Hilarious and clever to write a GCBR story as a sequel to “500 million, but not a single more”. I also loved some of your turns of phrase, like your final two sentences. This is also an interesting and relevant scenario—a mix of accident, pride, malicious intent, and the details of life in academia that’s different from the usual portrayals of terrorists, secret military labs, etc.
Unlike the ill-fated GCBR story that I myself submitted to the creative-writing contest a few weeks ago, I don’t think this tale quite falls afoul of the guidelines against posting dangerous information on the EA Forum, since smallpox is already such a famous virus and the most specific thing you mention is GenBank. But I’m not sure—some of the biorisk people I talked to after my story was removed gave the impression that they basically didn’t think that any publicity was a good thing for the cause of GCBR mitigation, since the playing field is so tilted towards the attacker and even nontechnical stories can create “inspiration risk” that might give the wrong ideas to the kind of researchers and grad students that your story is about. On the other hand… I just saw James Bond the other night which was about a mad scientist creating an engineered virus to kill off the Earth’s population, and that movie was delayed for over a year by an IRL global pandemic that possibly leaked from a lab project. So, from my perspective it seems insane for the EA forum to take a totally puritan approach to any discussion of biorisk scenarios, since it’s not like the rest of the world isn’t thinking about these things.
(My story was more of a sci-fi tale about how a future killer virus with the right properties might be able to defeat civilization even after all we’ve learned from Covid-19, and… I was rushing to write the story so I really didn’t stop to think. Fittingly, as someone named Jack, I could also have used some of the talking-down that your main character receives!!)
Anyways, congratulations on your first post to the forum!
Thanks Jack for this comment! I’m very happy to hear that you enjoyed the story.
I had never even considered that this story in itself could be dangerous, but I can see what the biorisk folks are getting at. But as you point out with Bond, they would need to do an enormous amount of policing to have much impact. Hopefully, they don’t see my story as dangerous...
I’m sorry to hear about your story getting scrapped, but I wish you good luck in walking the line between promoting biorisk thinking and not giving ammunition to folks who would try to do something harmful. I’ll try to do the same! It’s a worthwhile paradox to consider.
Hilarious and clever to write a GCBR story as a sequel to “500 million, but not a single more”. I also loved some of your turns of phrase, like your final two sentences. This is also an interesting and relevant scenario—a mix of accident, pride, malicious intent, and the details of life in academia that’s different from the usual portrayals of terrorists, secret military labs, etc.
Unlike the ill-fated GCBR story that I myself submitted to the creative-writing contest a few weeks ago, I don’t think this tale quite falls afoul of the guidelines against posting dangerous information on the EA Forum, since smallpox is already such a famous virus and the most specific thing you mention is GenBank. But I’m not sure—some of the biorisk people I talked to after my story was removed gave the impression that they basically didn’t think that any publicity was a good thing for the cause of GCBR mitigation, since the playing field is so tilted towards the attacker and even nontechnical stories can create “inspiration risk” that might give the wrong ideas to the kind of researchers and grad students that your story is about. On the other hand… I just saw James Bond the other night which was about a mad scientist creating an engineered virus to kill off the Earth’s population, and that movie was delayed for over a year by an IRL global pandemic that possibly leaked from a lab project. So, from my perspective it seems insane for the EA forum to take a totally puritan approach to any discussion of biorisk scenarios, since it’s not like the rest of the world isn’t thinking about these things.
(My story was more of a sci-fi tale about how a future killer virus with the right properties might be able to defeat civilization even after all we’ve learned from Covid-19, and… I was rushing to write the story so I really didn’t stop to think. Fittingly, as someone named Jack, I could also have used some of the talking-down that your main character receives!!)
Anyways, congratulations on your first post to the forum!
Thanks Jack for this comment! I’m very happy to hear that you enjoyed the story.
I had never even considered that this story in itself could be dangerous, but I can see what the biorisk folks are getting at. But as you point out with Bond, they would need to do an enormous amount of policing to have much impact. Hopefully, they don’t see my story as dangerous...
I’m sorry to hear about your story getting scrapped, but I wish you good luck in walking the line between promoting biorisk thinking and not giving ammunition to folks who would try to do something harmful. I’ll try to do the same! It’s a worthwhile paradox to consider.