[OT] Destroying all human life on Earth AT THE SAME TIME

[John Reimer]

Hello Gregor,

> You want to destroy all life on Earth. However, you don't want people
> panicking as this could alter the result, so you want all humans to
> die at the same instant. To do this, you're creating nano-robots. A
> single nano-robot cannot control a persons mind: Seven are required
> (three in each half of the brain and one in the brain stem).
> Nano-robots can harvest material from their host to build new
> nano-robots, but the host will die after approximately twenty
> nano-robots-worth of material has been harvested (they require
> particular rare particles that can only be harvested from the heart
> and lungs). Nano-robots may communicate with one-another via
> broadcast, but the range is limited to 1 mile. Nano-robots do not have
> unique identification globally, but do have unique identification
> within a body (that is, nano-robots in the same body can distinguish
> each other, but broadcast messages from a nano-robot in one human
> cannot implicitly be distinguished from broadcasts from another).
> These broadcasts travel at the speed of light (seeing as that they are
> light). Nano-robots harvest energy from their host, and as such can
> survive indefinitely. A nano-robot in a dead host survives long enough
> that this variable is not relevant for this problem.
> 
> Robots can only be spread by direct physical contact from an infected
> host to an uninfected one, and the process of transferring one
> nano-robot destroys two nano-robots (that is, the infected host loses
> three robots in the process but the new host only gains one).
> 
> Devise an algorithm for these nano-robots that will destroy all human
> life on Earth in a minimum amount of time, but with which all humans
> will be destroyed within five minutes of each other. That is, minimize
> the time from deploying the first nano-robot to the initial human life
> being exterminated, and minimize the time from the initial human life
> being exterminated to all human life being exterminated. You may
> assume a maximum of twelve degrees of separation between average
> industrialized people and that even the most remote tribe is connected
> by at least one human to the industrialized world.
> 
> Bonus: How would you change this algorithm if you wanted to destroy
> all animal life? All life? How would you change it if astronauts were
> considered?
> 
> - Gregor Richards
> 


Ok, Gregor.  I'll bite.  What's your fascination with this problem?  Are 
you trying to make a point about something?

If "yes", you may as well be direct about it.  If "no", then why the thread 
hijacking?  Come on... help me out... I'm a little slow sometimes. :) 

-JJR