Genetically engineered in a U.S. biowarfare lab, it gets loose in an accident, kills everyone in the compound, then escapes into the general populace. It spreads too quickly to be contained. It mutates too rapidly for anyone to develop a vaccine. Within six weeks, it knocks out 90 percent of the global population, and civilization shuts down. My colleague was being humorous, of course.
Technology is usually more benign than a killer microbe.
Most technological advances in this century have had positive applications, and our toasters and telephones are unlikely to turn on us. New tools, once invented, have the habit of spreading in unintended ways throughout a culture. They change much more than the jobs they were created to do. Fire changed everything. Iron changed everything.