We live in a terrifying time
Well, the nanobots that you are describing do not exist, so they aren't what is making the time terrifying
this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025
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Wait until you hear about viruses or prions. Truly terrifying nanobots. Worst of all, they already exist. Those things are out there right now.
Prions are absolutely wild. There is no cure, no "vaccine" - not that that would even be possible because they're not viruses, bacteria, or even living things from outside your body. They're just a faulty version of something that already exists in your system and they make your body self-destruct.
Prime horror movie material.
You trust your body. You trust your mind. But what if the enemy... is already inside you?
They’re not viruses. They’re not bacteria. They’re your own proteins... twisted. Hungry.
They hide in the folds of your brain. They wait in the silence of your cells. And when they strike... you won’t even know you’re already lost.
PRIONS
COMING TO AN ENDOPLASMIC RETICULUM NEAR YOU
Congratulations. I am now terrified of my own brain.
New fear unlocked.
If a plausible zombie virus were to exist, it would definitely be those long-incubating stuff
Prions(tm): not a virus
There have never been enough concerns to be worth to develop a vaccine for a prion, and current used techniques are those for being efficient for their targets, but as far as I know prions are just proteins and proteins can be (and are) targeted, the whole immunitarie system often relies on those...
Chemical weapons appear as a much better option than viruses. Enemy is there, drop a nervine agent and everyone is dead. Wait for a while and you're free to advance.
Viruses in much more difficult to operate: infect someone somehow - I guess a bomb or something like that could be used as well. Wait several months so that enemy actually gets infected on large scale, but not too long because most of them won't be dying anyway and soon back to battlefield. In the meantime vaccinate the whole of your invasion army. Start producing massive quantities of vaccines just in case it spreads to your own country somehow and you'll have to treat your own population.
Assuming you were able to create both the virus and the vaccine within the period the war lasted, it may give you some bit of advantage during a period of 1/2 months or something like that. Good enough if you're able to win the war in such period, but if you've got that kind of money to spend I'm sure you've got way more efficient options.
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That sounds much more complicated than just using a gun. And they even work on people in hazmat suits.
Why would you destroy potentially useful human resources?
no violence needed
How is this entire thing not violence?
unless you have the EMP tech
So you mean like robots with electronics in them? You should read less science fiction. This is beyond bill gates microchip injection nonsense.
Also how is this different form just gassing the enemy?
When I say, "their bodies are yours," I'm talking about the nanobots being used to mind-control or pacify them, not kill them.
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Robots with electronics in them and when they bark they shoot electronics at you?
They most probably won't, there is literally zero chance that someone would kill you with nanobots.
probably won’t
zero chance
I mean biological warfare already exists so no need to go 21st century with it. I'd imagine that even if the tech existed, it just wouldn't be cost effective.
We already had a sublime propaganda machine, yet here we are with AI anyway...
And cost effective only matters if you actually want to solve problems for people, not if you want to make money by creating something nobody wants and have you and your friends in the military-industrial-political complex get astronomically rich together.
It'll be mosquito sized drone that stings you in the neck and then you die
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the borg, replicators(milky way) all use nano-robots as a method to attack thier intended victims, or assimilate them.
its actually the basis of borg assimilating a planet, deploy cloud of nanoprobes into the infect the population through the atmosphere, they dont seem to do it often though.
nano-tech is also big in sg1, where the goauld use them to infect and age the population, in sga they were use to infect humans and wraith.
The nanobots we have need a light as power source and only work in a strong magnetic field. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ9aXoah5DA
Just try to avoid having a endoscopic lamp inserted into you while you sit inside a MRT and you should be good, no fear needed.
I'm on the last part of the Wool/Silo series. No spoilers.
Really excellent books. I didn't think the second one could be better than the first or reveal more secrets, man was i pleasantly surprised
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Someone's seen the movie Upgrade lol
Loved that movie!! Always thought the nanites were a bit lazy but how else can you threaten an AI i guess
This is literally the concept of a popular science fiction TV series. I won't say which one because I don't want to spoil it, but its next season is eagerly awaited, and it was huge when it was airing its previous season(s).
The series is based on books, and some fans of the series have read ahead; some have finished the books and know what all happens. Of course adaptations do change things, but killer nanobots that were used to wage war were the catalyst and a hidden plot point. I think the next season will reveal this.
(No, it's not Fallout. Fallout is good old-fashioned nuclear war. The show doesn't follow any of the games, but they share the same lore. The show is changing some of that, adding onto it (e.g. Vault Boy origin story in the first season), but they aren't changing that. Also, not based on books.)
If you know, don't say. Or at the very least use spoiler tags.
Fallout the Show doesn't follow any of the games because it's an entirely new story told in that same universe. The games and show all share the same timeline, and yet each game (including the show) has an entirely different story, taking place at a different location and point in time, in each installment.
So there's really nothing for the show to follow, other than the established rules of the world it inhabits, and imo it does a very good job of that.
Gimme the spoiler tag! I wanna watch this!
You kinda can't because that plot point hasn't been revealed yet. That said, if you know that's what's going on, it makes the show's first mystery trivial! I read the books after the first season, and I loved picking that mystery apart. I think after the first episode we had enough to speculate and go back and forth on theories. Of course now you can binge watch the whole season, so you aren't forced to take all that time to think about it.
spoiler
The show is called Silo, on Apple TV. You don't need an Apple device to watch it; Apple TV is on most smart TV app stores. You can also usually get a free trial. The show is 2 seasons so far. Again, nothing about the show says nanobots (yet). And be warned, the books were very thin on details, but the author is an executive producer on the show, and he's adding a ton of stuff (and changing others). So they might change it, but you can read the books if you like the concept.
So the back story is, humans killed each other with nanobots rather than nukes, and, much like the world of Fallout, they live in underground bunkers called silos. And also like Fallout (more so the games), some of the silos run experiments. Some social, some scientific. They have a ton of strange rules, knowledge is forbidden, all that good stuff.
The mystery I mentioned was about the first person on in the series sent outside "to clean." The question was whether what he saw on the visor real or not. Once you know they're gassed with the nanobots as soon as they step outside (there is zero radiation out there), that explains the show's first mystery. "But he's in a suit," you think. That gets answered by the end of the first season.
Hope you can still enjoy it!
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[...] there's just no way to dodge this sort of stuff unless you have the EMP tech [...]
I think that we are closer of advance EMP technology than remote controlled operative war nanobots that supose a non violent threat more than biological weapons (which I find quite violent and inhumane), not to mention that countermeasure evolution seems much easier than (if not as easy as) the effective sophistication of nanobots, just to say a few...
Well, "obsolete." Unless your average home invader starts employing nanobots in their crimes guns will still be useful, just not against state level threats that can afford nanobots. Of course, those threats already have f-35s or whatever number we're on now so guns are already of limited effect there.
If you’re into this concept you should read the Blade series by Linda Nagata
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