Been working on a sci-fi setting, and been wanting to avoid the sterotype of humans being jack of all trades, or just plain tougher than anybody else (if we go with the HFY stuff, though this'll no doubt turn into such a thread), or the consumate diplomats. So I thought "You know what's weird? Humans fucking poison themselves for fun and profit."
Okay, so we know that on planet earth, the ability to eat stuff that is actually poisonous to you and survive it isn't exactly the most common skill for macrobiological beings.
Humans developed it as a method of hygene we're pretty sure. Eat the poisonous, spicy, red plant, deal with the hell your ass will be feeling, but it'll kill all those nasty parasites in you. So humans that could eat spicy (read: poisonous) food were better able to survive not only because they had an additional food source, but because they were killing off all the parasites in their guts.
A nifty advantage on top of this is that our bodies can process a lot of stuff with crazy side effects that would probably kill us if our livers/kidneys/various other purification systems weren't up to snuff.
What if Humanity's big contribution to the galaxy is recreational drug usage? Oh, other species had the basic ideas, but they never really got beyond their equivalents of weed because anything harder would have been too much trouble on their systems. Medicine for them required far more precise measurements than it did for humans because the difference between medicine and poison for them was so much larger than it is for us. The idea of "Hey, I wonder if this morphine stuff could be used to have a good time" wouldn't have occurred to them, even -after- they had the technology either cybernetically or genetically to allow them to do that kind of stuff safely. >cont
Enter humans, who have the uncanny knack of figuring out how to distill, process, or otherwise convert various forms of biological matter into shit that'll have them trippin balls for hours.
Humans are unique in the galaxy because unlike the super tough, durable, bite your head off races, their biology isn't SO good at processing poison that they never are effected by it at all, and they're not like the less tough species that weren't evolutionary equipped to experiment with their medicines just to see which are the most fun to use.
Enter humans with their rather extensive set of cultures and rules on getting high, and that's their export to the galaxy. A new form of entertainment based on chemically altering your brain in a safe way. Suddenly there's a market for all those poison processor implants and gene-tweaks that isn't just for the survival nuts or the military, and for the super tough dudes? Maybe some kind of speciliazed pump can be invented for them to allow the chemicals to bypass their natural safeguards.
I'm not quite sure what I'll be encouraging the party to do in this game, but it'll probably involve crazy shenanigans, smuggling, exploration for the next big high, and other fun things like that.
Thoughts? Additions? Places I can take this? What do you guys think?
Aaron Russell
>you will never be the Walter White of space, producing and selling large quantities of chili peppers to tweaked-out Martian addicts
Josiah Price
You must understand that technically just about everything is poisonous, it's all about dosage. But that would create some interesting bits, not so much in recreational drugs and food, but more in the world of medicine. In your scenario, human medicine would be chemo compared to alien medicine, just because their bodies would fail to shit as mundane as ibuprofen fun fact, with current FDA guidelines ibuprofen would have been approved. Shit is hell on your liver
Grayson James
>Shit is hell on your liver Even within the guidelines on the box?
Julian Taylor
Kinda, it won't kill you, nor does use give you any real indications (unless you use it a lot) The issue is that the window of overuse is very small
Connor Murphy
>used to take like two-three times the listed dose just to get any effect out of it, solely for painkilling purposes Fuck. Least I'm not doing that NOW.
Logan Ortiz
That red peppers are actually poison? Yeah, it is.
A lot of animals can't EAT that shit without dying. There's almost no animals out there who ENJOY having pain inflicted on them from eating spicy things, or eating bitter things either.
We are about 90% sure 'hypertasting' or 'picky eaters' are from folks who have left over adaptations from when humans COULDN'T eat that stuff without dying, so picky eaters who can't stand bitter or spicy food have that reaction cause our brains are screaming 'poison spit it out' to us.
That's not entirely true. There's different chemicals and they have different effects, dogs can't really take a lot in terms of heavy spices, or god forbid, chocolate (both poisonous), but they're fine with other drugs we use that don't get you high.
And at the end of the day, 99% of sci-fi is based around misapplied science-facts. If we let that stuff get in the way of cool ideas for settings we'd never get anywhere would we? As long as internal consistency is met, I think it'll be fine surely?
Dominic Howard
>As long as internal consistency is met, I think it'll be fine surely? Oh yeah, just wanted to give another thing to think of, other than drugs and food. Because let's face it, chances are that your players will use medicine a lot more than food or drugs, unless it's really, really roleplay heavy
Josiah Wilson
How small is very small? My aunt killed herself through overmedication, but she was a tiny woman and was popping pills for years.
Christopher Foster
I took it for migraine headaches until it gave me upper intestine bleeding that hospitalized me.
Elijah Ross
Humans do handle dietary trauma pretty well. We are one of the few creatures where diarrhea isn't a sign of certain death.
Xavier Jenkins
Ibuprofen isn't really bad on your liver, it's mostly just tough on your stomach lining and then generally only in large doses. The over the counter drug that really kills the liver is acetaminophen, especially if you do any drinking.
>if you drink regularly the liver opens up a metabolic pathway that literally converts tylenol into a substance that directly kills the liver >tylenol is regularly used by people to deal with hangovers and is put into a lot of other painkillers and cold remedies >the warnings on the box about liver damage are super vague, lax, and noncomittal It's a good thing the liver is so good at healing itself or a lot of people would be fucked
Daniel Walker
sure, but the idea for this is just in the setting. My thought is that most aliens got around the drug problem via direct injection to problem areas rather than just 'swallow two pills and let your digestive and cardiovascular system sort out the rest'
Oliver Cruz
...I was taking it for constant migraines as well, though it wasn't internal bleeding that got me to stop, just the realization that taking handfuls of pills at a time was probably not the best idea. Now I've got prescription stuff. Whiiich has acetaminophen in it. Because of course it does.
David Myers
Could be super fun, I'd definitely play it. You could do hilarious stuff with hallucinogens, look up DMT. Smuggling shipments of space drugs while avoiding the feds and pirates while dealing with the space mafia sounds incredible.
John Phillips
You may want to incorporate human food being a delicacy. If our constant poisoning of food has any benefits, its the rich, savory and incredibly large selection of different tastes and dishes we've been able to make with them. Hell, sometimes we shave gold onto things!
They'd also wouldn't be high priced for just that, no; they'd be also high priced for the medication you have to take before and after eating human meals to strengthen you immune system and help aliens deal with and eject the toxins.
On another thought, humans also could introduce aliens to the "miracle berry", which makes sour and bitter tasting things taste sweet. People will take these and literally bite into lemons like they're candy. I've tried it before, its like lemons taste like they're made out of pure sugar.
Adam Lopez
The thing was, it was a slow bleed and I didn't notice the side effects of the resultant anemia (one of which was more headaches), so I was basically pouring gasoline on a fire.
Asher Cox
>Humans are fucking horrible doctors unless they are treating other humans >They are as likely to accidentally kill you as they are to cripple you >But fuck they are surprisingly good at fixing humans
Hell, smuggling a fucking CHOCOLATES and CHILI PEPPERS would be fun. Especially chocolate with a chili on it.
Julian Rodriguez
sounds like a cool thing to run with. Humanity's largest industrial projects end up being aero and hydroponic stations.
Cooper Moore
Hersheys being associated with drugrunning is amusing
Landon Torres
>A lot of animals can't EAT that shit without dying. There's almost no animals out there who ENJOY having pain inflicted on them from eating spicy things, or eating bitter things either. It's not "poison". It's just designed to be unpleasant to eat for mammals. Birds can't taste capsaicin, so they don't mind. Plants like peppers want birds to eat their fruits but not mammals because birds will spread the seeds further.
Humans, however, produce endorphin in response to the pain of eating something spicy, so once you get used to it, it becomes pleasant.
Jace Edwards
>What is alcohol? The discovery of beer is sometimes considered a contributor to the birth of human civilization, because people settled and organized to make more of it. So yes.
Gabriel Walker
youtu.be/ZNRSHr3b4uA This ad now takes a new, somewhat sinister twist. A stash of chocolates on seemingly barren had been ransacked by a local aliens, who turned into choco addicts. Now it's time for them to pay for their next fix.
Christopher Green
We're a species of Zoidbergs...
Sebastian White
Average sized dogs could eat a whole tablet milk chocolate without problems. Sure it's going to get poisonous for them if done too often, or wreck their kidneys if regularly, but they can eat some. A square of black chocolate isn't going to kill anything but the smallest puppiest chihuahua either, and it has to be some pretty high cacao content chocolate at that.
Benjamin James
Booze was also cleaner than most water sources, so it was healthier to drink alcoholic liquids than take a risk drinking water that could have bad shit in it.
Gavin Jenkins
My 6lb pomeranian ate the last 3/4 (over 2oz.) of a 74% cocoa organic dark chocolate bar and I didn't even notice until I found the empty wrapper a day later. No symptoms at all.
I think cocoa affects some dogs more than others but it's best to not give it to them just to be safe.
Gavin Lewis
Pretty sure the whole 'chocolate is poisonous to dogs' thing is because if people didn't believe that, they'd be feeding their dogs a shitton of chocolate just because in the amounts that ARE toxic to them. Especially the smaller ones.
Easton Baker
Humanity as the hedonists of the galaxy? There was an old, old, Veeky Forums archive on the subject, written in the days of yore.
James Diaz
Source? Google search yields nothing.
Dylan Stewart
cassiopeia quinn
Luke Hughes
This just adds more layers to the "Mexico is literally made of drugs, murder, and other deadly things" trope. >chocolate >chilis >coffee >nightshades (tomatoes, squashes, etc.)
Michael Lewis
Speaking of coffee, apparently caffeine is deadly poison to most other vertebrates, but has a beneficial effect on bees.
>humanity encounters a spacefaring civilization of bee people >embassies and trading areas are required by treaty to have large coffee plantations nearby >both sides are quite happy about this >one day the humans learn that the bee people excrete honey >war is nearly started when some lance corporal on guard duty asks a passing drone to shit in his coffee
Carson Brooks
Bee's don't excrete honey.
They vomit it.
Logan Richardson
Many thanks user.
Samuel Nelson
This is also why most pre-modern forms of booze have very low alcohol content. There's a reason the verb "to drink" without a description of what you're drinking refers to alcohol in most European-derived languages.
Adam Perry
>Thoughts? Additions? Places I can take this? What do you guys think? Space is an Ocean => Spacers are Sailors => sailors are infamous for getting high/drunk as hard and as often as they can. Some bored space marine spiking the punch at a diplomatic function could lead to a Jonestown type massacre, if you want to use this to spark conflict with a species that can't metabolize ethanol properly.
Mason Hill
stealing this idea thankyou!
Ian Foster
To be fair, these are aliens, not Earth bees.
Landon Robinson
Chemo itself probably looks like torture to everyone else. >So let me get this straight, hew mon. >You deliberately inject RADIOACTIVE POISON into the BLOODSTREAMS of your elderly and infirm on PURPOSE? >It's the only thing that'll kill cancers that we can't cut out with knives >[panicked xeno screaming]
Samuel Butler
"Have I mentioned that there are microorganisms that can induce cancer in their hosts? Or that occasionally a cancer that is inherently contagious will form?"
Josiah Allen
got a link by any chance?
Angel Perry
I remember the gist of it. >we make first contact with hulking shark men >their spaceship is very utilitarian and their vocabularies are sharply limited >other species were better warriors, engineers, diplomats, and traders >but none of them had art worth a damn >we became the creative class of the galaxy >all was well
Caleb Allen
>e are about 90% sure 'hypertasting' or 'picky eaters' are from folks who have left over adaptations from when humans COULDN'T eat that stuff without dying, s No comment of hypertasting, but the vast majority of picky eating is from behavior altering parasites (in this case, bacteria) living in screwed up gut flora.
Brayden Brown
Unless they've cured it or have a far stabler and more copy-sure DNA equivalent, then they'll have cancer too.
Though, they may have cured theirs.
Hey now, Science wants you to ignore that... even as they push the HPV vaccine as preventing cervical cancer...
Lincoln Smith
Ugh, I can't believe I just wasted an hour of my life reading that garbage! The webcomic is riddled with plot-holes, the protagonist is an unrepentant mary-sue whose morality flip-flops every other issue, it seeths with virtue signalling, and the webcomic's sole redeeming virtue is its well-drawn mammary glands! I'm willing to tolerate mediocre art, setting, and even plot, but this "webcomic's" absolute shit characterization is simply inexcusable!
Matthew Lopez
really? I thought pickyeating was all hypertasting to a greater or lesser extent?
Eli Evans
I think you're overthinking it.
Blake Peterson
Picky eaters like most foods they don't touch, and find the foods the eat bland/repetitive. But give them options and they'll pick routine in a snap. It's not about flavor, it's about craving.
Isaac Rogers
I'm a professional critic, it's literally my fucking JOB to overthink plot!
Jackson Martin
Diarrhea is the number one cause of death.
Aaron Cox
PAJEET, MY SON
Leo Gutierrez
Hey user. Try reading this then.
Liam Gray
I'd like to believe this isn't true, but I know someone who's dog starts losing hair and getting skin lesions if it eats anything other than dog chow, and she still keeps giving it lots of food. So the poor thing's in pain, because the stupid cunt's too busy babying it to take something away for it in order to help it.
Dylan Edwards
Why does this seem vaguely fetishistic?
Asher Allen
>poisoned food as recreation So alcohol?
Caleb Scott
You have a sick mind.
Levi Miller
it's still less lethal in humans than it is in literally anything else.
Caleb Lopez
a chow (medium sized dog) eating a Heresy Kiss isn't going to keep over dead but it'll probably get sick from it. A chow eating a chocolate bar is probably in danger.
Isaiah Rogers
just double checked.
It's 20mg of toxic ingredient per pound of dog to reach 'stomach pump the dog or it's dead' levels. So it depends largely on your cacao content.
Aiden White
Seriously though, it doesn't say where they excrete honey from, which means it's likely one or more of several things: It comes out of their mouth = Kissing It comes out of skin = Licking them They have some sort of tube = Sucking honey out of tube It comes out of genitalia/ass = Shouldn't it be obvious?
Camden Carter
to compare. Humans can eat 1 gram of that particular extract per pound of body weight before it starts to reach lethal dosages. It's also a matter of the actual stuff in the cacao.
What that means is that an 80lb human has to eat around 5.7 kilograms of average chocolate to overdose on it. An 80 lb dog, by comparison, would die from 114 grams.
Julian Carter
Dogs are frequently alergic to chocolate, it's not actually poisonous. My dog will gorge itself on snickers if it can sneak a bag of them (better luck next year Trick or Treaters) and come out fine.
Parker Ramirez
The actual active ingredient we taste as spiciness, Capsaicin, has no effect on non-mammals. It is entirely evolved in an attempt to stop creatures with molars that can break open and destroy the seeds of the plants from eating the peppers, while allowing creatures like birds that will just scatter the seeds everywhere to be unaffected. It has absolutely no cellular effect, and simply binds directly to the temperature regulator sites of mammalian cells, causing them to falsely report that they are experiencing extreme heat. This can still be lethal due to physiological shock responses, but capsaicin is extremely non-toxic otherwise. It is very likely that aliens would find it much less poisonous than most other stuff in our diets.
The fact that peppers also contain antimicrobials is completely separate. Capsaicin is likely an evolutionary spinoff of those microbials. Plants in hotter climates have to deal with more pest species so they evolve much more complicated chemical cocktails to try and deter them.
Lincoln Sullivan
Your math is wrong. According to the 1 gram per pound, the person would have to be 5000 pounds to start to OD from 5 kilos of chocolate
Daniel Johnson
>>average chocolate >so not pure cocoa Didn't notice that line. Oops
Ian Price
Sorry, I should have been more clear. The gram weight is the actual toxic compound -inside- of chocolate.
I worked backwards from the measurements of 'how much chocolate would it take to kill a man' and the article also provided how large a dosage of the actual compound inside of chocolate was necessary based on body weight.
I worked backwards from there.
yeah that probably contributed.
Andrew King
those kind of people are scum. my friends parents overfed their dachshund (long sausage dog) so much that it's fucking spine broke and they had to put the poor thing out of it's misery
Joseph Adams
yeah, right now
not in an natural setting
Ian Brown
Holy shit, I just had a massive flashback to this YA book I read back in fifth grade or so where alien bodysnatchers were walking among humans, but red pepper was ridiculously addictive to them and also actually killed them if they ate too much.
Anyone else know what I'm talking about? Can't remember the name for the life of me.
Jaxson Phillips
Lol! This is turning into a discussion about how humans are better than aliens! That's silly!
Lucas Price
>52370497 And butts. Don't forget the butts.
Charles Morales
Lol! I admit that I have read many a low quality story because of the sexual content!
Caleb Garcia
eeeeven in a natural setting. yeah, it's HIDEOUSLY dangerous even still, but even today humans can handle it better than just about any other species can.
If you want to get technical, we also survive having our limbs chopped off and going into shock better than anything else, so that might be more closely linked to our ability to survive diarrhea than our superior gut flora.
Jaxson Richardson
I did say it was almost certainly going to end up as a HFY thread. This is more or less the topic that started the original humanity fuck yeah thread.
Jack Perry
lol its still cool though
but what if we take it the other way!
What if aliens don't need to have fun to be happy?
What if humans are the junky hedoniists of the alien civilization!? lol
Justin Morgan
possibly, but I'm having trouble imagining what a civilization that doesn't need entertainment would be like.
I mean, come on, there's basically two forms of industry, the industry of needs and the industry of entertainment, and almost all of culture falls into the later.
Nathan Adams
Doctors have outright said that if it was introduced today Tylenol probably wouldn't have passed FDA safety regs for over the counter medicine.
Fortunately I don't drink, so i'm free to take either or. I find acetomephanine is best for muscle aches, ibuprofine is best for swelling/nerve pain.
Tyler Young
What if one of the main alien civilizations don't feel the need to be happy?
They're a theocratic race of aggressive but calculating warriors who consider it their holy duty to bring order to the universe and all the lesser races. They expand because they believe that it is the divine will, they have no real entertainment-oriented culture to speak of.
Thomas Campbell
lol I neeeeeeeever take tylonol because its bad bad bad. alcohol is all the painkiller I need lol jk
lol I like this! I could be a good future scifi commedy
Nolan Walker
You should read Consider Phlebas.
Ian King
>Now I have to run a sci-fi comedy using the PARANIOA system.
Evan Allen
Science doesn't *want* anything, user.
Actually, science could be a pretty cool human trait now that I think about it. Sure, everybody learns from observation, but humanity has an uncanny willingness to experiment.
"I wonder what happens if I poke/eat/fuck it..."
Jordan Hughes
It's kind of hard to justify space age technology without that impulse. Unless you involve the usual progressor/ ancient aliens! tropes that get stale very quickly.
Connor Russell
Animorphs by any chance? Can't recall too well, but it rings a bell.
Julian Thompson
What if the aliens stumbled into hyperdrive by chance? Like, say, they have this nagging to randomly try new combinations. Like, they can't help tinkering with technology, it's like an impulse they can't stop. Like DF dwarves' Fey Mood or something like that. While curiosity is more controlled, they have no concept of it. So here we have a race that bumbled through science because they're somewhat autistic, and is basically driven by bursts of sporadic intelligence. Their masterpieces would then be analyzed by other races and perhaps reverse-engineered, maybe? Because after these bursts of inspiration/intelligence they revert back to their 'normal' selves and cannot perceive exactly how and why their masterpiece work.
tl;dr: what if they can't help it?
Jacob Thompson
Presumably these aliens had to start at prehistoric technology at some point. If their whole culture is essentially 100% based of random tinkering without any understanding of underlying concepts, starting with sharp rocks and ending with hyperdrive... that would be a quite alien race indeed.
Aiden Turner
Or maybe they abuse their Fey Moods. Like, as soon as one creates a masterpiece that does something good, it would be copied perfectly down to the tiniest detail they can. They still don't know how it really works - all they know is 'place power here, attach it to a ship, and point it the other way of where you're going' for their FTL engines. It just works!
Blake Harris
A lot of animals eat stuff that's toxic to a lot of other animals. Either because they're not affected by it, or because they're reasonably resistant and very hungry.
As for recreational drugs, that's shit which IS poisonous to us, which we intentionally take what we hope is a less than lethal dosage of. And we don't seem to be the only animals around doing that either.
>caffeine is deadly poison to most other vertebrates
Swallow 20g of it and you'll notice that it can be quite lethal to mammals too.
That's gonna end with Hatsune Miku hijacking a carrier, isn't it?
Brayden Morales
I don't know if they would necessarily have a society in any way humanity does. You could have an intelligent non-sentient race of space ants like this though. I'm pretty sure ants don't have architects who figure out exactly how to build tunnels and mounds, or farmers who actually figure out how to farm insects and fungi... they just do it instinctively.
Ian Gomez
I attempted to disinfect the wound with pepperspray once, expecting capsaicin to kill the bacteria. I feel dumb now.
>literal "spicers" being spice smugglers right alongside drug-runners.
>do individual planets regulate importation based on the average lethality of consumables? >"I swear officer I'm just importing hydrocarbon fuel, yes, ethanol is a valid and legal fuel source."
>human doctors are the zoidbergs of space, horrifying in the ham-fisted(to other aliens) application meds.
>accidental assassinations because some asshole spiked the punch-bowl
>human-food parlours with complimentary anti-death drugs so aliens can eat and not die.
>I wonder what human "drug culture" translates to in space?
>what other cultural variances would be fun or interesting?
what else guys?
Wyatt Morgan
A planet with no anti-fungal defenses in its native fauna was accidentally wiped clean of all sentient life when a French crew dropped by with an innocent gift of bleu cheese.
