The horror of reading the headline “Amateurs are trying genetic engineering at home” brings things back to various story ideas I have thought of but never put into book form.
A lonely guy, who never forgot the guys who picked on him in High School invents a disease that quickly kills men, and only men, leaving him essentially the last man on Earth.
Two variations on the zombie apocalypse, both either a movie/tv mini/maxi series or a modification for Left 4 Dead… In both variations the story involves escorting a lady the party finds to safety as she has the cure, but can’t replicate it until she gets to the main survivor camp which is rumored to have the equipment necessary. We know little about her past, she worked for an infectious disease center, her husband worked for a sprinkler system company, they had a child which she doesn’t speak anything more of, but nothing really else. The disease is a 28 Days Later type rage virus that is spread via infected blood getting into you (at least an open membrane) or in certain liquid forms. Anyhow, the party finally makes it past the hordes of zombies and to a large survivor camp who confirms that there is the medical equipment necessary to replicate the cure. She is taken away. As she leaves she makes a comment (more on that in a bit) and presses a button which causes the sprinkler system to activate all over the camp, with the water having the gel that spreads the virus, causing it to spread to the camp. Our last shot is the party who we have been following outside watching the helicopter leave and then turning to the oncoming zombie hoard. Prior to this we finally learn the real origin of the virus was her, and possibly some of her allies. In one case it is just her and her hatred of all humanity, as the helicopter leaves we hear her say “humanity doesn’t deserve to live.” Then there is the original story line where we drop hints along the while that the disease was originally created by some Christians who thought they could make Jesus return quicker by causing the apocalypse. This was inspired by the people who think that the election of Obama and other events prior to that may cause Jesus to come back sooner. (Which makes God really weak if His time line can be disrupted by mankind, especially a simple election or any of the other things that caused people to say that such and such may make Him return soon, but then again most Christians don’t think God is strong enough to convict people of sin himself and therefor make laws to do His job for Him, but that was another post all together.)
Anyhow, the whole idea of people playing Genetic Engineer at home can only end badly. Sure a good percentage of people will want to do good, but a certain percentage will want to do harm. Even in the cases of those wanting to do good may cause harm. The killer bees got here out of the intent of doing good, but they escaped the lab. Even something that may seem good for a while may mutate and evolve into something bad. This isn’t to say that we should stand in the way of scientific progress, but there needs to be caution as we move forward on certain fronts.