Post-MNT civilian defences
From Wise Nano
Unlimited diamondoid industrial capital would permit the construction of a wide variety of offensive weapons. If these weapons were actually used it would surely be the end of the world, so a war between two mature MNT combatants is, in a sense, too terrible to be interesting. This article considers the case in which such a war never occurs, either because the first MNT possessors administer it to disarm the world of any other MNT scale-ups in progress, or through some other stabilizing mechanism. Two possible stabilizing programs (ideally via a SALT-like arms treaty) are a global ballistic missile defense shield and a global scale-up-in-progress sensor grid.
By the time diamondoid MNT will most likely be achieved (2015-2030?) dozens of nations will have the ability to detonate chemical, biological and nuclear weaponry; though transporting it (especially through a missile shield) may be more difficult. Additionally, the nations of the world with the most advanced aerospace industries may have the ability to launch high kinetic energy projectiles that could defeat a MNTed missile shield.
If multiple WMD releases take place, the world of the future may have to deal with a variety of lingering effects including persistent chemical, biological, and nuclear toxins. There also is a more exotic threat that the world's major cities will be shelled with asteroid-impact imitating projectiles.
In order to assuage the threat of a war between two MNT possessors, data-gathering to detect MNT development would have to be nearly universal. Any jurisdication that did not agree to permit the presence of a MNTed sensor grid on her own soil would have to be forced to implement the sensor grid (which doesn't have to exhibit Orwellian characteristics if the sensors are only designed to seek a MNT scale-up in progress and not designed to eavesdrop on human communications).
To protect civilian populations against large-scale attack, MNT administrative bodies could build self-sustaining diamondoid cities deep enough beneath existing cities to be naturally shielded from kinetic energy missile impacts (which might be quite deep, depending on the largest feasible asteroid to steer on high-speed collision course). To prevent an existential risk (human race dies out) it might be good to have some people actually living in the cities ASAP (or else off earth entirely). If kinetic weaponry is used without warning on a city, the population will mostly die. But if conventional WMDs used are detonated nonlocally (if a MNTed missile shield works), the population in a city will have time to transport to underground cities. More time can be bought to remain in cities at risk from nonlocal weaponry by positioning MNTed compressed gases at strategic city properties, designed to overpressure the local atmosphere and prevent drifting chemical/bio plumes from settling on the city.
Many chemical and many (perhaps eventually all) biological weapons will be neutralizable with personal MNT technology. To deal with small-scale as well as large-scale attacks, it may be highly desirable to develop and deploy such defensive technology. This will not be perfect, as people don't use as much anti-virus software or sunscreen as recommended, but it should help. Personal defensive protection equipment could also reduce the impact of some kinds of crime.
