Imagine machines so small that you literally cannot see them. Tiny machines, the size of a few atoms, designed to attack virus proteins or cancer cells, or maybe convert air into water, or some similar task. Now imagine that these machines have been programmed to self-replicate, a relatively simple proposition, given they’re only a few atoms big, they don’t take up much building material. You can basically make them out of anything.
Now imagine that somehow they malfunction, or for irony’s sake maybe they were mis-programmed to begin with, and they begin to multiply unchecked, slowly increasing in numbers. Of course, they’re only small, so a few more won’t hurt, right? Well, take that small number, and then start increasing it exponentially, and you very quickly have a very big problem on your hands.
These machines require no real fuel, and they would endlessly self-replicate. They would self-replicate until they had literally consumed every atom of useable material on the planet up to and including the planet itself.
The machines are nanobots, and the scenario I am shrilly talking about is the grey goo apocalypse.
What you have to understand about that event is that we’re not talking about the earth being covered in a grey sludge of quadrillions of living machines. They would consume rock and lava, from the brittle crust right to the molten core, until there was nothing left but a giant blob of grey ooze, floating in space. Earth, and everything on it, would be utterly, totally consumed.
Now, many scientists say that that sort of talk is just paranoid nonsense. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s paranoid nonsense. And I know good paranoid nonsense when I see it.
What you have to do is weigh up the cost-benefits. On the one hand, nanotechnology has already given us carbon nanotubes which promise to revolutionise several industries from medicine to construction. Speaking of medicine, scientists from very early on have talked up the possibility of nanobots to cure cancer and disease, by attacking it on it’s own terms, at the molecular level. There’s a very real possibiility that AIDS and most forms of cancer will be cured in our lifetimes due to nanotechnology.
On the other hand, a single mutation in one miniscule robot means the entire earth is turned into galactic play-doh.
That’s why my bunker is hermetically sealed with a leak factor of less than a micron, and is fully insulated against the vacuum of space despite being buried a kilometre underground. You never know when rock is going to turn into creeping grey sludge oozing mindless malevolence.
Tags: The November Challenge, Ways The World Will End
November 8th, 2009 at 17:54
You have made a few damn good points here. I think I shall put some time aside next weekend to build myself a bunker. Don’t suppose you have some blueprints of your bunker floating around?
November 8th, 2009 at 23:32
Having just finished watching Primer, all I can think about is these machines being invented in 200 years from now, but they work backwards in time. So because they work in reverse, they slowly but surely eat their way into history, atom by atom, millisecond by millisecond, until they reach us and destroy us completely, totally and utterly, and then continue backwards until all of human civilisation is consumed.
But the society in 200 years continues to operate forwards, because the nanobots only work backwards in time.
So I guess what I’m saying is fuck you, Primer.
November 8th, 2009 at 23:33
I’m referring to this:
http://xkcd.com/657/large/
And the real timeline is actually worse:
http://www.freeweb.hu/neuwanstein/primer_timeline.jpg
November 8th, 2009 at 23:59
That Primer idea completely fucks with everything I understand about the universe. I want to know more.
Also, Stu, your post reminded me of that Michael Crichton book, Prey. Except where you were all like ‘Hey, let’s build molecule-tight bunkers and survive and shit’, he was all like ‘Let’s dance in teams to distract the swaaaaaarmmmmmm.’
So I guess what I’m saying is fuck you, Crichton.
November 9th, 2009 at 00:21
But here’s the thing. It doesn’t end at the grey goo. There will always be mutation errors in the code and they’ll happen fast. Single part nano-bots will become multipart nano-machines. Eventually it’ll build up and more complex entities will exist. Before your know it,..
Cybertron.
Yeah!!!!!
November 9th, 2009 at 03:29
If we combine backwards-time nanobots with nano-evolution, we end up with Transformers vs. Dinosaurs, and I think we can declare this comment section closed for business because nobody’s going to top that.