I'm feeling inspired!
Nanorobots able to kill bacteria could also destroy healthy human cells, becoming a trans-biological plague in their own right. Self-replicating nanomachines intended for molecular manufacturing could be programmed to break matter apart instead of putting it together. A horde of multiplying nanomachines released into the environment, programmed to devour the matter around them and use it as raw material to build copies of themselves, could in principle become a planetary cancer dwarfing nuclear weapons in their capacity for destruction. Malignant nanorobots could be designed to putrefy human bodies and mutate in response to countermeasures. They could be programmed to destroy crops and plant life. They could be ordered to trigger destructive chemical reactions in water or the atmosphere, such as obliterating ozone or poisoning aquifers. They could build themselves into artificial life forms, such as super-tough cybernetic plants intended to drive their biological predecessors into extinction. The theoretical potential of all these nightmare weapons to replicate themselves without human control is what makes them uniquely horrible. Nuclear bombs are bad enough, Bill Joy points out, but at least they can’t multiply out of control like a virus.
God that gave me a hard on!
Edited, Fri Mar 4 17:08:01 2005 by Lefein