Space now terrifies me

[martin's a madman]

Bleh.
That's not scary.
Things like an 'alien (tm)' stuck in the belly of one of the seven people on board a small space ship, surrounded with empy space and the anxiety that follows the sensation of helplessness that you have when you realize that one of you seven has a monster in his/her ribcage.
THAT is terrifying.
The anxiety and fears are much better than the necromorph 'Boo' jump in scares. Yeah, they might STARTLE you for a moment, but southpark already brought the value of being startled to nothing.

I know the game isn't scary, but imagine if your were in that situation. Your mind would probably shatter from the terror.

I know mine would.

Mate, if I were to be in that situation I'd be dead.
Why did he and not others didn't die?
Because he was in stasis. You'd need to be insane or terminally ill to have 'an advantageous'.... SCRATCH THAT, a beggining.
Besides, you'd know how to pick your allies becasue they can TALK and they don't try to chew on you.
An experience alone in a horor game is scary (for example, 'Amnesia: The dark descent'), but having companions with mixed loyalties is something entirely different.

One word........ASARI.


And now space is totally worth exploring.

Mate, they have sex by combining minds.
Do you really want to see that kind of pornography?

I'm sure they'd still have fully functioning vaginas, I mean, Shepard hit it, right?

 

[Nouw]

I think of Tyranids.

You know, the alien race that consumes galaxies.
[sub]In more of 'horror-terrifying' terms, I think of xenomorphs. Face-Rape is not fun.[/sub]

 

[TheIronRuler]

I'm sure they'd still have fully functioning vaginas, I mean, Shepard hit it, right?

If you watch closely you can see that they 'mind-fuck' each other but that's it.
you DO see some very nice striptease dances here and there.

 

[Agayek]

We're just a needle in a haystack, although the haystack is the size of a large country. Just happening to come across us is about as improbable as all the water molecules in your swimming pool evaporating at the same time (OK, that's an exaggeration, but they're both unlikely enough that they don't even register on the scale of what is comprehensible to humans.)

It's plausible that they would be here specifically to murder us though. They could also decide to study us or peacefully contact us though, depending on what their culture is, which we can't really know anything about.

It's about as unlikely as walking down the street and just happening to run into an identical twin you never knew about. Is it at all likely to happen? Not at all, but it's certainly possible.

 

[The Random One]

Space, space. Gotta see space.

I watched that video the OP said was horrible and all I could hear was Yahtzee saying 'Aaaaah aaah aaah my face is melting! It looks really painful! Are you scared yet? Are you scared yet?'

If they subscribe to a fascist superiority of their species then they aren't advanced enough to be space faring.

I wish you were right and scientific progress was intrinsically connected to societal progress, but that's not the case. The nazis built the first rockets. And yes they wouldn't have gotten far because of their stupid idea of aryan sciences being better, but a world in which the dominating society is self-centered self-entitlement every scientific idea is eventually going to come to the mind of a guy of the proper race.

Plus the aliens might:

- Have some sort of ritualistic significance to attacking and destroying other races/inhabited planets.
- Be an extreme fringe group of a society that reached high tech levels through peaceful means.
- Simply fail to realize humans are sophont/sentient/alive and accidentally kill them.
- Categorize humans as animals due to insanely high thresholds to be considered intelligent life in their culture, i.e. you must be able to build a Dyson sphere.
- Have no concept of death as a negative act in their culture, and kill humans as a way to inform us we are in their way.
- Destroying our world to make way for a transgalactic highway.

Etc, etc.

 

[Rusty pumpkin]

Cthulhu, Shoggoth, and Nyarlthotep say hi. If you don't know them, they're Lovecraftian entities that came from space and are part of their own mythos. Apparently, seeing even a lesser one will drive you insane or get you killed, and supposedly they will come back to earth to do... whatever with it. I figured you might not want to sleep for a bit, assuming you are that imaginative.

 

[Heathrow]

I shall point to you the several centuries of human colonization, butchery and enslavement of foreign peoples. The principle is exactly the same. Why would you go across the ocean, murder everyone there that didn't give you what you wanted, then enslave the rest and come back home?

There is a logical flaw in this argument, in that aliens are just that, and we cannot therefore properly apply human reasoning to their behavior. Without any other metric though, being hostile and violent to outsiders is a perfectly acceptable conclusion to reach regarding extraterrestrials.

Also, resources that are right here are infinitely more valuable than resources on the other side of the universe. That's plenty of reason for an alien fleet in the Solar system to murder all of humanity.

Space is not like Earth. Oceans and seas are much easier to traverse than interstellar gulfs, the amount of resources you can harvest from your own solar system is massive.

Consider for a moment that at the root of all conflict is a struggle over resources. Religions and nations may squabble over seemingly arcane things but what are they really fighting over? Land to grow on followers to depend on. If you have all the resources you could want there is no incentive to fight. If a species is advanced enough to traverse the universe, not continents or oceans, then they are advanced enough to harvest resources from wherever they please.

Why would they choose to harvest from a populated system? Why would they choose to harvest from the tiny planet that supports life when there are gas giants and moons with much more accessible resources in the same solar system?

I am not proposing anything more than common sense would presuppose about a species that has learned to survive. If you want to make the assertion that they would for some reason be more violent than we would rightly expect then I would expect you to back up your theory.

Notice how your acting superior about something you don't understand. Nobody knows what alien life would be like. We can make, at best, educated guesses about how species would have evolved on other planets. We have no clue about what an intelligent, space-faring species would be like since we have not even reached that level yet. Think about how many different environments there are on earth and how much diversity we see here. Think about what a species could be like if genetic modifications were incredibly common and they had altered themselves to the point where they did not even resemble there original form. Then you need to take into consideration what impact their technology may have had on society.

When you make all of this into consideration, I find you saying something like this;

I find terrifying aliens to be implausible and therefore not compelling. I prefer to think about what aliens might actually be like.

to be laughably absurd.

There are clues, I have laid some of them out. You may ignore them if you wish.

As to my superiority, I felt it necessary to rebuke an insult in kind. And if anyone ever called for a perfect example of shallow-mindedness then I would propose as a candidate the man who belittles the imaginative and creative effort to hypothesize on what life beyond our experience is actually like.

You say that like intelligence and technological advancement go hand in hand. We still kill, hate, and envy just like we did when all we had was pelts and sharpened sticks. Besides, we got off-topic. The necromorphs and the Aliens xenomorphs use living organisms as part of their reproductive cycles, and are hive-minded parasites. They aren't space-faring in the slightest. In fact, the necromorphic plague in Dead Space originated from a code on a monolith on Earth, so they aren't aliens at all, just transforming zombies.

Do we travel as we wish among the stars? Do we bend the cosmos to our will? Do we explore the universe in our ships or only in our imaginations? Humanity has a long way to go, and I never said we were anything like a space fairing civilization.

As to necromorphs, if they are alien then in reality they should find our biology quite inhospitable for parasitism. If they are Terran then they don't really enter into this discussion do they?

I wish you were right and scientific progress was intrinsically connected to societal progress, but that's not the case. The nazis built the first rockets. And yes they wouldn't have gotten far because of their stupid idea of aryan sciences being better, but a world in which the dominating society is self-centered self-entitlement every scientific idea is eventually going to come to the mind of a guy of the proper race.

Plus the aliens might:

- Have some sort of ritualistic significance to attacking and destroying other races/inhabited planets.
- Be an extreme fringe group of a society that reached high tech levels through peaceful means.
- Simply fail to realize humans are sophont/sentient/alive and accidentally kill them.
- Categorize humans as animals due to insanely high thresholds to be considered intelligent life in their culture, i.e. you must be able to build a Dyson sphere.
- Have no concept of death as a negative act in their culture, and kill humans as a way to inform us we are in their way.
- Destroying our world to make way for a transgalactic highway.

Etc, etc.

Unless you believe the military success of the fatherland would have brought about the end of all conflict then my point stands. Fascist regimes will propagate conflict and therefore prevent any ability to attain the planetary unity that will be necessary for proper space exploration to begin.

The initial cost of any serious intergalactic exploration will almost always be beyond the reach of any single power bloc on a resource barren planet and if resources are plentiful then why would a species be warlike?


As to you other points. I do not find that ritualistic and traditionalist behaviors correspond with any sort of scientific progress. Science is often about breaking free from old ways of thinking and these systems do not work well together.

Fringe groups all have the same problems as fascists. That was simply my catch-all for that group of aliens.

Not realizing we are life is highly probable and a good reason to invest time on speculating on the true nature of alien species so we don't make that mistake ourselves.

Classifying humans as animals wouldn't make them genocidal towards us would it? Unless I missed something.

I think it would be hard for any living creature to not have a negative concept of death. If we encountered a hive consciousness this could be a problem though. Killing a few million drones might be its idea of a gentle rebuke. Still I think most space fairing races will have an evolved sense of diplomacy and tact, my personal opinion though.

Finally: Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. The odds of their trans galactic bypass bisecting our insignificant little point of space strike me as infinitely improbable.

 

[Legendsmith]

Fair enough. The religious mind does not subscribe to logic.

Spoiler: Because, you know, the first modern scientists totally weren't religious.

Sarcasm!

Come on, this misconception really irritates me. There is no science vs religion.

 

[TheIronRuler]

Space, space. Gotta see space.

I watched that video the OP said was horrible and all I could hear was Yahtzee saying 'Aaaaah aaah aaah my face is melting! It looks really painful! Are you scared yet? Are you scared yet?'

If they subscribe to a fascist superiority of their species then they aren't advanced enough to be space faring.

I wish you were right and scientific progress was intrinsically connected to societal progress, but that's not the case. The nazis built the first rockets. And yes they wouldn't have gotten far because of their stupid idea of aryan sciences being better, but a world in which the dominating society is self-centered self-entitlement every scientific idea is eventually going to come to the mind of a guy of the proper race.

Plus the aliens might:

- Have some sort of ritualistic significance to attacking and destroying other races/inhabited planets.
- Be an extreme fringe group of a society that reached high tech levels through peaceful means.
- Simply fail to realize humans are sophont/sentient/alive and accidentally kill them.
- Categorize humans as animals due to insanely high thresholds to be considered intelligent life in their culture, i.e. you must be able to build a Dyson sphere.
- Have no concept of death as a negative act in their culture, and kill humans as a way to inform us we are in their way.
- Destroying our world to make way for a transgalactic highway.

Etc, etc.

I call the last line a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference, and I respect you for that.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

I'm sorry but I must post this

WE ALMOST WENT TO PAGES WITHOUT THAT! >.<

 

[MrVeryOriginal]

Well, There is a LOT of stuff that can go wrong with space, The reason it's so mind bogglingly terrifying is that there's so much of it there and trying to comprehend it all could drive a person to madness.
Speaking of which, has anyone notice that films never try to capitalize on PEOPLE GOING CRAZY IN SPACE, and just that. It's always "They're going crazy because of this disease" or "They're going crazy because their wife was killed by Aliens" It's never, "They're Trillions of miles from home alone, in vast space that no one's ever gone and there is a high chance that they'll never make it back so they loose their mind" I would like to see that in a movie or book as a concept.

 

[Internet Kraken]

EDIT: Internet Fucked up and posted this before I was done.

 

[Heathrow]

...

Key word: actually.

I was referring of course to my other posts. If you would like further illumination on any point by all means ask.

 

[Internet Kraken]

There are clues, I have laid some of them out. You may ignore them if you wish.

Not exactly sure what you're referring to. I'm assuming you are talking about your supposed reasons as to what you know an intelligence space-faring species will be like.

What evolutionary imperative promotes the annihilation of random species you know nothing about?

Perhaps said species is not intelligent? Perhaps it is something mindless and destructive, like a engineered bioweapon? Something created for the explicit purpose of destruction? Such a creature could exist. We have genetically engineered simple creatures to suit our own needs. It is not out of the question that a species could make the mistake of creating an incredibly destructive organism.

You wouldn't eat them, their biology would likely be toxic to you.

That's a pretty big assumption to be made, but it doesn't really matter overall. The species may kill you off simply because they perceive you to be a threat.

You wouldn't destroy them for their resources, resources are too abundant in this universe to waste time squabbling over.

Again, another assumption. Perhaps the aliens require a planet that is already habitable because terraforming is not viable to them. I don't know. To claim you know the eaxct needs of a space-faring civilization when we know nothing about them seems silly. You can only base their needs of us, and we are not capable of traveling across the galaxy so it's hardly a good comparison.

If the aliens are xenophobic it's much easier to avoid us. If they subscribe to a fascist superiority of their species then they aren't advanced enough to be space faring.

This is a huge assumption and I honestly don't understand how you can actually sya that and think you are right. We have no idea what an alien culture might be like. You have no idea what there planet is like. You have no idea what cultures would be viable on said planet and what attitudes would allow to progress into the space age. How do you know they wouldn't simply wipe us out becuase they don't want another advanced species challenging them? What if they fear us? What if they just want to fight and are such a powerful society that they can indulge in their every desire? You don't know anything about how an alien culture would work. Nobody does.

Lording over others as if your intellect is greater is never necessary anyways. The fact that you're acting superior in a topic nobody truly understands is laughable.

 

[The Man With the Soap]

I'll volunteer for the First Space Marine Corps to keep all you little children safe from the big scary aliens.

 

[lacktheknack]

I find terrifying aliens to be implausible and therefore not compelling. I prefer to think about what aliens might actually be like.

Implausible? How so? There's too much space out there for there not to be intelligent life. What's to say this life isn't the spacefaring fuck up your entire day kind?

Never overestimate the small amount of hospitable space (read: space that is not being bombed by space rocks, on fire, frozen solid, filled with toxic gas, etc.). There's hardly any.

And IF lightning struck twice and there's other life out there, we can guarantee it's nowhere near us (the closest hospitable zone is tens of lightyears away). Toss in the laws of physics, and there's no way anything is getting anywhere close to us outside of cryogenesis (and if they're fresh out of cryogenesis, I doubt they're going to attack everything).

That being said, space scares me the same reason deep ocean scares me:

http://images.kaneva.com/filestore9/5172405/6374472/black.jpg

 

[Scabadus]

As long as there's not Goblin sharks in space, it's a damn sight better than Earth.

It could happen...

Spoiler

The next plausible step for the Jaws franchise.

Jaws may be unique in that space would actually make the show better (though still not any good).

As for actual aliens, I find it hard to be scared of them. Regardless of their motivation and whether they want to kill us, help us, enslave us or assimilate our bodies into their collective, it's going to happen. With even a 20 year difference in military technology (assuming their minds work at a rate even close to ours) any alien force could utterly destroy the human race if it wanted to. Hell, with CURRENT technology we could detroy our own planet many times over (nukes), the aliens wouldn't have to settle for advanced death-rays, all they'd have to do is bring a weapon of similar power here on their spaceships and we'd all be doomed.

So basically, there's no point in fearing aliens. When we as a race do meet them, we'll either live in peace and everyone will get along, or one side will effortlessly wipe out the other and no amount of fear-induced preperation will stop them. Obviously I hope for the first, but I'm not scared of the second.

And as an interesting note for the people arguing that an alien parasite would have no need of bodies using a different Organic structure, you're assuming that evolution stops when technology is advanced enough for space travel. Start by assuming something small, something like this: any intelligent life must use some form of energy transfer, to facilitate that intelligence. For humans this is electricity via nerve cells and neurons. Now from that, assume just one more thing: the majority, or at least a good number, of alien races use electricty as this energy. Suddenly, a generically viable alien parasite becomes viable, one that hijack's a body's electrical network to totally take control of it, sustaining its own life using that same electricity. For the record, this isn't totally my idea; it's based on a species from a book called The Host by Stepheny Meyer (yes the same one that wrote the Twilight series; the romance is trite and cliched but the sci-fi and horror is well done. The woman has a remarkable knowledge of microbiology for somebody who doesn't hold a degree in the subject).

 

[Heathrow]

Not exactly sure what you're referring to. I'm assuming you are talking about your supposed reasons as to what you know an intelligence space-faring species will be like.

I wonder if you've actually read any of my posts.

Perhaps said species is not intelligent? Perhaps it is something mindless and destructive, like a engineered bioweapon? Something created for the explicit purpose of destruction? Such a creature could exist. We have genetically engineered simple creatures to suit our own needs. It is not out of the question that a species could make the mistake of creating an incredibly destructive organism.

Why was it made? Why would it be dispersed? How does a species survival ever depend on the creation of this?

That's a pretty big assumption to be made, but it doesn't really matter overall. The species may kill you off simply because they perceive you to be a threat.

Why, isn't it significantly easier to find some other patch of the universe and just avoid whatever species you dislike? It's not like there's anything special about our solar system to like.

Again, another assumption. Perhaps the aliens require a planet that is already habitable because terraforming is not viable to them. I don't know. To claim you know the eaxct needs of a space-faring civilization when we know nothing about them seems silly. You can only base their needs of us, and we are not capable of traveling across the galaxy so it's hardly a good comparison.

You're right, we can't assume the exact biology of an alien species. I wonder why you are assuming they'd want a planet habitable for humans then. We do know their exact needs. They will need the stuff that was on the planet they developed on. Since life could develop on any number of planets why assume that a large proportion would be Earth-like.

This is a huge assumption and I honestly don't understand how you can actually sya that and think you are right. We have no idea what an alien culture might be like. You have no idea what there planet is like. You have no idea what cultures would be viable on said planet and what attitudes would allow to progress into the space age. How do you know they wouldn't simply wipe us out becuase they don't want another advanced species challenging them? What if they fear us? What if they just want to fight and are such a powerful society that they can indulge in their every desire? You don't know anything about how an alien culture would work. Nobody does.

Lording over others as if your intellect is greater is never necessary anyways. The fact that you're acting superior in a topic nobody truly understands is laughable.

Going to space and traversing vast stretches of space are different things, if humans want to go to another star we're going to need the resources of whole worlds. Why are you assuming that some alien species will somehow magically bypass the need for resources and cooperation necessary for a jump to interstellar space travel.

If they fear us then they'll avoid us unless we confront them. That is a universal aspect of fear.

Likewise how would a generally bloodthirsty species ever stop fighting long enough to make the cooperative effort needed?

Honestly, I am tired of explaining these same ideas again and again. If you take so much offense at this I suggest you Google Exobiology pick a scientist and take it up with them instead.

 

[Internet Kraken]

-snip-

I'm afraid you're missing the point. I'm not saying that all of your logic is wrong. An alien species could very well be the way you describe it. However we lack sufficient data to claim we know what they would be like. Becuase of this, any number of theories about what they would be like or what they would do are plausible. What I have an issue with is not your belief that an alien species would not be hostile, I myself believe that, but rather the fact that you are dismissing other theories when you lack the data to do so. You claim to know what an alien species would be like even though nobody could possibly know that.

 

[Anarchemitis]

Space can be scary in far more mudane ways than you can imagine.

This is a picture of SLCM-108 Apollo 12, bring struck by lightning twice at about T+00:02.00 seconds. (An arc hitting the CM Launch Escape tower, traveling down the length of the Saturn V, and exiting through the ionized plume of exhaust gases).
The lightning killed all electrical systems on board (except for automatic guidance gimbals of the engines, and the two-way radio). For a while, Mission Control seriously considered an abort of the mission, which consisted of turning off the main engines of the Saturn V, activating a small rocket to pull the Astronaut's Command Module away from the rocket, and then blowing up the Saturn V.

Thankfully the Electrical systems were recovered and the mission continued without a hitch afterwards, but dang it was close.