jlf1961
Posts: 14840
Joined: 6/10/2008 From: Somewhere Texas Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Greta75 quote:
ORIGINAL: jlf1961 First, the chimps in question gain super intelligence over night, then the virus that was created to only exist in a test tube or brain must mutate to become airborne AND contagious in the airborne form... Oh, yeah, I guess you have not figured out that viruses are not all naturally airborne, they mutate, you know that is why the Ebola virus that killed all those people did not spread and become a pandemic, it is spread through body fluids, like the AIDS virus.... Which blows your whole virus premise out of the realm of plausible. Chimps did not become intelligent over night. It was a gradual process. The movie never show this happening over night AT ALL. The fact that virus can mutate, simply tells me that it is unstable and uncontrollable by scientists and it could evolve into one that could do what happen in the movie IF humans were unable to contain it or find a cure for it. And the fact that AIDS still cannot be cured, and currently, the latest news is a strain of gonorrhea has mutated or evolved to a state where it is incurable too and now, spreads through oral sex and french kissing too. quote:
Then the army of apes as depicted in the movie actually totals more than all the chimps in the US to begin with, hence the necessity for those monkeys to breed like rabbits AND give birth to ADULT young so those apes could breed to produce more apes so they could out number humans around the world. I only see a couple of hundred chimps in the movies. There wasn't alot chimps. But what I saw was, the virus killed Millions of humans. And it still at the third movie has no cure. Lets address your points one by one... First, viruses do not mutate that fast, avian flu, the one that every one and their brother has been screaming about and conspiracy theorists have been running bat shit crazy over has been around for at least 10 years and still has yet to mutate to the point where it will cross species without being fluid born OR airborne in such a way as to be a threat to humans... Ebola has been known for almost 50 years, and it still has not mutated to jump from apes to humans EXCEPT by humans eating the flesh of infected simians (apes) and is still primarily a water born virus, with one exception a variant discovered in a US quarantine facility in which two unrelated groups of primates imported for research were in separate sections of the building, one group was known to be infected and due to the ventilation system, another group got infected. The strain was not the same as the one that gets all the headlines thank god. Furthermore, even though humans and higher apes are within 1% of being a genetic match, that one percent is why simian affecting viruses only affect humans if humans eat contaminated meat or come in contact with contaminated body fluids, so once more the virus as portrayed in the move would be one that defies all scientific law. And if you read the article, you would understand that in this case, overnight means basically ONE generation. Evolution does not happen that fast, even with human help. We have not gotten that adept at creating viable DNA that would force the issue. So, basically the whole premise is as far fetched as you actually allowing two of your brain cells to communicate with each other. This does not even address the fact that within the same generation the freaking chimps and higher apes actually grew in stature and became almost fully bipedal in the process, it took homo sapiens about a million years to go from ape type movement to walking fully upright. Basically the premise of the movie is in complete contradiction to evolution, forced or otherwise. Not to mention that gene therapy, which is the idea behind the virus in the first place is still in its infancy and the only virus that shows a possible lead in the field is one of the retro viruses, the one that causes AIDS. The damn virus rewrites the dna of the human immune system so well that it kills us. Then there is the real problem with human dna (actually every species dna) in that most of it is considered junk DNA, which means most of it is not even active. There are parts of human dna that goes back to the first hominids. We dont use it now, and it is latent, but it is there. So to actually isolate the series of faulty dna markers leading to Alzheimer's has not even gotten half way done yet. What is known is that, while the chimpanzee brain is similar to humans, the exact chemical processes are still so different that a virus to accomplish what the movie depicts would not affect humans unless humans drank the blood or ate contaminated meat. And for those who want to give me a rash of shit for arguing the point, the information I am giving is the same crap that I was given when I worked for a security firm providing facility security for World Health Organization clinics during a fucking Ebola out break back in the late 80's. We sat through three days of classes telling us why we would not be at risk of catching the virus since 1) we did not work directly with patients and 2) did not handle contaminated clothing or waste. Then there is Neil deGrasse Tyson's Star Talk radio show which did about four segments on the movies. He has a lot of fun blasting science fiction movies and books that basically play loose with science to the point of being stupid. He pointed out to the author of "the Martian" who made the boast that he worked hard on the science to keep dr. Tyson from tearing it apart, including the orbital math. Dr. Tyson pointed out that his math was a little off, and that little bit meant that all trips to Mars would have missed the planet by about a million miles. He also ripped my favorite series "firefly" to shreds on at least one occasion. If you would bring yourself to read, and thus learn, there are a number of books that you might actually enjoy and would give you a lot of very helpful information on a number of subjects you have brought up in the past. One that I recommend is an essay by Stephen King concerning his research for his novel 'The Stand.' It was both informative and scary as hell, since all the information he used came from biowarfare specialists as well as doctors who specialize in epidemic and pandemic diseases. His last paragraph in the essay is what drives my survivalist (google the term) program. To paraphrase: With the growing popularity in primitive eco vacations, the biggest fear that doctors have is that someone will someday get infected with a virus from some local tribesman in some remote part of the world where it is no more deadly to them as the common cold but in a population that has never had it in its history, turns deadly. I am sure you have read or heard about the impact of small pox carried to colonies by Europeans, both in the Americas and Asia. What is less known, but was equally fatal was the childhood disease chicken pox, as well as another form of the disease, cow pox. Both of those have a less than one percent mortality rate in humans where it is common. But in populations that never had it in their history, both proved nearly as fatal as small pox. And there are still native populations that have very little contact with the outside world. Of course, there is also one of the worst diseases that is still out there, the black plague. Rare today, and for the most part, easily treated with antibiotics... Except that in recent years antibiotic resistant strains have been found in the American South west, Asia, Africa, and Europe, all because doctors for years threw antibiotics at everything from the sniffles to minor infections and people did not follow through and take the entire run. The antibiotic resistant form of staff is a direct result, and I have personal experience with that since my great nephew was in the hospital with that bug for almost two weeks. You want to look at a plausable disease that could decimate the human population, look at Spanish flu that devastated the world after ww1. Showed up once, and never again, and we have no genetic samples of that one to make a vaccine.
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Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think? You cannot control who comes into your life, but you can control which airlock you throw them out of. Paranoid Paramilitary Gun Loving Conspiracy Theorist AND EQUAL OPPORTUNI
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