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The Nanovirus Makes No Sense!

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    The Nanovirus Makes No Sense!

    I'm still new here so I apologize if this has been answered already, but this is something that has been bothering me since I started re-watching the series.

    In the episode "Hot Zone", the expedition team discover a nanovirus in a lab and it got loose because it was damaged, possibly from the flooding. The virus was apparently designed to kill humans, but not Ancients. Later (as in until Season 3), we learn of the Replicators created by Ancients and were created to fight the Wraith. However, they were programmed to be "aggressive", which is what POTENTIALLY lead to the creation of the nanovirus: killing off humans would cause the Wraith to starve.

    However, I've had the hardest time accepting this for a number reasons. First, when/how did they create such a virus? You'd think with how much the Ancients care for humans and were monitoring the Replicators, this virus would never have been created in the first place. Second, why weren't the Replicators programmed to NOT target humans too? This should have been something o how did it end up on Atlantis? The Replicators were considered a failure, yet the Ancients thought "Eh, they worked so hard on this virus that kills humans, lets take it with us!"? And they just left it in some lab for no reason? Hell, it makes even less sense when you think about the fact that Dr. Weir traveled with that Puddlejumper that Janus invented (EP: "Before I sleep"). Knowing that humans we're gonna find the city intact after all these years, you'd think he put up warning signs or something!

    I just don't understand how the nanovirus could end up on Atlantis. The Replicators we're considered a failure AND were built on an entirely different planet, so ending up on Atlantis makes no sense.

    #2
    I think there's some confusion here.

    When the Asurans Replicators were first made, they were just basic nanites given an AI and extreme anger issues. The only other thing they added into it was to take their anger management problems out on the wraith. Not having it target humans was an oversight.

    Also is the history. The Asurans did not create the nanovirus as a means of fighting the wraith. They built it out of spite. The Ancients gave up on trying to perfect the Asuran Replicators as a weapon, so they opted to just wipe them out. They succeeded in wiping most of them out but a few nanites survived and proceeded to replicate. When the Replicators finished rebuilding, they saw Ancients taking care of humans. Now you have robots with anger management issues that are mad their creators not only tried to kill them but decided to coddle something else in its place. And so the Asurans built the Nano Virus to target, torture, and kill the Ancients' beloved human race.

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      #3
      And that virus that ended up on Atlantis...how? They couldn't have put it there after the Ancients left because even they didn't know Atlantis survived the Wraith siege from 10,000 years ago until AFTER Sheppard and his team visited their world.

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        #4
        It can be assumed the Asurans used it on a couple of human populations. The Ancients heard there was a plague, came and collected it, then took it back to Atlantis for study.

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          #5
          What? The Asurans were in isolation on Asuras from the time of their Lantean-induced near-extinction until McKay reprogrammed them. They didn't make the nanovirus.
          "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

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            #6
            I think we are confusing two things here.

            1. It was established that the Asurans were able to re-write their basecode ever since McKay tempered with it. That means they can do whatever they want now including killing Ancients and humans alike.

            2. Killing humans is not contrary to their prime directive; wipe out the wraith, therefore cutting off the Wraith's food source (killing humans) is not contrary to this directive. As to why the Ancients did not put any limitations to this objective is, imo, just to be plot convenient for the show.

            3. The nano-virus was a failed experiment made by the Ancients, not the Asurans. Its objective was to destroy the Wraith from within but they soon realized it only affected humans without the ATA gene. The expedition accidentally unleashed it killing some members of the team.

            There was a bunch of virus in SGA so I can understand it gets confusing.
            Spoiler:
            I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to—I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I’m a machine, and I can know much more.

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              #7
              Originally posted by StargateMillennium View Post
              It can be assumed the Asurans used it on a couple of human populations. The Ancients heard there was a plague, came and collected it, then took it back to Atlantis for study.
              Well then they should have realized it was their own nano machines at work and realized that they didn't completely destroy the Replicators/Asurans. Either way, it just seems like an after-thought to me.

              The only thing I can think of is that the Replicators were initially created on Atlantis, which at the time was on the planet Asuras. This is where they created the virus, but after the Ancients realized this wasn't going to work, they left the planet with the virus and then destroyed the Replicators on the planet. Now why they would study this virus instead of just destroying it, I don't know. Yes, they had no reason to assume humans would ever step foot on Atlantis, but still. We could assume that maybe they were planning to destroy the virus, but were too busy fighting the Wraith.

              Sorry if I'm making this a bigger deal than it is, it just bothers me how this virus ended up on Atlantis in the first place and Ancients wanting to study it instead of destroy it.

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                #8
                In Progeny McKay said the Asurans were the race that created the nano virus.

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                  #9
                  Originally posted by StargateMillennium View Post
                  In Progeny McKay said the Asurans were the race that created the nano virus.
                  Oh. My bad forgot about that, thanks for the clarification.
                  Spoiler:
                  I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to—I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I’m a machine, and I can know much more.

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                    #10
                    If the Asurans were programmed not to target humans, they wouldn't be able to combat the Wraith since the Wraith have human shields they keep on their ships in the form of worshipers and food stock. This has the unfortunate consequence of them being able to decide to target humans in the form of a nanite virus or by bombarding human populations from orbit. The creation of the former may have been the reason that the Ancients decided try to terminate all Asurans.

                    DigiFluid said that the Asurans never left their homeworld prior to Earth coming on the scene, but that's not the case. After the Ancients left 10,000 years ago, the Asurans started attacking the Wraith on their own. They returned to their homeworld and remained there after the Wraith created a virus to stop their attacks. There's nothing in the show to say that was the first time they did that. There's also nothing to say that the Ancients didn't terminate the Asurans because they found out that they were planning a nanite attack.

                    As for Janus cleaning up the nanites: He had a limited amount of time to prepare things for Weir under the noses of the other Ancients and there were a whole host of things that needed cleaning up from the partially ascended creature (which was more of a concern since he would've known it would've been released when the power failed) to exploding tumors. Expecting him to take care of this particular problem for them under his constraints is a bit much. And how was he supposed to know that particular thing would break containment? And if he did, what was he supposed to do? Put it under double containment? Destroy the nanites entirely? Would he even have had access to the equipment necessary to do that (most equipment was already sent to Earth at that point and it would have been suspicious if he started going through remaining cargo crate)? Hell, would he even have known that they were in the city and, if so, where in the city they were? There were lots of different experiments going on throughout Atlantis, not all documented in the database (this was one of them that wasn't documented) or shared between different scientists. We have no way of knowing if the Ancient running that lab was even authorized to keep those nanites.

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                      #11
                      Originally posted by starflame34 View Post
                      Well then they should have realized it was their own nano machines at work and realized that they didn't completely destroy the Replicators/Asurans. Either way, it just seems like an after-thought to me.

                      The only thing I can think of is that the Replicators were initially created on Atlantis, which at the time was on the planet Asuras. This is where they created the virus, but after the Ancients realized this wasn't going to work, they left the planet with the virus and then destroyed the Replicators on the planet. Now why they would study this virus instead of just destroying it, I don't know. Yes, they had no reason to assume humans would ever step foot on Atlantis, but still. We could assume that maybe they were planning to destroy the virus, but were too busy fighting the Wraith.

                      Sorry if I'm making this a bigger deal than it is, it just bothers me how this virus ended up on Atlantis in the first place and Ancients wanting to study it instead of destroy it.
                      Why would they recognize the nanites? The nanites that comprised the Asurans had evolved to become something completely different. If bore any resemblance to Ancient technology then McKay would have recognized it. As far as the Ancients would be able to discern, these were just nanites and could have come from any advanced civilization.

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