The problem with your example is that sterilization is a side effect that would take a very long time to actually cause armageddon, and if civilization can produce GMO foods they can PROBABLY reverse whatever leads to the sterility.
A nuclear exchange that wipes out the key parts of western civilization could happen in 1 hour, and the war could be over in 1 day. If someone were to release a huge swarm of killer nano-machines, it might take months to years to eat the biosphere (again, the machinery I am talking about is NOT self replicating) but developing a countermeasure could take decades.
Another factor to keep in mind is that human biotech advances are very slow and incremental, due to extremely heavy regulation. There is a reluctance to take risks, yet if the risks were taken, far more rapid advances are likely. If a significant proportion of the population were sterile, this reluctance to take risks would be enormously reduced, and rapid advances could happen.
One apocryphal story I heard from a professor at Texas Tech Medical School was that most chemotherapy agents in use today were developed during the postwar period, when regulation was almost nonexistent and a researcher could go straight from the laboratory to the bedside of a cancer patient.
Hearing stories like this, and realizing that in the United States, something like 1.6 million people die every year ANYWAY, I think that regulations should be greatly reduced, but that’s for another discussion.
Another standard (at least in sci-fi) example: some gene in GMO foods unintentionally resulting in sterilization as a long-term side effect.
The problem with your example is that sterilization is a side effect that would take a very long time to actually cause armageddon, and if civilization can produce GMO foods they can PROBABLY reverse whatever leads to the sterility.
A nuclear exchange that wipes out the key parts of western civilization could happen in 1 hour, and the war could be over in 1 day. If someone were to release a huge swarm of killer nano-machines, it might take months to years to eat the biosphere (again, the machinery I am talking about is NOT self replicating) but developing a countermeasure could take decades.
Another factor to keep in mind is that human biotech advances are very slow and incremental, due to extremely heavy regulation. There is a reluctance to take risks, yet if the risks were taken, far more rapid advances are likely. If a significant proportion of the population were sterile, this reluctance to take risks would be enormously reduced, and rapid advances could happen.
One apocryphal story I heard from a professor at Texas Tech Medical School was that most chemotherapy agents in use today were developed during the postwar period, when regulation was almost nonexistent and a researcher could go straight from the laboratory to the bedside of a cancer patient.
Hearing stories like this, and realizing that in the United States, something like 1.6 million people die every year ANYWAY, I think that regulations should be greatly reduced, but that’s for another discussion.