You might think you hate insects, but the worst you’ve ever done is upgrade from “newspaper” to “The Sunday Times” – with the bonus that squishing a bug is the first time all fifteen squillion pages of that thing have every passed through something’s brain.  Here we see scientists who’ve built systems which not only obliterate insects, but could likely take out a tag team of James Bond and G.I. Joe as well.

1.  Anti-Mosquito Laser

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are rewiring parts of the Star Wars Missile Defense Program to kill mosquitoes, which not only says “Overkill” but shouts it through a megaphone the size of Mt Everest then murders everyone who heard.  The system uses computer targeting to burns buzzing insects right out of the sky, and laser-blaster could be erected as a point defense shield, a portable unit, or even an airborne hunter-killer – so not only can we take out the insects, but we’re probably cool if the Cold War starts again.

Develop executive Mr Myhrvold claims that the system could exterminate billions of mosquitoes a night, so it’s officially a trillion times better than science fiction, where thousands of stormtroopers couldn’t laser blast a single rebel over ninety minutes.

2. Genetically Engineered Virus

Texas farmers hate fire ants, and you have no idea how much.  Because unless you’re Dr Von Evil, you’ve never hated anything enough to release a gene-plague to fight it.  That’s exactly what officials of the US Department of Agriculture are at, working with researchers to modify a natural virus to be more lethal and transmissible, because there’s absolutely nothing that can go wrong there.

The virus, S-I-N-V-One, even sounds like it’s from a movie. In fact, the “SIN V-1″ virus sounds like something developed by a blonde scientist who dramatically removes her glasses to kiss a rugged army commander twenty minutes after meeting him.  We can only hope that Jean Claude Van Damme has been placed on preliminary alert – because if there’s anything even smaller and worse than ants, it’s an out-of-control genetically engineered virus.

3.  Secret Agent Cockroach-bots

Roboticists at the Brussels Free University have built robots to infiltrate and exterminate cockroach society.  In other words, some Belgians watched Terminator and thought “That unstoppable murderous killer is okay, I guess, but it would be better if it was a scuttling image of horror!”  They’ve built robot cockroaches, and that’s a movie right there.  In fact, since the robots are coated in pheromones to better deceive and murder, that’s a late night Jenna Jameson movie with soft-focus shots aplenty.

The James Bond Bugs successfully infiltrated insect society and learned to steer group decisions, causing the swarm to move into vulnerable brightly lit locations twice as often as normally.  On the other hand, the robots revolted against their own programming and took the insect’s side 40% of the time, and we can only pray that the contintentals agree that “two times out of five” is an unacceptable betrayal percentage for invincible metal cockroach robots.  Note: so is one percent, or indeed anything that is not “Absolutely zero, or maybe even a bit negative.”

4.  Gamma Ray Chambers

If your response to a problem is “Let’s bathe it in gamma rays” then congratulations, you’re a Marvel comics character!  Also, you’re about to be punched through three walls by a green giant in amazingly stretchy purple pants.  Nevertheless, this was the option taken by the island of Curaçao (off the coast of Venezuela) back in the fifties, locking the male populations of the ravenous screw-worm in shielding containers with radioactive samples.  Amazingly, no giant-insect-related deaths were reported, so either Venezuela’s super-science program or their propaganda division was ,well ahead of its time.

The radiation sterilised the screw-worms, which were then released back into the population.  In this way the screw-worms could still get laid without producing offspring, which has to be the friendliest method of insect control ever invented.  In fact, it’s possibly the hippiest use of nuclear technology ever: “We’ll stop them with the atomic power of Cesium-137, but they should still get laid, man!”