Bioweapons are lousy weapons, because they aren’t effectively targetable. That may be a big part of your Great Filter.
Something just being infectuous (or deadly) doesn’t make it a good bioweapon. In fact, even if you have smallpox, you don’t have a bioweapon yet. You still have to package and deliver it. And if you want full-on apocalypse cred, you also have to make it a lot worse than the background of naturally occurring pathogens.
This is why none of the people smart enough to build and deploy one in 2025 have a good reason to, including nation states. If the number of people who can do it goes up by 3 OOMs, you might get someone crazy enough to build one despite these facts.
This is why none of the people smart enough to build and deploy one in 2025 have a good reason to, including nation states. If the number of people who can do it goes up by 3 OOMs, you might get someone crazy enough to build one despite these facts.