I just found the perfect weapon against the Zerg.

[Xyvik]

You can't adapt to bullets or nukes or plasma (completely) But you can easily adapt to diseases and fungi, become immune, and turn it against humans.

But it is much more difficult, physiologically speaking, tp adapt to a disease/fungi that has been specifically programmed to attack you. Just look at AIDS. Genetic research in the time period we're talking about could easily stamp out a genome that was a one-time shot, IE cells replicate and die with no external influence accepted, and then point it to attack the Zerg.

But they would need to be able to map the Zerg's structure completely. They certainly made strides in that, but as far as I know they don't know enough to get an engineered attack against the Zerg.

As a fungi? Maybe not, although it would make a cool story. As a virus? Quite possibly.

[Alex06]

I sure hope there aren't cordycepts that can attack humans...

[Pandonetho]

There aren't.

[n00bonicPlague]

Yeah, they only affect insects and whatnot.

There are a handful of lethal fungi that can grow in us, but the situations have to be just right.

[newcomplex]

But it is much more difficult, physiologically speaking, tp adapt to a disease/fungi that has been specifically programmed to attack you. Just look at AIDS. Genetic research in the time period we're talking about could easily stamp out a genome that was a one-time shot, IE cells replicate and die with no external influence accepted, and then point it to attack the Zerg.

But they would need to be able to map the Zerg's structure completely. They certainly made strides in that, but as far as I know they don't know enough to get an engineered attack against the Zerg.

As a fungi? Maybe not, although it would make a cool story. As a virus? Quite possibly.

Zerg can evolve FTL travel through evolutionary process I dont think disease is that big of a deal for them.

[Norfindel]

Zerg can evolve FTL travel through evolutionary process I dont think disease is that big of a deal for them.

Speacially because they have their own virus that can recode the ADN on a victim to make it part of the swarm.

The best thing to use against the Zerg are probably self-replicating nanobots, as they cannot control them, nor assimilate them, and would be a bitch to destroy completely. Still, a lot of shit can go wrong with that approach

[Sheliek]

Speacially because they have their own virus that can recode the ADN on a victim to make it part of the swarm.

The best thing to use against the Zerg are probably self-replicating nanobots, as they cannot control them, nor assimilate them, and would be a bitch to destroy completely. Still, a lot of shit can go wrong with that approach

I always thought that the Zerg were capable of infesting machinery, just not in the way we see in organic infestation. They certainly couldn't assimilate it fully into the swarm, but an infested dragoon, stalker, or immortal is probable, as would the infestation of, for example, automated guns.

Still, nanobots would probably be difficult to infest, what with the 'nano' in their name.

[Pandonetho]

Wouldn't they try to infect machines through biotechnology?

[Kimera757]

The zerg could control machines in two ways:

1) Infest whatever is inside. (Since they cannot infest protoss [yet anyway], they can't infest a dragoon this way.)

2) Infest the machine. That was something you could do in StarCraft: Ghost. (Nova could control a zerg into infesting a machine. That wasn't necessarily in the last build of Ghost that they worked on though.)

[Xyvik]

I was under the impression that the infestation process is performed by Queens, and that Overlords are the ones that scout out potential new strains for the brood. (please correct if me I'm wrong)

Based on those assumptions, individual zerg strains could easily be wiped out if there are no Queens or Overlords nearby. Or, conversely, if the disease/virus itself was engineered specifically to destroy Queens and Overlords, the brood would have no defenses.

That is, at least, my understanding of the situation. Anybody care to rebuttal?