Let's keep things simple two rules.
- No giving sentience, This is a no brainer issue.
- Let's keep it to beings under the Animilia kingdom. "mutated virus/bacteria" is a common trope.
To start:
Let's modify ants to have lungs.
Most insects are constrained by the amount of oxygen they can acquire through their exoskeleton.
Imagine how big they can get if they didn't have that constraint?
Octopodes no longer die when they give birth, meaning they can teach their young and form societies.
WAIT THEY DIE ON BIRTH!??
WTF this actually needs to be fixed.
Submit a bug report or fork the repo and do it yourself. It's only maintained by volunteers after all.
But they are not social creatures, so if they were, even when they died someone in the social group could still teach the youngs
A breed of 100+ pound Chihuahua with the same temperament as the original.
In a push to deal with micro plastics, bacteria are developed to be able to break down plastic. Eventually, it gets into the plastic installed for a purpose and starts breaking that down.
House flies start producing potent methamphetamine in their wings, which means the whole world has uncontrollable access to it.
All life with gills learn to breathe air without water, and suddenly all marine life is competing with us for land space
Some common form of bacteria modified to break down plastics rapidly the way they do organic matter. Youd see buildings falling apart, packaging need to be redesigned for everything, electronics rotting, etc.
And if u wanna end the world just make smallpox as contagious as the common cold and release it into the wild with a small change to make all current vaccines useless.
99% sterility. Virus transmitted. Long incubation. People would freak out.
Depending on what causes the sterility it could be managed through diffecountries. It's like huge spark to class warfare instantly. especially for less well off counrries.
