Could a genetically engineered bioweapon wipe out most of the human race?

Could a genetically engineered bioweapon wipe out most of the human race?

  • Yes

    Votes: 48 60.0%
  • No

    Votes: 12 15.0%
  • It depends

    Votes: 20 25.0%

  • Total voters
    80
Could a genetically engineered bioweapon (Ebola, Smallpox etc) really wipe most of the human race?

An example would be the Ebola Shiva virus from Rainbow Six:
The conspirators, staunch environmentalists, believe that the great proliferation of humanity is destroying the biosphere and that the optimum number of humans in the world should not exceed half a million. Therefore, the "excess" billions must be killed off. The plan is to use the Olympics where people from virtually every country in the world are gathered, and infect athletes and spectators with a mutated form of Ebola which they would carry back to their countries. When the disease starts breaking out in various countries, the Horizon Corporation would announce that it had fortunately developed a vaccine and is set to produce it on a large scale, and be hailed as a savior. The world's governments would hurriedly organize giving the supposed vaccine to their entire populations. By the time it is realized that in fact it was the disease itself, it would be too late - the whole of humanity would be dead or dying, except for the "chosen few" who would get the real vaccine and who would inherit the emptied world. The fanatic conspirators, bearing no personal animosity to the billions they plan to kill, are utterly convinced of the justness of their act and think of it as "saving the world" - i.e., saving the environment and the biosphere from the encroachment of destructive humanity.
Another example is the superflu from Stephen King's The Stand which kills 99.4% of humanity.
 
A plague of some sort wiped out 90% of the native American population within decades first contact with the Europeans,so it is possible.
 
Not particularly likely (such a plan would either be intercepted in the planning stages or contained soon after it started), but definitely possible. I think this belongs in the Future History thread, though.
 
If the disease spreads easily and kills quickly, isolated populations or those who go to sealed environments can wait it out. If it is a slow killer, odds are good it is identified and efforts are made to contain it one way or another. You'd need to find a natural reservoir for the disease in other creatures besides humans to come close to 100%.
 
A couple of possibilities:

1. A pathogen that affects food crops, like the one in John Wyndham's No Blade of Grass.
2. A pathogen that's asymptomatic but that causes permanent infertility in humans.
 
A couple of possibilities:

1. A pathogen that affects food crops, like the one in John Wyndham's No Blade of Grass.
2. A pathogen that's asymptomatic but that causes permanent infertility in humans.
1. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault makes it hard for this one to completely wipe out humans after 2008
2. Could work
 
Wiping out all food crops would require numerous different agents, as there are many different crops and people can eat almost anything if they have to. Something that kills fertility would work - I wonder if it would work on those pre-pubertal...
 
Future AI could genetically engineer a bioweapon and wipe us all out. It could be Terminator style, except bioweapons being used in place of nukes. Robots would be immune. This might be more effective than in the whole Terminator franchise.
 
Honestly, these days, it would be very hard for a bioweapon to wipe out most of the human race, given the fact that we have a good understanding of infectious disease and how it works, as well as modern containment protocols to help step the spread. Medical infrastructure can be easily overwhelmed, but quarantines exist for a reason.

Germ theory wasn't really elaborated upon until the 1850s at least with the work of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, and viruses were identified in the 1890s. So all of the plagues before that would have more easily wiped out much of humanity, because we didn't fully understand what isolation protocols we should use, as well as what was causing disease.
 
We have had a few scares on potential deadly germs in recent years, what with bird-flu and Ebola, but while many people have died - in the case of the latter for example it has only been a disaster in the local area.
In terms of world population they have had no impact. AIDs has probably been the worst where in parts of Africa the 'adults' have been hard hit with children and seniors remaining.
It would take something entirely new, or the release from some secure facility of something old but deadly, where the population's immunity had died out, to have some major impact.
 
It's certainly possible. If the bioweapon is something that spreads quickly but is not immediately fatal then it could infect a great many people before it's spotted. As a bioweapon there is every chance it could also mutate once out in the world, complicating efforts to deal with it.

Containment protocols depend on the disease being spotted and governments taking prompt action. Frankly I don't have that much faith in governments to take prompt enough action. To take the UK as an example closing our borders to keep a bioweapon out would be a very drastic action, but might be needed. I have a feeling that HMG would not react quickly enough to keep the disease out.
 
The technology does not exist at this time. While the human genome has been mapped, we still don't know what all of the elements of our genes actually do yet.
 

Raunchel

Banned
It's impossible to wipe out humanity with just a bioweapon. You can do damage, sure, but there are way too many issues that you have to overcome to kill them all. Even an infertility virus wouldn't do the job, there would be too many people left alive, and they have a fair bit of time to find solutions.
 

Archibald

Banned
The wikipedia page of USSR bioweapons scared (and still scare) the shit out of me. Seriously, with all those WMDs, a good case could me made that human civilization dodged a lot of bullets.
 
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