Great leaps in human technological advancement are often initiated by the rise of a single, new, unforeseen field of invention. The forging of metals brought us solidly into the age of construction; the printing press brought us into the age of literacy; and the modern factory system brought us into the industrial revolution. The next big leap in technological advancement is, according to all sources, just over the horizon: nanotechnology. If industrialization made consumer products easier, cheaper, and more readily available, nanotech is going to make consumerism practically rain from the sky. Nanoparticles, the term for inert, nonmachine molecules reduced to the nanoscale, could theoretically do anything from eliminating cancer to creating self-mending clothes, while nanobots, the more complicated microscopic machines, could rearrange the building blocks of matter itself, essentially creating something out of nothing. It’s going to be like having a million tiny robot butlers at your beck and call who live inside your body, and whose only desire in life is to fetch you as much awesome as you can hold.
This is the world of nanotech, and it’ll be the best thing that ever happened to you… if it doesn’t kill you first.
COMPUTERS ARE reaching their saturation point in our everyday life—cell phones, iPods, digital cameras. They’re getting more ubiquitous by the day and smaller by the minute. They provide most anything, from serious applications like military command and genome sequencing to the more trivial tasks like supplying online journals or easy access to obscure fetish porn. And it’s no wonder they’re so omnipresent; what other device could fill all those niches at once? What else could simultaneously function as an efficient soldier, run complex laboratory data, allow you to express your innermost feelings, and show you people fucking in cartoon coyote suits? Computers have thoroughly inundated modern life, so why not take it a step further and inundate your life, quite literally?
Well, nanobiotechnology—the term for nanotechnology applied to biological systems—proposes to do exactly that… and a lot sooner than you may think. You see, scientists are already implementing the first wave of human-altering nanomachines, and they expect to have the first legal, commercial applications available within the next decade. But the technology may be moving faster than we’re able to fully understand it, and some issues that are already cropping up are, to put it politely, so terrifying that the fear shit you take will inexplicably shit itself in terror.
This effect is similar to the theory of “trickle-down economics,” except that instead of hoping that the superrich accidentally drizzle money over the poor like monetary salad dressing, in this case it’s human-augmenting robots trickling into the ecosystem through waste by-products. Basically you’re pooping superpowers into the swamp.
The “Green Goo” scenario is a theory stating that the true danger of nanotechnology lies not within the mites themselves, but in the creatures they modify. Much like the concerns surrounding genetically modified foods, the idea here is that any introduced trait that turns out to be beneficial will enter the gene flow and start to carry over naturally. It addresses such concerns as what might happen to an ecosystem if a strain of nanobots or nanoparticles accidentally improves, even marginally, something like the eyesight or immune system of a top predator. Furthermore, what could happen to the predator if its prey suddenly possesses, say, heightened endurance? These sorts of scenarios can’t be fully tested in labs, because they deal expressly with nonlaboratory conditions taking place solely in wild ecosystems. And the effect is cumulative, so what may start with a harmless frog leaping just an inch higher could well end up with a sky eternally darkened by sinister patrols of helicopter sharks.
And as usual, it all starts very small, and with only the best of intentions: Researchers at the University of California have recently developed nanomites equipped with small doses of chemotherapy drugs. These simple nanobots actively target cancer that is attempting to spread, and then attach to a protein found on cancerous blood vessels that supplies tumors with their oxygen and other nutrients. They then inject their payload of drugs into the vessels, which causes them to deny the tumors sustenance, thus preventing the cancer from metastasizing and spreading to other organs, which is really what kills most cancer patients. The drugs don’t eliminate the tumor; they just contain the cancer and starve it until somebody can come along and kill it. To put it more succinctly: They function like a million tiny Auschwitzes… inside your blood.
This development is important because the cancer drug used—doxorubicin—is also a highly toxic poison, one that causes fatal heart attacks in a significant portion of the people it’s administered to. But the nanobots are able to administer the drug so precisely that the amount needed for treatment is drastically reduced, and the side effects are almost nonexistent. It’s a technology that could save your life one day, and a damn good reason to have these things inside your blood and be quite happy about it. Just try to avoid thinking about the submolecular genocide raging inside your veins. And I wouldn’t mention the fact that the poisonous robots living inside your blood are the only thing keeping you alive, if I were you. (There are nice, padded places the police tend to bring you to if you say things like that out loud.) Oh, and definitely don’t dwell on the somewhat worrying prospect that if too many of these poisonous-drug-administering nanomachines were introduced into your body, just waiting for the cue to activate, you’d be basically walking around pre-murdered, just waiting for somebody to take a whack at the robot-filled poison piñata that is your body. So that Auschwitz-in-the-blood analogy from earlier still holds true. It’s just that this time, you’re the one in the showers.
• Indians swapping Manhattan for beads
• The Chinese allowing British occupation in exchange for opium trade
• Curing cancer by injecting poisonous robots
But hey, don’t start getting freaked out yet! This wasn’t even the part intended to scare you; it was just an example of some of the wonderful things that nanotechnology can do for you (in this case, injectable anticancer Nazi robots).
It’s very unlikely that the burgeoning field of nanobiotechnology will be reserved solely for medical uses. There’s a pretty standard, preestablished pattern of dissemination in place for new technology. At first, new tech is always reserved for serious uses, but before long it’s so commonplace that you have it everywhere. Take the internet, for example: It was exclusively a military network just over forty years ago, and now half the line at Starbucks is tapping into said former military network to check out grammatically impaired cats while waiting for their Grande Frappucino. So sure, nanobiotech is just for cancer treatment now, but maybe tomorrow it’s a flu vaccine and maybe a week from now it’s a pain reliever, or a subdermal sunblock, or maintenance-free contact lenses. But if it’s that commonplace, then why not go further? Why not a customizable, morphing tattoo? Or a permanent cell phone in your ear? How about a remote control installed in your brain? The potential uses are tempting, and the appeal is easy to see.
We’ve established that it will be inside everybody eventually. Then what? Even supposing that nobody abuses the technology, its very nature makes even the most benevolent intent potentially lethal. Take the respirocytes proposed by nanoexpert Robert Freita: They’re a harmless application, just a kind of artificial red blood cell that pumps oxygen more efficiently and more stably than the natural equivalent—236 times more efficiently, to be precise. Because of this dramatically heightened performance, they would be invaluable in treating disorders such as anemia and asthma, or simply to oxygenate the blood for better endurance and performance in sporting events. In other words, they’re blood-borne nerd fixers.
However, with higher doses of these nanobots, their hosts could also be able to do things like hold their breath for several hours and run at a dead sprint for nearly twenty minutes. And that’s great! How many of you would want to be able to do that? Now, how many of you want anybody else to be able to do that? Go ahead; raise your hand if you want sociopaths who breathe underwater, sprinting rapists, and serial killers who never tire.[2]
Not to mention the worrying fact that these machines are by no means human-specific. The respirocytes take a kind of frat-boy approach to blood: If it’s warm, it needs to be pumped. No further distinctions need to be made. Also of concern is the fact that their durable outer shell and self-sustaining programming make them seriously hardy devices, easily capable of surviving and functioning outside of their intended environment for long durations. And when you factor in how easily they could spread—their transferability by blood and other bodily fluids—you start to get a worrisome picture. One bad accident at the local zoo with somebody hosting these nanobots and next thing you know, you’ve got untiring, superspeed pythons racing through the streets and a terrifying new version of sea lion roaring at the bottom of your pool. In an instant, the food chain is drastically reordered. Though the chief concern for now is just the effect a modified species could have on its local ecosystem, any supercharge in the efficiency of predators is the last thing we need.
After all, humans are only at the top of our food chain because we’re smart enough to compensate for our insane physical incompetence as a species. So… maybe you should start studying. Because pretty soon, a billion tiny robots might be seriously hot-rodding up some grizzly bears, and you? Well, let’s just say you’re going to have to get a hell of a lot smarter in a big hurry if you plan on making it back from the store with both arms.
IF YOU’RE TALKING about nanotechnology at a party, two things are assured:
1. Nobody is going to have sex with you in the foreseeable future, and…
2. Somebody will bring up the Gray Goo Scenario.
The term “Gray Goo,” for those of you probably too busy boning right now to read this, describes the danger of self-replicating nanomachines running amok, forgoing any meaningful objectives in favor of just endlessly reproducing themselves like tiny little robotic Irish Catholics. The term was originally coined by a man named Eric Drexler in 1986, in his book Engines of Creation. He called it this partly because nanotech was just being recognized as the next industrial wave of the future, and also because the far more awesome title, “Engines of Destruction,” was already taken by three Swedish metal bands, two monster trucks, and one particularly shitty mechanic.
In his book, Drexler writes of Gray Goo as something akin to the Midas touch, the simple wish that everything you touch turns to gold, which leads to you dying of starvation, because you cannot eat gold. Here the simple wish is that you didn’t have to build every single goddamned microscopic robot by hand, which leads to your limbs being eaten by robots. Because if you encourage incredibly simple nanobots to build more of themselves, the danger is that they won’t know when to stop pulling apart matter for its raw building materials, then using those appropriated materials to build more robots, which, in turn, will do the same thing. If left unchecked, the nanobots would eventually break down everything into its core elements, effectively restructuring the entire planet into robots. While the idea of an entire planet turning into a robot may indeed make a sweet-ass plot for the next Transformers movie, the unfortunate consequence would be the end of all life as we know it. Not exactly worth the trade-off, in my opinion.
“I guess we shouldn’t have ‘encouraged’ those robots to eat people in order to build more people eating robots.”
The terrifying notion of microscopic organisms pulling apart base matter and assembling more dangerous creatures isn’t exactly new. It was originally inspired by DNA, small molecules that break down raw materials and build more complex molecules from them. They gave structure to all life on Earth, and all a self-replicating nanobot does is follow this same concept, with the limiters pulled off. If you did the same thing to human beings, the results would be similar; we’re basically just destructive machines tearing up shit to build more of ourselves until there is nothing left on Earth but a mass of writhing bodies engaged in a gargantuan, planetary-scale accidental orgy.
Luckily Eric Drexler wrote another essay years later that tells us that Gray Goo is just not ever going to happen. He assures us that there is simply no practical need for nanobots to be self-replicating, because it would make far more sense to build tiny “nanofactories” that manufacture completely nonreplicating robots. The factories themselves wouldn’t be autonomous; they’d be immobile and dependent on human resupply, so there would be absolutely no danger of infinite reproduction. Indeed, it would actually be much harder to engineer a single Gray Goo nanobot than it would these simple nanofactories. The factories themselves needn’t be microscopic, after all; they’re actually more likely to be somewhat large in scale—probably around the size of a photocopier. (You may want to keep this fact handy for future reference, lest ten years from now you find yourself at an office Christmas party, drunkenly attempting to photocopy your ass, but instead find that its base matter has been reappropriated into microscopic robots. The normal apocalypse is bad enough. We don’t need one made entirely out of drunken cubicle jockeys’ former butt cheeks.)
Then why did you invent the entire concept, Eric Drexler?
So it’s easier to build a factory to do the microscale work for you and, of course, there would also be less programming needed for the factory produced nanobots, because unlike the Gray Goo ’bots, they don’t need to procreate, just work. So while that kind of sucks for the little robots (no robot sex for you little guys; there is only work until death), it is pretty good for us; no disintegrating, just magic invisible construction workers! I know that’s a great concept, but do try to avoid saying that phrase out loud until this is common knowledge. It will only generate more odd stares at the person already laughing at a book about the apocalypse. You don’t need the help.
• Asspocalypse
• Catasstrophe
But all these construction concerns pale in comparison to the fundamentals necessary for a Gray Goo ’bot to even function. Every nanobot would need to have five important capabilities, any one of which, if absent, would render the whole scenario impossible. First of all, to even acquire those building materials (read: your flesh) they would have to be mobile, and that’s a heftier task than you might imagine. Second, power is an issue: How do you power the microscopic nanobot, much less its even smaller nanoengine? It’s not like you pour thimbles of gas into its tiny fuel tank, as adorable as that would be; it needs an entirely new fuel source, and how do you come up with something like that that remains nontoxic to the human body?
• Live in a cave forever.
• Swing your arms about wildly, as if swatting invisible insects.
• Hide your blood.
Horrifyingly, that’s how!
Scientists recently broke this fuel barrier when they started powering medical nanobots with the reengineered tails of human sperm. It’s quite an elegant solution, really: Sperm are perfectly functioning, natural motors that power themselves solely on glucose, a chemical already naturally present in the human body. And this system also knocks down another barrier of the fundamental capabilities needed for a Goo-bot to function, which is combating the human metabolism. Glucose is a perfect fuel for any use within the human body, so these natural engines could be used on any biological robot, from cancer-fighting nanobots to system-enhancing modifications. Researchers are looking into using these things for anything from curing paralysis to reducing asthma. So on the plus side, there might just be a new weapon in the battle against disease. On the downside, that weapon is basically cum in your blood. Hey, at least homophobia will die off pretty quickly, when all bigots refuse treatment because their organs “ain’t no queers.”
• You’ll never be alone again.
• It probably tickles.
• Parts of you will live forever! (Or at least long enough to disassemble your loved ones.)
The third element a self-replicating nanobot would require to function would be an incredibly sturdy shell. Microscopic machines not only have to endure the intense atmospheric pressures of the body and atmosphere, but also need to fight off interference from sunlight, bacteria, temperature—basically everything. Sure, it’s a hard-knock life, nanobots, but that’s what you get for being a doomsday scenario. What did you expect, pity? You want to turn our stomachs into your children, nanobots; we have no sympathy for you here.
The fourth fundamental is control, because what’s the point of having a roving, armored nanobot if it just wanders around aimlessly with no clear goal in mind, stumbling awkwardly through your blood with absolutely no purpose in life, like a tiny little robotic teenager?
And finally, the last fundamental is that of fabrication: A nanobot would need to constantly carry around all the tools it needs to build more of itself, in addition to the tools needed for whatever job it was engineered for. These things are smaller than bacteria, so there’s not exactly room for a carry-on.
All of this adds up to a simple realization: There’s just no call for a self-replicating nanobot. It is not only impractical, but actively dangerous. Why go through that if there’s an easier, cheaper, safer solution?
See? Everything’s cool.
No, really, buck up, friends! Those little robot fiends are impotent! Aside from tiny feelings of cybernetic frustration, a gaggle of wee unsatisfied female robots, and some itty-bitty inklings of machine inadequacy, there are no negative consequences!
Nobody dies today!
Why, Eric Drexler himself states that Gray Goo has become a scaremongering scenario that only takes away from more pressing concerns regarding nanotech. Chris Phoenix, Director of Research at the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, also states quite clearly that it is a nonissue:
Runaway replication would only be the product of a deliberate and difficult engineering process, not an accident. Far more serious, however, is the possibility that a large-scale and convenient manufacturing capacity could be used to make powerful nonreplicating weapons in unprecedented quantity, leading to an arms race or war. Policy investigation into the effects of molecular nanotechnology should consider deliberate abuse as a primary concern, and runaway replication as a more distant issue.
So that’s… comforting, I guess? He’s saying that Gray Goo won’t ever happen on accident! Admittedly, it would be slightly more comforting if he didn’t also say, practically in the same breath, that you shouldn’t worry about Gray Goo happening on accident, because it’s only going to happen on purpose, and even then only if far more terrifying things do not happen first. Jesus, hopefully nobody’s turning to cry on Phoenix’s shoulder, because he certainly didn’t get his doctorate in compassion.
• Steel Pudding
• Robot Death Buffet
• Reverse Voltron Disorder.
However, who would ever want to engineer it on purpose? Gray Goo wouldn’t be appealing for military purposes because it’s so hard to control and so wantonly destructive. When other nanotech weapons can be used far more effectively to kill with control, who would want something that just randomly destroys life and sows chaos? Only psychopaths and terrorists want that kind of stuff.
Oh, wait; we have a whole bunch of those around, don’t we?
In light of this fact, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology realized that they couldn’t scratch Gray Goo off their list of concerns just yet, but did add that it was a low-priority threat because there were “far more dangerous and imminent issues with nanotechnology.”
There were far more dangerous issues than sperm-powered blood robots eating the Earth.
That’s what they said.
They think that’s comforting.
“I’m so sorry, sir. You have terminal cancer. But don’t worry; it’s all going to be OK! You won’t be dying from the cancer… because I am going to shoot you in the face right now. Isn’t that reassuring?”
No, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, that is not comforting. I would suggest you offer hugs instead of these horrifying press releases, but judging by your previous “consolation” track record, I’m afraid you’d just end up whispering obscenities in people’s ears while punching their children.
WITH ALL THE CURRENT fearmongering about nanotechnology—most of which has been done within the confines of this book—it’s not actually very likely that the nanobots are going to build their children out of the last sad remnants of Earth or inspire a deadly new team of superanimals like the world’s tiniest Legion of Doom.
But don’t worry, that doesn’t mean we’re not all going to die anyway!
This is because even the most benevolent of nanobots share one simple, undeniable commonality: To achieve any major effects, there are going to have to be a lot of them and, though it is infinitesimal, they do take up some space. When their purpose is complete, they’ll deactivate and die off—unfortunately leaving their corpses where they lie.
But so what? Aside from the hassle of having to construct a plethora of mini tombstones (and the rather gross prospect of microscopic widows getting grief fucked inside your teeth), how could this possibly affect you? Well, the primary application for a lot of this nanotech is going to be for health issues: improving stamina, boosting immune systems, and fighting off cancer. All those corpses are basically just litter, and the human body is their environment, which means that when they die, they die inside of you. And if you think this scenario—that you’ll be poisoned to death by the corpses of miniature robots that live inside your blood just like that hobo down by the library keeps screaming—sounds somewhat outlandish, then you should know one little thing: It’s already happening.
• Denial
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Acceptance
• Grief fucking
Take, for instance, the scientists over at Kraft foods—scientists whose job, ordinarily, probably consists of formulating the perfect Dora the Explorer pasta shape-to-cheese ratio—are instead currently working on new types of nanoparticles to add to beverages. They plan to create “interactive beverages” that will shift colors and patterns according to your input. So on the plus side, you can have green beer whenever you want it, but the trade-off is that it’s potentially full of superpoisons. Some would argue that these risks dramatically outweigh the benefits here, but those people probably haven’t spent their entire lives wishing beyond hope that their Coke would turn pink when they rubbed it. Clearly, those bastards just don’t understand the dream.
• Angry Cherry
• Depression Blueberry
• Jealous-Rage Sour Apple
• On-the-Prowl Pink
• Willing-to-Settle Gray
OK, so nanoparticles aren’t exactly murderous microscopic robots. They actually have a lot of positive effects, and are being used in vastly increasing numbers across myriad products, from paint to socks, makeup to underwear. Their upsides are easy to see: They can have a lot of useful effects, cost very little to produce, and take up almost no space in existing products. Most of what we know about them is quite beneficial; it’s the stuff we don’t know that’s worrisome.
Back in March 2002, the EPA found the first inklings of the problems to come, when a study they’d conducted found nanoparticles cropping up in the livers of research animals. This warranted urgent further study, seeing as how nanotech was on the verge of becoming the world’s largest emerging industry. Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center quickly confirmed that at least one kind of nanoparticle could indeed penetrate the skin, and from there seep into the bloodstream. Those particles are called quantum dots, and they’re on the smaller end of the nanoparticle scale. They are often used in makeup and sunblock, which is unfortunate, considering how they seep through skin like that—but even more unfortunate when you consider that UV light, like from the sun, actually facilitates absorption of the dots. So the thing you use to protect yourself from the sun is actually rendered harmful and then activated and inserted into your body by the mere presence of sunlight. Apparently the engineers in charge of quantum dot production got their doctorates in Irony from Incompetent University.
“Pentetratin’ you like you know you like it since 2002.”
Separate research conducted by scientists at Purdue University concentrated on tracking the likelihood of other nanoparticles, called buckyballs, infiltrating human systems—be it through water, soil, or the fatty tissue of the livestock we consume. And they found that there was indeed a pretty high chance of these buckyballs attaching to our own fatty tissues—even more so than DDT, the notoriously harmful pesticide. Now, to be fair, it was not outright stated in the study that buckyballs do anything worse than DDT once they get in there, but this comparison was specified in the report. That’s like conducting research that concludes that adorable bunnies are ten times more likely to be found in your home than murderous serial killers. Sure, it’s innocuous enough information, but when you phrase it like that it’s clearly going to scare the shit out of everybody.
• “You’ve got more white blood cells than a vampire Klan meeting.”
• “You’ve got a higher semen count than your whorish mother’s mouth.”
• “You’ve got an ‘A’! And an ‘I’ and a ‘D’ and an ‘S’!”
But nobody was entirely sure what these revelations really meant for humanity at the time; as one panel member, Vicki Colvin, professor and director of the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology at Rice University in Texas, put it:
One thing we’ve concluded is whatever these things [nanomaterials] are going to do, they’re not inert. What will they do when they get in the environment, and what will they do when they get into people?
If seeing that sort of fearful uncertainty from people who typically really know their shit has you a little worried—don’t be! That worry is totally premature; I would save it for later… when things get worse.
When the EPA finally decided that this stuff needed to be regulated way back in 2008, they started the Nanoscale Materials Stewardship Program, which requested that companies send in safety records for their environmental research efforts in the field of nanotechnology. The only catch? This program was completely voluntary, and the companies could omit literally anything they didn’t feel like sharing. So basically the EPA asked large, profit-motivated companies to pinky swear that “everything was cool,” and then followed up by asking them if it was “for realsies.” And if there’s one thing that massive corporations have shown they take seriously, it’s the honor system.
Later, a member of the EPA council, Mark Wiesner, director of the Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology at Duke University and former director of the Environmental and Energy Systems Institute at Rice University, took the art of issuing worryingly ambiguous statements even further when he went on record with his concerns about large-scale nanoproduction, stating, “People talk about incorporating nanotubes in composites that might be used in tires. When you drive tires around, they wear down, and so nanotubes will be passed around in the environment. Where does this stuff go? What will be its interaction with the environment? Is it the next best thing to sliced bread, or the next asbestos?”
• Sliced bread
• Kittens
• Warm cookies
• Alan Thicke
• Mayonnaise
• Awkward high fives
• Asbestos
So he’s really just trying to say that there might be cause for concern here; he just worded it as vaguely, and as threateningly, as possible. He might as well state that this scenario is either a chocolate bar or a hand grenade; it’s either a new puppy or a furious grizzly bear; either multiple orgasms or blindfolded chain-saw surgery.
As far from comforting as Wiesner’s creepy PR statements are, it starts to get worse when you realize that he’s being literal. See, carbon nanotubes closely resemble asbestos fibers in shape: They’re elongated, thin, and bar shaped. But the tubes are not typically as dangerous as asbestos, because they have a tendency to group together, which alters their overall shape and thus renders them harmless. However, if they do split into single fibers, they can then inflict the same kind of damage that long-term exposure to asbestos has, like serious respiratory problems, and even cancer, say the results of a 2008 study published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. So it’s probably not such a great thing that a large area of current nanotech research is dedicated solely to finding methods that make sure these things don’t clump together, but rather stay separated into their tiny, thin, deadly form. After all, asbestos wasn’t all bad: Before it started killing people, it made somebody like a billion dollars!
“Listen, guys, I love this tiny shit we’re doing here, but I’ve got an idea and I’m just gonna throw it out there: Let’s make ’em long, straight, thin filaments—like asbestos!”
“But sir, is it really the best idea to model our product after a deadly carcinogen?”
“You know what else is a deadly carcinogen? Your butt! Ho! Served!”
“Well played, sir. Cancer tubes it is.”
Concerns are also being raised about interaction between nanoscale products and external factors. Even if the nanotech itself is totally safe, if it meets up with the wrong stuff inside your body, all hell breaks loose. It’s like this: Say you have a lovely, pure, angelic daughter. She’s very talented, well-spoken, and a pleasure to be around. She’s the light of your life. But one day she brings home her new boyfriend to meet the folks… and he’s a rabid grizzly bear. Now, your daughter is still an angel in her natural environment (your home) and a grizzly bear is a noble, majestic creature in its home (the wild), but when you bring the two together, it tends to fuck up the family reunion. Now replace the family reunion in that metaphor with your own sweet internal organs, and you’ve got a delicious terror sauce that pairs well with both anxiety and horror!
Take gallium arsenide, for example: It’s just a harmless semiconductor, kind of like a faster version of silicon. It’s already all over many small-scale electronics and solar panels, but if you deploy it at the nano scale, suddenly it starts seeping into your body. And that’s when shit really goes wrong, because gallium arsenide is made from gallium… and arsenic! You know, like the deadly poison? So yes, gallium arsenide is a completely safe tool on the normal scale, but if it starts actually getting inside your body, you might have some problems, and deadly, poisonous problems are among the shittiest genre of problems to have inflicted on every cell in your body. That risk is not inherent to just gallium arsenide, either; pretty much any material could, theoretically, have that ill effect when brought to the micro scale. A toaster, for example, is a lovely machine—who doesn’t love its warm, crispy ejaculations? But if you shrink that toaster down to the nano scale, well, suddenly it’s a different story when that comforting, crusty breakfast staple is being made a billion times a second inside your own heart.
• Red meat + terror sauce = pinot noir
• Fish + terror sauce = chardonnay
• Spiders + terror sauce = tears
• Clowns + terror sauce = nightmares
• Spider clowns + terror sauce = nocturnal fear emissions
And it’s not like you can just opt out of it, either, because this seepage factor means it won’t affect only the voluntary users of nanotech. A core principle of effective nanotechnology, after all, is the ability to spread in anything from bodily fluids to simple skin contact, through our food supply, or even as airborne contaminants. And once they do enter your bloodstream, any number of other disastrous interactions can occur: The proteins in your blood may “wrap them up,” thus distorting their own shape in the process. And when their shape changes, so does their function. Depending on what shape they’re surrounding, those proteins may suddenly switch functions. They may, for instance, get confused and switch to clotting—causing your blood to suddenly coagulate inside your veins.
Or even more worryingly, bacteria may piggyback on nanoparticles intended for medicinal purposes. This is particularly bad because medicinal nanotech will be engineered to bypass your immune system, seeing as how your immune system would destroy the particles as it would any other foreign invader, and they wouldn’t be effective as medicines if they were destroyed. So any bacteria piggybacking on these beneficial particles could then use said particles like tiny little BattleMechs—their otherwise weak bodies being shielded by the hardy, nigh-indestructible armor that is the medicinal nanoparticle. This would transform otherwise easily destroyed bacteria into little blood-borne ninjas, free to wreak severe devastation on your immune system with no way of being detected.
For a current example of potentially dangerous nanotech particles in use, consider nanosilver: It’s used for its antimicrobial properties to both eliminate odor and reduce the chance of infection. As such, they’re being mass produced for use in socks, underwear, bandages, cookware—a billion little particles with a billion potential uses, and they don’t even need to be modified, just shrunk down. This is because some elements, when reduced to nanoscale, can suddenly have effects previously unseen in their large-scale counterparts. One gram of any nanoparticle less than ten nanometers in diameter is roughly one hundred times more reactive than a gram of the same material comprised of larger, micrometer particles. In short, the more you shrink it, the more crazy shit it does. Just like the Japanese.
Because the Japanese are typically a shorter people, and are, as a nation, batshit insane God love them for their awesome robots, but you cannot dispute the epicness of their crazy.
It’s also astoundingly hard to measure the exact effects of any random nanoparticles you may absorb, because the more you accumulate of any given particle, the more you change the way it affects you. In the case of regular-scale silver, the side effects on human beings are relatively harmless. At most, if you consume too much normal silver you’ll develop argyria—a condition that turns your skin blue. It is permanent, but otherwise relatively harmless. The upside of normal-scale medicinal silver? It’s an effective antimicrobial ingredient whose flexibility and relative safety have proven incredibly useful to human beings. The downside? You might have to spend the rest of your life as a Smurf. And that’s pretty OK, right? They seem happy enough folk, even if it is a bit of a sausage party.
Nanoscale silver is still beneficial, of course: It still has all the antimicrobial properties of its larger counterpart… it’s just that it might have too much. Professor Zhiqiang Hu, from the University of Missouri, has conducted studies that showed that even relatively small doses of nanosilver can kill the bacteria used to process sewage and waste. So the more nanosilver you flush, the more invincible you make your own poop—a disturbing thought if ever there was one. And these aren’t the only necessary bacteria that silver puts at risk: If too much gets into ordinary soil, it can eliminate nitrogen-fixing bacteria in there as well. All plants on Earth need that stuff to live, so if you kill that off, no more food for you. And as a human being, you probably need that stuff to live. Well, unless you’ve drunk too much normal-scale silver, in which case you’d be just fine; Smurfberries will be largely unaffected.
Physically frail Whole life limited by adjective before name Always getting captured by asshat Gargamel Only one woman Sloppy 242nds.
Yet another problem lies in the very nature of nanotech’s construction. See, nanobots have to be made of only the hardiest materials in order to withstand the vast atmospheric pressures that would otherwise crush their delicate machinery. Materials like diamond, carbon, and even gold are used in pretty much all nanotech. Durable materials. Strong materials. Materials that do not break down. Materials that sit inside your veins, and just build up, and up. It takes only a millimeter of arterial plaque in your veins to provoke coronary artery disease (the leading cause of fatal heart attacks), and though nanobots are much smaller than that, there’s going to be a hell of a lot of them. Basically, you could now be looking at a massively contagious worldwide heart attack. It’s a supreme twist of irony: By developing microscopic, disposable machines in order to do away with the arcane, polluting, industrial practices of yesteryear, we may literally pollute ourselves to death from the inside out with the litter of the future. On the plus side, though, that litter is mostly made of diamonds and gold—so at least your insides will be blinged out like Snoop Dogg’s car on the submolecular level. It’s like they say: “Live fast, die young, leave behind a beautiful, jewel-encrusted cardiovascular system.”
Put your hands down, aspiring serial killers and rapists. Your vote does not count here.