Well, "obsolete." Unless your average home invader starts employing nanobots in their crimes guns will still be useful, just not against state level threats that can afford nanobots. Of course, those threats already have f-35s or whatever number we're on now so guns are already of limited effect there.
this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025
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Maybe, but drones are so much more fun, and millions of kids start volunteering for training to fly them starting when they are less than 10 years old, so there are plenty of experienced drone operators available at any given moment.
[...] there's just no way to dodge this sort of stuff unless you have the EMP tech [...]
I think that we are closer of advance EMP technology than remote controlled operative war nanobots that supose a non violent threat more than biological weapons (which I find quite violent and inhumane), not to mention that countermeasure evolution seems much easier than (if not as easy as) the effective sophistication of nanobots, just to say a few...
The nanobots we have need a light as power source and only work in a strong magnetic field. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ9aXoah5DA
Just try to avoid having a endoscopic lamp inserted into you while you sit inside a MRT and you should be good, no fear needed.
I mean biological warfare already exists so no need to go 21st century with it. I'd imagine that even if the tech existed, it just wouldn't be cost effective.
We already had a sublime propaganda machine, yet here we are with AI anyway...
And cost effective only matters if you actually want to solve problems for people, not if you want to make money by creating something nobody wants and have you and your friends in the military-industrial-political complex get astronomically rich together.
Wait until you hear about viruses or prions. Truly terrifying nanobots. Worst of all, they already exist. Those things are out there right now.
Chemical weapons appear as a much better option than viruses. Enemy is there, drop a nervine agent and everyone is dead. Wait for a while and you're free to advance.
Viruses in much more difficult to operate: infect someone somehow - I guess a bomb or something like that could be used as well. Wait several months so that enemy actually gets infected on large scale, but not too long because most of them won't be dying anyway and soon back to battlefield. In the meantime vaccinate the whole of your invasion army. Start producing massive quantities of vaccines just in case it spreads to your own country somehow and you'll have to treat your own population.
Assuming you were able to create both the virus and the vaccine within the period the war lasted, it may give you some bit of advantage during a period of 1/2 months or something like that. Good enough if you're able to win the war in such period, but if you've got that kind of money to spend I'm sure you've got way more efficient options.
That reminds me... let me post another shower thought...
Prions are absolutely wild. There is no cure, no "vaccine" - not that that would even be possible because they're not viruses, bacteria, or even living things from outside your body. They're just a faulty version of something that already exists in your system and they make your body self-destruct.
There have never been enough concerns to be worth to develop a vaccine for a prion, and current used techniques are those for being efficient for their targets, but as far as I know prions are just proteins and proteins can be (and are) targeted, the whole immunitarie system often relies on those...
Prime horror movie material.
You trust your body. You trust your mind. But what if the enemy... is already inside you?
They’re not viruses. They’re not bacteria. They’re your own proteins... twisted. Hungry.
They hide in the folds of your brain. They wait in the silence of your cells. And when they strike... you won’t even know you’re already lost.
PRIONS
COMING TO AN ENDOPLASMIC RETICULUM NEAR YOU
Congratulations. I am now terrified of my own brain.
New fear unlocked.
If a plausible zombie virus were to exist, it would definitely be those long-incubating stuff
Prions(tm): not a virus
We live in a terrifying time
Well, the nanobots that you are describing do not exist, so they aren't what is making the time terrifying
That sounds much more complicated than just using a gun. And they even work on people in hazmat suits.
Why would you destroy potentially useful human resources?
Are you insinuating that your nanobots wouldn't kill people?
Well, they're not mine and rather evil mega corps' or PMCs' from MGS, but yeah, that's what I had in mind...
But then they wouldn't even perform the basic function of a gun. How would that make guns obsolete?
no violence needed
How is this entire thing not violence?
unless you have the EMP tech
So you mean like robots with electronics in them? You should read less science fiction. This is beyond bill gates microchip injection nonsense.
Robots with electronics in them and when they bark they shoot electronics at you?
Also how is this different form just gassing the enemy?
When I say, "their bodies are yours," I'm talking about the nanobots being used to mind-control or pacify them, not kill them.
Astronomically more complicated and expensive, therefore cooler.
Also, you can't EMP gas, though I guess that's one the smallest downsides of nano robots.
I'm on the last part of the Wool/Silo series. No spoilers.
Really excellent books. I didn't think the second one could be better than the first or reveal more secrets, man was i pleasantly surprised
It'll be mosquito sized drone that stings you in the neck and then you die
Or, again, injects nanobots through that stinger, which then take control of your body. Why let a perfectly fine slave body go to waste by dying?
Someone's seen the movie Upgrade lol
I've actually never seen that! I guess I've gotta, now!
Loved that movie!! Always thought the nanites were a bit lazy but how else can you threaten an AI i guess
They most probably won't, there is literally zero chance that someone would kill you with nanobots.
probably won’t
zero chance
Do you believe that nanobots like this exist?
What do you mean by "believe?" They're already out there; do you not follow the news? https://www.inside.lk/lifestyle/health/microscopic-robots-offer-new-hope-for-treating-clogged-arteries/
Nanobots that hijack bodies don’t exist. What exists are lab particles that barely survive blood flow and need giant external machines to do one trick. No internal power supply, no brains, no autonomy. Your immune system deletes them like spam. Breathing in murder-robots is sci-fi anxiety, not tech analysis. If this were real, you wouldn’t be the first to notice.
the borg, replicators(milky way) all use nano-robots as a method to attack thier intended victims, or assimilate them.
its actually the basis of borg assimilating a planet, deploy cloud of nanoprobes into the infect the population through the atmosphere, they dont seem to do it often though.
nano-tech is also big in sg1, where the goauld use them to infect and age the population, in sga they were use to infect humans and wraith.
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