Oxygen is so crazy that once microbiology in the ancient oceans started producing it, all life on earth nearly died. Like very nearly sterilized the earth.
At high concentrations, its still fucking awful for us. Easy to forget that the atmosphere is still only 21% Oxygen and 78% Nitrogen. Even setting aside the risks of fire and explosion at higher concentrations, this highly reactive substance degrades the nervous and musculature system.
You wouldn’t want to wander around in a fully oxygenated environment for the same reason you wouldn’t want to drive your car through a lake of gasoline.
Sol 3 is a Class-14 Deathworld on what used to be a thirteen-point scale until they found it.
Not only is the planet very geothermally volatile with active volcanic systems AND feature violent and chaotic weather systems…
“Earth” is the deepest gravity well they’ve ever witnessed chemical rocketry successfully achieve orbit from.
The biosphere is teeming with pathogens, so much so that the sapient population’s own bodies rely on symbiotic microbial colonies in order to digest nutrients among other tasks.
And the macroscopic fauna are ALMOST as scary as the microscopic stuff: every biome packed with highly adapted predators.
At the top of this complex carnal carnival of carnivory, the “humans” who live there are unstoppable pursuit and persistence predators highly naturally gifted in ranged combat that historically used to just WALK their prey to death. The animals which ancient humans consumed could sprint to temporary safety, but humans will catch up, ALWAYS catch up, and the prey will still be tired when they have to sprint again. Eventually the fatigue outpaces them, and humans catch up for the last time. Just walk right up and bash them with a rock, they might not even have to throw it: dinner is ready!
Furthermore, it’s not just the highly volatile oxygen that all the animals there breathe… Sol 3’s atmosphere also even contains a constant background presence of radon. The biosphere is passively resistant to some levels of radiation. One of the cities was consumed in the fallout cloud of an exploding nuclear fission reactor(they STILL use water to cool their municipal fission reactors even now!), and although the humans fled, the animals that stayed there are FLOURISHING. Deformed and mutated, but thriving.
NOBODY SANE CHOOSES TO GO TO SOL 3.
complex carnal carnival of carnivory
Beautiful.
Sol 3:
HarmlessMostly harmlessMore of this please
The entire ecosystem is also part plastic.
Over on reddit there’s an entire genre of this sort of fiction in /r/hfy
The main contributor continued writing it on a full novel scale at https://deathworlders.com/ .
However…Imho after about 40 chapters, it really loses it’s way (bar a couple of cool minor plots). And the author goes a bit right wing rhetoric/muscleporn-y.
God help me, I fought all the way through that 8,000 page monstrosity. I never want to read homoerotic fiction as long as I live, got quite enough of sweaty, muscly men and aliens rubbing all over each other.
I just got frustrated with it.
spoiler
You’ve got the battle for the survival of an entire planet after they all got biodroned.
How many chapters that actually detail what happened? It felt like all it did was go
spoiler
Attack announced, humans arrive and set up a beach head, daar flattens a few cities in the background.
Then spends more time talking about how he is burdened and manly as a result of doing it than the actual doing.
The Hell storyline after that gave me hope, as I trudged through chapters of “cor, look at Adam’s muscular muscles muscling”, but once that finished, and we started getting storylines like “Why can’t we have guns in Folctha? Murica!”, I kinda gave up.
Interactive Education was always my favorite series from r/HFY
Read the first 2 chapters, and so far seems pretty neat.
I thought it was.
New loyalist chapter name
Aliens would need an oxidizer to metabolize as well, even if that oxidizer isn’t oxygen. If they want to actually efficiently get energy out of things, it’ll need to be a strong one. Even fermentation is a oxidation-reduction reaction that just doesn’t use oxygen.
If we ever found a species that was made of alcohol we would absolutely dominate, err domestic them as quickly as possible.
Thank you mitochondria for allowing us to respirate the death element.
Truly the powerhouse of the death breathers
We are all the death breathers, my fungi, my bees, we’re powered with the miti-c
We’re also reliant on water and are mostly made out of it. water is such a “universal solvent”, it’s quite OP. It dissolves so much, that we don’t even think about it
We’re death breathers, but also basically have acid blood like xenomorphs
So you’re telling me if I stop breathing I’ll never get older? I’m in!
Technically true, yes
Everybody in this thread needs to read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
I’d add that the audiobook is amazing also.
And also go in without knowing anything about it
Yes! No spoilers!
It doesn’t matter for some books.
It’s well worth it for this.
That’s what I did. Right after reading Artemis. PHM is way better.
For those who haven’t read it:
Jazz hands, bitches!
That’s all you get.
goddamn amazing book
Reading this I start to miss r/HFY again
Yeah, if one is so inclined,the Jenkinsverse is well worth the read.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/wiki/ref/universes/jenkinsverse/
Me too :(
Is there an active one on the fediverse? Id contribute but I can barely write my name.
There seems to be one but it’s still a bit empty
I might have to consider starting up my own story or something. I’ve had the base of an idea rolling around but haven’t gotten much farther than that
Do it. I’ll be your first up vote.
Death breathers are made of electric thinking meat. Life is fucking rad.
Reminds me of the short story podcast ‘The Truth’ episode - “They’re Made out of Meat”. In fact I think it may have been a short story I once read online beforehand, that they may just have dramatized. (?)
does lemmy have an equivalent to/r/hfy ? This has big /r/hfy energy.
Explains why we tend to spontaneously combust at times
In Becky Chambers’ Wayfarer series, there is a species who actually breathes methane. The focus though is less on how that actually happens and more on how they navigate as the only species for whom oxygen is toxic. It’s a great series, btw. It’s a not-quite-as-optimistic as star trek future, but still optimistic and with a vast range of species who are all intermingling as learning how to get along.
Rusting your insides
So if this is true, why do we need it to live?
There are anaerobic bacteria that don’t need oxygen to survive. That was the norm before The Great Oxidation Event when cyanobacteria started releasing oxygen into the atmosphere during photosynthesis. Prior to that there was very little oxygen in the atmosphere, and anaerobic bacteria ruled the world.
After the GOE the high concentration of oxygen killed off most of the anaerobic bacteria, and what was left were organisms that made a blood truce with oxygen. Aerobic organisms gained incredible power from utilizing oxygen for metabolism, but eventually die from the accumulated damage the oxygen does to them.
Wow, I know so little about this topic and I’m learning all kinds of cool things. Thanks for the comment. I’d never thought about aerobic being the opposite of anaerobic before either.
Organisms need some oxidizing agent to respire. We use oxygen because it’s very highly reactive and thanks to photosynthesis is goddamn everywhere.
Can you explain that first part in more detail? I really know nothing about this and I’m curious to hear more.
