[NGTM-1R]

The purpose of most military operations is ultimately to capture something, not to render it useless to anyone. Including yourself. It's much like the trap behind nuclear weapons. They're very good at destroying enemy units, terrible at letting you later occupy territory and make substantial use of it.

So grey gooing is a beautiful idea if you don't care about destroying the biosphere and rendering the planet uninhabitable and its resources useless to anyone, but if there's even the slightest chance you'll want to use it or its resources later than the Grey Goo is not the way to go.

Now, granted, you could just scorch the bugs from orbit or the atmosphere, then try and rebuild the planetary biosphere from scratch, but that's a lot of trouble to go to.

[General Battuta]

I'm pretty sure that if you're the Biotic Aliens then the bugs are not going to be a major obstacle to you, since they're your weapons.

They may be very friendly to you. They may be xenoforming machines in their end-state. They may just be very edible.

[Akalabeth Angel]

You lost me when you said "gunpowder bullet bugs"

[General Battuta]

If you don't think organisms can synthesize complex molecules then you are silly.

[TrashMan]

From what we know on this tiny little ball of rock called Earth.  All your posts are is a blanket dismissal of anything that we could say to have a good discussion.  We don't KNOW that organisms will do that, but we sure as hell don't know they CAN'T either.

We can make reasonable assumption with a good accuracy with the knowledge base we have today.
You're  "but it might exist somewhere in the universe" statement is no different "but the laws of thermodynamics might operate differently in another dimension" argument.
Highly unlikely.

There are also a gigantically large number of creatures that could kill people.  Enough to kill the entire human population several times over.  We just happen to be lucky that those things can and will eat things easier to get to than people.

Creatures have been breeding on Earth for millions of years. Guns have been around for 200. And we can kill pretty much the whole planet several times over with what we have now.

I assume you have seen Jurassic park.  Granted, those have been dead for a while, but they were that big back then.  With the teeth to go through cars to match.  Maybe they wouldn't be able to go through dedicated tank armor, but just about anything else crumples under that force, if not outright pierced.

Seriously, you use Jurrasic Park as some sort of fact. Jurrasic par kis fiction. Not to mention that cars aren't armored - if I hit it with my fist hard enough I can dent the thing. That's paper-thin.

*long post by Batutta*

Interesting read. Yes, you are right that organism can synthesize complex molecules - but unless they can synthesize a gun or a nuke, technology wins hands down i nthe firepower department.
You are right - factories take time and resources to set up - but once up they can produce massive ammounts of hardware at a breakneck pace. Not to mention - DRONES. Slap a gun on a AI controlled mecha and you can send it into battle with no training required.

One thing you're neglecting is that the "bugs" need biomass to grow. They need space. And they're pretty much constrained on one planet.
Ammount of metals/ores on a planet >>>>> ammount of biomass. You can produce more bullets and guns than there are bugs in the universe. Bugs need to eat. Bugs need to grow. Nukes don't.

Also - nanomachines. Van Neumann probes.
Automated factories. Factories that build factories?

[NGTM-1R]

I'm pretty sure that if you're the Biotic Aliens then the bugs are not going to be a major obstacle to you, since they're your weapons.

They may be very friendly to you. They may be xenoforming machines in their end-state. They may just be very edible.

The problem with a good area-denial weapon (like mines) is that this doesn't really work. If you work some sort of IFF into them, biological or otherwise, it can be spoofed...and biological replication and adaptive rapid evolution as is much more vunerable to breakdown in this than other forms of it. (Cancer, anyone?) So it has to blind, or nearly so, to friend/foe, to keep it effective. Or it'll just go blind anyways perhaps.

Hence my Grey Goo/nuclear weapons analogy. If we assume a similar level of sophistication between the two sides, this is a Grey Goo/nuclear carpet bomb attack and as such one should never expect to use the planet or at least any part of it not blocked off by large bodies of water again without extensive time passing (presumably the bugs will eventually run out of materials and trigger ecosystem collapse) or extensive, planetary-ecology-messing-up-or-destroying firebombing.

Unless you're posisting this is like the lowest thing in their arsenal and they totally overpower the technological force anyways, in which case even using them is pointless.

[MR_T3D]

yeah, a nuke uses relatively little matter, and is much faster to deploy and deny an enemy an area
AND NGTM-1R is right, to make an IFF into the bugs can...and eventually would be... spoofed by a technology.
simply put, nukes pwn everything short of currently fictious energy sheilds , organic or not.

[StarSlayer]

Trashman you keep changing the parameters of the argument every time some one brings up a good point.

You first demanded to know how an biological enemy could defeat an technological one

I pointed out viruses
- You threw out a pandemic and wanted to know how a tank could lose to a animal

Battuta puts together a scenario where a Space Marine is defeated by an organism
-You demand a battlefield scenario

I point out that if the enemy has locally more numbers then your deployed forces has firepower they will lose
-You change the argument to a industrial output one. 
 




Is there likely some sort of critter that can shrug off 120mm tank rounds and rip through Chobam armored MBTs?  Probably not. 

All things equal is it likely a biological enemy could defeat a technological society in a war? Probably not.

Are there scenarios where a biological enemy could defeat a technology driven one in battle? Damn straight there is.

You're not accounting for things like Intel, terrain, logistics, morale, numbers and the basic fact that humans make bad decisions sometimes.  Sure can you make a lot of bullets?  Yup, its the only reason we started using guns in the first place.  Their accuracy and penetration sucked compared to crossbows and their reload times where slower then bows.  Are all those bullets magically available at every point of contact with the enemy? No.  Your forces only carry the ammunition and fuel they can carry.  There is no hammer space in an MBT for pulling HEAT and SABOT out of.  If you deploy a mechanized division to stop an alien incursion and they use up all the ammunition they have locally available that division is going to be overrun, doesn't matter how many factories you have churning out bullets elsewhere.

[General Battuta]

yeah, a nuke uses relatively little matter, and is much faster to deploy and deny an enemy an area
AND NGTM-1R is right, to make an IFF into the bugs can...and eventually would be... spoofed by a technology.
simply put, nukes pwn everything short of currently fictious energy sheilds , organic or not.

When did this get to be about nukes? At all? This was a comparison with bullets. I am getting annoyed at people who don't read threads.

This IFF argument is kind of silly. Bullets don't have an IFF; that's up to whoever fires them. Same with whoever decides to deploy our hypothetical bugs at a target. Frankly I imagine our BioFoes aren't too bothered by the bugs or their actions; their end state (once they're in a 'secure area') might work as a xenoforming tool.

Interesting read. Yes, you are right that organism can synthesize complex molecules - but unless they can synthesize a gun or a nuke, technology wins hands down i nthe firepower department.
You are right - factories take time and resources to set up - but once up they can produce massive ammounts of hardware at a breakneck pace. Not to mention - DRONES. Slap a gun on a AI controlled mecha and you can send it into battle with no training required.

Factories produce at a linear pace from a centralized point with a big supply train. Our bugs here produce at an exponential rate, anywhere, foraging for their own supplies.

Drones require construction and programming, they can't make themselves. Plus, remember, these aren't meant to be compared with drones. They're meant to be compared with bullets.

One thing you're neglecting is that the "bugs" need biomass to grow. They need space. And they're pretty much constrained on one planet.\

Bullets need metal to be manufactured, plus a huge factory and the manpower to run it. And they're constrained to...well, wherever they're sitting, unless somebody picks them up and moves them.

Ammount of metals/ores on a planet >>>>> ammount of biomass. You can produce more bullets and guns than there are bugs in the universe. Bugs need to eat. Bugs need to grow. Nukes don't.

This is a comparison between bullets and bugs. Not nukes and bugs. If you make bullets out of an entire planet you'll have a lot of bullets, sure...but it'll take centuries. Millennia.

Also - nanomachines. Van Neumann probes.
Automated factories. Factories that build factories?

I already brought these up; thus my point about how the best technology will end up mimicking organic methods.

[deathfun]

Instead of responding to many quotes, and responses...

Interesting read. Yes, you are right that organism can synthesize complex molecules - but unless they can synthesize a gun or a nuke, technology wins hands down i nthe firepower department.

Cockroaches have a high resilience to radiation. They can be killed by it still, but it takes more then the average human being.
Who's to say that there isn't an organism that actually thrives in high radiation situations? Maybe the explosion will kill him, or maybe it won't
Thing is though, who is to say that organism on other planets can't synthesize projectile weapons of some sort? Using Earthlings as a basis for an argument may be valid, but improbable.

Seriously, you use Jurrasic Park as some sort of fact. Jurrasic par kis fiction.

Well, this argument is taking place in the future non? Maybe on one planet, there is indeed a reptilian population of the same magnitude.
You can't simply say "No" since there is no proof proving it wrong, nor right. It's a theory based off the fact that the Universe is huge, and the probability that there is life on another planet is larger then there not being any.

I know you probably didn't say 'no', but I wouldn't remember

[General Battuta]

Yeah, how about them Dune sandworms?

[Akalabeth Angel]

Bugs aren't organic robots.
If if one could create some sort of super bug, getting it do what you want is a whole other matter.

[General Battuta]

Why? What's the difference between a robot and a bug? I don't really see one.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Why? What's the difference between a robot and a bug? I don't really see one.

Bugs are animals and have their own reasons for doing what they do. Even if genetic manipulation is possible, how is a person supposed to train these 'gunpowder' bugs to explode at the right time and so on? Bugs attack out of self defence for eating, and usually target things around thier own size or smaller. How is a person going to get bugs to attack full sized humans and do all these military things that require months of years of training with any sentient being?

[General Battuta]

How do you get salmon to turn up at the exact place at the right time without any instruction? How do non-sentient insects construct hives with caste systems and then farm aphids? How do parasitized ants know specifically to crawl to the tops of blades of grass? How could a parasite possible evolve that replaces the tongue of a particular fish species?

Nature does this kind of incredibly detailed stuff all the time. And it's because there's enough room for programming in a single organism - in DNA - to encompass billions of computer programs.

[Polpolion]

it just hitches a ride in on a meteorite or whatever

 

[General Battuta]

Again, hardly seems like a huge issue, especially for engineered life. You could even do it in spore form if you were so inclined.

[Aardwolf]

I don't think TrashMan is going to back down any time soon.

Also, yay for me finally responding to something on the last page, instead of not realizing there were other pages between what I was responding to and the most recent post.

Also, recommend threadsplit?

[Akalabeth Angel]

How do you get salmon to turn up at the exact place at the right time without any instruction? How do non-sentient insects construct hives with caste systems and then farm aphids? How do parasitized ants know specifically to crawl to the tops of blades of grass? How could a parasite possible evolve that replaces the tongue of a particular fish species?

Nature does this kind of incredibly detailed stuff all the time. And it's because there's enough room for programming in a single organism - in DNA - to encompass billions of computer programs.

Even if what you suggest was remotely possible, technology would still trump organic weapons because why make a self-replicating organism that you can't directly control when you could instead make a self-replicating robot or nano-machine that you can receive ordinary signals and other information.

Why make a bullet bug when you could make a bullet robot that could do the same job with less risk.

[Rian]

If you can create attack bugs to arbitrary specifications, then why couldn’t you create chemical cues to control them? Ants do a lot of their communication with pheromones.