I’ve mentioned the IL-4 cloaking technique in the Timeline, but I needed to mention it in the comic proper. This is for real, this is serious stuff. People think that a biowarfare bug will look like the swine flu, with a few people dead? Uh, uh. If a professionally designed virus gets out everyone who catches it is gonna die. Best you can do is close the borders with fire and pray for the human race.
Of course, there’s no reason Girii and Roger can’t have fun until then, right?
↓ Transcript
Jacob: Relax. If you're going to be world travelers, you need vaccinations. I can't protect you against biowarfare, but this should handle natural diseases.
Girii: How will we know if a disease is natural or not?
Jacob: Simple. If you catch an engineered virus, you'll die. Way back in the 20th century, they discovered that an IL-4 protein cloak made biowarfare bugs untreatable. The tech has improved since then. But the project can't target you without a genescan. So you'll only catch a bug if they decide on a broad spectrum release. Then the whole continent dies. That's probably how they'll get us. Just a matter of time.
Roger: Still think this is going to be fun?
Girii: Up until everyone starts dying, yeah.
Girii: How will we know if a disease is natural or not?
Jacob: Simple. If you catch an engineered virus, you'll die. Way back in the 20th century, they discovered that an IL-4 protein cloak made biowarfare bugs untreatable. The tech has improved since then. But the project can't target you without a genescan. So you'll only catch a bug if they decide on a broad spectrum release. Then the whole continent dies. That's probably how they'll get us. Just a matter of time.
Roger: Still think this is going to be fun?
Girii: Up until everyone starts dying, yeah.
Another sci-fi webcomic I read is lauded all the time for its scientific accuracy. I’m not sure I want to encourage that here – ’cause what you’re comin’ up with is scarin’ me. (O__o) XD
To paraphrase Pratchett: When the world ends, it won’t be with a bang or a whimper… it’ll be with the sound of some degree’d idiot in a lab coat saying, “I wonder what happens when I do this?”
DaveP: Or the redneck equivalent, “Hey! Ya’ll watch this!”
Jacob is just full of good news, today, isn’t he?
The man’s job title is ‘Genocide Man’. He’s walking bad news. 🙂
Sorry, James. Rednecks are retail. Scientists are wholesale, possbily to the full limits of the market.