site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1181 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 4, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Is anyone monitoring the biological attack in Russia?

Nope. I have Indian wholesale antibiotics and recently got a second cat, I think the plague is irrelevant to me.

It’s a gain-of-function enhanced bioweapon version of pneumatic plague. The stock version naturally has a 90% fatality rate. 77% if you can get them on antibiotics less than a day after infection. This one has probably been bred or engineered to be resistant to most major antibiotics. There’s also some indications it’s been modified to have a longer-non-symptomatic carrying period to compensate for the high fatality rate.

Is it a lab leak or a bioweapon attack from Ukraine? What's your best guess about this whole thing?

Multiple sources are saying that the index case was a worker at a lab known to have stocks of plague bacteria. So as close to smoking gun evidence of a lab leak as you are going to get in an authoritarian country.

Pneumonic plague is a rare natural variant of bubonic plague caused by the same Y pestis bacterium - I see no evidence that the variant we are seeing has been the subject of gain of function research (or that it wasn't, but a leak of unmodified plague is more likely even if some of the work being done at the Irkutsk lab was GoF). Weaponisation research on plague could include aerosolising (non-GoFed) plague bacteria in a way which would consistently generate the (more deadly and more transmissible) pneumonic form - a lab leak outbreak where the index case was pneumonic would be strong circumstantial evidence that this was happening.

To do weaponisation research on GoFed Y pestis (as opposed to doing the GoF work and the weaponisation work separately) would be an act of such monumental stupidity that I don't expect even the Russians to do it.

As I understand, if you get it from inhaling vapors from a broken vial, it'd be 100% pneumonic. One gets the bubonic one via an infected insect bite, and the way of ingress defines how it goes - if it's the bite, it goes to the closest lymph node, settles there and you have a bubo. If it's inhaled, it settles in the lungs, thus pneumonic. You don't need to modify anything between one and the other, it's just how it got in that matters.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats