Timeline for Could someone survive if all the DNA inside his cells got damaged? For how long?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
19 events
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| Apr 15, 2016 at 0:27 | comment | added | Paul Milovanov | @ConradClark thank God. I was starting to get worried. | |
| Apr 7, 2016 at 15:10 | comment | added | Conrad Clark | @PaulMilovanov Oh, don't worry. It's for a book. | |
| Mar 17, 2016 at 12:57 | comment | added | Paul Milovanov | I sincerely hope your need to know is driven purely by the spirit of curiosity. Writing questions on stackexchange is a rotten way to spend your last minutes. | |
| Mar 16, 2016 at 16:03 | comment | added | user19058 | Randall Munroe’s Book What If? contains the question what would happen if you lost all your DNA instantly. | |
| Mar 18, 2015 at 12:46 | comment | added | 2012rcampion | @ConradClark The technology exists to make a fertilized egg with the same DNA as a donor, resulting in an organism (person) with the same DNA. This person would be like a twin born thirty years after the original (or however old they are). The technology doesn't exist to make a movie-style clone, where, in minutes to days, a person absolutely identical (epigenetics, memories, etc.) to the original is created. The latter is probably what OP is thinking of, as it allows you to make a 'spare body' to transfer yourself to (I'm thinking of The Island, or the Asgard from Stargate). | |
| Mar 18, 2015 at 10:52 | comment | added | Conrad Clark |
@Beta assuming that cloning technology exists - I may sound very dumb asking this, but doesn't it?
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| Mar 18, 2015 at 3:45 | comment | added | Beta | You say in the comments below that you want enough DNA damage that he cannot create a clone of himself (assuming that cloning technology exists). If the damage is random, that would definitely require enough damage to kill him in hours. But if the damage can be specific (e.g. an advanced bioweapon), it could destroy parts of the genome crucial to development, but which an adult doesn't need for survival. Would that do? | |
| Mar 18, 2015 at 3:29 | comment | added | 2012rcampion | Just for a rough estimate of the timeframe, fast-acting drugs can take effect in minutes to hours. Loss of DNA would affect pretty much every system in the body that uses proteins (that's all of them) simultaneously, imagine how fast your death would be. | |
| Mar 18, 2015 at 3:18 | answer | added | 2012rcampion | timeline score: 17 | |
| Mar 18, 2015 at 1:39 | history | edited | HDE 226868♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
deleted 1 character in body; edited tags; edited title
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| Mar 17, 2015 at 18:33 | answer | added | Culyx | timeline score: 4 | |
| Mar 17, 2015 at 17:54 | vote | accept | Conrad Clark | ||
| Mar 17, 2015 at 16:45 | answer | added | bowlturner | timeline score: 4 | |
| Mar 17, 2015 at 16:45 | answer | added | Samuel | timeline score: 5 | |
| Mar 17, 2015 at 16:45 | answer | added | Maxime Lucas | timeline score: 16 | |
| Mar 17, 2015 at 16:31 | comment | added | Jax | It seems to me that scrambling his entire genetic code would cause almost instantaneous mass organ failure, since your characters gene controls how his organs work. Without the genes to tell the cells how to behave, the cells are little more than empty shells. An analogy (not sure how accurate it is) would be shooting the driver of a car. At best the car would eventually come to a stop. At worst the car would crash and kill all the other occupants. | |
| Mar 17, 2015 at 16:22 | comment | added | Conrad Clark |
Yes. I mean in a way that no matter what cell you tried to clone from him, none could generate something with his same original DNA. I think I should put reality-check on this as well, because I have no clue that this is even possible.
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| Mar 17, 2015 at 16:18 | comment | added | Jax | ALL the DNA*in EVERY cell? | |
| Mar 17, 2015 at 16:04 | history | asked | Conrad Clark | CC BY-SA 3.0 |