The Most Dangerous Weapon Is Not Nuclear 

This video was made possible through a grant by Open Philanthropy. Check out the biorisk career guide from 80,000 hours: 80000hours.org/kurz-bio

The #1 asset we as humans have is the fact that scientists openly and freely share their knowledge with other scientists.

As someone actually working in biotech who also has a home lab it’s not that easy. Most organisms aren’t available to purchase especially pathogens. As for DNA sequences it is monitored and I’ve personally been called by the FBI WMD directorate and the International gene synthesis consortium when they were checking up on what I was buying even though it wasn’t pathogenic. So there are public and private watchdogs on all this stuff, plus making and testing novel viruses isn’t as easy as this video makes it seem. Especially if you need a lot of human test subjects. If you want to know where the biological super weapons will come from it’s rogue states like North Korea. They have the money, the human test subjects, the ability to hide what they are doing and leaders crazy enough to try it. Also a group of biohackers working with biotech at home made and tested the first successful Covid vaccine months before any corporation and published all their methods and results online. If Covid had been a much worse virus and especially if it’s delivery had been weaponized by targeting government infrastructure like the CDC and the FDA. They might have been the only ones to actually make a working vaccine. Mostly because biohackers are decentralized and can work a lot faster since there isn’t any bureaucracy and they tend to test things on themselves. There is a very real possible scenario where a state makes a biological WMD and deploys it strategically crippling the corporate and government infrastructure leaving only a decentralized network of citizen scientists to respond. Let’s not regulate them out of existence please. Edit - in reply to the comments saying how can biohackers make a vaccine if they can’t make a super plague. Vaccines are much easier, the first vaccine was made in 1796, it’s not remotely the same scale of work. It’s the difference in tech and infrastructure that you would need is the same as what you’d need to go from making a toy robot in your garage as a hobby and making an army of military robots. Vaccines are just a lot easier to make than WMDs because they are old and simple technology that works with the amazing power of your immune system where plagues have to work against that power.

As someone who has worked with an actual virus for completing a 6-month dissertation project, I had to sign around 7 different forms stating that I know what I'm gonna do at the lab, the kind of reagents I'm most likely gonna use, the people I'm gonna work with, the type of microbe that will be studied, and so on. Also, I was given limited lab access where the card only worked for 12 hours as I was doing my Masters and there was 24x7 CCTV surveillance. On top of all that, we all followed a strict protocol in sorting and disposing of any kind of lab waste we generated. So yeah, everyone kinda knew what I was upto from start to finish, and we did everything safely and cautiously. The idea that people could easily make a deadly world-ending microbe at home in the distant future is rather daft because it is very difficult, risky, and expensive to get your hands on even some of the most basic equipment, enzymes, and even a perfectly harmless microbe. Kurzgesagt, I do love your videos, but please be careful when talking about anything related to making a home-made bioweapon as it perpetuates the false idea that scientists are out there creating pandemics for the fun of it, and I mean this as a microbiologist.

I am very pleased to see people questioning this video, its messages, and sensationalism, all while adding correct information. As Kurzesagt gets influenced by donors and deadlines, the people are upholding what is needed

Something is very wrong and different about this video. The people are faceless and generic. There are no birds. The video isn't broken into their usual kind of chapters, nor does it have an intro. They didn't promote this video on reddit like they usually do. Heck, even their sources document is cited incorrectly. Their bibliography cites a source about UVC lamps, but links to an article that doesn't have any mention of the claim. The biggest thing to me is that this video relies very heavily on a single source, and the author of that source received millions of dollars in funding from the sponsor of this video. That doesn't feel right to me, either. Kurzgesagt says in their finance video that they have contracts that prevent their grant givers from editorial influence other than suggesting topic areas. Their reliance on a paper published by someone who received money from the same institution makes doubt that claim. Something is just very wrong about all this. I can't say I'm happy with this video, it feels overly alarmist and downplays the benefits of the free sharing of information and scientific research. If I can't even trust some of the facts in this video, I'm not gonna trust the opinions, either. And I say this as a long-time fan, too. I really love what kurzgesagt brings the world. I just want some kind of explanation for why this all happened. How'd they get their sources cited wrong? How did they not see the conflict of interest in their main source? Why is the animation style and format so different? By all means, I'd love to be wrong. If I missed something I'd love to know. But at first glance, it really seems like something's up with this video. Edit: It actually is broken into chapters, it's just more subtle about it.

For the record, anyone with a relatively strong undergraduate physics education and some engineering experience knows how to build a nuclear bomb, as well as most of the constituent parts, with relatively accessible materials. The obstacle to building one is that fuel enrichment requires infrastructure that is visible from space and will quickly get you in a lot of trouble. How to do any of that is not really a secret at all.

Pretty sure we all learnt during COVID that the most 'successful' viruses walk the line of fatality as extremely lethal viruses have no chance to spread and infect others. Even if you created one with a very long incubation period with sudden onset death this would provide a large window for people to get treated and slow down the spread (and its ability to spread during this incubation period would likely be limited by the fact you need to be having symptoms to transmit things often). This will always provide a limiting factor on just how lethal a virus can really get.

my dads belt is still deadlier

Kurzgesagt, thank you for teaching me how to create a more destructive nuclear weapon! I'll test this in my back yard now, thanks! Update: It was successful, I shall detonate it in the WTC.

I work at a community biology lab and it's actually pretty difficult to get virus, even just as gene DNA, even for non-pathogens. Then, as others have pointed out, you still need to assemble them. There is already a decent amount of due diligence and international collaboration, especially by the large biotech distributors that currently dominate the market. This is one case where the inevitable centralization under capitalism leads to safer systems. This is of course at the cost of access to the poorest communities and we could intentionally design regulatory systems while also maintaining the spread of knowledge and access to technological resources. This also ignores viral ecology...the reason that existing deadly viruses like ebola are much easier to contain than COVID has to do with differences in virulence: a long incubation time and a large proportion of asymptomatic infections. Often the traits that allow a virus to easily and quickly spread throughout a population also reduce its virulence as dead hosts (usually) can't spread the virus.

I wasnt sure whether the feeling I was getting from the video was based, but thankfully I can see in the comments that more people are noticing, I'm so glad critical thinking is not dead. I know very little about biology and chemistry but could notice this video feels like kurtzgesagt just repeating in their own style the worldview and ideas of someone else.

Im sure someone has said this, but the only reason the COVID vaccine was made so quickly was 1) due to decades of (fairly) open access research on coronaviruses, and 2) how all the flux of covid research was very accessible across the world during the early stages of the pandemic. Making research secret when it comes to public health will only do a diservice to the field, especially during catastrophies

As a molecular biologist working on gene therapy using viral vectors, I can assure you that it is extremely difficult to avoid being tracked when ordering genetic components. Even though our biosafety level 1 is officially defined as "non-pathogenic material that is unlikely to harm the environment and humans," we are still obligated to report each case to the appropriate authorities and maintain meticulous documentation of our biosafety level 1 experiments. These experiments, which are considered safe according to the defined biosafety standards, are subjected to frequent monitoring by regulatory bodies. As you can imagine, things get even more strict when working with higher biosafety levels like viruses that target human cells. This time the kurzgesagt clip is more entertaining than informative.

I'm definitely noticing that that's a recurring theme with Kurzgesagt videos; getting people's attention with something super scary or existential crisis-inducing, and then ending the video with "yeah but actually, you really don't have to worry that much".

Modifying existing viruses requires getting the virus and doing very specific work on it. If we could create microbes from just knowing the sequence of their genetic material and creating it easily, this could open up a Pandora’s box that would make ghost guns look benign.

bro wrote batshit virus at 4:45 and thought we woudnt notice💀💀💀

This video is the only video from Kurzgesagt which has left a frown on my face after watching it. I have a degree in microbiology and this video makes it sound like anyone with a couple of thousand bucks and a microscope has the potential to create a deadly virus. Truth is it requires training, knowledge in the field, and expensive machines to successfully work on viruses (and most importantly SAFELY). Our current understanding of viruses is nothing compared to say, E. coli. It’s not as simple as using gene editing like CRISPR and replacing a couple of genes to make a super mutant. Simply, the most efficient way (and quickest) way would be to use human trials to select for variants that showed higher infectious rate while also increasing lethality, but that’s not something you can just do in your backyard…

This video felt incredibly weird. Not only the structure, lack of faces, the alarmist tone, the lifelessness of the animation... What feels the weirdest to me is the sub-par sources, and the fact that the main source for this video was paid by the same organization that paid for this video. I will explain. (I apologize for how long this is.) I looked through the sources that they listed, and out of the 52 times they source something, 9 times Kurzgesagt sourced the same book. And of those 52 sources, only, to my eye, 13 were about the manipulation and study of bacterial/viral genes in any capacity. (There were 6 on nuclear weapons, for comparison). And about the claim of easy access to both materials and knowledge that the argument hinges on? There is one source about concerns related to easy access to genetic information, and one about easy access to DNA editing equipment. The source about easy access to genetic information (other than the book this video is based on) brings up several good examples of the risk involved with being incredibly open with knowledge about viruses and bacteria. It brings up case studies where scientists edited viruses, and published their results, in a way that was a cause for concern. Such as editing a mousepox virus so that it could bypass an existing vaccine, and publishing what gene editing was done to make that possible. The source does show an opposing opinion, which says that those with access to that information can then plan to counteract such a gene, if a virus like it were to be released on human populations. And this source, while intriguing, focuses wholly on the formal, laboratory-based research. Which this video decisively does not address, instead talking about, essentially, 'backyard biologists'. Which the second source talks about. This source isn't a peer-reviewed paper, or published in a scientific journal, unlike the first one. This source talks about DIY CRISPR kits - at home DNA editors. But the source makes no mention of infectious diseases, saying that these kits can ".... make bacteria and yeast change colour, produce a fragrance or live in inhospitable places, but their lives are short." The source says that there is very little that can be actually done to bacteria beyond this. Which does not back up the claim that pretty much anyone could have access to powerful gene-editing capabilities. As for the book - the primary source of this video. I am not inclined to read it in its entirety, but I will provide relevant quotes they listed, and break them down. For materials access: "DNA constructs of length sufficient to generate infectious 1918 influenza virus can now be obtained for US$1,500; coronaviruses cost approximately US$2,000, but typically must be enzymatically stitched together by hand prior to virus generation, limiting (for now) the number of capable individuals to those also skilled at modern biotechnology. The laboratory equipment and reagents required for these tasks can typically be obtained for less than US$50,000.” So... It doesn't mention who has access to such materials (making it seem like anyone could order it off the internet), nor does it say how easy it is to edit such diseases to make them bio-weapons. That is the only mention of material access. For information access: “Security concerns are less salient in the current culture of the life sciences, as evidenced by the number of projects explicitly intending to create, identify, and publicly share a list of viruses ranked by apparent threat level.” "Under the current system, a scientist who warns the world of a pandemic-class agent inadvertently provides widespread access to skilled "lone wolf" actors who rely on commercial DNA synthesis, as well as well-resourced actors who do not” His argument appears to be that publishing information about potential pandemic-creating agents or mutations gives people the information to create them... Without considering the opposite side of that coin - it also gives people the information to stop them. Overall... Not very convincing, to me, at least. The many comparisons to nuclear weapons, in his quotes, feel odd to me. It's the comparison between life, an ever-evolving, extremely complex system, to nuclear bombs and their proliferation, which is exclusively a weapon or energy source. There are no "cures" or "vaccines" for a nuclear explosion, but there *is* for viruses and bacteria. So while there is pretty much only danger in the democratization of information about nuclear weapons, there is undoubtedly upsides to the information on diseases. The collaboration and wealth of information that scientists had on the subject is precisely what led to the super fast discovery of a COVID-19 vaccine! But, solely the arguments aside... This was a weird video, very unlike most of Kurzgesagt's. The changing of the title and thumbnail (which is done solely for engagement - and Kurzgesagt hasn't shown they cared for that before). The fact this video was paid for by the same organization that paid the man who wrote the book this video is based on, essentially saying exactly what's in said book, the weirdly lackluster sources compared to normal videos, the bad analogy in nuclear, not looking at an opposing viewpoint, not going in-depth about something crucial (like who has access to viral materials), the odd structure, the sub-par animation.... I won't read too much into it, but I can say confidently that this is not the standard quality that I expect from Kurzgesagt, and that I am very disappointed in them for this. Thank you for reading this. Sorry that it's so long... But Kurzgesagt is a huge channel, doing a lot of good, I think, so I don't want them to go down the route of whatever led to this video being created. Edit: Spelling mistakes

00:00 Biotechnology revolution and its potential for both good and bad 02:49 The rapid progress and accessibility of biotechnology 05:26 The potential dangers of biotechnology and the risk of a catastrophic pandemic 08:18 The importance of taking precautions and using biotechnology to triumph over pandemics

"We don't know if it came from nature or a lab." Yes me do. You know we do.

As scientist working in a microbiology laboratory, I can tell you it is nearly impossible to get your hand on something dangerous online. The only way to get dangerous bacteria or viruses involve going through an tremendous amount of administrative and certification work impossible to do if you are not in university or big company. The same goes for bacteria and viruses modification, you not only need the equipment (that isn't easy to get as it is expensive and for some them, you need certification and authorization too), but also the people to work with (terrorists are rarely academics). And the cherry on top of the icing, you need to justify why you would like to have such bacteria or viruses to work with. So it is not really for tomorrow (nor the day after), people will be able to make something dangerous in their garage. The good news is all the tools you propose to put to stop new pandemic are already done since... decades... Next inform better yourself! I am very disappointed how the documentation of this video has been so poorly handled. You really need to make a second video to show how difficult it is to make super bug in your backyard....

Something you missed about this, is that they are also researching antibodies and other things USING that freely shared data, in fact i believe that there are programs to auto compute antibodies from a gene sequence directly.

Me in my basement at 3 am combining viruses with radioactive materials:

I love the audio on your videos, i am a slightly hard of hearing but your audio is crisp and at great volume compared to hundreds of other content creators. Thank you!

Okay this is a bit of a bigger issue: presenting UVC lamps as safe to run while people are in a room and the voiceover saying they kill the viruses you breathe before someone else can inhale them. That’s dangerous considering people are already giving themselves awful burns and even skin cancer with UVC lamps. Ventilation and filtration is an excellent idea, but putting it alongside the UVC lamps might make people who know a little about the latter distrustful of the former.

In the end i feel like this is a strategic miss-framing of DIY biology projects, exaggerating their potential risks and minimizing the regulations that already exist on such projects, and it pushes for information regulation which would really lead to further information monopolies and centralization in companies

Me: *Creating breakfast in my kitchen* Kur: 5:39 Me: *Completely unfazed while making toast*

"Boths sides of the Yin and Yang" Everything as its balance. The greater the potencial for good, the greater the risk for bad. Amazing explanation!

You cannot just order dangerous DNA or virus strains. It has to be from an account held by your university/lab, which will have been vetted beforehand, and they in turn will have vetted you.

I'm really glad most of the people here are able to think for themselves and actually voicing concerns when they feel the videos are not up to mark. It's really disappointing that they would just throw out a word salad like that and not explain anything while making such wild claims.

Seeing the Umbrella Corp at 3:50 and the possible T virus after it got me more interested in Bio Science and medical history

All Channels are great. What I'm curious about, how is the special animation created? May I ask what software or applications do you guys use to create them - It's so fascinating.

This video felt “off” from what I am used to and expect from kurzgesagt. I didn’t get that feeling of being informed after watching this. Felt more like I did as a kid after listening to my father discuss a possible future conspiracy.

If that knowledge is not shared, then we cannot develop counter measures against weaponised viruses allowing the first actor to develop such a virus have horrifying power.

I’m glad they brought up info-hazards because I’ve been thinking about that a lot and I honestly don’t know how I feel about it. The idea that information is too dangerous to spread makes sense. But what if we made certain information illegal? Is that ethical? Should knowledge ever be restricted or limited, even for a good reason? Not confidential or private knowledge, but just… knowledge. For example, if a time traveler went back and made knowledge of how to split the atom illegal to share or possess. Would that be ethical? It would save millions of lives, but can you arrest someone just for knowing something? For understanding science? Where do you draw the line on infohazards? Who decides what’s hazardous or how severe it is? On one hand I believe knowledge is free, ideas and knowledge should be shared as openly as possible to as many people as possible because maybe some seemingly odd information about designing a gun might help an engineer design a safer braking system for elevators or something… an idea he wouldn’t have come up with without seeing a mechanism on that gun. Sure, someone might take that information and make guns and blah blah… but is that worth locking that information away? Because it might be dangerous in the wrong hands? Where does the line between info-hazard and personal responsibility exist? Knowledge is just knowledge. If a person finds out how to make Molotov cocktails, and then uses them in a riot… was that info-hazard or personal responsibility? Because I know how to make napalm… I also know decent origami and butterfly knife tricks, and cooking. I’ve never actually made napalm, I’ve never attacked anyone with my balisongs and I never intended to… that’s my personal responsibility. But I do know some crazy people would use napalm. I know some people absolutely would use my knife tricks for intimidation and to hurt others… I dunno. The whole concept of an infoahazard messes me up. Because I exist on both sides. I love learning, I love knowledge and teaching people and absolutely love random knowledge and learning totally random skills and information… But I’ve also been a firearms instructor and I’ve seen that not everyone should learn to use a firearm. Some people absolutely need limits on the information given to them… but that’s not my choice to make! That’s not my judgement to deal out. I got into teaching gun safety to help people, get rid of some of the fear and stigma and answer questions honestly for people… but I definitely met a few people asking some very uncomfortable questions and it gave me pause about whether to even answer or not.. When some sketchy dude keeps asking about firearm registration, how many serial numbers they have and other very suspicious crap I ask myself… is this an info hazard situation? Is this information too dangerous to share in this situation? I don’t know. Like all big questions… it’s big. It’s complicated and I just take it case by case, use my best judgment and I try to trust in humanity as best I can.

3:15 I got new idea for my science exhibition Thanks bro😊

3:14 this is definitely a "Kurzgesagt out of context" moment

I am sorry but the things said about doing biotech at home is just very unrealistic. I am working in Biotech and every little thing is expensive as hell. As a trained biochemist/geneticist etc., doing top notch biotech at home where you manage to get "breakthrough discoveries" every few years would only be possible as long as you have a huge funding or being a multi millionaire if not billionaire who can afford all the expensive devices, including service contracts and the staff who can operate it properly.

I love it how its incredibly simplified but you can still recognize wikihow at

3:50 the umbrella corps badge gave me a bit of a flashback to "7 minutes. 7 minutes is all I can spare to play with you."

You can't safely use UV lamps at home, they decompose synthetic and organic materials alike, producing often toxic or allergenic compounds. There's a solid reason these are used in hospitals and other strictly controlled environments only. And air cleaner has little to do with your epidemiological safety, either. Most points of contact are in public transportation or other human activity hubs like workplaces and restaurants, not in your house.

Tldr: Biotech tools may be cheap but you still need to know how to use it. It's easy to mess up and simply fail so it's unlikely the average person would succeed. I'm more concerned about Kurzgesagt's call to wall up information on biotech & genomes. When I was a highschool student preparing for International Biology Olympiad 6-8 years ago, I experienced firsthand how easy it was to construct a makeshift biotech lab. Our teachers brought stuff from the university and turned a hall in our dormitory into a makeshift lab. Of course there were no cleanroom or hazmat suits or those kind of things. They just put some machines on the table, kept the reagents / enzymes / DNA solutions in a household fridge, and stored other tools in the corner of the room (micropipettes & tips, microtubes, racks, etc). We didn't deal with dangerous microbes nor genes, but I do recall doing DNA cleaving with enzymes (not crispr), PCR and electrophoresis. There were other experiments of course (animal dissection, preparing microscopic slides out of plants, culturing bacteria & fungi, staining bacteria, etc...), but the biotech experiments were the most exciting. Even though biotech tools, DNA & reagents have become cheaper but it doesn't mean you can conjure up a virus that easily. Properly using them needs particular knowledge, skill & finesse. A simple mistake could fail your whole experiment. It's like sculpting statues: even with a hunk of marble, a hammer, chisels and knowledge of how a human looks, it is unlikely that the average person would be able to create a statue of decent quality. Even with access to budget biotech tools, reagents, and the virus genome, it is unlikely that the average person would be able to create that virus. To me, the most alarming part is the call to wall up information on genomes & information on biotech. Much information in the science world is behind a paywall already and even us who were preparing to compete in an international olympiad often resorted to "third party services" to access the information (books & research papers) free of charge.

Paused the video to research the Vela Incident referenced on screen and went down a rabbit hole of nuclear reactivity studies including Mie Scattering, for over an hour before I remembered to return to this video. In a roundabout way you guys still did your job of educating people right. Lol.

2:19 i swear theres an incomplete swastika on the bottom left

As a molecular biologist, seeing this made me want to cry. In essence: "here is a fear mongering video that will make you nervous about things you don't understand and how easy it is to do (actually... its still hard to do and it takes a group of people a lot of effort to get anything right)" Then... "And here is a list of unreasonable requests that will halt all lab work in the field for those fears" Honestly. Making a virus will take either one crazy guy 4 years to do and then it'll probably fail. Or a team a few months. Either way, people will likely notice and you'll need a bunch of good guys to counteract it. Its like hackers in the 90s. The evil geniuses of the world will try regardless, so your only hope is to have them outnumbered by a 100 good guys.

For real though, the idea of increasing the amount of information gatekeeped by people in power of *any* type is incredibly dangerous. As many others have pointed out, it's not as easy as you make it out to be to create a supervirus. You really do need the expert training for it, and the "it costs as much as a small car" claim assumes unrealistically ideal conditions with no wasted money or mistakes, which are both guaranteed for anyone not working under supervision in a controlled environment.

Step one; get a jug of stagnant pond water. Step two; get a jug of hand sanitizer. Step three; put them in a blender and mix for a good long time. Step four; wait for the 0.01% of germs that survive to breed again until you have a blender full of germs that are immune to hand sanitizer. Step five; take a sample and set it aside. Step six; mix in a new antibiotic and turn the blender back on for a bit. Step seven; allow it to breed again. Step eight; set aside a sample. Step nine; repeat steps 6 through eight until you run out of ideas for antibiotics to use. Congratulations you have a blender full of germs entirely immune to anything you thought of to throw at it.

I love this series, so helpful, keep it going neeb!

You guys are amazing.

This video felt particulary nebulous. Less based on reality, more based on a bit of bias.

"To cringe or not to cringe that is the question" -Kurzgesagt, 2023

YOOO as a lifelong Resident Evil fan, I see and love the easter egg you guys dropped at 3:50!

7:25 the most dangerous virus: AMONG US

this video feels so weird, like it's attacking free share of scientific discoveries, wich is something amazing about science... it's the first time I have this feeling in a kurzgesagt video in years watching

argh the last part about the poster and working to be better really made me tear up, you guys are amazing🥲

kurzgesagt still a Banger every Ep Shared , ty !) for u'r hardwork

It's always the videos sponsored by open filanthropy that miss... *i wonder why*

That’s the first video of Kurzgesagt that I didn’t like 😅. I myself work in Biotechnology. In laboratories we have safety measures to not let anything (harmless or harmful stuff) get out. There are really just few labs around the world that are S3 or S4 labs and are even allowed to work on dangerous organisms and these are highly regulated! I think that’s missing in this video.. Labs that can not even follow S1 safety standards should not even be allowed to do any work. And I hope they find these labs and shut them down.

can you make one about time dilation? mb if you don't take recommendations but I've been researching about time dilation and if find it extremely interesting and hope others can learn more about it and perhaps find joy in learning about it like me :)

“It’s complicated but here’s it in a nutshell” -Kurzgesagt

This video feels sensationalist. I'm getting strong [citation needed] vibes from some of the claims, such as a highschooler being able to create a super virus.

Early birds will know that this video was originally titled "The Most Dangerous Weapon is NOT Nuclear"

Everyone is gangsta until Kurzgesagt says, "Crappy."

I think a video on colonizing Mercury, the asteroid belt, and Jovian system would be cool.

7:26 - Among us

It's actually nearly impossible to get *accurate* DNA sequencing by yourself in a personal house setting. You will instead get a kit from the companies that do that, who outsource it to biolabs that take the sample and put them into the machines to do it. The reason cost is low is because those machines are now well automated, and the law of scale. You are still hardly doing yourself by on your own unless you are buying millions of dollars of equipment that only big hospitals and universities can afford.

scientist:i found a new virus me:CAN YOU STOP TRYING TO FIND THINGS THAT CAN KILL US

5:59 best defense is an air shower clean room with suction hole floors with cyclonic precipitators since any cellular fragment can be infectious due to Brownian motion since agricultural farms and rail transit trains dump infectious waste so please require them to use autoclaves and irradiators to sterilize.

Whether its Biological, Mechanical or Nuclear, if Humanity is to be undone it will be by its own hubris.

The last pandemic was man made...

Buyed a shirt last month and it has very good quality. Also feels good to support you guys

I’ve never had any interest in stuff like this, but you guys can somehow make any topic interesting

I don’t think we should try to restrict the sharing of information, plus doing that isn’t easy

I've seen other people criticize this in the comment section as well but let me just add my own opinion onto this pile. This whole video feels like an advertisement to privatize yet another part of the scientific industry. University and institutions are willing to pay big bucks to get their stuff published in paywalled journals or to get the papers from said journals. I am frankly surprised that the biotech industry is this open on it's knowledge but I would rather keep it that way, it would allow people to learn a lot from all this knowledge on their own instead of being outside the walled garden of the medical industrial complex.

Hi Kurzgesagt! Could you make a video on different life form bases? Such as Silicon based life forms (for ex, here on earth, we are carbon based) and other potential based life forms?

4:45 “New Batshit virus discovered” I see what you did there.

I would have appreciated more detail on what the real magnitude of the risk is here. We live in a time when a lot of people are massively over-hyping these so-called “existential risks”, and from what I understand of the field, individual biohackers cooking up deadly plagues is still the stuff of science fiction and it would be way easier and cheaper for terrorists to just use nerve gas. Not that we shouldn’t worry at all, and who knows where we’ll be in 30 years, but we have a lot of problems in the world today and concerning ourselves too much with some of this stuff (like runaway AI) just seems like fearmongering. I think basic pandemic preparedness, which apparently we’re still not doing, would be a much bigger win and we’d get a lot of these things “for free”.

The fact that we will probably one day live in a world where almost no one ever gets sick is crazy

I think this raises of the question like 'If we keep on doing this, will we become weaker as the time goes?' I mean we are destroying anything that has potential harm to us and animals. I believe this wanes our competence of survival to bare minimum.

Humanity's greatest breakthrough was the ability to share knowledge with almost anyone, anywhere. We are only at the beginning and I wish I was born later to see how far it carries us. There might always be bad outcomes possible, but I like to be optimistic in thinking that our future as a species will be unlike anything we can imagine. Especially with biotech.

I am a PhD student in essentially virology. This video is shallow, imprecise, fear-mongering and got quite a few important things inaccurately or incorrectly. Here are the few points I noticed: 1. It’s probably impossible to do this DNA order tracing - people can just order short pieces and stitch them together like how high school students can learn to do. 2. It’s really quite difficult to make a virus more deadly/infectious in lab. Most people just experiment with a few point mutations, which almost never result in a virus that is more fit to replicate in humans. Even doing recombinations don’t work most of the times. You talking about this loosely also make scientists that do well-meaning and very important experiments being attacked by the public. I remember listening to a TWiV episode and hearing a scientist receiving extremely derogatory emails from the public for doing some standard experiments with SARS-CoV-2 that are very important to help understanding how Omicron is more infectious. 3. Vaccine development is just slow. It was lucky for SARS-CoV-2 we had some very important findings from trying to develop a vaccine for SARS-CoV-1 over a decade ago (mostly those two proline mutations in the spike). It was not intuitive and may simple need longer for other vaccines to develop. Clinical trials also just has to take that long. I am not an expert in that but I can’t imagine the whole process being shortened to just a few months - to see the short term safety effects it just takes time. I think you might have gotten the idea for the video from some old advisory letter to Obama or something like it. It was OK and makes a lot of sense to us who study the subject, but talking about it to the public should require a lot more understanding than what this video presented to avoid confusions. Edit: From some comments: I see that my wording was way too strong for point 1. The point being that there are sequences that we can control to at least greatly reduce reckless behaviors. It should be relatively easy to set up since the DNA synthesis companies are already sorting their customers based on origins.

Politicians: hold my beer

Will kurzgesagt be doing a video concerning LK-99?

There's often a lot of chat of doom and gloom, but it's encouraging to be reminded of the innovation potential of humanity which is often overlooked. Thanks, Kurzgesagt.

I wouldn’t take this video at face value, I’d take it with a huge grain of salt. Advocating for less open sharing among scientists and more surveillance than already exists in the world makes me doubt that this video is sincere about fears of bio warfare rather than the desire of some people to control the spread of knowledge and keep it in the hands of a few to maintain existing power structures. Exactly like with nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, which are almost exclusively in the hands of powerful and often colonial countries that use them to maintain their hegemony.

I always imagined a nasal implant or tracheal implant that uses ultraviolet light to burn away virus and micro bacterial invaders

With the way that humans act towards each other now and in the past I seriously fear for a future where anyone can control biology completely. That future looks absolutely terrifying.

@7:20 "the really spicy stuff". Thanks, now I'm going to have a side of existential dread every time I reach for the hot sauce now

Eh the whole concept of "We should track people and limit peoples ability to access information cause bad things could happen" Is a dicey topic, and has issues that clash with fundamental freedom of speech rights in many western countries. If anything that will be the stumbling block that will inhibit any controls who does what with biological technology. Also I take issue with the opinion that we've been "responsible" and have limited nuclear proliferation through limiting access to information when its the fact that getting a hold of the materials to make a weapon that has more been the issue. The information to make a bomb is easily obtained, its the materials and production of those materials that's extremely difficult to get a hold of or make without killing yourself, or tipping off other countries onto what you're doing. To that point look up the case of boy scout who built a functional nuclear reactor in his shed. You could conceivably control it through a licensing program, but that too has its limits, and relies on countries caring enough to license people to perform genetic work, and or the ability to control the manufacture of equipment needed to do such work. That also falls apart if the equipment is also easy to make on your own. This also somewhat mirrors efforts of gun control, as the information, equipment needed, and materials to make your own firearm is freely available and difficult to stop.

i suddenly have the urge to search up how to make a deadly virus from my living room

Good vid could you make a video on how uranium might be used as a fuel source or something about the environment

2:40 Not going to happen because giant corporations dont want you to build or repair your own devices, because that doesnt make them much money

The Unbrella corp reference at 6:48 was perfect lol

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain

I like how he starts really dark then goes positive and tells us everyone will be fine😂

I am proud of you guys! 3/4 videos in a span of a month; don't rush them, they need and are enjoyable as always.

I loved the Umbrella Corp and Jurassic park references in this one.. and the video itself is phenomenal as always! I love watching these and learning about the different aspects they feature.

Reminds me of how a substitute teacher taught us how nuclear bombs work in high school chemistry as an extra lesson bc we finished the lecture early

00:00 Biotechnology is revolutionizing biology 01:36 Biotechnology has become affordable and accessible due to automation and information sharing. 02:59 Biotech progress can lead to deadly consequences 04:25 Virus hunters discover and share potentially dangerous viruses freely. 05:46 Handling biotechnology like nuclear technology can prevent misuse 07:08 Preventing pandemics requires tracking, detecting, and destroying threats. 08:25 Control biology to triumph over pandemics and diseases