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{{trope}}
'''Grey Goo''' is like a [[Horde of Alien Locusts]], only replace Alien Locusts with [[Nanotechnology]]
They're worse than alien locusts.
The color is conventional. Other colors of goo that work the same way are just as bad. Red Goo or Black Goo are intentionally released nanoweapons that do the same thing, and may or may not have an off switch, which may or may not work in any case. Green Goo doesn't disassemble everything, but just kills living things, or renders them infertile. Blue Goo is a defensive "antibody" developed to fight back against another scenario; if there's a nanobattle inside your body, the waste heat might cook you to death anyway. Golden Goo is a specific grey goo variant, where nanomachines designed to pull gold from seawater disrupt the ocean ecosystem, or less probably, dry up the oceans. Pink goo are people. No, not like [[Soylent Green|that]] but it is the cause of it.
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For some reason, most of the time these specifically were created to clean up oil spills.
Can cause [[The End of the World as We Know It]]
Compare [[Blob Monster]].
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== Meta ==
* [[Browser Narcotic|How many tabs do you have open,]] [[Wiki Walk|and how many new tabs spawn from each of those
▲== Anime & Manga ==
* Grey goo has completely devoured Mercury by the time of ''[[Gunnm]]'' (AKA ''Battle Angel Alita'').
* The ''WORMS'' in [[Sky Girls]] are related to this. Sort of.
* ''[[Turn
** [[It Got Worse]] in creator [[Yoshiyuki Tomino]]'s original novel, where the ''full powered'' version of the eponymous Gundam can affect the area from Earth to Jupiter with the Moonlight Butterfly - that's '''over 600 million miles'''.
** The DG Cells in ''[[G Gundam]]'' are a combination of this and [[The Virus]].
==
* Adam Warren's adaptation of the ''[[Dirty Pair]]'' revealed that the Earth had been destroyed decades earlier in a massive Grey Goo outbreak, the "Nanoclysm", which led to nanotechnology being regulated and virtually outlawed. The villain of the miniseries planned to use a cache of nanotech to take over [[Heroes-R-Us]]'s Central Computer, and from there, the known universe. {{spoiler|Unfortunately, the Central Computer revealed that it was partially based on something the Nanoclysm left humanity as an apology...}}
* The Modular Man from ''[[Tom Strong]]'' is a large-scale example of this. Each individual module is about the size of your head. Once he gets to Venus, though, he multiplies until he has something closer to the proper
* [[Transmetropolitan]] mentions it as a possible weapon if the commonly-used "makers" are reprogrammed. The standard MO for handling a "grey goo" scenario is to release blue goo to contain the grey goo and restrict its damage to a small area. One brief mention is made of someone who lost his legs because he decided to (and succeeded) shut off the grey goo instead of releasing the blue goo.
* ''[[The Filth]]'' features this type of creatures, but portrays them in a very sympathetic light during the stages of their evolution. The more they spread, the more the world is seen from their perspective.
* {{spoiler|What happened to [[Darkwing Duck (comics)|Negaduck]] after [[Literal Split Personality|being hit by the Tron-Splitter]] at the end of "Crisis On Infinite Darkwings".}}
== Films ==
* ''[[The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 film)|The Day the Earth Stood Still]]'' remake tries to reboot the Earth with this. It was more a "Grey Cloud" than Goo, but same strategy.
* ''[[G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra]]'' had "Red/Black" weaponized Goo (which is [[Sickly Green Glow|green for the viewer's convenience]]), which ate any metal it came into contact with. Thankfully, the designers were smart enough to build them with cutoff switches which neutralized them instantly.
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* In one of the ''[[Thursday Next]]'' novels, Thursday's time-traveling father tells her of a future wherein the world was overtaken by such a scenario; the world is consumed by pink slime. {{spoiler|It turns out to be strawberry pudding.}}
* ''[[Death From the Skies]]'' by Phil Plait presents a berserker Von Neumann probe, which is essentially grey goo on a cosmic scale.
* Neatly inverted in ''[[Charles Stross|Saturn's Children]]''
* In Scott Westerfeld's book ''[[Uglies|Specials]]'', the main characters break out of a weapons storage facility using nanotechnology-based silver goo (much more flashy and dramatic than plain old gray goo, to paraphrase the author).
* A rather spooky example [http://qntm.org/gorge presented here as a story], {{spoiler|which shows us why you should just let the gray goo be...}}
** And played with in [http://qntm.org/transit this story on the same site], {{spoiler|where the sentient gray goo triggers the nanoapocalypse to ''save'' humanity from an impending asteroid collision.}}
* Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski's ''[[The Killing Star]]'' includes weaponized
* In Greg Bear's {{spoiler|''Forge of God''}}, this is done deliberately and systematically by a beligerant alien race, to humanity as well as at least one other race. The sequel, ''Anvil of Stars'', is the story of a handful of the survivors of
** In Greg's ''[[Blood Music]]'', the Green Goo is not nanotechnology, but biotechnology, but operates in basically the same fashion. The "noocytes" consume all the biomass in North America, converting it to more noocytes. {{spoiler|It turns out that all the living creatures who are assimilated are also recorded and "alive" in a new kind of reality, similar to "Bloom" above.}}
* The Melding Plague also ended humanity's golden age in [[Alastair Reynolds]]' ''Revelation Space'' series. Everybody was enjoying the benefits of a [[Magitech|highly advanced nanoscience]], until humanity encountered a plague that could subvert all but the hardiest [[
* Played with in ''[[The Dervish House]]'' by [[Ian McDonald]]. The
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* A minor example of this was the nanite colony Wesley Crusher was running in one episode of ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]''. Fortunately, this goo turned sentient and was willing to be moved to a better food source before it disabled the ship.
* The Replicators of ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' are this trope scaled up to lego size. When they eventually [[Mechanical Evolution|evolved]] to silver goo, their diet changed from "any kind of metal" to "[[Unobtainium|neutronium]] only", thus keeping the new model [[Too Awesome to Use|a rarity]].
* A failed pilot for a TV series called ''Doorways'' by [[George R. R. Martin]] featured a parallel dimension where, yep, nanomachines used to eat up oil spillages went and ate all the oil. This scenario was the result of [[Executive Meddling]]
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== Tabletop Games ==
* Gray Goo is discussed in ''[[GURPS]]: Ultra-Tech'' in a section on Von Neumann machines and points out the waste heat of the goo eating a planet is likely a more pressing threat than being eaten by it. On the up side they require extremely high level technology and are expensive to make, on the down side some versions might be able to fly or travel through space.
* ''Centauri Knights'', a far future/HumongousMecha sourcebook for ''[[Big Eyes, Small Mouth]]'', takes place on a dead alien planet colonized by humans. According to the [[Game Master]] information in the back, the reason the planet was vacant was because an ancient war resulted in a
* Virus Bombs of ''[[Warhammer
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* Tiberium in the C&C universe can be seen a slow-acting example of it. It needs around half a century to engulf a significant portion of the Earth.
* Grey goo missiles called the "Nano Virus" are a high-level planetary siege weapon in ''[[Sword of the Stars]]''. It is amusingly classified as a bio-weapon, meaning you have to go through several tiers worth of gene modification to access it. The Nano Virus is harmless to organics, but the planet's industrial output will be heavily damaged and it will wipe out an AI rebellion as if they were living creatures hit by a regular bio weapon. It is the only bio weapon that will affect the Zuul, since their machinery is made of the same metal as everyone else's.
* ''[[Parasite Eve]]'' features massive amounts of Pink Goo. The [[Big Bad]] is actually a [[Patient Zero]] infected with intelligent pink goo by accident. Every enemy in the game was created by the pink goo. If you go on to the Chrysler Building in the EX game, the building itself is infected with the pink goo (which is the in-world reasons that mode has random maps) and pink goo is literally everywhere.
* A grey goo like attack is possible in [[Supreme Commander 2]]. The Cybran Nation can upgrade their engineers to have weapons, by doing this and building nothing but engineers you will get an ever growing blob of engineers that will automatically shoot every enemy in sight and use the remains to build more engineers. [http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/06/20/engineering-victory-in-supreme-commander-2/ Full instructions here].
* In [[Super Smoke|Smoke]]'s ending in ''[[Mortal Kombat Armageddon]]'', the power of [[Elemental Personification|Blaze]] causes his nanobots to go into overdrive, consuming all of Edenia and replacing it with a sentient mass of grey goo that calls itself Smoke.
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== Webcomics ==
* [http://xkcd.com/865/ This] page of ''[[
*
{{quote|
'''Captain Tagon''': Our Doctor tells me that those nannies have been trying to 'colonize' their surroundings ever since they got here.
'''Assassin Flamb''': We've all been drinking Nanneze like it was Ovalkwik.<ref>"very heavy stimulant cocktail cut with shampoo and inert ultra-tensile carbon"</ref>
'''Captain Tagon
'''Assassin Flamb''': The Nanneze, or the Ovalkwik?
'''Captain Tagon''': ''Both''. }}
** So, of course, they ran in the problem [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2012-11-14 head-on].
{{quote|Nanomachines are extremely unlikely to survive the wash of plasma depicted above, while armored combatants have little to worry about. Things made of flesh (including recently hardened, ultra-durable flesh) fall somewhere in the middle.
If you find yourself attacked by nannies, hold your breath, close your eyes, and set yourself on fire. Then stop, drop, and roll, and hope that good skin regeneration technology is available where (and when) you live.}}
** Later, a Bradicor who lost a few millions of Earth years worth of memory to brain damage met Schlock, recognized the material on sight (they used carbosilicate goo for data storage and even replaced their v.1.0 brains with it) and wasn't happy to see it: "[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2015-06-12 ''AAAUUUGH!'' The doom-sciencers were ''right!'' The Green Goo has taken ''everything!'']"
== Web Originals ==
* In the late 20th century of the ''[[Chaos Timeline]]'', nukes are scrapped because nanobots made them obsolete. The so-called [[Gratuitous German|Braunschleim scenario]] is the casual armageddon scenario everybody fears. {{spoiler|On the eve of [[World War Three]], this fear urges a bunch of [[Playful Hacker
* In ''[[Orion's Arm]]'', humanity's exodus from [[Earth-That-Was|Old Earth]] was caused by the [http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4ad4d58752948 Nanodisaster]. Though the grey goo itself was quickly neutralized by blue goo, The Great Expulsion was more due to the [[
* "[//selenite.livejournal.com/180532.html Feeds, Seeds, and Gray Goo]" on LiveJournal of '''selenite''' discusses the issue using [[The Diamond Age]] and ''Aristoi'' by [[Walter Jon Williams]] as examples.
== Western Animation ==
* The ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'' episode "Dark Heart" dealt with alien nanomachines that were in the process of taking over Earth this way.
* Matrix from ''[[Gargoyles]]'', a sentient mass of nonobots created by Fox's mother (who mentions the grey good scenario by name) in Australia, tries to bring "order" to the world. Dingo made a [[Heel Face Turn]] and convinced Matrix to fight for "Law and Order" (Long story involving the Aborigine [[Spirit World|Dreamtime]], roll with it). Later, he did provide one of the funniest lines in the comic series on taking over the world, see page quote.
* One of ''[[Ben 10]]'''s alien forms is Upgrade the Galvanic Mechomorph, a piece of
* An episode of the 1980's animated ''[[The Incredible Hulk]]'' involved a scientist bioengineering a [[Blob Monster]] that could eat literally anything except the special glass of its container, and would get bigger the more it ate. Of ''course'' the glass breaks and it starts eating Gamma Base. ''Fortunately,'' it turns out that the one thing it's allergic to is gamma radiation, which the Hulk constantly emits.
* One episode of ''[[The Powerpuff Girls]]'' features nanobots destroying Townsville, though they didn't seem to be making more of themself, just ripping everything that wasn't alive to dust.
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== Real Life ==
* A strange example from [[Real Life]] which has elements of the
: HeLa cells were so durable that they were difficult to get rid of via sterilization and the tiniest bit could convert whatever normal tissue they came into contact with. HeLa cells soon spread throughout the world and even today scientists have problems dealing with HeLa contamination of their cell cultures.
: Fortunately for humanity, the HeLa cells quickly die out or result in only weak tumors when injected into a living human body (yes, there were people crazy enough to try this out). Even more fortunately for humanity, the HeLa cells ability to grow outside the human body led to it being a useful tool in the development of the Polio vaccine, in cancer research and in the testing of drugs, cosmetics and many other substances. A rare case where Grey Goo actually turned out to benefit humanity.
: Better yet, the cells are a [[Black Box]]; ''no one in decades of research has been able to figure out why they won't die!'' At this point in time, the mass of her post-death divided cells is greater than the mass of her body at death. Something on the order of 20,000 kilograms worth. And that's in the sixty years since she passed away.
: But there is also a downside: HeLa cells benefited humanity but not Henrietta's impoverished and undereducated family; when they first heard about the immortal cells they thought scientists had her ''actual body'' being kept alive somewhere. When a woman wanted to talk to them about Henrietta for [http://rebeccaskloot.com/the-immortal-life/ a book], they initially hung up on her because they thought she was another scientist looking to exploit them.
* Then there's the [http://www.cracked.com/article_16583_the-5-scientific-experiments-most-likely-to-end-world.html theoretical threat of Strange Matter.] The television series ''The Universe'' featured it in their 10 Ways to Destroy the Earth, and basically, ''everything on Earth melts'' like a warm ice cream sundae into non-organic goo. [[Nightmare Fuel|Sweet dreams!]]
** There are far more energetic particle collisions happening every second as subatomic matter bombards the planet and occasionally smashes into the atmosphere or the ground. So far, in the last nearly five billion years, we've somehow managed to evade such a fate. This suggests that either the energy required to produce strange matter is far larger than what the LHC can manage or the odds of such collisions producing it are so incredibly small as to be considered nearly impossible. The Earth is safe. For now!
{{reflist}}
{{Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism}}
[[Category:Futuristic Tech Index]]
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