Growing up I was horrified of the idea of a hostile Alien invasion.

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

I mean, how do we even know (maybe they addressed this, I don't watch the movies) that their ENTIRE SPECIES are hunters? For all we know, they are a bunch of hick yokel hunters, and the rest of their society looks down on them as they go around killing other species? We aren't all whale hunters or deer hunters on Earth, but that might be all some whales or deer ever experience of humans.

A whole society of hunters is dumb, I agree. One could make the argument of that they were a successor species. They had a progenitor race that designed them and they sort of just adopted their tech. Which isn't that strange a concept. A full blown post-humanist horizon is probably, in terms of neuroscience, about 80 years on the horizon? I mean the advances we've made in understanding the brain and submerged chipping means that we're on the brink of humanity's next, great evolutionary leap.

It's an exciting time to be alive. Genetic engineering and Deus Ex style transhumanism nonsense... forget all that garbo surface trash thinking. I mean sense data sharing. I mean being integrated into universes of thought. Tearing down borders of individuality to create a human hive. Actually up-ending ideas of society and every conception of what it means to be human.

That being said... there's always the chance that such a society might collapse. Leaving remnants of pre-integrated humans.

 

[skywolfblue]

Growing up I was horrified of the idea of a hostile Alien invasion.

But now hostile alien invasions don't bother you??????

--------------------------

The problem is, most evil aliens don't make sense, cause they master intergalactic travel, but are mindless bloodsucking monsters who don't wear clothes?

Hell, even Mass Effect made no sense, I mean the Turians should have known better and realized humans didn't know what the hell they were doing. Not like humans were the first other species they ever met, you'd think there would be protocol, ala Star Trek.

Hmm when you think about it, the Orcs from Warcraft are from another world entirely and had to invade Azeroth via portals.

Yet none died to the native germs inhabiting Azeroth

Right, but fantasy is fantasy, and the idea of alien invaders invading Earth without clothing is something different.

Clothing just makes sense. Even if you'rea super-advanced race, clothing brings utility. It allows you to store tools, determine social standing, protection from hazards, and an outlet for creativity and self-expression.

Even if an alien race manages to do without some of that it's hard to imagine they can do awaywith all of that.

Particularly if they have managed to achieve interstellar society.

Clothing brings us a lot of utility. Yet the same might not be true for alien races. I'd put forward the Hanar from Mass Effect, or the Aliens from Arrival as species that probably wouldn't benefit from clothes all that much.

Their body physiology doesn't lend itself well to pockets. It might be easier for them to store tools in a toolkit that they always keep on hand.

Aliens may not view "spacesuits" as a needed thing, and instead use pressurized pods/spaceships.

Social Standing is probably the biggest thing. In a race without clothes, anyone who wears them would instantly be famous and recognizable. Yet aliens need not be individualistic.

 

[Squilookle]

In the War of the Worlds book, the Aliens were these octopus looking creatures:

I love the way it lists some of H.G. Wells' books and then just says 'etc.'

That's when you know you're a writer who's influence on a genre is basically untouchable

Funnily enough, my first taste of alien invasion stories was also The War of The Worlds, but it was Jeff Wayne's musical version. It's still may favourite version of the story (though I have a soft spot for the goofy 50s movie), but when my Dad first played it to me the car radio had accidentally been turned way up, and from the moment Richard Burton's voice boomed out of that radio so thunderously, I was already terrified of alien invasions.

I mean, just listen to the first minute of it, and imagine not knowing what to expect, and this dialogue shattering the silence. Also you're about 7 years old:

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Growing up I was horrified of the idea of a hostile Alien invasion.

But now hostile alien invasions don't bother you??????

--------------------------

The problem is, most evil aliens don't make sense, cause they master intergalactic travel, but are mindless bloodsucking monsters who don't wear clothes?

Hell, even Mass Effect made no sense, I mean the Turians should have known better and realized humans didn't know what the hell they were doing. Not like humans were the first other species they ever met, you'd think there would be protocol, ala Star Trek.

Hmm when you think about it, the Orcs from Warcraft are from another world entirely and had to invade Azeroth via portals.

Yet none died to the native germs inhabiting Azeroth

Right, but fantasy is fantasy, and the idea of alien invaders invading Earth without clothing is something different.

Clothing just makes sense. Even if you'rea super-advanced race, clothing brings utility. It allows you to store tools, determine social standing, protection from hazards, and an outlet for creativity and self-expression.

Even if an alien race manages to do without some of that it's hard to imagine they can do awaywith all of that.

Particularly if they have managed to achieve interstellar society.

Clothing brings us a lot of utility. Yet the same might not be true for alien races. I'd put forward the Hanar from Mass Effect, or the Aliens from Arrival as species that probably wouldn't benefit from clothes all that much.

Their body physiology doesn't lend itself well to pockets. It might be easier for them to store tools in a toolkit that they always keep on hand.

Aliens may not view "spacesuits" as a needed thing, and instead use pressurized pods/spaceships.

Social Standing is probably the biggest thing. In a race without clothes, anyone who wears them would instantly be famous and recognizable. Yet aliens need not be individualistic.

IDK, the Hanar are a pretty fantastic concept of a levitating (if I remember correctly) species with no obvious form of propulsion. That's already a pretty big stretch of the imagination. They're also a pretty singular species like that. If you're going to invade a planet, you don't want to lose pilots and ships just because the hull gets partly ruptured. Space suits are effectively lifeboats of space craft. It also allows an foreign species to survive any direct contact with the enemy... like capturing enemy soldiers.

Honestly the Volus made the most sense to me. Their clothing seem the most logical for settling foreign worlds, and their materialist outlook makes sense for a species requiring extreme needs and necessities to simply leave their ships.

And that's probably the reality for humans going somewhere, as well.

Like even going to Mars, you have Martian dust as fine as moondust, which will stick to clothing, and is absolutely riddled with highly toxic perchlorates. So it's not so much a case of humans getting to an airlock and being able to take off our siits after repressurization....

Much more a case of the Volus.

After all... imagine this...

... but toxic Martian dust.

Moondust gets everywhere, and it's not that healthy to begin with. Martian dust is even worse.

Humans are going to be the Volus of any interstellar society. Perpetually terrified of being without the means to create ideal environments to survive. Encased in hydraulically powered steel and textile space suits, carrying specially designed webbing harnasses to carry emergency life support tools, 'passports', and other necessities to meet medical emergencies like autoinjectors of epinephrine, multi-directional camera arrays wired into a hardened visor HUD so that we can instantly scan every angle around us, voice synthesisers in case our comms fail while in pressurized environments, and utterly obsessed with material wealth given their very survival depends on it.

Let's say you're on the citadel. You're going to spend 2 hours checking every part of your gear before exiting your spaceship. That hypothetical CO2 scrubber on your air recyc system is not just a CO2 scrubber. It's your fucking life. You're going to be pretty fucking tetchy when anyone, alien or not, pokes your 'outfit' in curiosity or goes through your stuff.

Your spacesuit is going to be your pride and joy. You're going to personalize it. Make sure everyone knows it's *yours*... and depending on your superstitions, likely adorned with good luck charms and stylized images to assist in how others recognize you and your property. If you want an example of this, look at the long historical instances of using playing cards and card symbols in Western military cultures.

And I think that is going to be a reality of any direct contact. So clothing comes with the territory.

In terms of carrying tools, displaying rank, and keeping us alive. I'm pretty sure that would be the status quo for other races as well.

With examples like the Hanar, it makes assumptions of the types of planets that can support advanced intelligence, as well as if evolution doesn't exist... in much the same way we can guesstimate an advanced space faring alien race likely has a concept of 0, we can guesstimate the type of ecological niches that allow intelligence to arise.

For example, colour perception of humans, occipital lobe activity, and the sheer computational capabilities if the brain to make intuitive deductions of edge detection and object depth. And these are critical to human functioning in a natural world and the expression of our intelligence and survival. Only through the relative kindness of civilization and the intelligence to create our built environment do the completely blind lead lives of near-independence.

Imagine how difficult it would be to achieve space flight, much less permanent structures and cities, if we didn't have such a phenomenal and intuitive grasp of vision? What about written language? What about threat detection? What about visual artistry? Our capacities for vision give us a fascination with our visual world. We crave it like a drug.

So much so prisoner's cinema and 'white torture' are things... So expect our space suits will be riddled with colourful nuances once their saturation rate is high enough...

It's hard to imagine a sufficiently advanced species wouldn't have a similar affinity for colour, form and visualized movement.

To put it in other ways... while scientists and engineers may marvel at the devices and capabilities of contact with another sapient species, it will be their forms, mannerisms and artistry that will capture everyone's imagination... and likely them in turn...

And just as well at that... an affinity for vision and how to entertain our quiet lusts for visual stimulation may be the only thing we may logically share on a cultural level. And by those virtues, may be able to find greater worth in peaceable cultural exchange rather than merely the terror of discovering we are not alone, and someone doing something very smart/stupid of simply attacking it.

Once again... we really, *really* don't want to discover that life is easy in the universe. It's best to assume we are alone.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I personally thought the Spielberg War of the Worlds was rubbish, but that's just me.

Aaaaaand, War of the Worlds was partly a response to European colonialism. Which I thought should be mentioned.

 

[Saelune]

Spoiler

Growing up I was horrified of the idea of a hostile Alien invasion.

But now hostile alien invasions don't bother you??????

--------------------------

The problem is, most evil aliens don't make sense, cause they master intergalactic travel, but are mindless bloodsucking monsters who don't wear clothes?

Hell, even Mass Effect made no sense, I mean the Turians should have known better and realized humans didn't know what the hell they were doing. Not like humans were the first other species they ever met, you'd think there would be protocol, ala Star Trek.

Hmm when you think about it, the Orcs from Warcraft are from another world entirely and had to invade Azeroth via portals.

Yet none died to the native germs inhabiting Azeroth

Right, but fantasy is fantasy, and the idea of alien invaders invading Earth without clothing is something different.

Clothing just makes sense. Even if you'rea super-advanced race, clothing brings utility. It allows you to store tools, determine social standing, protection from hazards, and an outlet for creativity and self-expression.

Even if an alien race manages to do without some of that it's hard to imagine they can do awaywith all of that.

Particularly if they have managed to achieve interstellar society.

Clothing brings us a lot of utility. Yet the same might not be true for alien races. I'd put forward the Hanar from Mass Effect, or the Aliens from Arrival as species that probably wouldn't benefit from clothes all that much.

Their body physiology doesn't lend itself well to pockets. It might be easier for them to store tools in a toolkit that they always keep on hand.

Aliens may not view "spacesuits" as a needed thing, and instead use pressurized pods/spaceships.

Social Standing is probably the biggest thing. In a race without clothes, anyone who wears them would instantly be famous and recognizable. Yet aliens need not be individualistic.

IDK, the Hanar are a pretty fantastic concept of a levitating (if I remember correctly) species with no obvious form of propulsion. That's already a pretty big stretch of the imagination. They're also a pretty singular species like that. If you're going to invade a planet, you don't want to lose pilots and ships just because the hull gets partly ruptured. Space suits are effectively lifeboats of space craft. It also allows an foreign species to survive any direct contact with the enemy... like capturing enemy soldiers.

Honestly the Volus made the most sense to me. Their clothing seem the most logical for settling foreign worlds, and their materialist outlook makes sense for a species requiring extreme needs and necessities to simply leave their ships.

And that's probably the reality for humans going somewhere, as well.

Like even going to Mars, you have Martian dust as fine as moondust, which will stick to clothing, and is absolutely riddled with highly toxic perchlorates. So it's not so much a case of humans getting to an airlock and being able to take off our siits after repressurization....

Much more a case of the Volus.

After all... imagine this...

... but toxic Martian dust.

Moondust gets everywhere, and it's not that healthy to begin with. Martian dust is even worse.

Humans are going to be the Volus of any interstellar society. Perpetually terrified of being without the means to create ideal environments to survive. Encased in hydraulically powered steel and textile space suits, carrying specially designed webbing harnasses to carry emergency life support tools, 'passports', and other necessities to meet medical emergencies like autoinjectors of epinephrine, multi-directional camera arrays wired into a hardened visor HUD so that we can instantly scan every angle around us, voice synthesisers in case our comms fail while in pressurized environments, and utterly obsessed with material wealth given their very survival depends on it.

Let's say you're on the citadel. You're going to spend 2 hours checking every part of your gear before exiting your spaceship. That hypothetical CO2 scrubber on your air recyc system is not just a CO2 scrubber. It's your fucking life. You're going to be pretty fucking tetchy when anyone, alien or not, pokes your 'outfit' in curiosity or goes through your stuff.

Your spacesuit is going to be your pride and joy. You're going to personalize it. Make sure everyone knows it's *yours*... and depending on your superstitions, likely adorned with good luck charms and stylized images to assist in how others recognize you and your property. If you want an example of this, look at the long historical instances of using playing cards and card symbols in Western military cultures.

And I think that is going to be a reality of any direct contact. So clothing comes with the territory.

In terms of carrying tools, displaying rank, and keeping us alive. I'm pretty sure that would be the status quo for other races as well.

With examples like the Hanar, it makes assumptions of the types of planets that can support advanced intelligence, as well as if evolution doesn't exist... in much the same way we can guesstimate an advanced space faring alien race likely has a concept of 0, we can guesstimate the type of ecological niches that allow intelligence to arise.

For example, colour perception of humans, occipital lobe activity, and the sheer computational capabilities if the brain to make intuitive deductions of edge detection and object depth. And these are critical to human functioning in a natural world and the expression of our intelligence and survival. Only through the relative kindness of civilization and the intelligence to create our built environment do the completely blind lead lives of near-independence.

Imagine how difficult it would be to achieve space flight, much less permanent structures and cities, if we didn't have such a phenomenal and intuitive grasp of vision? What about written language? What about threat detection? What about visual artistry? Our capacities for vision give us a fascination with our visual world. We crave it like a drug.

So much so prisoner's cinema and 'white torture' are things... So expect our space suits will be riddled with colourful nuances once their saturation rate is high enough...

It's hard to imagine a sufficiently advanced species wouldn't have a similar affinity for colour, form and visualized movement.

To put it in other ways... while scientists and engineers may marvel at the devices and capabilities of contact with another sapient species, it will be their forms, mannerisms and artistry that will capture everyone's imagination... and likely them in turn...

And just as well at that... an affinity for vision and how to entertain our quiet lusts for visual stimulation may be the only thing we may logically share on a cultural level. And by those virtues, may be able to find greater worth in peaceable cultural exchange rather than merely the terror of discovering we are not alone, and someone doing something very smart/stupid of simply attacking it.

Once again... we really, *really* don't want to discover that life is easy in the universe. It's best to assume we are alone.

Well, I mean, Mass Effect is essentially saying in their universe that the default is that most interplanetary species have similar respiratory requirements as humans. A more realistic idea would really be that we ALL, us and other theoretical interplanetary species would require equipment to make spacefaring work. But that is just another one of those overly hand-waved aspects, though one I think that is detrimental, particularly in Star Trek.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

I think everyone has a few alien invasion movies that stick with them as the special guests of their earliest nightmares, usually their first few before it became a 'common setting' in their minds.

My very first alien invasion film was Star Trek: First Contact, and the first invasion I read about was the Animorphs series. So I wasn't so much terrified of our planet being destroyed as I was by the prospect of our slow, agonizing conversion into something decidedly not recognizable as human. Slaves, or worse.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

I 'member being afraid that an apple seed might grow into a tree in my stomach if one was eaten. I also 'member being afraid the LHC would create a black hole and destroy our whole planet overnight. Aliens though? Nah, the sooner the better please. Same with ghosts. Anything at all would be nice, don't matter if you got bad intentions. Anything to break the existential isolation we currently find ourselves in really. Can't remember any fears of being colonised by aggressive entities. Wonder if that's a symptom of being British and all the baggage that entails.

 

[Elijin]

Im not saying anyone here is wrong or right, since that's obviously an unknown quantity.

What I am gonna say, is that some of you are really stumped by the concept of alien. Some great deductive logic in here, for sure. But none of it allows for the concept that something can be so alien we have no frame of reference, or base understanding of it. All of the logic deductions essentially come from a place of 'The Aliens might be alien, but they wont be THAT alien, they will still follow these rules which we've found useful to our experience of life and evolution.'

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

I 'member being afraid that an apple seed might grow into a tree in my stomach if one was eaten. I also 'member being afraid the LHC would create a black hole and destroy our whole planet overnight. Aliens though? Nah, the sooner the better please. Same with ghosts. Anything at all would be nice, don't matter if you got bad intentions. Anything to break the existential isolation we currently find ourselves in really. Can't remember any fears of being colonised by aggressive entities. Wonder if that's a symptom of being British and all the baggage that entails.

Yea, I have never been afraid of aliens, and I also remember my cousin who told me if I swallowed Watermelon seeds they would grow out my ears. The one thing I was completely terrified of, though rightly so, due to the sheer number of them I have survived was tornadoes. I had a recurring nightmare that something happened on earth that caused a nightmarish weather shift and there were hundreds of tornadoes everywhere.

Ever since that birthday when I as a kid where the sheriff came by with his bull horn telling us to take cover and everyone had already taken shelter when me and my Dad were still outside and I saw one huge funnel with two skinny trailers in a row coming straight for us and it throwing cars and digging into the ground destroying everything. Those three tornadoes lined up like that is something I will never forget. When My dad realized I was still outside he yelled at me to get in the shelter and I ran into the house and grabbed my birthday cake since I had not even blown out my candles yet and held on to that thing the whole time I was in shelter. My dad came running in last and held onto the door the entire time in the hopes of preventing it from flying off. It sounded horrible, much worse than standing next to a train and we heard crashing and glass and thought we were done in for.

We lucked out though, it touched down across the street from our house and destroyed a barn entirely and threw it at and into our house. part of the barn was in our living room, on our roof and in our back yard. It apparently went back up and skipped us and came down again behind our house and destroyed another barn. I survived many after that, but that was the closest it came to "getting me" except maybe the one that threw a tree at my car while driving home. Man I hate those things. I am probably going to have nightmares again now.

 

[stroopwafel]

Aliens never scared me, to be honest it would be kind of a relief if they existed even if they were hostile. What kind of gives me existential angst is the cosmic coincidence of life itself, and that there might indeed be nothing more than a cold and perpetually silent universe. That we are the only sentient creatures with no clue why we are on this dying rock anyway, wasting our time on trivial bullshit till the day we die. And that one day all life on earth will be snuffed out, and that there will be no one to lament it's loss. Only the perpetual indifference of the cosmos. In cosmic terms, life will never have existed in the first place.

 

[Squilookle]

I 'member being afraid that an apple seed might grow into a tree in my stomach if one was eaten. I also 'member being afraid the LHC would create a black hole and destroy our whole planet overnight. Aliens though? Nah, the sooner the better please. Same with ghosts. Anything at all would be nice, don't matter if you got bad intentions. Anything to break the existential isolation we currently find ourselves in really. Can't remember any fears of being colonised by aggressive entities. Wonder if that's a symptom of being British and all the baggage that entails.

Yea, I have never been afraid of aliens, and I also remember my cousin who told me if I swallowed Watermelon seeds they would grow out my ears. The one thing I was completely terrified of, though rightly so, due to the sheer number of them I have survived was tornadoes. I had a recurring nightmare that something happened on earth that caused a nightmarish weather shift and there were hundreds of tornadoes everywhere.

Ever since that birthday when I as a kid where the sheriff came by with his bull horn telling us to take cover and everyone had already taken shelter when me and my Dad were still outside and I saw one huge funnel with two skinny trailers in a row coming straight for us and it throwing cars and digging into the ground destroying everything. Those three tornadoes lined up like that is something I will never forget. When My dad realized I was still outside he yelled at me to get in the shelter and I ran into the house and grabbed my birthday cake since I had not even blown out my candles yet and held on to that thing the whole time I was in shelter. My dad came running in last and held onto the door the entire time in the hopes of preventing it from flying off. It sounded horrible, much worse than standing next to a train and we heard crashing and glass and thought we were done in for.

We lucked out though, it touched down across the street from our house and destroyed a barn entirely and threw it at and into our house. part of the barn was in our living room, on our roof and in our back yard. It apparently went back up and skipped us and came down again behind our house and destroyed another barn. I survived many after that, but that was the closest it came to "getting me" except maybe the one that threw a tree at my car while driving home. Man I hate those things. I am probably going to have nightmares again now.

wait how much of that was nightmare, and how much of it happened?

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

I 'member being afraid that an apple seed might grow into a tree in my stomach if one was eaten. I also 'member being afraid the LHC would create a black hole and destroy our whole planet overnight. Aliens though? Nah, the sooner the better please. Same with ghosts. Anything at all would be nice, don't matter if you got bad intentions. Anything to break the existential isolation we currently find ourselves in really. Can't remember any fears of being colonised by aggressive entities. Wonder if that's a symptom of being British and all the baggage that entails.

Yea, I have never been afraid of aliens, and I also remember my cousin who told me if I swallowed Watermelon seeds they would grow out my ears. The one thing I was completely terrified of, though rightly so, due to the sheer number of them I have survived was tornadoes. I had a recurring nightmare that something happened on earth that caused a nightmarish weather shift and there were hundreds of tornadoes everywhere.

Ever since that birthday when I as a kid where the sheriff came by with his bull horn telling us to take cover and everyone had already taken shelter when me and my Dad were still outside and I saw one huge funnel with two skinny trailers in a row coming straight for us and it throwing cars and digging into the ground destroying everything. Those three tornadoes lined up like that is something I will never forget. When My dad realized I was still outside he yelled at me to get in the shelter and I ran into the house and grabbed my birthday cake since I had not even blown out my candles yet and held on to that thing the whole time I was in shelter. My dad came running in last and held onto the door the entire time in the hopes of preventing it from flying off. It sounded horrible, much worse than standing next to a train and we heard crashing and glass and thought we were done in for.

We lucked out though, it touched down across the street from our house and destroyed a barn entirely and threw it at and into our house. part of the barn was in our living room, on our roof and in our back yard. It apparently went back up and skipped us and came down again behind our house and destroyed another barn. I survived many after that, but that was the closest it came to "getting me" except maybe the one that threw a tree at my car while driving home. Man I hate those things. I am probably going to have nightmares again now.

wait how much of that was nightmare, and how much of it happened?

"hundreds of tornadoes everywhere" was the recurring nightmare. From my Birthday on actually happened.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Not particularly an alien invasion movie[footnote]More an invasive alien movie[/footnote], but my first scary alien was, well ... Alien. When I was 6 or 7. That earned me some sleepless nights.

Everything I saw after that seemed rather tame by comparison. At least you can see most of them coming before its too late.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Well, I mean, Mass Effect is essentially saying in their universe that the default is that most interplanetary species have similar respiratory requirements as humans. A more realistic idea would really be that we ALL, us and other theoretical interplanetary species would require equipment to make spacefaring work. But that is just another one of those overly hand-waved aspects, though one I think that is detrimental, particularly in Star Trek.

Damn straight we would be all wearing space suits. Though technically I guess we might just call them 'survival suits' or 'internal pressure suits'. Given they wouldn't just be for space. One of the more scarier depictions ofMars thatI think does a discredit to actually showing why it would be insanely hard to set up a colony there is how any and all of its depictions never seen to bother talking about perchlorates in Martian soil.

You can't just have an air lock. The suits themselves will need to be decontaminated. Entire rooms will need to be routinely auto-vacuumed and filtered. You're going to need to ship dirt from Earth, or find some way to fix Martian soil to safely cultivate it. And despite all your best efforts, it's only a matter of time until it builds up. Turns out interplanetary colonization is hard. This shit will get in seals, get in door gears, clog your pores making it hard to completely decontaminate. Under fingernails removing suits. In small doses it's fine, but it builds up. And there's only so much equipment and resources you can bring with you.

That being said, with a hypothetical interstellar society of everybody wearing survival suits, I reckon we should adopt the Equestrian system of personalizing property. It's actually really cute and smart. Ponies put their cutie marks on their saddlebags and beside their names on letters.

Seems like a clever way of personalizing goods without a mutual written language. That is assuming that complex vision and colour perception is pretty much a prerequisite for advanced intelligence and civilization development.

Basically give every being a specific, temporary visual symbol that they can quickly use and temporarily spray over part of their suit and collected bags/harnasses ... make it easier to identify people without requiring their radio frequencies.

That's how I'd do it, anyways. Random assortment of colour contrasted, geometric shapes that is individual to that person on star bases or planets that they get assigned. Something an automated CAD-controlled computer and ink sprayer can perform and just sort of spray on someone's suit, their ship, and their bags.

Kind of like a passport stamp. Implement Q-Code tech in there that people can just scan that image and all the pertinent details come up based on that person's security clearance to see it.

 

[Thaluikhain]

That being said, with a hypothetical interstellar society of everybody wearing survival suits, I reckon we should adopt the Equestrian system of personalizing property. It's actually really cute and smart. Ponies put their cutie marks on their saddlebags and beside their names on letters.

You mean like heraldry, which now that I think of it came about due to people wearing survival suits of a sort? Sci-fi often takes that as a given.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Yea, I have never been afraid of aliens, and I also remember my cousin who told me if I swallowed Watermelon seeds they would grow out my ears. The one thing I was completely terrified of, though rightly so, due to the sheer number of them I have survived was tornadoes. I had a recurring nightmare that something happened on earth that caused a nightmarish weather shift and there were hundreds of tornadoes everywhere.

Ever since that birthday when I as a kid where the sheriff came by with his bull horn telling us to take cover and everyone had already taken shelter when me and my Dad were still outside and I saw one huge funnel with two skinny trailers in a row coming straight for us and it throwing cars and digging into the ground destroying everything. Those three tornadoes lined up like that is something I will never forget. When My dad realized I was still outside he yelled at me to get in the shelter and I ran into the house and grabbed my birthday cake since I had not even blown out my candles yet and held on to that thing the whole time I was in shelter. My dad came running in last and held onto the door the entire time in the hopes of preventing it from flying off. It sounded horrible, much worse than standing next to a train and we heard crashing and glass and thought we were done in for.

We lucked out though, it touched down across the street from our house and destroyed a barn entirely and threw it at and into our house. part of the barn was in our living room, on our roof and in our back yard. It apparently went back up and skipped us and came down again behind our house and destroyed another barn. I survived many after that, but that was the closest it came to "getting me" except maybe the one that threw a tree at my car while driving home. Man I hate those things. I am probably going to have nightmares again now.

Tornadoes are legitimately terrifying threats for sure very understandable, and experiences like yours am not surprised leaves such a strong fearful impression for life. That moment does sound like the sort of moment that shapes and never leaves you. Out of all the angry weather, they do also have the added fear effect of being a physical visible presence that appears to discriminate between what they destroy and what they avoid, providing an illusion of possible sentience for any poor soul within their vicinity. Unlike the vast indiscriminate nature of a hurricane or tsunami. So maybe it taps into some further primal fears in that sense too? Having been lucky enough to be born in a country where the largest natural threats are either Badgers or Tory voters, it's something am aware I may never truly get to experience to fully understand.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

You mean like heraldry, which now that I think of it came about due to people wearing survival suits of a sort? Sci-fi often takes that as a given.

Kind of like heraldry, but given that you wouldn't necessarily want to advertise a person's presence ... probably just a one time stay-length random symbol/colour pattern.

The benefit of randomly generated pattern is that the suit would provide some level of anonymity, but also still be identificatory to station security or making legal transactions. Not only that, it would be harder to frame others. After all, if people had heraldic imagery, someone could just copy it on their space suit and cause an interstellar incident.

Plus heraldry isn't necessarily identificatory on its own. Well, not necessarily an individual that is. Whereas a distinct visual pattern of variable length authenticity and registry, and no other likeness to it on a station, is.

The other benefit is that certain constituent parts of the pattern may illustrate to things like medical or security personnel certain personal conditions prior to examination. Like let's say you have a human terrorist group plot to kill Mi'rots from planet Thistus ... rather than scanning individuals, certain constituent parts of the symbol might automatically provide possible threat evaluation and combat information in the chaos of activity within certain sectors of the station... like computer surveillance systems automatically detailing the racial make up of constituent bodies in a room to determine the possibility of attacks against certain other targeted groups and known habitats they may congregate.

Basically being able to break up mobs before they happen.

Which would seem like a useful tactical feature to promote base or station security. Though arguably it's profiling, but whatever ... sci-fi future values.

 

[Squilookle]

I 'member being afraid that an apple seed might grow into a tree in my stomach if one was eaten. I also 'member being afraid the LHC would create a black hole and destroy our whole planet overnight. Aliens though? Nah, the sooner the better please. Same with ghosts. Anything at all would be nice, don't matter if you got bad intentions. Anything to break the existential isolation we currently find ourselves in really. Can't remember any fears of being colonised by aggressive entities. Wonder if that's a symptom of being British and all the baggage that entails.

Yea, I have never been afraid of aliens, and I also remember my cousin who told me if I swallowed Watermelon seeds they would grow out my ears. The one thing I was completely terrified of, though rightly so, due to the sheer number of them I have survived was tornadoes. I had a recurring nightmare that something happened on earth that caused a nightmarish weather shift and there were hundreds of tornadoes everywhere.

Ever since that birthday when I as a kid where the sheriff came by with his bull horn telling us to take cover and everyone had already taken shelter when me and my Dad were still outside and I saw one huge funnel with two skinny trailers in a row coming straight for us and it throwing cars and digging into the ground destroying everything. Those three tornadoes lined up like that is something I will never forget. When My dad realized I was still outside he yelled at me to get in the shelter and I ran into the house and grabbed my birthday cake since I had not even blown out my candles yet and held on to that thing the whole time I was in shelter. My dad came running in last and held onto the door the entire time in the hopes of preventing it from flying off. It sounded horrible, much worse than standing next to a train and we heard crashing and glass and thought we were done in for.

We lucked out though, it touched down across the street from our house and destroyed a barn entirely and threw it at and into our house. part of the barn was in our living room, on our roof and in our back yard. It apparently went back up and skipped us and came down again behind our house and destroyed another barn. I survived many after that, but that was the closest it came to "getting me" except maybe the one that threw a tree at my car while driving home. Man I hate those things. I am probably going to have nightmares again now.

wait how much of that was nightmare, and how much of it happened?

"hundreds of tornadoes everywhere" was the recurring nightmare. From my Birthday on actually happened.

That's just awful. And on your birthday too. Weird question I know, but was the cake eaten in the end? It sounds like you must live somewhere deep in the Alley. What happened with the tree thrown at your car story?