Continuing the hijack (sorry, cdj, but it does keep your thread at the top of the pile) as I can't converse with Dave, look at the Thomas A Easton 'Organic future' series (starting with 'Greenhouse') as a biotech pushed to its limits story.
But the 'Things man was not meant to dabble in' theme is as old in the genre as Frankenstein, and the magician's nephew model – it seemed like a good idea at the time, but got out of hand – is the basis for a number of catastrophe scenarios. And biotech, like nanotech, is admirably suited as a villain; who can accurately predict the future actions of a life form, after all?
demigod said:
scientists are trying to develop the bacteria from the gut of some weird crustacean that turns Wood into Sugar. This they could use it to turn Wood into Ethanol and make a substitute for crude oil. I got to thinking while driving (as you do) what would happen if that went wrong and the bacteria started to attack all the living trees!
Trees are used to attack by micro-organisms, and the probability of any decay bacterium beating their defences is lower than that of a mutated 'predator' bacterium.(something that has frequently occurred, but generally only to one species at a time). They're far more likely, if they escape, to eat floorboards, furniture and roofbeams. (when the house fell on me I didn't care too much as I'd been breathing pure alcohol for days before.) But the cellulose transformers are relatively slow; they're only rotting the stuff a bit more efficiently, after all. Hardly watching the trees crumble to dust before your eyes.
All right, diversion over. No, I haven't had any fresh ideas on the mass emigration from a planet whose atmosphere has become unbreathable.
