Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to blow your Mind from how stop
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey you wasn't discussable your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and boy
Speaker 1: do we have a treat for you today because Robert
Speaker 1: and I saw Alien Covenant this past weekend, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: on a Saturday, wasn't Yeah, it was. So we're going
Speaker 1: to try to avoid major plot spoilers, but this episode
Speaker 1: today is going to uh spring off of an idea
Speaker 1: that came up when we were watching the movie. So
Speaker 1: we are going to talk about the movie a little
Speaker 1: in more general terms. But if you absolutely cannot bear
Speaker 1: to hear anything at all until you see it, you
Speaker 1: might want to pause here and come back once you've
Speaker 1: seen it. Like I said, no specific plot spoilers, but
Speaker 1: I mean, we've got to talk about the movie, right yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and I don't agree with me talking about
Speaker 1: any more depth than you would get out of the
Speaker 1: trailers for it. And there were so many trailers for
Speaker 1: this film. I feel yeah, I feel like this was
Speaker 1: the most part of it. May just be those sort
Speaker 1: of the algorithms of YouTube advertisements, but I felt like
Speaker 1: I was absolutely bombarded to the point where I just
Speaker 1: really wanted to respond and say like, look, I I'm
Speaker 1: on board, I'm gonna see it. Just stop making me
Speaker 1: watch trailers for it, because I'm gonna it's gonna reach
Speaker 1: the point where I'm gonna start losing interest. So Ridley
Speaker 1: Scott did the same thing with Prometheus where he didn't
Speaker 1: just do trailers, but he did scenes that take place
Speaker 1: before the movie starts. Sit with him and that thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think maybe part of it just
Speaker 1: like shooting a lot of footage, and then with this
Speaker 1: film in particular, I felt like there was this is
Speaker 1: so one of the things with the film, like Alien Covenant,
Speaker 1: is that by no means was just a small movie.
Speaker 1: This is a large studio production. And and over the
Speaker 1: years Ridley Scott has has proven himself one of these
Speaker 1: directors who knows how he has the clout to work
Speaker 1: within that system, but he seems to know how to
Speaker 1: to cater to expectations like you don't not that I
Speaker 1: follow this kind of thing just religiously, but you know,
Speaker 1: I don't remember every hearing stories about Ridley Scott's battle
Speaker 1: with the studio over something like he seems to Yeah,
Speaker 1: it may have happened that. I don't recall hearing about that.
Speaker 1: It's not like hearing about David Fincher's struggles on Alien
Speaker 1: three with Fox. Yeah, and part of that is him
Speaker 1: having cloud. You know, he's Ridley Scott. He's essentially, you know,
Speaker 1: a living legend of of the cinema. But but I
Speaker 1: also get the sense that he is willing to he's
Speaker 1: willing to work. He's willing to adjust that or to
Speaker 1: um to to to adjust the settings, the trajectory on that,
Speaker 1: on that that vision he has in order to see
Speaker 1: it to the theater. What you're saying is he'll play ball. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I get the impression that he's a he's a guy
Speaker 1: who will play ball. Okay, So here's so it is
Speaker 1: an alien movie. I will say it's an alien movie
Speaker 1: in the Alien franchise. That actually felt kind of like
Speaker 1: an alien movie. And here's my short review. Almost all
Speaker 1: the things I can think of to say about it
Speaker 1: are criticisms. I felt that it had really similar problems
Speaker 1: with Prometheus. With the script, the human characters are underdeveloped.
Speaker 1: Their personalities and motivations didn't seem to be consistent from
Speaker 1: one scene to another. Parts of the plot definitely went on.
Speaker 1: And this is a cliche I hate to use it,
Speaker 1: but it is the best descriptive term for it. It
Speaker 1: was on autopilot in certain parts, but I just really
Speaker 1: liked it. I enjoyed it nonetheless, despite all that it
Speaker 1: was beautiful to look at. Of course, Ridley Scott's always
Speaker 1: a great set designer, great at the visual aspect of
Speaker 1: his movies, creative and interesting things to explore. In the
Speaker 1: first half at least, I love the gleeful sense of
Speaker 1: body horror repaired with this classically ponderous mad scientist vibe,
Speaker 1: especially in the mid section of the movie. And Michael
Speaker 1: Fastbender is just heroically fun so to the extent this
Speaker 1: makes any sense, I felt like the movie was somehow
Speaker 1: both stupid and an intensely pleasing work of art. Okay,
Speaker 1: well this actually this in ways lines up with some
Speaker 1: of my feelings about it. It was definitely for me
Speaker 1: a film that I saw it, I wasn't sure how
Speaker 1: I felt about it, but I keep thinking about it
Speaker 1: every day since I saw it, and and I feel like,
Speaker 1: for me at this point in my life and only
Speaker 1: the way I interact with films like that's how I
Speaker 1: tend to judge it is it something more than like
Speaker 1: the structural completeness of a film, or the or the
Speaker 1: character motivations and the character development, Like is there something
Speaker 1: in the movie that I came back to because there's
Speaker 1: for instance, there's so many just sort of paint by
Speaker 1: number of superhero films, and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: fun I enjoy seeing them, but it's well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm into them. I get excited about him. I'm excited
Speaker 1: to say, see the next Guardians of the Galaxy film
Speaker 1: whenever it's you know, I can watch it on an
Speaker 1: airplane or however it comes together. I enjoy seeing them,
Speaker 1: and then I don't. I don't chew on them afterwards.
Speaker 1: They kind of go in in in, one year out
Speaker 1: the other kind of right. So with Alien Covenant, I
Speaker 1: kept thinking about in terms of of of Scott's vision
Speaker 1: for this film and the fact that he you know,
Speaker 1: like we said, well play ball um. Because it's because
Speaker 1: just as the the Malevolent Organism and the Alien series
Speaker 1: draws its form via the life forms that it annihilates,
Speaker 1: so too does Alien Covets Covenant Seema a chimerical beast.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a Prometheus sequel and Body, but
Speaker 1: with appindages that call back to Aliens Alien three, even
Speaker 1: a dash of a VP and there for good measure,
Speaker 1: and you know, the monster's form varies, enabling the creature
Speaker 1: to better consume it's victims, but the genetic mission remains
Speaker 1: the same. This you know, unstoppable will of weaponized evolution,
Speaker 1: created and recreated by those who would take on the
Speaker 1: mantle of gods. And it's such really Scott, I feel
Speaker 1: like he allowed Covenants form to encompass fan and studio
Speaker 1: demands for more, for more monsters, for dashes of past
Speaker 1: installments in the franchise, but still at its heart, it's
Speaker 1: a Prometheus sequel. It's the the second installment in a
Speaker 1: new film Mark that one commentator on called called quote
Speaker 1: a weirdly religious science fiction universe. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm me personally, I love both space horror and virtually
Speaker 1: anything that's weirdly religious, So you know, I'm on this
Speaker 1: bull's eye for me to h Yeah. I love it
Speaker 1: though with I mean the those aspects you mentioned, I
Speaker 1: love that they're all there, but they also, um would
Speaker 1: you say, so many of them are not followed through
Speaker 1: on It's almost like they set something up to happen
Speaker 1: in the movie and then it just never happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I would be interested to learn more about
Speaker 1: sort of the behind the scenes and what was added,
Speaker 1: what was changed, because for instance, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: shower scene not to not just spill anything later in
Speaker 1: the film, and it's very a VP, and it feels
Speaker 1: feels a bit tacked on. It's like the moment it goes.
Speaker 1: Multiple reviewers have commented on this that at some point
Speaker 1: the movie suddenly becomes a slasher movie. It's like a
Speaker 1: Friday movie for a few minutes, and that's sort of
Speaker 1: how it felt to me. Yeah, and uh, and I
Speaker 1: also have to say that when it comes to the
Speaker 1: characters of this film, like really, this is a film
Speaker 1: about two androids and uh and and to a and
Speaker 1: to a lesser extent, a third character who is Um,
Speaker 1: who is sort of like the associate captain who ends
Speaker 1: up taking over the Billy credit character. Uh. Everyone else
Speaker 1: is is far less developed. But at the core, I
Speaker 1: mean a film about to androids sort of struggling to
Speaker 1: figure out like where they stand in relationship to the
Speaker 1: to these these these lesser creators are they are there
Speaker 1: there there their guardians or are they there destroyers and
Speaker 1: know I'm I'm I'm all on board of that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah, okay, so we got to get into
Speaker 1: the meat of the episode. But one final comment about
Speaker 1: the movie. Do you think they're ever going to stop
Speaker 1: with the the title format of franchise named colon abstract now?
Speaker 1: And I'm so sick of it. Alien Resurrection, Alien Coming,
Speaker 1: and all the franchises do it now. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, uh, Terminator, Genesis whatever. It makes me feel
Speaker 1: like the next one is going to be called like
Speaker 1: Alien Gamification. It just feels like such a product I hated.
Speaker 1: I wish they could give each movie its own title. Well,
Speaker 1: the last one was Prometheus, so thumbs up for that.
Speaker 1: I get the feeling that it is about tying everything
Speaker 1: into this overarching brand. Yeah, I think it's just to
Speaker 1: get people in the theaters. And I mean sometimes we
Speaker 1: use the NOWNI nown colon additional keywords, uh template when
Speaker 1: say titling episodes of this podcast, because a part of
Speaker 1: it is like I've only got so much space and
Speaker 1: I really need to convey what this is about. So
Speaker 1: Alien's Colon Covenant that lets you know that it's going
Speaker 1: to involve aliens, it's gonna involve Colon's, involve something quasi religious,
Speaker 1: and that's all you need to know. But if we
Speaker 1: were to really follow this format, every episode of ours,
Speaker 1: somebody called something like stuff to blow your mind colon respiration,
Speaker 1: which is sort of what we're gonna get into today. So,
Speaker 1: without spoiling anything significant about the plot, I wanted to
Speaker 1: point out something this movie movie has in common with Prometheus.
Speaker 1: So it's got space explorers, that's no surprise. Astronauts go
Speaker 1: into other planets and they just plunge their faces straight
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere and biosphere of an alien planet without protection.
Speaker 1: And Prometheus they are these scenes where they take their
Speaker 1: helmets off for no reason I can really remember. I
Speaker 1: think they're just for the heck of it. In Covenant,
Speaker 1: they just walk out of their landing vehicle without suits
Speaker 1: of any kind. There. They just weren some hats and
Speaker 1: some overcoats. Now, I'm fine with characters behaving irrationally or
Speaker 1: unrealistically in horror or in sci fi movies. I think
Speaker 1: that's a pretty common element and I'm okay with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean basically the whole movie Covenant, it begins with
Speaker 1: a hey, should we go check this out? Scenario? Like
Speaker 1: so many horror films, And if your characters were smart
Speaker 1: enough to stay on the path, right, then they would
Speaker 1: never we would have no movie because what was that
Speaker 1: noise in the bushes? And most horror stories are about
Speaker 1: going off the path? Should we go off the path?
Speaker 1: Should we go explore that? And yeah, you don't do that,
Speaker 1: you never get out of the boat. But if you
Speaker 1: never got out of the boat, we would have no film, right,
Speaker 1: So I'm fine with that happening, providing that I get
Speaker 1: provided that there's some consistent level of realism. Most modern
Speaker 1: sci fi movies I would say, have a very healthy
Speaker 1: dose of fantasy in them. And that's just one expression
Speaker 1: of that here. But today we wanted to explore the
Speaker 1: topic of why, if you're an actual exoplanet colonist or explorer,
Speaker 1: you really shouldn't want to take your helmet off or
Speaker 1: otherwise open yourself up to the alien environment and in
Speaker 1: the sea of unknown possibilities that could come flooding in
Speaker 1: upon you. Right. Uh. One thing to keep in mind
Speaker 1: here is that that we we're definitely looking at why
Speaker 1: you should keep that that helmet on and the dangers
Speaker 1: that are inherent to any any kind of alien environment
Speaker 1: we might experience. However, I feel like an important caveat
Speaker 1: to all this is that anytime we're looking at a
Speaker 1: fictional people landing on a fictional world taking their helmet off,
Speaker 1: I always have to wonder, Okay, would any sufficiently advanced
Speaker 1: civilization capable of not only interplanetary but interstellar travel, would
Speaker 1: they have all that worked out? Like, would they have
Speaker 1: sufficient scanning technology to know just like down to the
Speaker 1: finest detail that the air was breathable? Uh? Well, without
Speaker 1: spoiling too much about Alien Covenant, obviously they don't know that.
Speaker 1: But they're also religious fanatics. Not to have played David's
Speaker 1: advocate too much, but but they are. They are driven
Speaker 1: by religious optimism in that film. So what you're saying,
Speaker 1: Robert is you're a little more gung ho. I think
Speaker 1: maybe you're saying, breathe in, breathe in, Brothers. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: that if the if your technology is not picking it up,
Speaker 1: if there's a danger out there that you're interstellar technology
Speaker 1: is incapable of picking up on, let it act fast.
Speaker 1: Because movies movie movies like Alien Covenant show it's like
Speaker 1: there's no there's no real victory, and being a survivor,
Speaker 1: it's better to be that that individual that gets that
Speaker 1: has something jump out of him rather quickly. Right, at
Speaker 1: least you go out with a with a burst. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a big, chesty burst. Okay, Well, so maybe we should
Speaker 1: start by just acknowledging the concept of a space suit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of it's kind of easy to forget why
Speaker 1: we have them because we end up just focusing on
Speaker 1: how cool they look most of the time. Right, So,
Speaker 1: a space suit is I think I remember reading a
Speaker 1: NASA resource at some point a long time ago that
Speaker 1: put it like this, and it was it's a spacecraft
Speaker 1: for one person. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the extra vehicular mobility units that are worn
Speaker 1: by astronauts. When you've got to go outside and perform
Speaker 1: external work on the International Space Station and do a spacewalk,
Speaker 1: you put this suit on and it cools your body.
Speaker 1: It Uh. It supplies you with oxygen and breathable atmosphere.
Speaker 1: It purges the CEO two that you exhale when you're
Speaker 1: out there. Uh. It shields you from radiation, It shields
Speaker 1: you from impacts from space debris. So, and these are
Speaker 1: all very important things. But another important aspect of any
Speaker 1: type of suit for extra vehicular activity when you're out
Speaker 1: exploring the cosmos is that it's a contained environment. It's
Speaker 1: supposed to create a sealed barrier between external conditions and
Speaker 1: internal conditions. So this sort of means making the inside
Speaker 1: of the suit as earth like as possible, no matter
Speaker 1: what the outside of the suit is. And of course
Speaker 1: this would also mean keeping out things that really just
Speaker 1: don't go well with your Earth adapted biology, for example,
Speaker 1: for and dust, gas, particles, radiation, and potentially life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it comes back to the idea of like the spacecraft itself,
Speaker 1: it's it's the idea that we as humans evolved not
Speaker 1: only to live on Earth, but to live within a
Speaker 1: very um thin portion of the atmosphere and under very
Speaker 1: specific environmental settings. And uh and and so there are
Speaker 1: places on our own Earth whereof we we go, we perish,
Speaker 1: and therefore we have to we have to bring part
Speaker 1: of our world with us, even if it's just a
Speaker 1: skin layer in a suit. Yeah. Now I can totally
Speaker 1: understand the impulse to want to take the space suit off.
Speaker 1: I can imagine if I was somebody colonizing an exoplanet
Speaker 1: that was, you know, that we thought would be habitable,
Speaker 1: that we could start living there. Obviously, protocols would be
Speaker 1: to maintain that seal, to to keep the quarantine as
Speaker 1: long as there was any doubt whatsoever that what was
Speaker 1: outside could hurt us. But you just can't live that way, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, anytime you go outside, you've got to wear
Speaker 1: the suit. You you can't touch the rocks and the trees,
Speaker 1: You can't interact by contact, by respiration, by anything except
Speaker 1: through this barrier with the planet you live on. And
Speaker 1: that sounds like a horrible existence. Well, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, environmental standards are changing a little every day, Joe,
Speaker 1: So we'll check to get back in on this in
Speaker 1: a few years. Yeah. So, I guess now we should
Speaker 1: get into the five reasons that we've come up with,
Speaker 1: at least why you should really not want to take
Speaker 1: your helmet off on an alien planet. This would be
Speaker 1: a good list to have, you know, in in in
Speaker 1: reduced form as a sticker on the inside of your helmet.
Speaker 1: And then if when you're tempted to, when you're overcome
Speaker 1: by the beauty of uh, you know, exo planet. I
Speaker 1: love it when an exo planet has a nice diabolical
Speaker 1: name like uh in Furness b yeah or Manta Bolga six,
Speaker 1: you know whatever it happens to be. When you when
Speaker 1: you in there and you think, ah, this place with
Speaker 1: this uh this creepy name is actually rather beautiful. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get a breath of fresh air. Look to the
Speaker 1: lower left hand portion of your visor and go through
Speaker 1: this list, Pope satan Alpi six e. Alright, so reason
Speaker 1: number one is going to be the obvious one, the
Speaker 1: one that you probably don't even need to think about.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be atmospheric gas. Can I breathe this atmosphere
Speaker 1: that I am seemingly moving through? And we should be generous?
Speaker 1: This is one that sci fi almost always takes care of.
Speaker 1: There's a line in the script where somebody says, atmospheric
Speaker 1: conditions nominal the air, we can breathe it. But it's
Speaker 1: worth looking at what the atmospheres of other planets generally
Speaker 1: look like. Jean Paul Starchers said, you know, Hell is
Speaker 1: other people once you start looking beyond Earth. I propose
Speaker 1: an update, which is Hell is other people's planets, because
Speaker 1: we are just so tightly adapted to the earth biosphere
Speaker 1: and and and it's very particular balance of gases, and
Speaker 1: to upset that balance significantly would be to change the
Speaker 1: properties of Earth and thus to change the biosphere. So
Speaker 1: we need our atmosphere to be the way it is
Speaker 1: seventy eight percent nitrogen, one percent oxygen, about point nine
Speaker 1: percent are gone, and point one percent trace gases primarily
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide, plus a lot of variation in water vapor
Speaker 1: in the air. Now, we don't know exactly what the
Speaker 1: atmospheres of terrestrial exoplanets are going to be. We know
Speaker 1: we can see some gas giants orbiting other stars in
Speaker 1: the galaxy, and those of course are going to be
Speaker 1: composed generally like gas giants are like, they'll have hydrogen
Speaker 1: and helium atmospheres. But as far as the terrestrial exoplanets
Speaker 1: are go out there, we we don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: their atmospheres are going to be like. If you look
Speaker 1: at other terrestrial planets in our Solar system, you do
Speaker 1: start to get a picture that might be local to us,
Speaker 1: But we don't know Venus atmospheres about carbon dioxide, yeah,
Speaker 1: not good, not so nice. Mars has an incredibly thin atmosphere,
Speaker 1: it's you know, a one percent or kind of atmosphere,
Speaker 1: and what's there is about nine carbon dioxide. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: of course with venus to the reality is that if
Speaker 1: you're breathing that on the surface, you're essentially standing in
Speaker 1: a pressure cooker too, so so yeah, But but you're
Speaker 1: just talking about just the breatheability of the the air, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And even if you arrived on Earth at a different
Speaker 1: point in Earth's history, you would have encountered a very
Speaker 1: different atmosphere. But the primeval surface of Earth, say about
Speaker 1: four billion years ago, we also had an atmosphere of
Speaker 1: much higher CEO two concentration. Before the biogenic oxygenation of
Speaker 1: Earth about two billion years ago you had the original terraforming. Now,
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide is obviously not good to breathe. That is
Speaker 1: what you exhale. It's a waste product of of human respiration,
Speaker 1: and breathing it in can lead to bad effects at
Speaker 1: low concentrates, and death or asphyxiation or poisoning at high concentrations.
Speaker 1: I found an interesting chart put together based on research
Speaker 1: on carbon dioxide toxicity, and the chart was made by
Speaker 1: the International Volcanic Health Hazard Network and it's got a
Speaker 1: sort of ascending scale of c O two concentration in
Speaker 1: the air you're breathing, and what the effects would be.
Speaker 1: So they say, you know, two to three percent of air,
Speaker 1: you're not really going to notice what's going on, but
Speaker 1: there will be a shortness of breath if you exert yourself.
Speaker 1: If at three percent exposure, you're breathing gets deeper, uh,
Speaker 1: three to five percent exposure, you're breathing, rhythm speeds up
Speaker 1: and you might get headaches. At five percent exposure, your
Speaker 1: breathing gets really labored. You're gonna have headaches, sweating, heavy pulse.
Speaker 1: At seven point five percent exposure, you're gonna have really
Speaker 1: rapid breathing, increased heart rate, headaches, sweating, dizziness, shortness of breath,
Speaker 1: loss of strengthen the muscles, probably some mental fuzziness, like
Speaker 1: inability to work things out in your head. You're gonna
Speaker 1: get sleepy and hear ringing in your ears. At eight
Speaker 1: you get the really bad stuff vertigo, vomiting, loss of consciousness, uh,
Speaker 1: possibly death in this range, and then at you're gonna
Speaker 1: have convulsions, rapid loss of consciousness and death. Of course,
Speaker 1: this is a situation too in control environments where the
Speaker 1: CEO two level can can creep up if if things
Speaker 1: are are are out of wax stays in a submarine environment, yeah,
Speaker 1: or in the space Shuttle or this or like the
Speaker 1: Apollo spacecraft. If you don't have your CEO too scrubbers
Speaker 1: working you, you are in for a world of pain.
Speaker 1: And so, as we said earlier, this is something the
Speaker 1: sci fi movies usually do address. They're not just gonna
Speaker 1: land on a planet with the carbon dioxide atmosphere, opened
Speaker 1: the doors and say breathe in. Well, unless it's I
Speaker 1: feel like it. It It happened all the time. And track though,
Speaker 1: right what they beamed down somewhere and they couldn't breathe.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, it's been a long time
Speaker 1: since I've really mainline some trek, but it seems like
Speaker 1: they're always just breathing the heck out of any atmosphere
Speaker 1: they came across, like every world was breathable. Uh. And
Speaker 1: maybe there's a maybe there was always an explanation or
Speaker 1: maybe there's you know, some sort of transhumanist read where
Speaker 1: they've all had like an operation that makes them able
Speaker 1: to breathe carbon dioxide. Yeah, like if if this were
Speaker 1: Banks's Culture series. I'm sure that would be the explanation. Well, Okay,
Speaker 1: they're members of the culture and their their body is
Speaker 1: automatically adjusting to some different atmospheric condition. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: wanna posit that you should still be careful here. So
Speaker 1: imagine you are in this sci fi spaceship and you've
Speaker 1: arrived at a planet and they analyzed the atmosphere. Hopefully
Speaker 1: they've analyzed it before you went to the planet, because
Speaker 1: they can do that via the spectral analysis of the
Speaker 1: colors of light that reflect off of it. But you
Speaker 1: should arrive there and well you arrive there and they say, okay,
Speaker 1: oxygen atmosphere, you can breathe it, it still might not
Speaker 1: be safe to take that suit off, even just in
Speaker 1: terms of atmospheric gas, because even though ambient carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: levels might not be at a concentration to cause poisoning
Speaker 1: or asphyxiation, there could be other possibilities of localized events.
Speaker 1: So one thing I want to point out is on
Speaker 1: August twenty one nine, there was one of the weirdest
Speaker 1: and most tragic natural disasters in modern history, and this
Speaker 1: was near Lake Nyos in Cameroon, and Robert I think
Speaker 1: you've probably read about this before. I believe there's a
Speaker 1: House to Works article on this. There is, there is.
Speaker 1: This is one of the things I looked at. So,
Speaker 1: Lake Nios is a crater lake. It's resulting from volcanic
Speaker 1: eruption several hundred years ago, and on this day in
Speaker 1: August ninety six, the lake suddenly exploded. The lake exploded,
Speaker 1: sending towers of water up into the air, and it
Speaker 1: produced this cloud of gas that rushed out of the
Speaker 1: lake into the surrounding countryside, and it ended up killing
Speaker 1: more than seventeen hundred people in the nearby town of Nios.
Speaker 1: Nearly every person was killed. Only six people survived, and
Speaker 1: the killer was carbon dioxide. Now, lakes and volcanic craters
Speaker 1: often accumulate dissolved carbon dioxide in the water, but in
Speaker 1: most cases it gets absorbed into the atmosphere more gradually,
Speaker 1: right it rises up and gets released. In this case,
Speaker 1: it looks like what happened is that the water under
Speaker 1: high pressure at the bottom of this lake began to
Speaker 1: accumulate more and more dissolved CEO two it really high
Speaker 1: concentrations without ever releasing it. And then some unknown event
Speaker 1: could have been a small earthquake or in anything. It
Speaker 1: caused the lake to suddenly release all that carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: at once, and this massive cloud of poison gas that
Speaker 1: traveled at about sixty miles per hour across the surface
Speaker 1: of the land. So fortunately now that lake has de
Speaker 1: gassing pipes and it's got an alarm system that monitors
Speaker 1: the c O two at the bottom of the lake water,
Speaker 1: meaning you can prevent something like this from happening in
Speaker 1: the future. But it goes to show that local atmospheric
Speaker 1: conditions can be altered in a very deadly way at
Speaker 1: a moment's notice. So if you're walking around on a
Speaker 1: rocky alien planet with breathable oxygen atmosphere, should you also
Speaker 1: consider the frequency and location of geological outgassing of this type? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this sounds very much like a planet that might be
Speaker 1: encountered in the chronicles of Riddick World, like a a
Speaker 1: a regular you know, occurrence that they can sort of
Speaker 1: plan the action scene around. Yeah, like, oh, everybody, since
Speaker 1: you start going off. It starts going off because of
Speaker 1: a big CEO two surge is about to occur, and
Speaker 1: then they're having to stop in the fight sequence and
Speaker 1: get their masks on. Can I admit something you're probably
Speaker 1: gonna hate me for was that I've never seen a
Speaker 1: Riddick movie. Oh, You've got a remedy to this joke,
Speaker 1: at least with the first two. Yeah, how many are
Speaker 1: there is? So wait it's it's pitch Black Chronicles Narnia
Speaker 1: of Riddic Chronicles of Narnia rita, uh and what else?
Speaker 1: There's more after I think that the third one is
Speaker 1: just Riddick, and then then it's just ridd It's gonna
Speaker 1: be rid It or Dick. And the next one, I guess, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the first one. The first one is a
Speaker 1: fun action film with some cool critters in it. Uh,
Speaker 1: And many people hold it up just as an objectively
Speaker 1: you know, good sci fi action flick monsters. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the monsters are good in that one. The second one
Speaker 1: is a bit silly, a little flash Gordiny. But but
Speaker 1: I actually probably enjoyed that one the most just because
Speaker 1: it plays it plays two things I like, and the
Speaker 1: kind of a goofy um a space opera scenario. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the villain And that one's really good too. Yeah yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll have to check it out. But they often encounter
Speaker 1: the scenario where like in the first one, the whole
Speaker 1: deal is that the planet has these uh, these these
Speaker 1: plot uh centric periods of light and darkness, and the
Speaker 1: monsters only come out at night. But when they make
Speaker 1: the next one, they should definitely consider a a an
Speaker 1: explosive CEO two planet because I can I can picture
Speaker 1: it working beautifully. Well, that is one thing I guess
Speaker 1: we don't know. So in this episode we're going to
Speaker 1: be raising things that could be possibilities on unknown planets,
Speaker 1: but we don't really know if there are planets out
Speaker 1: there where there is very frequent CEO two out gassing
Speaker 1: all over the planet. On Earth, this can't happen, and
Speaker 1: we've just shown examples of how it can be deadly,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't happen all that often. It's not like
Speaker 1: if you're just generally landing on the surface, you'd expect
Speaker 1: to encounter that, because, yeah, you can imagine a scenario
Speaker 1: in which this is this is every day. This is
Speaker 1: just a regular part of life on Chernobyl six or
Speaker 1: whatever the name of the planet is, and a human
Speaker 1: is just not going to be evolved to survive that,
Speaker 1: right uh. And and it is something that you might
Speaker 1: expect to happen on geologically active planets all over the place.
Speaker 1: So you've got an icy mantle, it's got materials in
Speaker 1: it like a CEO two or sulfur dioxide that erupting
Speaker 1: clouds the dispersed on the surface. And it's true on Earth,
Speaker 1: lots of the deaths that are due to volcanic eruptions
Speaker 1: and other geologic events like that are not always from
Speaker 1: the things you think of like lava flows, mud and
Speaker 1: pyroclastic flows and ash fall, but due to poison gas,
Speaker 1: inhalation and suffocation. And you can even see that there
Speaker 1: are other objects in our Solar system that have eruptions
Speaker 1: like this, like Jupiter's moon, Io is incredibly geologically active
Speaker 1: as full of volcanoes on its surface that erupt with
Speaker 1: sulfurous glee. Yeah, and on this other world they just
Speaker 1: might be used to it. I'm reminded of the scene
Speaker 1: on The Simpsons where Marge just casually it's a Treehouse
Speaker 1: of Horror episode where March just casually says, oh, it's
Speaker 1: the fog that turns people inside out, creeping in, you know,
Speaker 1: and and in this world, yeah, that's just the fog
Speaker 1: that turns people inside out. It just happens every now
Speaker 1: and then. It's just how life goes. And uh, either
Speaker 1: you're you're evolved to uh to roll with the punches
Speaker 1: or you're not. That's they sing a song though. They
Speaker 1: just one sniff of that fog and you're side out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a big dance number with a dog in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and coming going after Abe Simpson's exposed Visra. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: good times anyway. Okay, well, there are some possibilities, but
Speaker 1: I think we should take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back we will look at probably the biggest
Speaker 1: thing to consider. All Right, we're back, so Robert, we
Speaker 1: assume that the gases of the atmosphere on our exoplanet
Speaker 1: are safe. We we want to explore or colonize. We've
Speaker 1: thoroughly checked it out. It has a breathable atmosphere with
Speaker 1: oxygen we've checked as geological activity. It's not going to
Speaker 1: be belching poison gas on us constantly wherever we land.
Speaker 1: We're we're pretty confident about the gas quality itself. Should
Speaker 1: we just take the helmet off now? Well, then we're
Speaker 1: getting into yeah that the next big worry is going
Speaker 1: to be what if there's some something in the air
Speaker 1: some sort of life form, be it alien spores, some
Speaker 1: sort of alien disease. I have no idea what I'm
Speaker 1: about to breathe in, right, right, So this is reason
Speaker 1: number two pathogens. Obviously, it's not going to be spoiling
Speaker 1: much about Alien Covenant to say that this plays a
Speaker 1: role in there. It's there in the trailers. You know
Speaker 1: what aliens about. But in our so are we. We
Speaker 1: did a live episode from September last year which was
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blew Your Mind Live. Actually, we put the
Speaker 1: franchise title before the colon and that one they did,
Speaker 1: we did Stuff to your Mind Live colon something about
Speaker 1: Strike Trek I think was the title. I mean, so
Speaker 1: many crows today, man. So yeah, it was Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blew your Mind Live Prime directives and planetary contamination, and
Speaker 1: what we talked about in that episode was uh NASA
Speaker 1: protocols for preventing cross contamination of life forms between different planets,
Speaker 1: and that that follows up on Article nine of the
Speaker 1: United Nations Outer Space Treaty, which contains the following language.
Speaker 1: Parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies of outer space,
Speaker 1: including the Moon and other celestial bodies, to conduct exploration
Speaker 1: of them so as to avoid their harmful contamination and
Speaker 1: also adverse changes in the environment of Earth resulting from
Speaker 1: the introduction of extraterrestrial matter, and we're necessary shall adopt
Speaker 1: appropriate measures for this purpose. Yeah, and this comes down
Speaker 1: to the idea that, sure, if we went to the
Speaker 1: Klingon homeworld, maybe we couldn't catch the Klingon flu or
Speaker 1: whatever the kind of element it happens to be. Maybe,
Speaker 1: but it could. But maybe even if we couldn't, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what could we do? Right? Yeah? But the idea too
Speaker 1: is that we only have this one model of life,
Speaker 1: and we have to sort of work forward with the
Speaker 1: assumption that any kind of life that evolves in another
Speaker 1: world is going to be uh, is the potential to
Speaker 1: be a comfortable system? Right, we even if we couldn't
Speaker 1: get germs from them, what if we could give germs
Speaker 1: to them? So yeah, those are the two primary concerns mentioned,
Speaker 1: their forward contamination and bat contamination. Forward contamination is this
Speaker 1: ethical scientific concern against contaminating other planets with Earth life,
Speaker 1: which could potentially harm any microbes that already exists there
Speaker 1: or obviously larger organisms. But if there is anything like
Speaker 1: that around us, we don't see it or it could
Speaker 1: be damaging the integrity of future scientific re search on
Speaker 1: that planet or moon, Like if you want to go
Speaker 1: there later and try to figure out if there's any
Speaker 1: indigenous life, you might have ruined your chances if you
Speaker 1: spread Earth life all over it. But the other concern
Speaker 1: is more akin to what we're looking at today, which
Speaker 1: is back contamination, and this is based more on self preservation.
Speaker 1: We don't want to endanger Earth life by accidentally returning
Speaker 1: alien pathogens or other dangerous life forms to our home planet. Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, the primary relevance of this in the Outer
Speaker 1: Space Treaty and in NASA protocols is the planets that
Speaker 1: are within reach of us, right which, as far as
Speaker 1: we can tell, look fairly devoid of life. We we
Speaker 1: might get a surprise, but we're not seeing anything running
Speaker 1: around on the surface. What would happen if we tried
Speaker 1: to apply the bio containment principles to a planet that's
Speaker 1: obviously teeming with life. If we go to an alien
Speaker 1: world and there's stuff all over the surface that's reproducing,
Speaker 1: should we feel safe to go down and walk around
Speaker 1: with the helmet off and take in some air. I
Speaker 1: would say maybe not. No, you know, Okay, Well, there
Speaker 1: is an article that I wanted to talk about I
Speaker 1: found in Astrobiology magazine, and that's a magazine about the
Speaker 1: the hypothetical study of of astro you know, applying astronomy
Speaker 1: principles to other life forms around the around the galaxy.
Speaker 1: Obviously we don't know whether they exist, so it's all
Speaker 1: a lot of hypothetical stuff. But it also deals with
Speaker 1: the origins of life on Earth and microbial environments and
Speaker 1: things like that. And the articles called alien Infection by
Speaker 1: Leslie Mullen from August two thousand three, and uh it
Speaker 1: draws in some thoughts on the subject of whether we
Speaker 1: could be infected by alien pathogens on another planet. So
Speaker 1: it cites the American astrobiologist Christopher F. Chiba, and at
Speaker 1: the time he held the Carl Sagan Chair at ST
Speaker 1: Now he's a professor at Princeton. Chaiva says, there are
Speaker 1: two potential types of alien pathogens we need to worry about.
Speaker 1: One would be toxic and the other would be infectious.
Speaker 1: Infectious are the types of germs we share between us
Speaker 1: here on Earth. They infect a host, they can be
Speaker 1: passed from host to host, and they they are parasitizing
Speaker 1: your body in a way, they're using your body to
Speaker 1: do something in the reproductive cycle. Toxic pathogens would be
Speaker 1: merely those that produce a poison or act as a
Speaker 1: poison that damages the body, even if you're not the
Speaker 1: intended host of this organism. So, first of all, there's
Speaker 1: some good news because we should think about how viruses
Speaker 1: and bacteria infectious agents work here on Earth. The strain
Speaker 1: of a disease that affects maybe dogs and chickens or
Speaker 1: even chimpanzees might not infect humans. In fact, it often doesn't.
Speaker 1: Lots of our parasites are co evolved, meaning they're they're
Speaker 1: finally tuned to their preferred host organism. And in the
Speaker 1: same way, animals evolved traits to live in a certain ecosystem.
Speaker 1: You know, think away the hands and the feet and
Speaker 1: tales of tree dwelling primate specialized in climbing trees and
Speaker 1: hanging from branches and swinging between branches that brackyation motion.
Speaker 1: Pathogens evolved to certain ecosystems as well, but those ecosystems
Speaker 1: tend to be the body of their primary host. Thus,
Speaker 1: if you've got alien pathogens that are not specifically evolved
Speaker 1: to colonize our bodies, they might not be able to.
Speaker 1: Then again, this goes both ways. It seems unlikely that
Speaker 1: we would encounter a space microbe finally tuned to infect
Speaker 1: our bodies, but if we did, our immune systems would
Speaker 1: probably not be finally tuned to defend against them. M
Speaker 1: that's true. So what would this look like? So, for example,
Speaker 1: you've got a microorganism that lives in the icy soil
Speaker 1: of Mars. It might be able to get inside our bodies,
Speaker 1: but the internal environments of our bodies that there are
Speaker 1: several options that our bodies might kill it. It might
Speaker 1: be too hot, too wet, it's just not how it's adapted. Alternately,
Speaker 1: it could maybe occupy our bodies without really doing anything,
Speaker 1: and you know, it could infect us, but it wouldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily cause disease or illness, or rapidly reproduce, take over
Speaker 1: our cells, or make toxic byproducts, or cause any other
Speaker 1: kind of damage. But every now and then on Earth
Speaker 1: there is one of these scary situations where a pathogen
Speaker 1: that previously could only infect another type of animal crosses
Speaker 1: the species barrier and becomes able to infect humans. And
Speaker 1: so we wonder if the same thing could happen with
Speaker 1: the microbes of another planet. So, like, if we're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how we could be attacked by microbes
Speaker 1: that did not evolve to infect us and that our
Speaker 1: immune systems did not evolve to fight off, are there
Speaker 1: any Earth parallels we could look to that would give
Speaker 1: us an idea of what that war between us and
Speaker 1: the microbes would look like. The author of this piece
Speaker 1: does come up with an answer, so she talks to
Speaker 1: John Rummel, NASA's former Planetary Protection officer, and Rummel points out,
Speaker 1: you know, there's one way to guess how our bodies
Speaker 1: might be affected by microbes of other planets, and that's
Speaker 1: to look at the effect of non specific microbes on Earth,
Speaker 1: which is are those that didn't co evolve with the
Speaker 1: specific host. Now, one example would I think fall more
Speaker 1: into the category I mentioned earlier of toxic bacteria, and
Speaker 1: this would be the example of cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria is all
Speaker 1: over the place on Earth. It's also known as blue
Speaker 1: green algae, even though it's not really algae, and you
Speaker 1: find it everywhere you go. So if you're out walking
Speaker 1: on a dock and you see blooms of this kind
Speaker 1: of turquoise scums sloshing around against the document. You might
Speaker 1: be looking at blue green algae or cyanobacteria. So cyanobacteria
Speaker 1: are capable of producing biological poisons known as cyanotoxins, for example,
Speaker 1: neurotoxins that attack the nervous system and hepatotoxins that attack
Speaker 1: the liver. And blooms of cyanobacteria in alpine lakes, the
Speaker 1: article points out, have been linked to the deaths of
Speaker 1: cattle in the area around the lakes, even though it's
Speaker 1: not that the cyanobacteria evolved to infect the cattle, and
Speaker 1: it's not that they're specifically trying to protect themselves from
Speaker 1: being eaten by cattle. It's just that the cyano bacteria is.
Speaker 1: Poisons are very general and they work across a broad
Speaker 1: range of organisms. So in the same way that you
Speaker 1: might have if you can imagine a large alien creature
Speaker 1: with a spiked tail, Yes, spike is very very broad
Speaker 1: in its application. It can cut into and decapitate and
Speaker 1: disembow varying types of life forms. Right, this is a
Speaker 1: brilliant analogy. And uh and and the same for just
Speaker 1: a a a sufficiently deadly um strain of sano bacteria. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not like if an alien had i don't know,
Speaker 1: a human shaped iron maide and designed specifically to pierce
Speaker 1: human bodies. That might not work on some cosmic jellyfish
Speaker 1: or gas planet somewhere. But if you just got a
Speaker 1: big spike on your tail, yeah, you can use it
Speaker 1: on pretty much anything. Uh So, yeah, that's a good comparison.
Speaker 1: But another example would be going away from the toxicity
Speaker 1: example and more towards the infectious example, would be, uh,
Speaker 1: the bacteria Seratia marcisns. And this is a rod shaped
Speaker 1: gram negative bacterium that can be found infecting an extremely
Speaker 1: diverse range of hosts. The article cites this is as
Speaker 1: one example of something that sort of works from one
Speaker 1: end of the evolutionary bush to another. It can infect humans,
Speaker 1: of course, and sometimes it's responsible for infections that are
Speaker 1: acquired in what's supposed to be a sterile environment, like
Speaker 1: hospital acquired infections, but it can also infect everything from
Speaker 1: fruit flies to coral Yeah. Crazy. So if there are
Speaker 1: organisms on Earth that can be that generalized in in
Speaker 1: the types of hosts they infect, you can imagine the
Speaker 1: same thing being true of some kuidance of alien microbes. Now,
Speaker 1: the difference there might be even bigger because they are
Speaker 1: not even part of our evolutionary tree. But if we're
Speaker 1: similar enough as organisms, it's it's possible they could infect us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: similar enough. I think that's where a lot of the
Speaker 1: danger lies. And in this I want to I want
Speaker 1: to touch on parasites for just a little bit. Nice. So,
Speaker 1: so here's the thing. Taking into account, Yeah, all the
Speaker 1: variables of conversion evolution on a foreign world. Um, that's
Speaker 1: one thing, But I'm not sure the greatest worry is
Speaker 1: that you would have a fine tune parasite taking to
Speaker 1: it to our body the way that it has, you know,
Speaker 1: evolved to take advantage of a host. Because even on
Speaker 1: our own planet, in the midst of our own ecosystem,
Speaker 1: we see the harmful and even fatal consequences of the
Speaker 1: parasite just getting lost and perishing inside of the wrong
Speaker 1: host or even you know, the right host, it just
Speaker 1: gets turned around. Parasitic death by misadventure. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: misadventure you've gotta be a war weary of. For instance,
Speaker 1: the pork tape worm is a prime example of this.
Speaker 1: Tell me more so, it needs to hold on. Sorry,
Speaker 1: is this what you'd get from eating undercooked pork burgers? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the name the pork tape worm. So this is
Speaker 1: a This is a parasite that needs to venture inside
Speaker 1: a pig to complete its life cycle, but the eggs
Speaker 1: often wind up inside of a human instead. The eggs
Speaker 1: hatch the confused larva. Uh, don't make it to the
Speaker 1: human intestines. Instead, they burrow into the bloodstream. They're swept
Speaker 1: through the body, often winding up in the brain forming cysts.
Speaker 1: And this can disrupt brain functions, damage the brain. It
Speaker 1: can cod's hydrocephalus and the result and it can also
Speaker 1: result in brain hernias that cause coma or death. Whoa,
Speaker 1: this is? This is like some alien stuff? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean really really, if you want to, if you
Speaker 1: want to explore some just complex you know, not only
Speaker 1: xenomorph esque, but like even beyond that level of complexity.
Speaker 1: In terms of life cycles, the parasitic world is phenomenal,
Speaker 1: especially when you have these are crazy branching um life
Speaker 1: cycles that involve multiple organisms. It's it's delightfully grotesque stuff. Uh. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you these parasites you encounter on another world, they or
Speaker 1: the parasites canna encounter you and even enter you. And
Speaker 1: maybe they don't have the they have not evolved to
Speaker 1: fully take advantage of you and serve as a proper parasite.
Speaker 1: But what if they could still get inside you? And
Speaker 1: they get they get lost, They don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: This is actually something I thought of quite a bit
Speaker 1: in viewing Alien Covenant, because we see a few different
Speaker 1: horrific scenes where these neomorphs, these uh, these these white
Speaker 1: sort of proto xenomorph creatures, they burst out of the
Speaker 1: infected person, like through the spine or through the mouth.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it really gave me the idea of all
Speaker 1: these poor things. They don't know where they are, These
Speaker 1: poor creatures, they're just lost inside this human host and
Speaker 1: they're just trying to get out wherever they can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny if you go back to the old alien movies.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not funny. I don't know. If you go
Speaker 1: back to the older alien movies, the aliens we see
Speaker 1: in those movies have a much more highly specified life cycle.
Speaker 1: They infect a person the same way every time, and
Speaker 1: they emerge from a person the same way every time.
Speaker 1: And these newer movies seem to be developing more more
Speaker 1: general diversity in the way the alien organisms parasitize their hosts,
Speaker 1: So again that's something to keep in mind. Uh my.
Speaker 1: My basic point is the parasite need only gain access
Speaker 1: to any of your major body systems or the body
Speaker 1: cavity itself to really mess things up. So it's life
Speaker 1: cycle might be might be doomed. But what about yours? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think we should admit that we just don't
Speaker 1: know what kind of dangers exists on real planets out there,
Speaker 1: and to what extent we would be vulnerable to them
Speaker 1: if they did. But the possibility space of fatal outcomes,
Speaker 1: I would say, is vast, and we just don't know
Speaker 1: what the probability of of real encounters is. Within that space,
Speaker 1: you could possibly have your body wrecked by an alien
Speaker 1: parasite that doesn't know what to do with you, allow
Speaker 1: the pork tape worm. You could effectively be in infected
Speaker 1: by a path of the pathogen that deems you close
Speaker 1: enough to its ideal environment or host organism. Or you
Speaker 1: might be poisoned by the toxic byproducts of defensive poisons
Speaker 1: in a microbial life form that wants nothing to do
Speaker 1: with you, but the story actually gets a little bit
Speaker 1: worse for our intrepid colonists on this exoplanet, because I
Speaker 1: want to mention a couple of things here that specifically
Speaker 1: have to do with space travel. First of all, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've read about this Robert. Space travel jams up
Speaker 1: your immune system. So for several years now, NASA has
Speaker 1: been studying the effects of space flight on immune system
Speaker 1: responsive crew members aboard the I S S. I've got
Speaker 1: a NASA news piece here from August reporting the findings
Speaker 1: of the NASA Integrated Immune Study and Clinical Nutrition Assessment,
Speaker 1: and so far results have shown that astronauts have a
Speaker 1: problem with diminished immune capacity during their time on the
Speaker 1: I S S. Specifically, NASA's Integrated Immune Study showed that
Speaker 1: immune cells remained present in the blood, but their activity
Speaker 1: was confused. Some cells are overactive, other cells are underactive,
Speaker 1: and this leads to a condition they refer to as
Speaker 1: asymptomatic viral shedding, which means you've got dormant viruses inside
Speaker 1: your body that wake up and become active once again
Speaker 1: without the host showing normal symptoms of infection, and then
Speaker 1: in turn, this viral reactivation triggers immune overreaction leading to
Speaker 1: symptoms like allergies and rashes, and so this is often
Speaker 1: times why you see you might see people in the
Speaker 1: I s s like filming videos and they look like
Speaker 1: they're having bad allergies. Yeah, you know that this is
Speaker 1: a This touches on just sort of the The general
Speaker 1: risk of course interplanetary travel, certainly interstellar travel, is that
Speaker 1: it's not just you're you're traveling from a hospitable world
Speaker 1: Earth to some inhospitable world like the ablow three h
Speaker 1: you were you were trying to get there. You have
Speaker 1: to travel a thoroughly inhospitable environment that of of of space,
Speaker 1: deep space, without the you know, protection from well, this
Speaker 1: gets into you know, what kind of technology would you
Speaker 1: have worked out to enable your trip, but you know,
Speaker 1: not having a proper protection from radiation, perhaps not having uh,
Speaker 1: you get into the mental realm as well, like being
Speaker 1: isolated for extended periods of time, like you get you're
Speaker 1: able to show up in that other world a little
Speaker 1: bit crazy sick without properly functioning immune system, and then
Speaker 1: you still have to deal with the rigors of a
Speaker 1: foreign biosphere. The idea is that the day you meet
Speaker 1: a space microbe could be the day, your immune system
Speaker 1: is just about at its worst. And so the article
Speaker 1: sites NASA immunologist Brian Crucian, who says, quote, if this
Speaker 1: situation persisted for longer deep space missions, he's talking about
Speaker 1: the the immune condition of people in the I s s.
Speaker 1: It could possibly increased risk of in action, hypersensitivity or
Speaker 1: autoimmune issues for exploration astronauts. Uh. And so what causes
Speaker 1: this we don't fully know yet, but there are a
Speaker 1: bunch of hypotheses. They focus on microgravity, stress, lack of sleep, uh,
Speaker 1: microbial environment or microbial exposure, isolation, and exposure to radiation.
Speaker 1: On the plus side, I would say all of these
Speaker 1: are things that we would hope, as you just alluded to, Robert,
Speaker 1: you would be able to address by the time we're
Speaker 1: an exoplanet colonizing species. If you're trying to travel to
Speaker 1: exoplanets in a space ship that doesn't have artificial gravity,
Speaker 1: that hasn't come up with ways of dealing with radiation,
Speaker 1: exposure or stress, you've got bigger problems. You know, you're
Speaker 1: you're probably not gonna make it there. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: unless you're go in with a sci fi scenario where
Speaker 1: basically everyone just needs to get out of the pool.
Speaker 1: You know, everyone has to get off of Earth and
Speaker 1: start on these colonies in it. That's the motivation for
Speaker 1: getting there, is that it's either go or perish totally.
Speaker 1: So that is something we should keep in mind. The
Speaker 1: other thing I had to mention so is space travel
Speaker 1: appears to make us immuno compromised. Also, multiple studies have
Speaker 1: shown that space flight conditions can increase the virulence of
Speaker 1: known pathogens. One example would be Salmonella Tiffi mariam. So
Speaker 1: in some experiments, when you took the strain of salmonella
Speaker 1: into space, once it came back, it was more deadly
Speaker 1: to mice than earth grown strains of the same bacterium.
Speaker 1: So if you can imagine picking up a germ on
Speaker 1: an alien planet and then ash overrides Ripley's quarantine procedure
Speaker 1: and you get in the ship and take it back
Speaker 1: to space with you, you could be making things even
Speaker 1: worse for yourself. All right, Well, on that note, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break and when we come back we
Speaker 1: will discuss killer allergens. Thank alright, we're back, And I
Speaker 1: have to say this is an area that I had
Speaker 1: not really given much thought of when I think of
Speaker 1: risks on an alien world. Um, I tend to think
Speaker 1: of I think of the atmosphere. I think of diseases
Speaker 1: and foreign organisms. I think of some of the things
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss in a bit, like radiation. But
Speaker 1: the idea of just all my allergies are acting up
Speaker 1: because um, because side is six. It's just it's just
Speaker 1: really affecting my sinuses. Well, again, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: explore possibility space. So this is not something that I
Speaker 1: think has been um widely explored. I just want to
Speaker 1: think about it as a possibility. So small bits of
Speaker 1: organic matter in the air, for example, of the pollen
Speaker 1: of plants or other airborne life forms. These are the
Speaker 1: kinds of allergens we encounter here on Earth, and I
Speaker 1: wondered what people with allergic susceptibility might might encounter on
Speaker 1: an alien planet. They might not be active pathogens, they
Speaker 1: might not be germs trying to invade your body, but
Speaker 1: that could make your body go haywire. That could trigger
Speaker 1: this critical immune system response and and death by asthma
Speaker 1: or anaphylaxis. So this process might not be as speedy
Speaker 1: as some other dangers, but could represent a threat to
Speaker 1: colonists who burn their helmets or otherwise open them up
Speaker 1: and breathe deep of the alien biosphere. So to look
Speaker 1: at whether this is a possibility, I think we should
Speaker 1: take a quick look at how allergic responses work. An
Speaker 1: allergic reaction is basically just a malfunction of the immune system.
Speaker 1: It happens when a foreign substance called an allergen comes
Speaker 1: into contact with the body and the immune system mistakes
Speaker 1: the substance for a hostile pathogen, right. It thinks that
Speaker 1: you are being infected by a germ that needs attacking,
Speaker 1: when in fact it's just some harmless stuff. It's a
Speaker 1: piece of protein, pollen, something like that, you know, shrimp,
Speaker 1: and this triggers an immune system response that is unnecessary
Speaker 1: and self destructive. It's kind of like if you've got
Speaker 1: an army base and the wind flows a tumble weed
Speaker 1: up against the exterior fence of the base and a
Speaker 1: malfunction in the basis automated defense network responds by shelling
Speaker 1: the area with heavy artillery, destroying part of the base
Speaker 1: in the process. So we don't fully understand all of
Speaker 1: the deep underlying causes of allergic reactions, like why some
Speaker 1: people have specific allergies and other people don't. Twin studies
Speaker 1: do seem to show that there's a strong genetic component
Speaker 1: to allergies, but environmental influences are a factor as well.
Speaker 1: According to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology,
Speaker 1: a little less than about eight percent of adults in
Speaker 1: the US have respiratory allergies also known as hay fever. Worldwide,
Speaker 1: it's more it's like ten percent to thirty percent of
Speaker 1: people as far as we know, And so it's generally
Speaker 1: true that allergic reactions to new substances don't occur immediately
Speaker 1: the first time you get exposed to those substances. The
Speaker 1: body has to encounter the allergen, produce allergy and specific
Speaker 1: antibodies known as I G E antibodies, and then allow
Speaker 1: those antibodies to bind two receptors on immune cells called
Speaker 1: mast cells and bays of rolls. And the delay between
Speaker 1: this first exposure, the sensitizing exposure, and then the potential
Speaker 1: for the first dangerous reaction I think is usually considered
Speaker 1: to be about a week or ten days. So this
Speaker 1: could be something that sneaks up on you. You've been
Speaker 1: on the surface of this planet. For a while, you
Speaker 1: think everything's okay, nobody's gotten sick in the first day
Speaker 1: or two, But suddenly you might get really bad asthma.
Speaker 1: And so this is more of a danger of prolonged
Speaker 1: exposure to an alien biosphere. The first encounter probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: harm you. But once this sensitization has happened, if the
Speaker 1: body encounters that same allergy and again, the cells trigger
Speaker 1: what's known as an allergic cascade. And this means the
Speaker 1: body floods with allergy mediators like histamine, which causes dilation
Speaker 1: of the blood vessels, low blood pressure, itching, sneezing, digestive problems,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And if this gets bad enough, it leads to,
Speaker 1: of course, what we know as anaphylaxis. You know, this
Speaker 1: is the really severe reaction that can be fatal if
Speaker 1: not treated quickly. So I is wondering how how dangerous
Speaker 1: is anaphylaxis, How fatal is it? Can? Can it cause death? Yes,
Speaker 1: but the odds aren't as bad as you think. So
Speaker 1: aten study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology
Speaker 1: found that anaphylactic shock resulted in between sixty three and
Speaker 1: nine deaths in the United States every year However, that's
Speaker 1: only about point three percent of cases where people presented
Speaker 1: in hospitals with anaphylaxis. So if you can get to
Speaker 1: a hospital, it looks like your odds are pretty good.
Speaker 1: Treatment usually tends to be a big shot of epinefron,
Speaker 1: also known as adrenaline, so you get the rush, uh
Speaker 1: and exactly the EpiPen it's a it's an epine an
Speaker 1: auto injector. One hopes that by the time we get
Speaker 1: to these foreign planets the prices have come down a
Speaker 1: little bit and they can stock up the ships with them. Um,
Speaker 1: it's less clear to me what the survival rate without
Speaker 1: medical attention or epinefron would be due to anaphylaxis. But
Speaker 1: of course, on the surface of an alien planet, can
Speaker 1: you get to hospital or can you get your rope
Speaker 1: and fern shot in time? I guess we would just
Speaker 1: hope that your med droid is working well. It has,
Speaker 1: it has the EpiPens for fingers to drive them in.
Speaker 1: That's right. Every time it tries to hug you, you
Speaker 1: get the adrenaline injection. Uh. So. The other the other
Speaker 1: thing to think about would be asthma attacks, which can
Speaker 1: also be triggered by allergic reactions to inhaled irritants, and
Speaker 1: they're often more deadly in the modern day. So an
Speaker 1: asthma attack causes constriction of the airways, and according to
Speaker 1: the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, about ten Americans
Speaker 1: die from asthma every day and ineen asthma killed three thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred and fifty one people. So it's usually treated
Speaker 1: with inhaled broncho dilators like the the emergency and haler
Speaker 1: that you have the rescue in haler um, but it
Speaker 1: can be treated with other stuff in the case of
Speaker 1: a really bad asthma attack. So, if you're on the
Speaker 1: surface of an alien planet, can you imagine what types
Speaker 1: of thing this that go into your body might cause
Speaker 1: a severe allergic reaction. Of course, it could be pollen
Speaker 1: or spores from an alien plant or some other kind
Speaker 1: of germinating life form. Could be alien foods if you
Speaker 1: find yourself eating them, though, I guess have we factored in, Robert,
Speaker 1: do you consider if you take your helmet off, do
Speaker 1: you also just eat the stuff around you? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this the other night because they
Speaker 1: watched um uh, the new MST three K episode that
Speaker 1: deals with the lost world. You know, uh, Edgar ice
Speaker 1: Burrows store German submarine winds up in this place where
Speaker 1: evolutions all walking, and you still have all these dinosaurs
Speaker 1: and they immediately, like right after they kill the first dinosaur,
Speaker 1: they cook it up and they eat it, just no
Speaker 1: concerns whatsoever. Um, it would be it would be funny
Speaker 1: to see that utilize in some of these sci fi
Speaker 1: scenarios where they kill a neomorph in they're like, out
Speaker 1: where we gotta eat, So let's fire up the grill.
Speaker 1: Sick of this freeze dried ice cream. But hey, how
Speaker 1: about another thing for anna phylactic shock? What about the
Speaker 1: venom of an alien organism? Oh yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: look at the terrestrial example, and you have plenty of
Speaker 1: of of small organisms that pack a substantial punch thanks
Speaker 1: to their their neurotoxins. Yeah, but it wouldn't even have
Speaker 1: to be that the or the organism's natural venom is
Speaker 1: strong enough to kill you. I mean, that could have
Speaker 1: been a reason we cited all on its own. Actually
Speaker 1: it would be the venom of alien arthropods. But imagine
Speaker 1: that the venom is not enough to kill you on
Speaker 1: its own, you still could have one of these immune
Speaker 1: system malfunctions. Uh that you know it. Basically, you get
Speaker 1: stung by the alien equivalent of a wasp what would
Speaker 1: we call it, the infernas seven hymenopteroid, and it stings
Speaker 1: you and gives you a dose of something that really
Speaker 1: just just meant to hurt, but instead you have an
Speaker 1: allergic reaction to the insect. And according to the American
Speaker 1: Academy of Allergy, Asthma, Immunology, up to fifty percent of
Speaker 1: people who die from allergic reactions to insects had no
Speaker 1: previously documented allergy, like they didn't know they were allergic.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like it could be a scary scenario
Speaker 1: on an alien world. Yeah, fear of alien bees. Alien bees,
Speaker 1: by the way, also a brand of professional lighting equipment
Speaker 1: for photographers. No way. Yeah, yeah, they have a lovely,
Speaker 1: lovely logo. Dude, I just looked it up. Yes, they
Speaker 1: give it. So they give him the alien face with
Speaker 1: the large eyes. It's like a gray except he's not
Speaker 1: Gray's yellow because he's a bee. And they make his
Speaker 1: wings yellow too. I'm not saying. I'm not sure why
Speaker 1: I'm saying. He I guess it looks kind of masculine.
Speaker 1: In the logo here. But but the bees we know
Speaker 1: and love are women, right. I know about this because
Speaker 1: my wife is a photographer, and uh, and there have
Speaker 1: been times in the past which is like, can you
Speaker 1: help me get the the alien bees? Make sure you can?
Speaker 1: You can you get the alien bees out of the
Speaker 1: car for me? So that the alien bees have become
Speaker 1: a normal part of my life. But then also on
Speaker 1: top of talking about potential alien allergens that that could
Speaker 1: get you, I I don't know to what extent that's
Speaker 1: a real thing to worry about, but I thought that
Speaker 1: was worth considering. There's also this other class where you know,
Speaker 1: we've looked at infectious agents and microorganisms, and we've looked
Speaker 1: at allergens, which is like bits of matter that upset
Speaker 1: your body. I wonder if there's also categories of things
Speaker 1: in between that we haven't even reckoned with, that we
Speaker 1: we don't even fully understand because there's just not a
Speaker 1: strong analogy on Earth. It makes me think about one
Speaker 1: of the picks from the My My Fiction pick from
Speaker 1: the summer reading episode we did last year, which was
Speaker 1: a sci fi book that I really loved called Aurora
Speaker 1: by Kim Stanley Robinson and A lot of reviewers seemed
Speaker 1: to hate this book, I think because they found it
Speaker 1: depressing and pessimistic, conjuring up this universe where space colonist
Speaker 1: characters come to the conclusion that Earth might be the
Speaker 1: only viable home for us in the galaxy. And the
Speaker 1: reason is that, based on a very small sampling of planets,
Speaker 1: planets seemed to be either uninhabitable, unable to sustain life,
Speaker 1: or already home to hostile micro organisms. And and so
Speaker 1: there's this organism. I don't want to spoil too much
Speaker 1: about the book, but they go to a planet whether
Speaker 1: where there is this organism that they just don't really understand.
Speaker 1: It does seem to infect and kill people, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't really work like micro organisms that were familiar with.
Speaker 1: At some point, a character tries to compare it to
Speaker 1: a fast acting preon, like the you know, these misfolded
Speaker 1: proteins that make copies of themselves and damage our tissues
Speaker 1: that way, But then they rule out they say, it
Speaker 1: actually doesn't really work that way. It's just a sci
Speaker 1: fi scenario. But it does make me think about the
Speaker 1: possibility that there could be tiny, chemically active molecules and
Speaker 1: objects that act upon our bodies in ways that are
Speaker 1: not even familiar to us. Uh in the ways we're
Speaker 1: familiar with from micro organisms or from allergens. Interesting, I'm
Speaker 1: not that familiar with with Kim Stanley Robinson. Is there
Speaker 1: another work by this author that I should recognize? This
Speaker 1: is the only book of his that I've read, but
Speaker 1: I know he's well known for his He did a
Speaker 1: trilogy of books about Mars, about terraforming Mars. Yes, that
Speaker 1: that must be where I recognized his name from. They're
Speaker 1: like different colors. I think it's called yes, yes, yes, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have not read those, but I have friends who
Speaker 1: spe Yeah. I haven't read them either, but I so.
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that a lot of people didn't like Aurora,
Speaker 1: I really loved it. I thought it was a fascinating
Speaker 1: counterpoint to a lot of the space exploration fiction we
Speaker 1: usually see. Are you ready to look at the next
Speaker 1: threat to the unhelmeted space explorer? Bring it on? Helmet
Speaker 1: still on? Ready to look at the reason? Number four? Okay,
Speaker 1: how about killer particles? So we discussed this in our
Speaker 1: episode Your Health is a Mars colonist. Many alien worlds
Speaker 1: are likely to contain extremely fine particles of dust, and
Speaker 1: soil that could cause health problems or even kill you.
Speaker 1: One thing that we mentioned in that previous episode that
Speaker 1: I just wanted to mention again. In December nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: you have the crew of the Apollo seventeen walking on
Speaker 1: the un They're out there doing their extra vehicular activity.
Speaker 1: Did they play golf? I can't remember who played golf? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't remember off handy there some people play golf.
Speaker 1: Maybe they did. Maybe that was somebody else. But astronauts
Speaker 1: Harrison Schmidt and Eugene Cernan, and they were operating in
Speaker 1: the location near the Sea of Serenity, and when they
Speaker 1: got back inside the lunar module after the A v A,
Speaker 1: Harrison Schmidt experienced what has been called quote lunar dust
Speaker 1: hay fever, which was this respiratory reaction to inhaling fine
Speaker 1: particles of lunar regulars. So the dust on the surface
Speaker 1: of the Moon has these weird qualities. It's abrasive, it's
Speaker 1: almost kind of been described like tiny fine shards of glass.
Speaker 1: It sticks to everything, It smells like gunpowder. Apparently it's
Speaker 1: hard not to inhale it when you're messing around on
Speaker 1: the surface of the Moon. And when you do, it's
Speaker 1: not good for your respiratory system. It it it messes
Speaker 1: you up. Other planets also have other types of surface soil.
Speaker 1: They're going to be very different than what we're used
Speaker 1: to on Earth, and we need to consider the possibility
Speaker 1: that all of these surface soils could have chemicals in them,
Speaker 1: fine particles that could really be a threat to our
Speaker 1: health and and could even kill us. Even on Earth,
Speaker 1: there are situations where inhalation of fine particles can lead
Speaker 1: to respiratory diseases. Like you can if you inhale a
Speaker 1: lot of extremely fine silica, Like if you're a minor
Speaker 1: or sand blaster or something, you can inhale this stuff,
Speaker 1: this fine silica that it leads to something called silicosis,
Speaker 1: and that's just not good for your lungs. It depends
Speaker 1: on exactly what kind of exposure you get, but eventually
Speaker 1: it can lead to progressive massive fibrosis, which is just
Speaker 1: destroys your lungs. It's almost like your lungs filling up
Speaker 1: with concrete. Uh. You do not want things like this
Speaker 1: going into your lungs. And things like in these fine
Speaker 1: grains could be present on many other worlds. Also. Mars
Speaker 1: is a good example of places where the soil is
Speaker 1: believed to contain chemicals that are not just dangerous in
Speaker 1: terms of them being fine and uh and respirable, But
Speaker 1: the Martian soil is known to contain perclorates, which have
Speaker 1: detrimental effects on the thyroid and hormone production in the
Speaker 1: human body. And we don't know what kinds of toxic
Speaker 1: chemicals could be in the soil of alien planets. But
Speaker 1: if you break the seal between the inside and outside,
Speaker 1: it's difficult to keep fine grain particles separate. And then,
Speaker 1: of course that's just assuming these are just straight up
Speaker 1: particles and they're not radioactive particles, right, because even Earth
Speaker 1: has naturally occurring radioactive particles radionuclides, which can be hazardous
Speaker 1: to your health if you inhale them. And so we
Speaker 1: don't also know the extent to which the surface of
Speaker 1: another planet might be peppered with fine radioactive particles that
Speaker 1: you can suck right in with a deep breath. All right,
Speaker 1: So we're down to the last item on our checklist
Speaker 1: before opening the helmet. And again, this is not just
Speaker 1: the opening of the helmet, but the breaching of the
Speaker 1: mini space suit and the presume protective layers that encompasses, right,
Speaker 1: so this one might be a little bit less helmet
Speaker 1: focused and more just focused on the general barrier between
Speaker 1: you and the outside. That's right. So radiation. We we've
Speaker 1: done a few different episodes now where we've we've we've
Speaker 1: discussed radiation, most most recently the episode dealing with like
Speaker 1: the demon Core idea and like what happens with what
Speaker 1: happened with Chernobyl and the risks probe posed by radiation
Speaker 1: to human health. Yeah. I haven't even thought about this
Speaker 1: before before we did this episode, but walking around with
Speaker 1: exposed skin on these planets, I mean, can you get
Speaker 1: an infurnace six sunburn? Yeah? I would guess depending on
Speaker 1: what the the the star or stars at the center
Speaker 1: of the infurnace system are like yeah, yeah, because both
Speaker 1: cosmic and solar radiation immediately become a problem once you
Speaker 1: leave the neighborhood of Earth, and to your point, even
Speaker 1: on Earth, solar radiation can be an issue depending on
Speaker 1: what your skin situation is like and where you are.
Speaker 1: Even on Earth's surface, we're exposed to a steady ambient
Speaker 1: level of radiation from the sun. Solar radiation, uh, and
Speaker 1: the larger universe cosmic radiation. But Earth's atmosphere and magnetosphere
Speaker 1: work together to protect us from most of the danger.
Speaker 1: So even astronauts on the International Space Station two miles
Speaker 1: above Earth, uh, they're exposed to much more radiation than
Speaker 1: we get on the surface. They're still shielded by Earth's magnetosphere,
Speaker 1: which extends thousands of miles into space around the planet.
Speaker 1: That's right, yea, So even though they're outside the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: there's still within this thing that repels a lot of
Speaker 1: this cosmic radiation. Yeah. This so this sort of magic
Speaker 1: field that's not magic, but you know, it's this wonderful
Speaker 1: protective shield shielding around the Earth. So you land on
Speaker 1: an alien world, you're just thinking about breaching your suit
Speaker 1: taking that helmet off. Does the planet have an atmosphere?
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and assume it does, Otherwise you really
Speaker 1: don't have a good excuse. So if there's so, there's
Speaker 1: some level of radiation shielding just by virtue of there
Speaker 1: being an atmosphere. But is there a magnetosphere? So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and guess there is. Because one of
Speaker 1: the things that happens when there's no magnetosphere is that
Speaker 1: the solar wind strips most of the atmosphere off of
Speaker 1: your world. Yeah, this is we talked about the thin
Speaker 1: atmosphere of Mars. Mars does not have a strong magnetosphere.
Speaker 1: I think it doesn't have one at all. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: talking massive atmosphere loss in these scenarios. So yet to
Speaker 1: to break down who has magnetosphere. There's Mercury, Earth, Jupiter, Ganymede, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.
Speaker 1: Mars definitely does not have one. But in the case
Speaker 1: of you know, an absence of a magnetosphere, massive atmosphere lost.
Speaker 1: There are there are many astrobiologies that predict that that
Speaker 1: potential life on an exoplanet might well be doomed without
Speaker 1: a magneto magnetosphere in place. At the very least, it
Speaker 1: would mean that life would have to flourish there perhaps
Speaker 1: underground be mind, you know, beneath protective ice caps or
Speaker 1: or artificial structures and systems. You get into the same
Speaker 1: scenario when we start thinking about the potential Mars colonists, like,
Speaker 1: how how would you effectively shield uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: colony on that world? Right, you want to like dig
Speaker 1: underground or something. Yeah, Still, you've got this protective space
Speaker 1: suit presumably provides some sort of protection against radiation, and
Speaker 1: even a world protected by a magnetosphere and an atmosphere
Speaker 1: can be a radioactive mess for creatures such as ourselves.
Speaker 1: I mean, it could be naturally occurring radioactive environments which
Speaker 1: we we certainly encounter, or something compromised by an intelligent
Speaker 1: species radioactive dumping. So to come back to the the
Speaker 1: alien universe, we don't know what the what other crimes
Speaker 1: the the engineers got up to today decided to just
Speaker 1: dump a whole bunch of radioactive waste on any particular planet.
Speaker 1: It seems like the kind of thing we would do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, So that's the thing that I guess is
Speaker 1: worth considering. What is the range of possibilities for the
Speaker 1: natural ground based radioactivity of a foreign planet? I mean,
Speaker 1: on Earth, there are natural sources of radiation apart from
Speaker 1: just what's coming from the sky. We've got uranium in
Speaker 1: the Earth. Uranium decays produces radon gas. If you inhale that,
Speaker 1: you can have radiation exposure. Uh so, yeah, I guess,
Speaker 1: I guess we just don't know what's possible on other planets. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: to put everything in sort of a uh in context
Speaker 1: of what we have here, which is our again, our
Speaker 1: best model for what we might find elsewhere. Uh. In
Speaker 1: terms of natural radiation, again, everybody has to do with
Speaker 1: some degree of terrestrial radiation thanks to naturally occurring radioactive
Speaker 1: materials such as uranium, thorium, radium, et cetera. In the Earth,
Speaker 1: and the inhabited area on the planet with the highest
Speaker 1: levels of terrestrial radiation is Ramsar, Iran, and this is
Speaker 1: due to a nearby radioactive hot spring in building materials
Speaker 1: that have been harvested from there. But I think I
Speaker 1: recall reading because we did a now piece on this,
Speaker 1: didn't mean that that actually in rams are like people
Speaker 1: are not don't really have much worse health outcomes despite
Speaker 1: the fact that they're exposed to elevated levels of radiation.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's my understanding. But but just in terms
Speaker 1: of like the levels here and these are gonna be
Speaker 1: this is what we're looking at, and this is gonna
Speaker 1: be in ing wise or nano gray units, and uh,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be per hour, I believe, so absorbed
Speaker 1: rates of radiation in the air and Ramsar are going
Speaker 1: to be between seventy and seventeen thousand and again that's
Speaker 1: the highest you're gonna find for an inhabited area on Earth.
Speaker 1: But if you go into uninhabited Uh, then this is
Speaker 1: the place that takes takes the cake. The Black Beaches
Speaker 1: of guadapare Brazil, and they contain monosite, which is a
Speaker 1: phosphate of rare earth metals containing uranium and thorium. Uh
Speaker 1: So it's in the sand here and it produce uses
Speaker 1: absorbed dose rates of of ninety to ninety thousand en
Speaker 1: gy wise um per hour. And now that's just natural radiation.
Speaker 1: If you go ahead and new a factory in radioactive
Speaker 1: pollution in our case by humans, but in another case
Speaker 1: by some you know, it doesn't even have to be
Speaker 1: an existing estraterrestrial species. You know, presumably you could have
Speaker 1: the radioactive waste of a of a of an inner
Speaker 1: planetary or simply planetary society that then later got onto
Speaker 1: destroying itself. Like what have we arrived on an exoplanet?
Speaker 1: We realize, Oh, the previous inhabitants annihilated themselves with an
Speaker 1: atomic war. Uh, surely that's been explored. That sounds like
Speaker 1: classic trek right there. But if we factor that in,
Speaker 1: then the most polluted example we have on Earth is
Speaker 1: h Lake Karace in Russia. This is a long time
Speaker 1: dumping site for radioactive waste and by most estimates, the
Speaker 1: most radioactive place on the planet now is that including
Speaker 1: next to the elephant's foot in in chernobyl Um. I
Speaker 1: believe so, yeah, I mean the idea here is that
Speaker 1: we're talking like longstanding you know, radiation. So this was
Speaker 1: just a place where just a small ural mountain lake
Speaker 1: where they would just dump stuff. They would they would
Speaker 1: just dump radioactive waste continually, and uh it they let
Speaker 1: to researchers in in the nineties to analyze it based
Speaker 1: on I think current satellite data. It's completely covered and cement.
Speaker 1: Now there have been attempts to to manage it. But
Speaker 1: in nineteen nine, uh, it's said if you were standing
Speaker 1: on the shore of the lake, you more than an
Speaker 1: hour of exposure would have been fatal. Wow. So I
Speaker 1: think you know, you can you can imagine a scenario
Speaker 1: where you you land on a world, maybe you have
Speaker 1: a preliminary radiation reading for just sort of the world itself.
Speaker 1: You wander onto a black sand beach. Yeah you want,
Speaker 1: you want onto the beach and uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: next thing, you know, you're absorbing increasing levels of radiation,
Speaker 1: which might not be an immediate problem, but it might be, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a problem of prolonged exposure. Right. Well, when
Speaker 1: we think about radiation again, there are there are two
Speaker 1: main ways that you would want to keep yourself sealed
Speaker 1: from your environment. It works in multiple ways. So one
Speaker 1: is that you would have a suit. Hopefully they would
Speaker 1: have some kind of shielding that proprides a barrier against
Speaker 1: the ray radiation, you know, the bombardment of your body
Speaker 1: with direct rays like gamma rays or neutron radiation. But
Speaker 1: then you would also want to keep your environment sealed
Speaker 1: so that you don't have the interaction with radioactive particles.
Speaker 1: And I think that could be one of the biggest dangers,
Speaker 1: is the inhalation of these radio nuclides. The more I
Speaker 1: think about it just might be better to leave the
Speaker 1: suit on. Definitely, no matter how delicious the neomorphs seem,
Speaker 1: no matter how delightful that beach may seem, maybe it's
Speaker 1: just better just to stay in the suit. It's I'm
Speaker 1: sure it has a bathroom function. Okay, here's a question.
Speaker 1: You're totally out of freeze, dried ice cream, no earth
Speaker 1: food left, you're on the alien planet. You've killed a neomorph.
Speaker 1: Do you starve to death or do you try to
Speaker 1: eat it? Well, I guess you try and eat it.
Speaker 1: I mean, geez, I don't know, of course, not knowing
Speaker 1: what I know about the neomorphs. Now, I mean, actually
Speaker 1: that maybe in a sense that's a survival method because
Speaker 1: you know that you might live on in some sorts,
Speaker 1: some form or another, right, right, at least you're parasitic progeny. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that the NEOMRP sandwich kind of becomes you, and then
Speaker 1: then you're good to go. Now you're completely acclimatized to
Speaker 1: the environment. You're no longer remotely human, but you're thriving. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I hope you have enjoyed this weird exoplanet speculation with us.
Speaker 1: But but if we haven't convinced you knit by now
Speaker 1: to keep your helmet on, uh, we're probably not gonna
Speaker 1: all right, Yeah, it's probably off by now, I'm guessing
Speaker 1: you know. But but hopefully we give you some good
Speaker 1: ideas here. Uh. Now, that's not to say that I
Speaker 1: want you to go in and just kneel the grass.
Speaker 1: Tyson the heck out of every science fiction film you see,
Speaker 1: because I think there's there's ultimately little joy in that,
Speaker 1: but but it it does. I do think it's always
Speaker 1: important to to have the scientific reality and at least
Speaker 1: in the background. You know, it's an act of disengaging
Speaker 1: from what you know about the real threats of space exploration,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just not knowing about it to begin with,
Speaker 1: and and and basing everything on the sci fi fantasy
Speaker 1: world you're observing. Well, I think earlier I mentioned something
Speaker 1: about how for me it has it's consistency. Really like,
Speaker 1: if if a movie seems to have an ethic of
Speaker 1: realism and hard science, I will be troubled by things
Speaker 1: that are unrealistic. But if it doesn't across the board
Speaker 1: have an ethic of realism and hard science, then who cares? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess you know it comes. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: if you were to encounter a scene where the helmet
Speaker 1: comes off in two thousand and one, right, like that
Speaker 1: would be a case we're like, whoa, come on, Stanley.
Speaker 1: Up until now, like we didn't even have sound in space.
Speaker 1: We're being just really hard with our science and now
Speaker 1: you're just kind of thrown it to the wind. But yeah,
Speaker 1: does in the windom do not sing. I'm sorry for
Speaker 1: singing twice, y'all. All right, everybody, Well, if you like
Speaker 1: this discussion here today, head on over the stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. That's where we have all
Speaker 1: the podcast episodes, and we also have things like videos
Speaker 1: and blog posts um including my expanded review of Alien
Speaker 1: Covenant that is on the website and that will be
Speaker 1: on the landing page for this episode as well. Also
Speaker 1: include links to other alien related and sci fi related
Speaker 1: content that we've covered over the years. And if you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with us directly, as always,
Speaker 1: you can email us at blow the Mind at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Let us know what you think. Send an email to
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff works dot com.