how could nano technology enhance human beings?

Question

in the military

Answer 1

Well, I wouldn't exactly use the word "enhance" to describe military uses of nanotechnology directly on soldiers. But since you are interested in the idea, I'll just give you two concepts to munch on....

--You've likely heard of "smart dust" or smart particles, right? Basically, this is primitive nanotech disguised as dirt, and what happens is, a moving target or otherwise hidden enemy ends up passing through an area laced with smart dust, gets "dirty" and in the process is tagged in a way that makes the target/enemy trackable by radio.

Now...to turn that idea inside out. Imagine a soldier whose nervous system is laced with smart particles. You'd likely be talking about the perfect spy, as it wouldn't even *matter* if the "soldier" was loyal to his side or not, since the person's senses and other neural networks are hacked.

What he sees, the trackers see. What he says, the trackers hear. Basically, with this more invasive extension of smart dust, what you have is someone you can contaminate, send in, "ride along with" in terms of intercepting his senses, actions, perhaps even his surface thoughts.....and then when the time comes, you have the 'tech implode into a mess of *sharp* buckytubes that basically rips the poor guy's nervous system to shreds cell by cell, killing him before he can even *say* he's been hacked.

But the scarier implications come from less demanding applications. Like say doing this to a soldier not just for tracking and monitoring purposes, but for behavior modification purposes, essentially watching everything he says and does, and if something inconvenient comes up (like that pesky conscience), you hunt down the individual neurons responsible and *shred them*.

Leaving you with a "soldier" that can be programmed like a machine.

--And the second concept? Well, in short this borrows from the notion that ultimately, nanotech probes represent a form of "computronium", or a substance that functions like the real-life version of a computer pixel or polygon on a screen. Basically, you can control these particles, and by extension the environment around them, directly through a machine.

And I've already brought up that this makes for some nasty options just on a brute-force conditioning/brainwashing level. But....

If a Command Center literally can alter a soldier at the cellular level, on the fly, in the middle of a fight on hostile terrain (big ifs there given the sensitivity of current-gen nanotech to dust and static electricity), then it stands to reason that such a soldier would be exceedingly difficult to kill. Why?

--The probes could literally *force* a soldier's body to heal and recover from minor wounds on the fly, nearly instantly,
--they could also force a soldier to *turn liquid* after the manner of a slime mold, so that some forms of attacks would pass through the person without harming him (think T1000 series from the Terminator 2 movie),
--or they could simply harden and reinforce the intra-cellular material that holds a body together, cell by cell, literally armor-plating a soldier to diamond-like hardness at the microscopic level.

Granted, a human body literally cannot survive for long at all with all these stresses going on, with machines inside of it manipulating things on the cellular level like so much *Playdoh*, but in the grand scheme of things, "long at all" for a human means decades.

It doesn't mean a soldier couldn't survive this for the few weeks it would take to *do the mission*, in a sacrificial manner.

And this doesn't even count your more stereotypical "super-soldier" types of enhancements to speed, strength, senses, and so on....sufficiently sophisticated nanotech probes can literally rearrange molecules at the whim of the Commanding Computer to such a degree it resembles The Old Magical Alchemy in terms of transmutations.

A person with a sufficiently nuanced nanotech probe cohort inside of him would be close to a Superman....provided he or she could remain in contact and on the right side of the Command Center.

And if not....the probes tear the soldier apart, from the inside out.

Like I said....

I don't consider this an enhancement. *People* should not be made over into living Weapons of Mass Destruction this way, it isn't just the power, mind you....

It is the lack of individual control, the fact that such soldiers would utterly be at the mercy of a Machine and its programmers.

Search up the old-school video game, "Robotron 2084" sometime, and ask yourself:

Do I want to be a Prog? They move fast and are badass, but then again, so are bullets.

Answer 2

a human body could be infused with nano machines and when they are injured whether it be in an accident or through a fire fight then the nano machine could heal the person any where from a matter of seconds to minutes reducing the need for front line medical personnel.
secondly they could become much stronger and faster if the nano machnes are programmed to augment their muscles or enhance memory
and they would help a person fight off an infection with a few million nanites inside them to assist the body.