No nanobot spread – human intervention and bacteria will eat them

There are ways to mitigate the actual dangers//// Given that most objects that will be manipulated into crawling, flying, and replicating machines will be at or above the nanoscale (and not atomic in scale, or even remotely close), there are definitely going to be numerous people working to deal with the threat of "runaway" nanotech. Nanobots would need to be self replicating in order to be effective on any massive scale, and as such, nano-factories will have to be contained, protected, and have an external computer and power source. An external power source would limit the potential for "swarms" to escape into the real world. Further, the alarm bells have been raised by Hollywood and the popular press. It's highly unlikely that any sort of large scale nanotech design will slip past media scrutiny.//// In addition (and perhaps most importantly), nature has its own built-in self regulation mechanism. Here's Mike://// "Simple: Bacteria will eat them. Microbes are nanobots with a billion years of refinement. They are very good at eating things made of graphene and nanotubes, and working with the limited energy and resources available in their environment. This is why nanobots work best in a controlled environment - they're very useful, but couldn't survive in the wild." Special shout to daelyte on reddit for the original idea of bacteria as nature's defense mechanism, too.//// If extremely small scale, self-replicating robots indeed prove to be feasible, cosmic rays from space, simple terrestrial wind, organic bacteria, and other naturally occurring evolutionary defense mechanisms on planet earth (including Brownian motion!) will be fully capable of tearing apart "nanobots" at the atomic scale all on their own.//// Conclusion//// The bottom line: the amazing things we can do with nanotechnology - from hidden sources of energy, to very small devices in our bloodstream capable of policing our immune system, to Drexler's "factory in a box" idea - will far outstrip the potential risks, particularly with nature's built in mitigation system, and with a tremendous amount of care and concern. The media tends to play on our darkest (and most unlikely) fears becoming a certain reality, and nanotech is no exception.//// Here's Mike to wrap things up:."