The Fermi Plague

I've been a subscriber to Analog Science Fiction and Fact for 40+ years, however, I've fallen almost a dozen years behind in my reading. Yes, I know, I know. :)

In any case, I am going to post comments about stories and articles I read starting with this one... "The Fermi Plague", an Editorial by Stanley Schmidt in the October 1998 issue of Analog.

Dr. Schmidt's title, of course, refers to the big question..."Where is everybody and why haven't they said 'hello?'" That question remains unanswered 11 years later, although we have discovered many, many, planets in the meantime. This question, though, isn't really the thrust of the editorial, and in light of what has happened since it was published, it takes on an even more scary taint.

What Dr. Schmidt asks, is can a techonological civilization...and as we are the only one we know of...can we survive long enough to become the sort of civilization that can contact other civilizations?

Stanley adds "the plague" as a possible answer to Fermi's Paradox. A Technological Civilization may develop the ability to kill itself with a plague.

Dr. Schmidt's example plague was the "Anthrax scare" of the late 90's. That was a phony scare at the time, but it was possible, even then, for a government, even a poor one, to "weaponize" a viral or bacteriological strain and deliver it against population in general. It is even more possible today!

It isn't just governments that could develop and spread such a plague, any well financed NGO...terrorist group...could pull it off. So could any well-heeled individual nutjob! Scary, huh?

After 9/11, the Mumbai Massacre, and all of the other attacks of the last decade it is clear that there are groups in the world willing to indiscriminately kill innocent people and suicide while doing it. All that has been wanting has been the agent of destruction. Crashing airplanes is awful, massacring people in a hotel, on trains, in nightclubs is awful, planting bombs here and there takes out buildings and dozens, hundreds, of people is awful, but non of them would compare to setting off an atomic bomb in downtown London, Paris, New York or Tokyo!

Atomic bombs can be built, and we know who might be building them. Are all of the atomic bombs from the former USSR accounted for? Are we sure? Even short of a bomb, just a conventional bomb...and we know they can build them...could disperse a cloud of radioactive death just from the waste material from power plants. As bad as an A-bomb or a "dirty" bomb would be it wouldn't be a global event...a plague could be.

There are plenty of natural diseases out there that could lay millions low...HINI anyone? And then there are the un-natural ones. There is no evidence that anyone has used our knowledge of DNA and genetics to create killer diseases...yet...but there is no evidence that it hasn't been done in one, or more, government library. If it hasn't been done yet, do you want to bet...can we afford to bet...that it won't be done?

Mankind on Earth is walking on a tightwire. We have been up there for years and will be up there for many, many, more...unless we fall off and then Dr. Schmidt will have been correct about how one Technological Civilization disappeared.

So, what do we do about it? Dr. Schmidt's suggested solution was for all of mankind to become rational, kind-hearted, and stop murdering each other no matter how good a reason we might think we have...in short, the end of fanaticism and the ascendancy of reason. You tell me, in the past 12 years has fanaticism receded or advanced? Sad and scary.