From:	Justin Fang <justinf@****.CALTECH.EDU>
Subject:	Re: More Problems?
Date:	Mon, 24 Mar 1997 18:03:56 -0800

Jaimie Nicholson wrote:

>>Well, Jaimie Nicholson had that cult under Gibraltar with that utterly
>>looney scheme to make a virus lethal to everything on the planet not
>>specially engineered to be immune. They obviously didn't (and couldn't)
>>succeed, so I don't know if you want to count that.

>Couldn't? I resent that. Why couldn't it work?

Um, because destroying the ShadowTalk world is Not Allowed?

The virus is biologically impossible, as well, but the prohibition against
massive world alterations is the important bit here. You can threaten to,
for instance, nuke Seattle all you want (well, it'd get old after a while)
but it can't actually *happen*. But you knew that already.

As for the virus: yes, all life on Earth shares a common ancestor and
numerous similarilties, but there are so many differences between bacteria
and seaweed and mushrooms and earthworms and oysters and cockroaches and
pine trees and amoebae and slime molds and humans and all the rest that for
a *single* virus to be able to infect and kill all of them is just plain
impossible. I didn't bother complaining at the time because there're cults
in real life that believe things far crazier than "we can make a virus that
will kill all DNA-based life."

--
Justin Fang (justinf@****.caltech.edu)
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