So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather?
What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving.
To paraphrase one of my favorite bits of a ‘humans are awesome’ fiction megapost: “you don’t know you’re from a Death World until you leave it.” For a ton of reasons, I really like the idea of Earth being Space Australia.
Earth being Space Australia
Words cannot express how much I love these posts
Alien: “I’m sorry, what did you just say your comfortable temperature range is?”
Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”
Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”
Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.”
Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”
Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”
Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”
Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.”
Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.”
I’d like to add that Earth is actually the only planet that we have found tectonic plates on, every other planet we have found has a completely different system of regenerating the crust. And the we believe the reason for this is that early on in Earth’s history and object the size of Mars smashed into us, literally shattering the crust. So the idea that our land masses are slowly crawling along the surface would be absolutely bizarre to aliens.
Sure, other planets have seismic activity that could result in an Earthquake, but not because massive plates of the crust are crashing into each other and creating mountains, pulling away from each other exposing the mantle, going under other pieces and sliding alongside each other, grinding. And not only is all of this happening constantly, we often live along the boundaries where all this is happening.
Not to mention that humans as a group are gleefully reckless, versatile, and (considering how fragile an individual can be) pretty dang resilient. Our bodies have all kinds of self-repair mechanisms that, while occasionally too aggressive (autoimmune diseases come to mind), lets us survive injuries and environmental conditions that would kill other animals. We aren’t the biggest, the strongest, or the fastest creatures on earth, but there’s a reason humans currently live all over the planet without much major competition except ourselves, for better or worse.
We often subject ourselves to extreme situations for fun, bragging rights, and just to see if we can. And when we can’t survive unaided, we build tools and vehicles, and go anyhow. North/South Pole expeditions, Mount Everest climbers, sea-floor exploration, manned space exploration, recent discussion of Mars colonization…. Basically, if we can get enough information about a hazard, we can probably figure out a means to handle it.
Incidentally, this is probably why the whole Mars-colonization idea is so appealing for our long-term survival. A really big meteor smacking into the Earth might wipe out all humans just because we wouldn’t have the time/resources to build a countermeasure.
Humans don’t just figure out how to deal with external problems, we have also been systematically trying to figure out how to deal with every internal problem (until we all just kind of die of old age). Things like infections, lost limbs, diseases, even fundamentally genetic problems that would kill us only a few generations ago we try to treat. And we think it’s normal that “oh yeah just give us a few more decades we’ll have that sorted eventually”.
Humans Are Weird
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A Glitch Named Anti 