Weaponization

A hammer has many uses depending on the hand that wields it. It can install a shelf or it can bash in someone's head. In itself the hammer has no moral compass. Though its virtue (arete) is to drive in nails, that function can be easily applied to the cranium. So it is with many tools.

That which is first designed for a constructive purpose may have that design perverted. Look at nuclear energy. The promise was clean, efficient energy of the future. The atomic age. Yet, at the tail end of the second World War, America found itself embroiled in the war of the Pacific. Japan refused to submit. The samurai spirit drove the Japanese airmen to dive bomb battleships, it drove infantrymen to fight to the bloody end on islands that previously were just dots in the ocean. Truman made the difficult choice to drop two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagisaka. Two bombs suggested there could be more. Japan opted surrender over annihilation.

The promise of nuclear energy progressed to the threat of nuclear holocaust. Soon the Soviet Union designed their own atomic bombs. The cold war placed the world in the center of a tug of war, a Western styled standoff. The bear and the eagle had bombs. If one dropped, they all dropped.

The perversion of technology into weapons of war is seen even earlier. The Nobel prize gets its name from the creator of dynamite. The explosive originally featured in construction. No longer had man to chip away at mountain sides. Drill a hole in the granite, place a few sticks in, then ignite the fuse. It did not take long however for dynamite to fall into the hands of bandits and bank robbers. Dynamite features as the weapon of choice for labor union activists. The railroad industry notoriously overworked and underpaid their workers. The Chinese suffered most, having been hoodwinked into the promise of the American dream only to find themselves dangling in a basket over a cliffside with a stick of dynamite in hand.

Weaponization features in the medical field as well. The same technologies used to develop a vaccine or an antivirus are used to develop biological weapons. The Resident Evil series centers around the T-virus. It's original use was medicinal. Soon its darker purpose was exploited. What once was meant for healing the sick now animated the dead. The virus spread, reanimating the victims of zombie attack. Resident Evil takes weaponization as an overriding theme. The T-virus and its offshoots are characters in their own rights, driving the story arc and influencing the behavior of the various characters.