Submitted 8 hours ago by DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Random thoughts just popped in my head and I just remembered that all the water in a given city is all centralized. Just add poison and boom, eradicated an entire city who are full of dissidents/opposition as punishment for voting the “wrong” way, or for a protest, or if the population is filled with “filthy undesirable [Insert Racial Group Here]”, or something like that.
Kinda unsettling to see that we are all just attached to “the grid” 😖
How do you feel about fluoride?
I don’t know how to feel about it.
On one hand, people should probably be brushing their teech anyways, so if you brush your teeth and also have flouridated water, seems a bit excessive?
But on the other hand, life is stressful and I’m dealing with depression and I often forget to brush my teeth… so like… idk I don’t have enough info to have a strong opinion on it. There’s pros and cons to both side of the flouride debate.
No.
But…
The adage that “the dose makes the poison” is working in your favor here. A large city supply delivers millions of liters of water per day; by the time you dilute your poison into millions of liters of water you’ll either be adding absurd amounts of poison (someone is going to notice massive line of tanker trucks queued up outside the treatment plant), or you are dealing with large - but not unweildly - volumes of something so horrendously toxic that it’s still deadly when diluted that much. There are very few substances that toxic, and someone is going to notice if you start procuring hundreds of liters of botulism toxin or Vx because at that point you are dealing with outlawed chemical warfare agents
Not only that, the water supply is linear, so to keep the water dangerous, you gotta keep adding the substance.
Just worth pointing out, changing water source in Flint Michigan and not adding corrosion inhibitors seemed to do an excellent job for a short period.
Lots of people drink bottled water, soda, beer, or other drinks not immediately connected to the water supply. Furthermore, poisons are unlikely to remain undetected long enough to kill the entire population. While a strong dose of a deadly poison like cyanide can kill in minutes it’s likely to be detected quickly due to how rapidly its effects begin to show up.
A slower-acting, accumulating poison like dimethylmercury could potentially kill more people because its effects don’t show up immediately. On the other hand, the delayed effects of the poison would provide the victims a chance to retaliate against the poisoners.
Either way, it’s a very crude and unfocused attack against a population which is unlikely to achieve any political aim besides wanton destruction and outrage.
Unsure why you’re getting downvoted (this is “No Stupid Questions”, after all), but I’ll give my 5 cents:
Reason 1:
The people is essentially the reason why a government has power. Without the people (and their support), the government governs a whole lot of nothing, and they will be forced to do labour themselves.
Reason 2:
Poisoning the water is not very accurate, and may lead to both the death of many whom already are supportive of the government (which will create distrust), and people only getting sick depending on the amount they drink (the dose makes the poison).
Reason 3:
Despite a population having a lot of dissidents, these people still work and contribute to society in some ways. It has to get pretty bad before it will be “worth it” to remove them from society.
Reason 4:
Even if it’s so bad that you’re looking at an open revolt against the government, poisoning the water will only really yield MAD, which is usually undesirable.
Ultimately, it’s unlikely desirable for any government to do this, as there are better ways (for the government). However, there have been some attempts at genocide through water supplies before, so it’s not completely unheard of. Check out Project Coast.
Regarding “No Stupid Questions”, I submit for your consideration the following: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyiNW33MpAo
stupid questions not allowed
If you live in an open and transparent society: there will be an investigation and there is a high chance they will find out. You’ll be expected to take care of the mess with disaster relief for the survivors. Also about 40% of the people did vote for you. Also even the ones who did not vote for you still pays tax.
If you live in a dictatorship: police brutality is cheaper and is a bit more selective in it’s targeting.
The chance of them pulling it off with nobody noticing or saying anything is very low, it’s not a one person operation. Then depending on the speed of the poison it would become obvious that there’s something in the water very quickly and people would stop drinking it.
The international backlash would be pretty severe.
Its called the Geneva Suggestions
Genocide unlikely as people can stop drinking after finding out it is poisonous, especially if the poison is fast acting.
River ecocide will probably alert the authorities. www.waternz.org.nz/Story?Action=View&Story_id=242…
It has to be a slow acting poison and not easily detectable. example…PFAS - www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC2eSujzrUY
Seems like there has been break-ins though to water supply - linkedin.com/…/elisabethbraw_is-russia-trying-to-…
WalrusDragonOnABike@reddthat.com 2 hours ago
It already happens. Look at things like pipeline leaks poisoning the water supply for certain native groups. There’s obviously protests against such projects that will inevitably lead to said poisoning, people get arrested for protesting, and then they do the project anyways.