no brain=no hunger. even if something goes horribly wrong, it's just a body that isn't recieving signalsparagon1 said:
DARPA Builds Cyborg Beetles
- Thread starter Logan Westbrook
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Making them isn't the only expensive thing. What about training, feeding, eyc. A robot is combat ready straight off the production line. Also, humans want money in exchange for fighting and if they die, you gotta pay the family.G-X said:
They aready have, it's called TV. The trick was making us think that we are the ones who have the remote control for the TV.Amnestic said:
I was about to say the same thing.Kilaknux said:
On a more serious note, it could have some pretty cool military applications, but to be honest I'm assuming the idea was more or less scrapped or else we never would have found out about it. Truthfully I'd imagine the effective use of this type of technology would be to say find some way to cybernetically control locust swarms, or disease carrying insects, as a way of covertly attacking other nations while making it look like a natural occurance. The fact that the program has been outed makes me think that people figured it was impractical.
See, if I developed something like that, I'd look back to China's old bio-attack on the US where they sent those tree-eating beetles to the US "by accident" a number of years ago and they went berserk in New York's forests (and yes, that is what I think it was for a number of reasons).
Just imagine the abillity to hide bugs in your trade goods, loaded with a custom disease, and then start a plague in someone's back yard by remote control. On no it's "Mega-SaRS"!!!!1!!
Not to mention what you could do to a nation by basically having a few billion cyber-locusts networked (probably impractical due to costs) which couldn't be affected by any conventional methods of stopping them, and then steering them strategically through an enemy's food supply.
Both would be great ways of destroying people we don't like without creating wars "OMG! acts of nature!".
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As far as the Metal Gear referances, and "giant robots capable of stealth launching nuclear missles", I think people sort of miss the point there. We don't really need giant robots to do that, and we already arguably do it.
Going waaay back to when Metal Gear started, it seemed to be a giant referance to the "MX" missle program (which was a good idea). The basic idea that Ronald Reagan was going to attach nuclear missles to trains, trucks, etcs... so nobody would know exactly where all of our nuclear weapons were at any given time. That way someone like the USSR couldn't pre-emptively destroy our nuclear stockpile.
The idea being somewhat pointless on a lot of levels because we had (and still arguably have) the best submarine stealth technology in the world. We keep enough nukes to end the world on nuclear capable subs all through the oceans that nobody can find (and are fully capable of moving around). One of the reasons why the US is scary is that we could have a submarine able to say fire and individually target 40+ nuclear weapons with near simultaneous speed and they could be sitting right outside someone's country right now and they would have no bloody clue that they are there.
Viewed from that perspective, why the heck do we need a tank or giant robot capable of deploying nuclear weapons? The oceans are much bigger. What's more if you want them mobile on land, trains and such work just fine.
Metal Gear is entertaining, but the idea is somewhat silly. Plus if you read the original backstory in the original Metal Gear it was intended in a 100% tongue in cheek fashion as a farce of modern politics using names like "Colonel Kadaffy" and "Hiyarollah Kockamamie" if I remember. They just got serious with it later. The whole concept of a "Metal Gear" is intentionally borked.
As I mentioned in my last post (for those that didn't read it) think more in terms of say infecting them with a disease. Bugs are quite good at carrying diseases you know.Kollega said:
I suppose if you were to say modify the beetle to carry venom as well you could also use it as an assination weapon.
Who gives a crud about guns and bombs. I could kill more people faster by letting loose a plague in someone's country in peacetime and making it look like a natural occurance. If I can make the plague/poison, and control the insect based delivery system then basically I can covertly kill anyone (or any group of people) almost totally without accountability.
Of course something is obviously wrong with the technology, rendering it impractical, or we'd never see it publically, instead we'd just be using it. A new "SARS" type epidemic would be wiping out billions of Chinese as we speak, and ripping throuhg the middle east spread by "sand beetles".
Fritzvalt said:We've had a few run-ins in the pastAceDiamond said:TheGreenManalishi said:A cover up for DARPA's other project...
YOU KNEW?!?!?!
Wow this is pretty darn old I remember reading about this in a article of the discovery magazine in July that was from a library. Though this just means that the Borg are coming soon.
First thing I thought when seeing this: Stealth Poison-Injecting Beetle Assassins! SPIBA for short, patent pending.