Mass-murdering neuroscience Ph.D. student

In other news, over 91,000 people have died since midnight EST.

I think this is only a very small update to our picture of spree killer or terrorist demographics. We already know about the enrichment of terrorism with engineers, and Aum Shinrikyo had access to some smart generalists (neuroscience is not a directly deadly field). We also know that such folk are much more likely to succeed at super-simple plans, like this one, than at doing complex technological endeavours for the first time in the face of countermeasures.

How long will it be (if ever) before a typical bio-science Ph.D will have the capacity to kill, say,a million people?

That doesn't have to ever happen. Ubiquitous DNA sensors that identify deadly agents, DNA vaccines, ubiquitous surveillance at the planning stage, tripwires in synthesis machines, and so forth can proliferate. The typical bio-science PhD is pretty crappy (Sturgeon's Law), and likely to fail at something like making the smallpox virus unless there is a cookie-cutter script kiddy style approach pre-packaged. That might happen, but we also might see varied government interference that makes failure much more likely, just as interference at every stage of potential nuclear terrorism makes it impracticable (although that is eased by the rare materials).

Noun and Chyba (2008, "Biotechnology and biosecurity") reviewed the risks of hostile uses of biotechnology in Global Catastrophic Risks (eds. Bostrom and Ćirković).

An excerpt from section 20.7 ("Catastrophic biological attacks"):

[M]odern society’s experience with bioterrorism has, fortunately, so far been limited to a small number of events that were neither intended to, nor did result in high mortality figures, so they may not serve as good indicators for what a successful major attack would look like. The 2001 US Anthrax scare that caused five deaths, for instance, involved a non-contagious pathogen, and although milled into a fine powder, the bacterial spores were initially contained within envelopes that resulted in only local dissemination. By contrast, the Aum Shinrikyo cult, seeking to stage a mass-casualty attack in order to realize a prophecy, attempted to disperse Bacillus anthracis, from a building rooftop onto the dense urban population of Tokyo. The Aum, which later succeeded in dispersing Sarin nerve gas in Tokyo subways, was, fortunately, unsuccessful both in efforts to procure a pathogenic strain of Bacillus anthracis, and in its attempts to efficiently disseminate the bacterium. But a more rudimentary dispersal technique was successfully used by another group, the Rajneeshees, whose actions were motivated by a desire to keep a large block of individuals away from voting polls, in order to influence local elections. In 1984, members of the Oregon-based cult successfully spread the enteric bacterium, Salmonella typhimurium, onto salad bars, causing illness in over 750 Oregonians and sending many to hospitals. Had the Rajneeshees used a more virulent pathogen, or had the US Anthrax been more efficiently dispersed, major public health disasters may have ensued. In 1993, estimates from the US Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment found that a single 100 kg load of anthrax spores, if delivered by aircraft over a crowded urban setting, depending on weather conditions, could result in fatalities ranging between 130,000 and 3 million individuals. However, these sort of dramatic results have been viewed as overly alarmist by those claiming that such high casualties would require optimal conditions and execution by the perpetrators, and that there would in fact be a very wide range of possible outcomes (Leitenberg, 2005).

To look at it in another way, it is surprising that someone with that level of knowledge intent on killing people didn't kill far more people. There are lots of simple ways someone with decent chemical knowledge and access to lab equipment could kill a lot of people in a confined space, but instead he chose to use guns primarily.

My leading hypothesis would be that people in this sort of mental state are not motivated by maximising the number of people they kill but by fitting into the mold of a gunman or fulfilling some other psychological desire. So if that is the case we should be comforted that even if the access of people to dangerous chemicals increases they won't use them. What would be really dangerous is if someone psychologically normal decided to kill a lot of people.

Since most of the damage seems (thusfar) to have been by gun rather than by gas this particular event, while tragic, does not seem to be evidence for a particular timeline on this sort of risk question.

The technology already exists for hundreds or thousands of deaths, you will grant; but they are not obviously being used, and instances where unusual methods are being used are low body counts (the 2001 anthrax attacks). Given that the spree killers are not already using them, why would we expect this this change?

Are you arguing either that even a small probability of a spree killer using them is too much when the damage could run into the hundreds of thousands, or that the increasing capabilities themselves will increase the probability?

How long will it be (if ever) before a typical bio-science Ph.D will have the capacity to kill, say,a million people?

I certainly think there is a considerable risk, as bio-engineering becomes routine even in smaller labs. One could rely on brute force methods, like creating an array of random compositions of influence viruses for example, attempt to infect a few people, hope something sticks(selection). And then several different strains with non-overlapping surface antigens - you get no overlapping immunity - emerge from your batch, instead of one super pathogen.

How long will it be (if ever) before a typical bio-science Ph.D will have the capacity to kill, say,a million people?

How hard is it to get one's hands on some of the select agents?

May be he did released some biological agent and shooting was a cover up for gas with viruses releese.

I don't think a doctor in bio-science would have too much trouble figuring out how to build a nuke. I've read that a lot of nuclear testing facilities aren't nearly as guarded as we'd hope. If what they were implying was correct, then it's already possible.

There is a rationality link here, but it's not the one you were thinking of.

We’ve Seen This Movie Before - By ROGER EBERT

Should this young man — whose nature was apparently so obvious to his mother that, when a ABC News reporter called, she said “You have the right person” — have been able to buy guns, ammunition and explosives? The gun lobby will say yes. And the endless gun control debate will begin again, and the lobbyists of the National Rifle Association will go to work, and the op-ed thinkers will have their usual thoughts, and the right wing will issue alarms, and nothing will change. And there will be another mass murder.

Colorado Gun Laws Remain Lax, Despite Changes After Columbine