00 — The Biohacking Landscape Map (synthesis)

The master map of the whole biohacking landscape as of mid-2026. Synthesizes the seven scene docs (01–07), three goal-deepenings (09 experience machine, 10 FiO, 11 biopunk), an independent cross-model pass (12), and the author's stress-tested "Bifurcated 2037" worldbuilding. Every claim here is grounded in those docs — source URLs and confidence tiers live in the per-scene docs; this map cites the doc, the doc cites the world. Where the docs disagree or hedge, this map says so. Oriented toward the author's three end-goals: (1) substrate independence / mind-uploading ("Friendship is Optimal", FiO); (2) "biopunk 2037" bioengineered-organs medicine; and (3) a real Nozick Experience Machine. The analytical payoff — the roadmaps — is in 08-two-roadmaps.md.

TL;DR

• "Biohacking" in 2026 is not one thing — it's a family of loosely-related scenes that share an ideology (morphological freedom + substrate independence + death-as-solvable, doc 07) far more than a technology. The scenes run from garage grinders implanting magnets, to $3B-funded reprogramming startups, to a ~500-person whole-brain-emulation field.
• The single most important honest takeaway: money and hype concentrate in the scenes furthest from their stated goal, while the genuine technical progress is narrow, slow, and disease-indication-shaped. The loudest claims ("reverse aging", "upload your mind", "merge with AI") attach to the thinnest data.
• What is genuinely real in 2026: xenotransplant pig organs in FDA-cleared human trials (doc 02); BCIs restoring cursor/speech/limb control for paralysis (doc 03); whole-brain connectomes of a fly and a cubic-mm of mouse, and an embodied fly emulation (doc 04); aldehyde-stabilized whole-pig-brain preservation that demonstrably keeps the connectome's ultrastructure (doc 04); DIY HRT as a working, mature decentralized body-modification practice (doc 05); exercise/sleep/metabolic health as the best-evidenced interventions in all of biohacking (doc 06).
• What is hype or grift: "BCI = uploading" (doc 03 — off by ~7 orders of magnitude); company "age reversal" framing with no controlled human aging trial anywhere (doc 02); DIY self-injection gene therapy with zero demonstrated efficacy and a body count (docs 01/02); the supplement/gadget revenue layer of mainstream longevity (doc 06); organ sacs as a near-term human product (doc 02).
• The two roadmaps' bottom lines (developed fully in doc 08): P(full FiO this century) is single-digit %, gated by data-acquisition and an unsolved science question ("which details are you?"), not by compute. Biopunk-2037's organ-supply spine is directionally supported by 2026 clinical evidence (xeno + bioengineered organs), but its whole-body-cultivation premise sits at P~15–25% and its brain-to-body integration premise at P~5–15% (author's own report).
• The scenes physically re-merge at a few venues — Lighthaven (Berkeley), Próspera (Honduras), RAADfest — and through a handful of people (Martine Rothblatt, Max Hodak, Bryan Johnson, Liz Parrish, George Church) who span multiple scenes at once. Watch those nodes to watch the whole map.

The scenes at a glance

Maturity scale (for the scene's headline / defining activity, not every sub-activity): 1 = speculative/concept · 2 = lab/animal demo · 3 = early human / one-off demonstrated · 4 = clinical or durable-commercial · 5 = routine/mature. FiO = relevance to mind-uploading. B37 = relevance to biopunk-2037.

Note on the market numbers: docs 01 and 06 now cite the same reconciled range — the broad "biohacking" market is ~$20–45B for 2025 depending on vendor (GMInsights ~$28.2B from ~$24.5B in 2024; Astute Analytica ~$38B; Mordor/Fortune/Precedence scattered across the band), with 10-year forecasts of ~$110–217B. These are squishy market-research estimates that disagree by ~2× (they slice the "biohacking" category differently), flagged C4 — directional only. (An earlier draft of doc 01 cited ~$1.36B→$1.70B, an order of magnitude too low; corrected.) The honest read: the commercial mass of "biohacking" is the mainstream-longevity/wellness wing, not the grinders or the uploaders — see doc 01 §5 and doc 06 §5.

How the scenes connect

The ideological throughline (doc 07)

Every scene on this map inherits the same three-part genome from transhumanism, even when its members don't call themselves transhumanist:

1. Morphological freedom — the right to modify/maintain your own body on your own terms (Max More 1993; Anders Sandberg, TransVision 2001). This is the grinder's magnet, the trans person's DIY HRT, the organ-sac founder's replacement liver, and the uploader's discarded body — the same right at different radius (doc 07 §6, doc 05).
2. Substrate independence — what matters is the pattern (information), not the meat; mind can in principle run on another substrate. This is the philosophical permission slip that puts the BCI engineer and the WBE theorist on one roadmap (docs 03→04, 07).
3. Death is a problem to be solved — Bostrom's dragon-tyrant, de Grey's escape velocity, Bryan Johnson's "Don't Die", Kurzweil's "live long enough to live forever." The single most unifying meme, restated in every dialect (docs 06, 07).

The scenes diverge on three fault lines (doc 07 §6), which matters more than the shared genome: biology vs. pattern (keep the body working forever vs. body is a disposable bootloader), accelerate vs. align (e/acc vs. rationalist AI-safety — the bitter intra-family schism that Friendship is Optimal dramatizes), and DIY/grassroots vs. VC/institutional (grinders & DIY-HRT vs. a16z-funded startups & network states).

The physical re-merge points

The institutions faded (Extropy closed 2006; FHI closed April 2024 — doc 07 §1) but the scenes re-converge physically, and those venues are where you can watch the whole map at once:

• Lighthaven (Berkeley) — hosted both LessOnline (rationalist, ~600 ppl 2025) and Vitalist Bay (longevity pop-up city) in 2025: a literal shared clubhouse for two supposedly-distinct scenes (doc 07 §4).
• Próspera / Infinita City (Roatán, Honduras) — the regulatory-arbitrage node where transhumanist ideology meets regulatory exit: Minicircle's unregulated follistatin gene therapy, Cassox's Augmentation Limitless crypto-wallet implants, the Vitalia→Infinita longevity city (docs 01, 02, 07). Legally precarious — Honduras repealed the ZEDE law and its Supreme Court ruled ZEDEs unconstitutional; ~$10.7B arbitration pending (doc 02 §4C).
• RAADfest / LEV / Don't Die / Foresight Vision Weekend — the longevity-conference circuit (doc 07 §4).

The people who span scenes

                         MORPHOLOGICAL FREEDOM (doc 05/07)
                                       |
   trans embodiment --- DIY HRT --- body-mod --- grinders --- furry/otherkin (FoFF)
                                       |
   MARTINE ROTHBLATT:  trans woman -> "freedom of form" manifesto
        -> United Therapeutics (xeno organs, doc 02)  -> Terasem (mind-uploading, doc 04/05)
        = one person spanning BOTH end-goals

   GEORGE CHURCH:  advises Kind Bio organ sacs (02) + on the brain-preservation
        "bridge" paper (04) + shows BioViva self-experiment data (02)

   MAX HODAK:  co-founded Neuralink (03) -> founded Science Corp:
        PRIMA retinal implant (most-delivered product) + biohybrid BCI (most speculative)

   LIZ PARRISH:  BioViva self-gene-therapy "patient zero" (02), longevity-fringe figure (06/07)

   BRYAN JOHNSON:  Blueprint / Don't Die (06) -> took Minicircle follistatin (02)
        -> "Don't Die" reframed as bridge-to-survive-the-AI-transition (06/07)

   SAM ALTMAN:  funds Retro Biosciences (02) + on Nectome brain-preservation waitlist (04)

   ANDERS SANDBERG:  WBE Roadmap co-author (04) + coined morphological-freedom-as-a-right (05/07)

The map's connective tissue is as much personnel and venue as it is technology. The same small longevity-investor network (Tim Draper, Immortal Dragons/Boyang Wang, LongGame, VitaDAO) recurs across organ sacs, DIY gene therapy, and reprogramming (doc 02 §7); the same Bay rationalist/EA crowd funds both AI-safety and the network-state biotech zones (doc 07 §4).

Demonstrated vs. hype — the honest ledger

Pulling the skeptic take from every doc into one place.

(a) Genuinely real / working in 2026

• Xenotransplantation in humans. eGenesis's 69-edit pig kidney (FDA IND Sep 2025; 2nd human transplant successful Jan 2026, patient off dialysis); United Therapeutics/Revivicor UKidney in an FDA-approved trial. Years ahead of organ sacs and the true 2026 substrate for "replacement organs" (doc 02 §3C).
• Bioengineered & ectopic organs, early clinical. United/Miromatrix miroliverELAP hit its Phase 1 endpoint (n=5, Jan 2026); LyGenesis grows ectopic mini-livers in lymph nodes, Phase 2a underway (doc 02 §3A/3B).
• BCIs that restore function. ~21 humans implanted by Neuralink; cursor control ~8–10 bits/sec, robotic-arm self-feeding, speech decoding ~62 wpm / large-vocab, inner-speech decoding ~74% on a 125k-word vocabulary; Science Corp's PRIMA retinal implant restored functional reading vision (doc 03).
• Connectomics + a first embodied emulation. Full adult fly brain (~140k neurons, FlyWire, Nature 2024); 1 mm³ of mouse cortex (~200k cells, MICrONS, Nature 2025, Method of the Year); Eon Systems ran the fly connectome in a simulated body at ~91% behavior accuracy (Mar 2026) (doc 04 §2/§5d).
• Approved / clinical-stage gene editing. Casgevy (exa-cel) — first FDA-approved CRISPR therapy (CRISPR Therapeutics/Vertex, Dec 2023, sickle-cell/beta-thal) — and Lyfgenia (bluebird) on the same day; in-vivo editors in human trials: Intellia (nex-z for TTR amyloidosis, Phase 3; lonvo-z for HAE, positive Phase 3), Verve (base editing for PCSK9/LDL; acquired by Eli Lilly ~$1.3B), Beam. This is the rigorous, regulated benchmark that contextualizes the DIY-CRISPR theater in (c) below (doc 02 §4E).
• Brain preservation, structural. Aldehyde-Stabilized Cryopreservation won the BPF Large-Mammal Prize (whole pig brain, 2018) — connectome ultrastructure demonstrably preserved (doc 04 §3a).
• DIY HRT. A mature, decentralized body-modification practice with community-run HPLC/LC-MS QC labs — arguably the most developed real-world instance of "biopunk-style" decentralized body-mod that exists (doc 05 §3).
• The boring basics. Exercise/VO2max, sleep, metabolic health — the strongest evidence in all of biohacking, and they live in the mainstream-longevity wing (doc 06 §6). GLP-1s are the best-evidenced new canon entry (doc 06 §3).

(b) Plausible but unproven

• Cellular/partial reprogramming. Real science (Yamanaka factors rejuvenate mouse cells/tissue; NewLimit's in-vitro human hepatocyte result) but no approved therapy, no controlled human aging trial anywhere, and the cancer/teratoma risk is the central unsolved problem (doc 02 §2, Brenner skeptic case §2H).
• Brain-preservation sufficiency. ASC preserves the structure; whether that structure is sufficient to reconstruct the person is the deep unknown (doc 04 §3a, §5b) — P(sufficient) ~0.15–0.5, genuinely uncertain.
• Whole-brain emulation of a vertebrate. The fly is a proof-of-loop with inferred weights, no plasticity, untraced motor neurons — "a generic fly behaving plausibly," not "the fly is in there" (doc 04 §5d).
• Biohybrid BCI (Science Corp). The one architecturally novel route that even gestures at the scale problem — but pre-human, years-to-decades out (doc 03).
• Whole-body / organ-sac cultivation. Valid underlying science (gene knockout) but no organ sac exists; gated by the no-human-ectogenesis bottleneck (doc 02 §1/§3D).
• Senolytics. Unity has real Phase 2b eye-disease efficacy — but a past Phase 2 failure too, and it's not "aging" (doc 02 §2G).

(c) Hype / grift / dangerous theater

• "BCI = uploading." False as stated — best human implants read ~10²–10³ of ~86B neurons (~10⁻⁷–10⁻⁸ fraction); peer-reviewed literature explicitly lists "upload/download your mind" as a misconception. Discount the "merge with AI / preserve memories" framing rather than use it to shorten timelines (doc 03).
• Company "age reversal" framing. The tell: even the best-funded shops monetize via narrow single-disease endpoints (Retro → an Alzheimer's protein-clearance pill); Calico's flagship aging asset failed in ALS and AbbVie exited after ~$3.5B (doc 02 §2B/§2D).
• DIY self-injection gene therapy. Zayner's CRISPR myostatin stunt and the COVID/HIV/herpes self-injections produced zero demonstrated efficacy; Liz Parrish is n=1 self-report; Minicircle sells follistatin (~$25k) with no controlled data, in a jurisdiction chosen to avoid the FDA. Aaron Traywick (Ascendance) died in 2018 (float tank, not the therapy) — the scene's defining tragedy (docs 01 §4, 02 §4). The contrast with the approved/clinical-stage end (Casgevy, Intellia, Verve — ledger (a) above, doc 02 §4E) is the whole point: skipping the rigor is what makes this theater.
• The supplement / gadget revenue layer of mainstream longevity. The branding inverts the evidence: loudest claims, thinnest data (NAD+/NMN, most peptides, $1000 blood panels). Nearly every flagship has a credibility ding (Asprey FTC letter; Huberman; Johnson's rule-changing leaderboard) — a structural effect of "media reach + product commerce" (doc 06 §6).
• Organ sacs as near-term human product. R3 Bio's private "brainless human clones" pitch (MIT Tech Review exposé Mar 2026) is decades away if ever; the artificial-womb bottleneck is fatal near-term (doc 02 §1).
• Grinder hardware as capability gain. Working demos (Northstar, North Sense, Ce6 night-vision) that never crossed to durable product; the implant route "adds risk without (yet) adding capability over Eagleman's removable Neosensory wristband" (doc 01).

The cross-cutting pattern: the demonstrated wins are narrow, disease-shaped, and under-hyped; the hyped claims are broad, identity-flattering, and under-evidenced. Follow the disease endpoints and the order-of-magnitude arguments, not the press releases.

Where this maps to the author's three goals

These three goals turn out to be one project at different radii — see 08 §Synthesis and the cross-model reconciliation in 12, where Claude and an independent gpt-5.5 pass converged on every load-bearing conclusion.

Goal 1 — FiO / substrate independence. The real path runs only through doc 04's critical chain (preserve → scan → know-what-to-extract → translate → run → "is-it-me?" → the AI piece). BCIs (doc 03) are an adjacent I/O field, not that path — "BCI = uploading" is the map's most important debunk. The mainstream-longevity wing (doc 06) and cryonics are the "stay alive / preserve until the tech arrives" bridge. The grinder, bio-startup, and trans scenes are culturally upstream but technically peripheral to uploading. Bottom line and leverage points are in 08-two-roadmaps.md Roadmap A.

Goal 2 — Biopunk 2037. The spine is doc 02's regenerative/organ axis (xeno + decellularized/ bioengineered + ectopic), which is the real, clinical 2026 substrate — not organ sacs (concept) and not reprogramming (a healthspan play, not an organ-supply play). Nerve reconnection is not an empty field (an earlier draft wrongly implied so): the strongest demonstrated evidence is the Courtine/ONWARD brain–spine "digital bridge" that restored thought-controlled walking in a paralyzed human (Nature 2023, doc 03 Part B) — it delivers the function of reconnection via an interface, while direct biological re-fusion of a severed nerve at scale remains unsolved (doc 02 §6, doc 08 B4). The trans DIY scene (doc 05) is the closest thing to a working present-day biopunk prototype. Full premise-by-premise scoring is in 08-two-roadmaps.md Roadmap B. Cross-model note: both Claude (doc 11) and an independent gpt-5.5 pass lowered the bifurcated-2037 report's whole-body-cultivation figure from P~15–25% to ~3–10% (doc 12) — the binding wall is de-novo ectogenesis/placentation, not vascularization alone — while agreeing the organ-supply spine is real and on-trajectory.

Goal 3 — The experience machine (a real Nozick Experience Machine). The newest goal, and the one that unifies the other two. Its tractable form is an external VR + dream/altered-state stack you can build today (doc 09); its true form (experiences subjectively indistinguishable from reality) reduces to either uploading-into-a-sim (Goal 1) or a perfect BCI write-layer (doc 03) — which is exactly what FiO/CelestAI is. Both models flag that, by the author's own published ethics (variation/reality/agency over pleasure), a pure wirehead/pleasure machine is the wrong target — the real one is FiO. Full treatment: 09-experience-machine.md; roadmap in 08 Roadmap C.

Cross-links to the workspace

The scene docs sit on top of existing deep-dive folders; go there for product/medical/funding depth:

• Chip / RFID / magnet implants → /workspace/health/chip-implants/ (doc 01)
• Organ sacs / bodyoids → /workspace/health/organ-sacs/ (doc 02)
• Mainstream longevity science → /workspace/health/longevity/ (doc 06)
• Peptides / DIY pharmacology → /workspace/health/peptides/ (docs 02, 06)
• Cryonics / brain preservation / not-dying → /workspace/cryonics/, /workspace/cryonics/not-die/ (doc 04)
• Trans body-mod / DIY HRT / morphological freedom → /workspace/trans/ (doc 05)
• FiO / uploading fiction (CelestAI) → /workspace/fiction/rationalist-fiction/ (docs 04, 07, 09)
• Decision theory / Nozick → /workspace/safety/decision-theory/ (doc 09)

Synthesis — numbers trace to docs 01–12 or the bifurcated-2037 report, which carry the source URLs and confidence tiers. Where the docs hedge (market size, organ-sac timelines, "which details matter", identity, the desirability of an experience machine), this map preserves the hedge. The three goal deepenings (09, 10, 11) were each independently re-researched by gpt-5.5 and reconciled in 12. Not medical advice. See 08-two-roadmaps.md for the analysis.