How to Get a Nuclear Bomb (2006)

Re:How to Get a Nuclear Bomb (2006) by jonmrodriguez on Tuesday January 10, 2012 @10:47AM (#3447308)

Nuclear is not as scary as bioterror.

I'm a college senior, and last spring I and two class teammates were able to re-engineer virus Phi X 174 in only 10 weeks, starting from zero knowledge of genetic engineering. Then we payed DNA 2.0 (a DNA synthesis contractor) to build us the custom virus for only $2k.

Also: on the third day of class, the prof showed us the complete genome of Ebola, and that based on DNA 2.0's price per length, it would only cost $20k to make.

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Re:How to Get a Nuclear Bomb (2006) by saulrh on Tuesday January 10, 2012 @11:46AM (#3447651)

I'll paste from my last post on this topic. There was an article that went over exactly this in Discover magazine a month or two ago. Summary is that it's harder than you might think.

  "You would need more than a garage; you would need a great
  garage and a lot of money. And it's not trivial. You need
  the oligonucleotides to stitch genes together, and as far
  as I know, most companies will check the order if the
  sequence represents that of a dangerous virus."

http://discovermagazine.com/2011/oct/21-dawn-of-the-biohacke...

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Re:How to Get a Nuclear Bomb (2006) by anateus on Tuesday January 10, 2012 @12:25PM (#3447873)

Not a great comfort, but companies like DNA 2.0, Invitrogen, etc. have pretty intensive safety checking of what they're synthesizing. No sending off for smallpox.

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Re:How to Get a Nuclear Bomb (2006) by tomjen3 on Tuesday January 10, 2012 @12:36PM (#3447944)

So all a terrorist would have to do is get a job there and smuggle an order past the checklist?

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