Gray Goo Problem in the Absence of Nanotech?

The Gray Ooze That Ate the Indonesian Villages – Los Angeles Times

SIDOARJO, Indonesia — Nothing, it seems, can stop the mud.

For more than three months, the hot, noxious goop has spewed up through a crack in the earth at a natural-gas exploration site, swamping everything in its path.

The expanding, surreal gray lake with the stench of rotten eggs has enveloped more than 10 square miles of land in eastern Java, Indonesia’s most densely populated island. The flow has forced 8,000 to 10,000 people from their homes, engulfed about a dozen factories, contaminated fish farms and intermittently closed a major highway.