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Danger: Humans


薔薇語

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When we start thinking about the great expanse of space and what kind of beings might inhabit it, one thing we tend to do is think of how dangerous 'the other' could be. We do this on earth, of course, when we discuss how humans aren't the fastest, strongest, most poisoness, etc. But what if we have it all wrong? What if we are just about he pentacle of dangerous beings? The following is a joking short of an alien anthropologist discussing humans. Enjoy!

 

 

Soar. 

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And then there's They're Made Out Of Meat.

And the old stand-by, this Tumblr thread: 

 

 

It’s funny how science fiction universes so often treat humans as a boring, default everyman species or even the weakest and dumbest.

 

I want to see a sci fi universe where we’re actually considered one of the more hideous and terrifying species.

 

How do we know our saliva and skin oils wouldn’t be ultra-corrosive to most other sapient races? What if we actually have the strongest vocal chords and can paralyze or kill the inhabitants of other worlds just by screaming at them? What if most sentient life in the universe turns out to be vegetable-like and lives in fear of us rare “animal” races who can move so quickly and chew shit up with our teeth?

 

Like that old story “they’re made of meat,” only we’re scarier.

 

 

Humans do have a number of advantages even among Terrestrial life. Our endurance, shock resistance, and ability to recover from injury is absurdly high compared to almost any other animal. We often use the phrase “healthy as a horse” to connote heartiness - but compared to a human, a horse is as fragile as spun glass. There’s mounting evidence that our primitive ancestors would hunt large prey simply by following it at a walking pace, without sleep or rest, until it died of exhaustion; it’s called pursuit predation. Basically, we’re the Terminator.

 

(The only other animal that can sort of keep up with us? Dogs. That’s why we use them for hunting. And even then, it’s only “sort of”.)

 

Now extrapolate that to a galaxy in which most sapient life did not evolve from hyper-specialised pursuit predators:

 

Our strength and speed is nothing to write home about, but we don’t need to overpower or outrun you. We just need to outlast you - and by any other species’ standards, we just plain don’t get tired. Where a simple broken leg will cause most species to go into shock and die, we can recover from virtually any injury that’s not immediately fatal. Even traumatic dismemberment isn’t necessarily a career-ending injury for a human. We heal from injuries with extreme rapidity, recovering in weeks from wounds that would take others months or years to heal. The results aren’t pretty - humans have hyperactive scar tissue, among our other survival-oriented traits - but they’re highly functional. Speaking of scarring, look at our medical science. We developed surgery centuries before developing even the most rudimentary anesthetics or life support. In extermis, humans have been known to perform surgery on themselves - and survive. Thanks to our extreme heartiness, we regard as routine medical procedures what most other species would regard as inventive forms of murder. We even perform radical surgery on ourselves for purely cosmetic reasons. In essence, we’d be Space Orcs.

 

 

Our jaws have too many TEETH in them, so we developed a way to WELD METAL TO OUR TEETH and FORCE THE BONES IN OUR JAW to restructure over the course of years to fit them back into shape, and then we continue to wear metal in out mouths to keep them in place.

 

We formed cohabitative relationships with tiny mammals and insects we keep at bay from bothering us by death, often using little analog traps.

 

And by god, we will eat anything.

 

 

In times of plenty, humans can take in many more kCal of energy than they need, and store it on their own bodies to save it for later. Even the most sedentary or unconditioned human can survive for a while without food, thanks to this adaptation, though humans do need water.

 

Humans come in many physical morphs and phenotypes, though most of them are bipedal and laterally symmetrical, which makes their physical capabilities far more variable than many animal species.

 

Lightweight individuals may be able to live on far less sustenance than larger specimens, and may exhibit superior climbing or stealth abilities.

 

Others may be endurance runners, though sprinters capable of impressive acceleration in a bipedal species exist.

 

Still others may have extensive protective soft tissue and fat reserves, capable of enduring extreme temperature and environmental fluctuations.

 

There are more color and keratin-configuration morphs than are able to be classified: suitable for any climate and ultraviolet light risk level in their planet’s usual orbital range.

 

Humans may also reach fairly impressive sizes, capable of feats of dexterous physical strength well-expected in the harsh and varied environment of Sol III (or ‘Earth’).

 

Physical mutations are extremely common, resulting in individuals with not only variant physical capabilities but variant mental states and social needs. Do not assume loner variants are less capable than pack-running individuals, or aberrant or seemingly-crippled individuals are any less capable.

 

Humans are capable of bonding and forming social groups despite any physical or mental variance, forming mutually beneficial gangs that need not follow any ‘optimal’ structure. Unlike many species on their planet, reproduction is not an essential drive in forming these gangs; humans are driven to gather and survive even without the need or instinct to prolong the human species. Some forms of strong human bonding do not include sexual reproduction at all, or are sexual in nature but are not reproductive. All humans, if psychologically suitable, are capable of caring for children even if they did not produce them.

 

Humans are not only are sexually dimorphic but also sexually variant: while some developmental traits are common between individuals of the same physical sex, others vary so widely that there may not be significant difference between physical sexes in some individuals, or individuals may be wildly different from others in their same sex typing.

 

Do not classify humans or evaluate threat based on reproductive sex, coloring, body mass, length, or other biological information.

 

Humans traditionally engage in restrictive social codes, absolutist religions (though they may divorce absolutism from their spirituality and segregate it from their science and reasoning potentials) and other forms of social control because it is impossible for any one group to control any other group due to their variance without enforcing a taboo. They oppress each other due to a survival-coaxed need for authoritarian power structures during their early development as sapient species on a planet with forbidding terrain, poisonous plant life, dangerous animal species, and unforgiving climates. They are warlike and have experienced hatred and suffering throughout their development, at the hands of their own species far before other sapient life forms were made known to them.

 

As a balancing mechanism for their culturally imprinted memories of hatred and war, humans also are some of the most emphatic sapient in the galaxy and are capable of forming emotional connections with non-human, non-sapient, or even completely fictional individuals. While they are warlike, their penchant for philanthropy and self-sacrifice is legendary.

 

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Beautiful quote!

 

While I already knew the information to follow, it still gave me a great chuckle! 

 

"There's mounting evidence that our primitive ancestors would hunt large prey simply by following it at a walking pace, without sleep or rest, until it died of exhaustion; it's called pursuit predation. Basically, we're the Terminator."

 

Soar. 

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No offence, guys, but this whole "danger: humans" thing is old school John Campbell stuff, and it leads down a bad, bad path. Here's Gordon R. Dickson on "Danger: Human," with somewhat disimproved punctuation. I think we can agree that Dickson's Eldridge Timothy Parker isn't so much a "typical human being" as a Mary Sue. That's because Dickson was a pretty smart guy, and maybe his heart wasn't in it. One guy whose heart was in it was Keith Laumer. So I guess it's no surprise that he wrote an entire book on the theme, Earthblood. Or, rather, co-wrote it with a New Orleans science fiction author named Rosel George Brown, of whom I can't really comment, as she died of cancer just as her career was getting going.

 

Look up Earthblood if you  have a chance, because it reads like someone picked up a copy of Iron Dream and didnt' realise that it was a joke. I don't know whether Laumer, Brown, or some gremlins are responsible for its awfulness, but it lays bare the straight path from "Danger: Human" to "Nazi Supermen Are Our Superiors." 

 

Also, there is no "mounting evidence" that our ancestors were "endurance hunters." Without going into an epic thread of a few years back, human hunter gatherers probably endurance hunted some animals, and used other strategies on others. The human evolutionary advantage is that we're tool users --not that we can run down horses. 

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http://www.amazon.com/A-Call-Arms-The-Damned/dp/0345375742

 

5193NVDA3VL.jpg

 

 

This is a series where that is the exact premise.  Humans are powerful and warlike and the peaceful races of the galaxy are horrified to discover us.

 

 

I remember reading the first 2 or 3 of these.  Was like eating Twinkies.  Started with great promise but little in the way of payoff in the end.

 

HM

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Yeah, they're easy reads.  There are three in the series, and I think I churned through all of them in like two weeks or so.  Nothing spectacular, but fun.  I think maybe the author meant it to be a serious criticism of human nature, but I just thought it was a funny premise.

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I like the Larry Niven's Known Space variant on this idea.  Humans don't seem that special compared to other aliens like Kzinti and Puppeteers but when it's discovered that they are really evolved from the Breeder stage of Pak Protectors (THE scariest aliens in the setting) then it gets interesting.  What's even scarier is when a Human goes through the transformation into a Pak. They make the regular Pak look like retards. 

 

:)

HM

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If we ever find life of off-Earth origin, we'll be able to talk more intelligently about it. We are still laboring under the ignorance of knowing only one biology. This is at least as bad as knowing about only one planetary system, back before the mid-1990s.

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I have long since gotten disgruntled with the popular notion that humans are at the bottom of some interstellar food chain. I honestly have not read any of the books referenced in this thread, but I have constantly wondered if we are not the pinnacle of galactic civilization. Perhaps we haven't been discovered because we're the ones that are going to eventually discover the other up and coming species. Hopefully it will be a relatively peaceful discovery and not one where we wear those funny little Spanish helmets.

 

Then again, the thread is all about a militaristic human expansion so why not. :)

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The novel <a data-ipb="nomediaparse" data-cke-saved-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon" s_egg"="">Dragon's Egg puts forth another interesting twist on this theme.  Humans discover the aliens but the aliens quickly surpass human tech.

Not just discover: human intervention arguably caused them to develop a technical civilization.
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From the "What I've Learned Playing an Alien" thread:

 

If a Human or group of Humans wants something you have - an item, knowledge, a resource, a service you can perform - try to make a mutually profitable trade. Humans love to trade. Not all of them are trustworthy, but in general, if you deal fairly with them, they will view you as a friend - and Humans can make surprisingly loyal and helpful friends.

 

If Humans want something you have, and you can't arrange a beneficial trade, be aware that they are quite likely to attempt to get it by stealth or trickery.

 

If the Humans need, or just want badly enough, something you have, and they have failed to trade for it and failed to steal it or trick you out of it, get your weapons ready. They will probably next attempt to wrest it from you by force. And they're STUBBORN. You should have tried harder to make a trade....

 

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary reports that consorting with Humans is hazardous to one's sanity

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Because I don't think anyone's made the point explicit yet -

 

The reason why, in fiction, Humans often seem inferior to aliens, robots, mutants, and other non-human but humanoid beings, is that these beings are created in response to Human desires and fears. They are created as what we would wish to be, or fear that we are.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Someday I should see if I can get the palindromedary to write something longer than a tagline.

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Because I don't think anyone's made the point explicit yet -

 

The reason why, in fiction, Humans often seem inferior to aliens, robots, mutants, and other non-human but humanoid beings, is that these beings are created in response to Human desires and fears. They are created as what we would wish to be, or fear that we are.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Someday I should see if I can get the palindromedary to write something longer than a tagline.

 

There are only three choices, better, worse or pretty much the same.  The narrative applications of aliens who are inferior in every way do exist, but they are limited.  

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There are only three choices, better, worse or pretty much the same.  The narrative applications of aliens who are inferior in every way do exist, but they are limited.

It is possible to depict aliens who are radically different but not necessarily, on balance, either inferior or superior.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says that assuming equal must mean identical is an artifact of the Human tendency to hierarchicalize and value-judge everything.

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If we ever find life of off-Earth origin, we'll be able to talk more intelligently about it. We are still laboring under the ignorance of knowing only one biology. This is at least as bad as knowing about only one planetary system, back before the mid-1990s.

I like the idea that we've already encountered intelligent life on several occasions and just didn't notice.

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I like the idea that we've already encountered intelligent life on several occasions and just didn't notice.

 

 

More importantly, we'll figure out which ones we can have sex with. Possibly even before the edibility test.

 

 

You realize this applies to both genders of humanity, right?

 

I mean, we've figured out the sex part, but not so much the "Hey, you're intelligent, too!" part.

 

We're still at the "Well, maybe" stage, and on a case-by-case basis at that, on both sides.

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