Thursday, December 5, 2019

Humans are Horrific Space Orcs*

A patrol of Company F. 6th Ranger Battalion, investigating a native hut on Dinagat Island in the Philippines
(U.S. Army photograph)
I think that there are valid arguments for our species being some sort of inter-galactic bad asses.

I'm going to let Beans and Paweł write this post in an attempt to prove my assumption. (Their comments are usually entertaining and informative, well done guys.)

From Beans -
Humans doth be weird critters. Omnivores who do far better on a meat heavy diet than a meat light diet (our guts are really too short to do plant stuff well. Seriously. One of the indicators of whether an animal is a carnivore or not is gut length. Shorter guts mean more carnivorous. Dog guts are longer in proportion to their body than cat guts are. Dogs are scavengerious semi-carnivores (yeah, I made up a word, but dogs can scavenge like vultures or eat meat and stomachs full of veggies, while cats MUST eat meat only. Which makes the concept of vegetarian diets for both rather suspect at best, criminal at worst.)

Longer the guts, the more veggies one can digest, and the crappier the veggie one digests can be. Grazers can eat meat (a surprising number of mice, small birds, grasshoppers, larvae and such are consumed by grazing animals.) But not the other way around. Serious carnivores, like big cats, eat veggie material in order to help unblock blocks in their guts (furballs, the occasional bone fragment, etc.)

We humans do better, live longer, think faster, on animal fats and proteins, supplemented by plant carbs. The more meat and fat, the bigger and stronger the human body gets, and the better the human body is at storing energy (as fat.) The Mongols were noted for gorging on meat and being able to fight and ride for days, while their Chinese opponents were slower due to needing to eat more often and not being able to store food-energy due to their reliance on plants supplemented by meat.

Weird stuff, huh?

As to Herd/Pack, well, yeah. And herd/pack mentality doesn't like it very much when an individual appears who excels. Herd/pack mentality doesn't like being challenged. It gets the individual shunned or killed.
And from Paweł -
  • humans are able to eat almost anything,
  • they use alcohol, which is lethal poison if in excess, for fun and finding sexual partners
  • they can survive broken limbs (try to do it as horse) and very early in history invented surgery
  • in extreme some humans have been performing surgery on themselves, no anesthesia
  • they can dive without equipment almost as good as seals
  • they evolved as apex predators, almost-exterminating lions, tigers and bears, including totally giant cave species
  • 14 year old human girl survived plane crash in Amazon jungle and emerged alive after 2 weeks of wandering
  • they took wolves, their once predators and made their pets
  • they made cats their mercenaries in fighting off rats and mice
  • there are multiple stories of humans, mortally wounded still surviving long enough to kill multiple other humans
  • they have been in state of near constant intra-species warfare for most of their history
  • they are able to fly into space now and are looking for ways past speed of light
  • they have exterminated many own cultures that happened to be either too weak or too fixed in their ways to adapt
  • they are perfectly capable of destroying own planet with nukes, but managed to hold this capacity in check for 60+years
  • once they spread into galaxy it will be all over for us
- From Galactic Council report on humans
Paweł also had an indirect link to *this.

After reading all of that, I have come to the conclusion that we are a very scary species. Perhaps if there are other civilizations out there among the cosmos, they won't contact us because they're terrified of letting us know that they exist. Of course, looking at human history itself leads one to believe that compared to humans, the rest of nature is pretty benign.

On the other hand, maybe those theoretical inter-galactic civilizations out there can't contact us because the speed of light really is unattainable and we're all adrift on our rocky homes speeding along through the universe until Time itself ends.

If it does.

Now my head hurts...



58 comments:

  1. Look for the online novel "The Deathworlders" for an interesting (and fun) treatment of the concept of humans as uniquely dangerous in the universe.

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    1. I will do that. Thanks for the heads-up!

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    2. It's part of the reddit community "r/HFY", or "Humanity, Firetruck Yeah!" Forgot how I stumbled on to this, but very cool. One author started it, and then others in the community wrote expansions around it.

      Here's the background wiki:
      https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/wiki/ref/universes/jenkinsverse

      And here's the reading order for the canon stories:
      https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/wiki/ref/universes/jenkinsverse/chronological_reading_order

      I still haven't read vast majority of the wiki, just jumped right in reading at the start of the canon.

      The main storyline is also here:

      https://deathworlders.com/

      /
      L.J.

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    3. I'll be checking that out this weekend, which starts tomorrow. Yay me.

      And thanks for the tip and the follow-on!

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    4. Odd coincidence, I was just at a local pizzeria for lunch and saw a guy with a T-shirt that said "DeathWorld" on it. Woundered what that was all about.

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    5. LJ..... thank you. After surgery yesterday, I figured I'd have time to read. 0230 pain train came thru last nite, and the next 90 minutes were bearable because of the llinks provided... Thank you, thank you!

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    6. Prayers for a speedy recovery STxAR!

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  2. An interesting post, once again proving Beans is a walking wiki while Pawel is not far behind although nowhere near in ranting. With the info posted today I can't see us "evolving" in the direction that so many progressives seem to want us to do......emotions are too much of a powder keg for that. As to the universe, I lean in the direction of "To Serve Man" if that classic reference means anything to you. Since it's the season of giving and in the spirit of homo sapiens adaptability/aggression it's time to further stack cheap and DEEP. Eyes will be trained to the skies while munching on jerky (heh heh).

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    1. If the Progs get their way, a more aggressive culture (I think you know the one I mean) will quickly move to try and take us out. Rather my biggest fear, that right there.

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    2. I'm not over worried. What progs lost sight of in their haste to trip over each other condemning those like us was that we are merely a giant in repose at the moment. A very famous and very dead man of Japan once gave voice to those smart enough to fear to rouse a sleeping giant. He got shot down long ago in a raid designed from the start to kill him and only him. I think the target discriminators may be coming unlocked around now all over the world. (Great series of books by David Brin, The Uplift War). Admittedly, the progs make a hideous spectacle of themselves but then, as usual with what doesn't see in the media is the ones that aren't progs. You might know them as the folks who append, USMC, AUS, USAF, USN and even USCG after their name from time to time.

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    3. The most scary we as humans are is when we are in a controlled herd mentality. It's why boot camp is specifically set up as US (the recruits) vs THEM (the DIs) and it also plays upon the power of The Nail That Sticks Out (the boot that causes problems by just not conforming properly)(though some boots who conform too properly are also targeted by their fellow boots, but the DIs fix this by bringing those boots into their collective as troop, squad and platoon leaders...)

      Worse is when we go all collective mind, collective body as the leftists want us to. Then what happens is things like the Khymer Rouge, the Bolsheviks under Stalin, the Nazis under Hitler, anything Mao touched and now anything Xi is touching, the whole Ho Chi Minh thingy, most college campuses today, most school systems today...

      Individual aggression can easily be channeled into arts, science, math, mowing the lawn, shooting people and breaking things and stuff like that. Collective aggression results in lots and lots and lots of dead people and usually results in what historians call 'genocide' and 'massacre.' As in the Armenian genocide, the Jewish genocide, etc.

      But some of these get labeled as other things, to make them more palatable. The 'Ukranian famine' (which was systematic genocide of the Ukranian People by that noted rat-bastard Josef Stalin) and 'The Great Leap Forward (on the bodies of tens of millions)' by that pedophiliac and noted rat-bastard Mao Zedong (who also has a 'Great Famine' named after him) are two examples of this. As it is easier for leftists to push their agenda by blaming weather and famine as the cause of so many deaths, rather than the systematic targeting for elimination of whole hordes of people. Since, well, you can kill people just as easily by taking all their food, food animals, seed grain, farm equipment, or by marching all those city dwellers out into the countryside to grub for food.

      And I haven't even touched on the stupidity of Rhodesia and whatever stupid name the people who now live there call it. Rhodesia evokes images of the Breadbasket of Africa, with surpluses of food, huge productive farms, happy peoples on both sides of the color spectrum. Whatever they call it now has become the new Somalia, with famine, death, and gangs taking over. And this is coming to the other breadbasket of Africa, specifically South Africa, where white farmers are being killed and their lands taken over by locusts and cockroaches (the issues are a little more serious there, but still, burning your seed corn because the white devil touched it and giving the land to people who never lived in the tribal lands that South Africa took over, ever? WTF. Winnie Mandela wins, Nelson Mandela loses (and he wasn't exactly a nice man either, but his ex-wife? Whoo, I think Hillary took lessons from that evil entity.)

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    4. It's a fear of the bloodshed that could occur, not that the Progs will win. They do make a spectacle don't they?

      Another series of books I need to check out...

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    5. Beans - I think we read some of the same stuff. Rhodesia, er, I mean Zimbabwe, and Venezuela are two examples of why that crap never works.

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  3. Interestingly, there are " leaders" in a pack. Somehow chosen to direct it. In packs, there is usually only one male, not the leader, but one breeding male. Who protects the rest, the pack has a memory function, and a safety function. If my reading were right, after all, it has been a long time since college, there were rouge packs. Wanderers, who had lost their alpha male or female, and searching for another. And that involved "invading" other packs territory's.

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    1. Good point Jim. Same goes for humans, someone is always in charge, whether by virtue of appointment or by virtue of character and a strong will to succeed. Guess which type I'd rather follow...

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  4. I saw no mention of noxious clouds of sulfur byproducts. Dad was a master of that. Almost like an evil twin or an area denial weapon.

    Very interesting reading this morning. I'll have some time over the next few days to read the recommendation by L.J. Carpal tunnel is a rat bas---d, and hopefully, I'll be losing it today.

    See you tomorrow....

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    1. Had a bout of carpal tunnel once upon a time, I know what you're going through.

      Noxious clouds, yeah, the whole "pull my finger" weapons system.

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    2. My chemical warfare system has been shuttered for a while, but since Turkey Day it seems to be in full production. Since Kegan the very short-haired dog loves sleeping under the covers to stay warm, he's been getting cropdusted might fulsomely, to the extent he'd rather freeze than smell what that smell is.

      Meh. That's what he gets for shoving me out of bed...

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  5. Amazing what opposable thumbs and an intellect capable of future planning, dreaming and what-ifs will do for your evolutionary chances, eh? Of course a nasty streak honed by competition for resources and protection from some really nasty beasts also helps. The bleats that we are all "civilized" now so should not worry about the evils of the past all seem to come from those members of society who have forgotten, or never knew, lessons of the past.

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    1. You're right Tom, it's the people who have no idea of the sacrifices made by others (and still being made) to let them live in their little cloistered Utopia.

      Santayana was right.

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  6. Debra Reynolds(doorkeeper)December 5, 2019 at 7:02 AM

    I enjoyed this. And as a DM, it gives me lots of ideas, so thank you (bwahahahaha!)

    AND, I tried to copy/paste in the Monster Hunter International symbol, but it won't let me.

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    1. Oh no, a DM with ideas! (Played a LOT back on Okinawa in the mid-70s.)

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  7. Hey Old AFSarge;

    Excellent Post, I recall a Gary Larson "Far Side" cartoon where it shows 2 crocodile's leaning back in stuffed repose and commenting" wow, no horns, antlers, claws, amazing". We basically are the animal world equivalent of "SPAM". physically we ain't that intimidating, but let us use tools and our brain, then we become apex predators. There are several books that deal with the dangers of humans, we don't look like much, but we are very dangerous. the 4HU books, the "4th Horseman Universe" deals with humans being intergalactic mercenaries, and physically we ain't much, but our gear and our aggressiveness makes us dangerous. Interesting concept and a great post.

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    1. Thanks MrG, I should have realized that there would be a whole sci-fi genre on this very topic.

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    2. But surprisingly, except when we go all 'wilding' like inner-city youths or go collectively stupid by turning into mass groups of leftist progs, we humans are rather safe to be around.

      We are one of the few species that purposely keeps other species alive. And we are the only known species to do it to a non-symbiotic or non-food animal species. Think about that. We Humans keep alive sh...tuff and species that will kill us, given half a chance, because we don't want it to disappear. Sure, it's all good for us in the USA to whine about the disappearance of tigers in India, but the poor farmer in India who faces losing family members or food animals to said tiger would rather see Fluffy get axed. But, instead, even he/she (poor farmer in India) strives to keep that animal alive and breeding. WTF? If we were the noted killers and destroyers that we are supposed to be, this earth would only have cows, chickens, goats, sheep, an occasional horse and other meat animals still moving around. But instead we, sometimes, okay, a lot of times, to our own detriment, keep sh...tuff that kills us around, and even somewhat venerate those very same killers.

      Wow. Bad evil humans, who, as soon as we aren't hand-to-mouth existence (where there are few rules) strive to protect the environment. Even in the worse 'Robber Baron' days of the USA, we were planting more trees, more forests, than the 'environmentally sound' Native Americans did. Sure, it may have been for selfish reasons, like money, but we did it.

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    3. @MrG/

      I also saw another Larson Far Side cartoon on the same theme showing two Polar Bears on an ice flow as two ship-wreck
      survivors crawling on, with one Bear grinning, saying to the other: "Lunch." :)

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    4. @MrG2/

      Perhaps best Larson cartoon on this theme shows a skydiving school hard adj to an alligator farm with a bunch of goofy-looking students lined up to board the plane on nearby runway with gators eyeing them hungrily. The para-landing bulls-eye tgt being in a field adj to the gator farm on the other side. The cartoon title? "Trouble Brewing" LOL!

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  8. "Cage A Man" by F.M Busby. The first book in the Demu Trilogy. Not on Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/Cage-man-F-M-Busby/dp/B00416VWKQ I didn't think the other books in the trilogy were as good as this one. YMMV.

    And "The Quantum Connection" by rocket scientist Travis Taylor. https://smile.amazon.com/Quantum-Connection-Warp-Speed-Book-ebook/dp/B00AP9XSFK/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=quantum+connection&qid=1575561513&sr=8-2

    Cool post.


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  9. “We are scary motherf**kers ok”

    Says it all in a nutshell.
    The rest is window dressing.

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    1. Scary, yes. But surprisingly safe to be around, unless one is a leftist. Else, well, the streets would be running with blood.

      Just look at every place that has either a widespread concealed carry system (like Florida and Texas) or places where Open Carry (with permit) or Constitutional Carry (carry what you will without permit as long as you're not a prohibited person) is in place. Gosh, look at the windrows of gunned down bodies, the piles of corpses, the bullet-ridden trees, cars, buildings.... (insert sounds of crickets, and wind blowing...) Oh, that's right, the free armed people don't go around lead hosing everything that moves. That only happens (in the USA) in leftist sh..tuff-holes controlled by leftists.

      Scary, but controlled. Unless your brain is rotted by leftyism.

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    2. We are what I would call, "scary as long as you don't f**k with us" beings. Though yes, unless one's brain is rotted by leftyism.

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  10. On the dangerous axis (dangerous defined as polite, helpful, thoughtful but can and will firetruck you up, right now, if necessary, regardless of who you are or who you think you are) as of December 5, 2019, I'd opine that perhaps 10 percent of humans are actually dangerous. Eighty percent have the capacity to be dangerous, with half of those on the bubble leaning toward being dangerous if they get a second chance and the other half almost certainly leaning toward laying down and dying. The final ten percent are those who choose to be losers. They can be dangerous indeed, but only by accident. For instance, signalling left, moving into the turn lane, then suddenly turning starboard, directly across traffic. To beat a dead horse as it were.

    TR Harris, The Human Chronicles Saga. Humans kidnapped by aliens turn out to be stronger and faster and more dangerous than the aliens. Not the best sf but entertaining if you're in the mood for a place where humans can accidentally punch clean through an alien's head and then have a comically hard time shaking the corpse off their arm. Not for everyone obviously.

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    1. That sounds right up my alley.

      So many books to read, so little time!

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    2. The first one in on sale for $ 0.99. It's now on the Kindle and the reading list just keeps getting longer and longer.
      Thanks for the heads up.

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    3. John - We expect a book report! Make sure you use the TPS Report cover sheet...

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  11. (Don McCollor) I finally found this again (and extracted it with some difficulty)
    "I Will Not Go Back" by Milton Geiger. It was published in the 1970s and here is an extracted portion...

    I am NOT IN VAIN!
    Out of the wilderness I came.
    Beast into man!
    I have survived holocaust and ruin
    And every terror of creation.
    My flint and my bronze lie
    Scattered pole to pole.
    From the speechless cavern to
    The Kimmeridge clay
    I have dared-and the
    Wreckage of my daring
    Is not all dust and folly.
    I AM Man

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  12. Damm, Mn Guard Blackhawk down SW of St Cloud MN approx 1400 today, on a maintenance flight, looks like the crew of three didn't survive, clear and 35 to 40F.......Mayday called nine minutes after takeoff by crew.....just.....just......God bless 'em.

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  13. Very interesting post today Sir!!. I think the thing that makes humans the most dangerous herd animal out there, or the apex predator, is the fact that herds tend to do things all together. They turn together (fish schools, birds in flight) they will run together (wildebeests, cattle, buffalo, caribou, wolves/dogs) and let the weak/sick/lame/lazy get picked off by the wolves/lions of the world. Humans will act together until someone decides to go against the herd flow. And most of the time, that is a very unexpected (by the herd) action. The ability to think individually instead of how the herd/Meeja wants us to think is a very human reaction. Like Beans said, we protect other species, even ones who can do us harm, which is definitely an only human reaction.
    And I believe that our ability to be other than expected is what makes us so very dangerous. That being predictable can be a good trait, as can being unpredictable.

    Prayers for the MN Army National Guard soldiers and their families. What is with the military and helicopters this year??

    Predictably, Up State NY got slammed with snow on Monday. There was 26.5 inches in the drive when it finally stopped on Tuesday morning. Some days being a home care nurse is not much fun...but at least there were very few vehicles on the road as there were 697 school and business closings, including "non-essential state workers"...how would you feel about being told your job was non-essential??? Of course, they got to roll over and pull the blankets back up...or grab another cuppa coffee and get on line...but still...just wanderings of my mind.

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    1. Be careful out there Suz, your job is an important one. An angel of mercy you are, in a very real sense.

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  14. Some excellent observations by those two. We really are intergalactic badasses. Now we just need to figure out the whole sharks with laser beams thing.

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    1. Now if we could get them flying without the use of tornadoes...

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  15. good posts. very well thought out.

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