibly eliminate whatever governs its reproductive control, and send it back to us? Research into this kind of bacteria isn't exactly as dangerous as working on Ebola, for instance...

    Let's use gasoline as an example. Dump some into a oil refinery tank farm and watch the infection chain spread via tanker into our service stations and from there, to our autos. What shape is our economy in when large chunks of our petroleum distribution chain has to be sterilized before reuse?

    Worse, the most probable enemies of the industrialized world are in the best position to absorb this kind of infrastructure attack, i.e. the US is funding a type of attack that endangers us more than the opposition.

  • Check out this article [alaska.edu] from 1977. Bacteria, with a little help, will eat oil/blacktop.

    Bacteria is now used to clean up oil spills.

    Now for the correction. The Observer article simply says 'bugs'. Given the above info, they almost certainly mean bacteria, not a virus, as the story submitter assumes.
  • And I was afraid we would be wiped out by robots which were made a little bit too smart for us to cope with.

    That will teach me for being too pessemistic.
  • These new weapons just keep sounding scarier and scarier.

    I'm not saying let's eliminate war altogether in favor of peace (that's just not realistic) but what about doing something like this:

    Have a global convention (we'll see if Geneva is booked) where we 're-initalize warfare'. Something like "So do we all agree that from now on we'll only use bow-and-arrows?. Is that okay with everyone?"

    I'm sure that'd work.

    :)
  • I recall an article in Analog back in the '60s that discussed the troubles that oil-eating bugs caused the military. It's not so much that they consume all of the fuel as that they denature it, cause acidic buildup leading to corrosion, and clog pumps and filters.

    The US lost a fair number of aircraft to this kind of bacterial mischief back then before they learned to put antibacterials in the fuel. I'd hardly be surprised to find that the bioengineers have found ways to make bugs that like the antibacterials.

  • The closest I can think of in science fiction is in Larry Niven's Ringworld series (a branch off of the known space stories) where a type of fungus/mold eats a certain kind of superconductor. It's been too many years, though - was the fungus a bioweapon, or just a natural occurence?
    • People laugh at S.F. but more often than not, the best S.F. & F writers consider the deeper implications of developing technology long before everyone else does. Asimov did lots of stuff with the ethics of robotics and such long before AI was really implimentable.
  • Imagine an escaped virus destroying the Earth's oil reserves and its whole industrial potential? Curiously, the military may implement the environmentalists' ultimate dream!

    Let me clue you in on what it is that the fuel eaten by these bacteria (not viruses) eventually breaks down into - water and carbon dioxide. This is a more controlled form of a process better known as FIRE.

    Flame of yet another kind: Timothy, you are an idiot. Even as a joke that was a grade A stupid thing to say. It reflects poorly on you as an editor and as a human being. If you don't know the difference between a virus and a bacterium shut your cornhole.

    We, Environmentalists, object to gasoline being burned (turned into Carbon Dioxide) faster than it is deposited in peat marshes and such. I don't want to rehash the global warming argument here, so don't y'all even start.

    The fact that the gasoline, while burned, does useful work, instead of, say, fueling the growth of a manmade organism, does not bother anyone.

    You can find out more about Hydrocarbon Utilizing Microbes (HUMs) here. [fuelpolishing.com] The document is fully accessible to a non-scientist. The people at Brooks Air Force base, who are/would be (?) developing these fuel eating microbes for offensive use have already made use of them in a peaceful context. [af.mil] Again, the press release is non technical. Personally, I find this to be admirable work - they're using them to clean up petrochemical contamination of soil and groundwater, which is an underappreciated ecological problem. I'm not terribly worried about these organisms going out of control and eating the world's petrochemical reserves. They exist in nature already in various forms and have not done that.

    The New Scientist has an older article [newscientist.com] about the fuel eating bugs, or, more specifically, about the circumstances surrounding the release of documents discussing the bugs; I think this may have come up on slashdot before but I searched just now and didn't find it. The sunshine project also has an article about there efforts to get the documents released. [sunshine-project.org]

  • USA uses 60% of oil production... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And I'm not making this up. Europe, Asia are big into economy cars but we are far behind that. So a virus that would eat petroleum based products (sound slike an episode of sliders, doesn't it?) will be the penultimate anti-american weapon ever dreamed.

    So do I welcome this, err... NOPE!

  • Not an easy lunch (Score:2, Insightful)

    by DumbSwede ( 521261 )
    I think the idea of a mutated, man-made bug eating all petroleum reserves and petroleum derived products very unlikely. Nature would beat us to the punch if this were a viable lunch for bugs at all. Untold trillions of microbes are mutating and trying to eat these compounds everyday. In some small ways they sometimes succeed. My contact lenses recently went bad due to a microbial or fungal infection. To be fair, they may have only been living in the contacts, feeding on trace nutrients from eye fluid.

    In any event, the normal environment that produces petroleum seems to favor organic to petroleum with the help of microbes and the catalysts of heat and pressure. To go in the reverse direction would involve adding some missing nutrients. While I have not researched breaking up oil spills, I suspect that they wouldn't just seed the spill with microbes, but some kind of key nutrients, catalysts, or dispersal agents, to sustain a growth that is not natural in nature. Keep in mind, man is not the only cause of oil spills. Oil often boils up from under the ocean after seismic events. Yet after BILLIONS of years, microbes haven't evolved to make a quick easy lunch of it. Eat it though they do, after it sufficiently disperses in the environment, and has mixed with other nutrients. Eventually they it get down, albeit slowly.

    This is not to say the DoD's research is pointless, but that there is probably more to it than just creating a super bug by rearranging a few genes. In all likely hood the artificially evolved microbes would require some unnatural assistance to achieve the degradation of an enemy's fuel and plastic products.

    • Well, I don't think oil-eating microbes have that much difficulty, since fairly recently, researchers have discovered entire ecosystems [noaa.gov] that seem to be dependent on petroleum- and methane-eating bacteria.

      But, yeah, the doomsday scenarios are a bit silly.
  • The military have been for a while testing drugs designed to make soldiers less anxious, ie less affraid.

    Now this has some important ethical implications. Is it ok for your government to give you a drug that makes you unufraid of death?

    Are they just helping you be a good soldier or turning you into a suicidal maniac?
  • I am not trolling but I think sometime you Americans should put a stop to your pentagon before they do something really dangerous.
  • Nearly all military vehicles, with the exception of aircraft, use diesel as fuel, but kerosene is not that different anyway. Anyone who is around large amounts of it knows that it's a constant struggle to keep "bugs" out of it so they don't consume it or clog fuel filters, you have to put additives in to kill them. What fantastic high-tech bio-weapon is needed when it's already happening?
  • Are we really that surprised at the Pentagon fiddling about with things that have the capability to destroy? Whereas I'm sure that we should be worried about bugs eating our oil, it's not the biggest threat to the environment that national security has ever come up with. Nuclear fallout, anyone? Napalm, Defoliants? Firestorms from conventional incindiaries? Landmines and undetonated explosive devices cluttering up farmland??

    Not to offend any oil reserves, but as I'm a HUMAN and not a hydrocarbon, maybe this isn't such a sin after all.

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