From the Vault: Five Reasons to Never Take Your Space Helmet Off

You've consumed enough science fiction to know something the average red shirt doesn't: Never take your space helmet off on a foreign planet. But if you're still tempted to breathe deep the gathering gloom, how about five compelling scientific reasons not to? Join Robert and Joe as they discuss "Alien: Covenant" and explore some very compelling biological and radiological reasons to remain helmeted on an alien hell world. (Originally published May 25, 2017)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Time to go into the Old Vault for a classic
episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This one was
originally published in May of It was called five Reasons
to Never Take Your Space Helmet Off. And I remember
why we did this episode is because we went to
the theater to see Alien Covenant, Yeah, which I haven't

(00:28):
watched again since the theater, but I am expecting actually,
despite the bad reviews, it probably holds up pretty well
as a new version of the nineteen fifties Mad Scientists
B movie. Yeah, I haven't seen it since it since
it originally came out, either, but I consider it better
than most science fiction films. Uh at any right, it

(00:49):
does involve a trope that frequently pops up in science
fiction people taking their space helmets off on uh, you know,
alien worlds, and then then they're surprised eyes when something
terrible happens. Right, just get that biosphere right in you right?
Or the other of course, example is where where characters
take their helmets off on alien worlds and nothing bad happens,

(01:11):
which is also, as you'll learn in this episode, equally
preposterous like the old Star Trek episode. Yes, and actually
that's what I'm comparing Alien Covenant more too. It's like
it's like a beautiful if Ridley Scott photographed a version
of Bride of the Monster by Edwood. Well, the great

(01:32):
thing about Ridley Scott films is even even when they're bad,
they're pretty good. So I mean, there's gonna be a
there's gonna be a certain degree of artistry that's going
to be present, even even of other avident areas of
the film, like Gunter Deliver. I think that was the
case here. I remember some severe scripting and pacing issues,
but I just kind of liked it anyway. Yeah. I

(01:54):
think they're about three movies slammed together into Alien Covenant,
and two of them I really enjoyed. Uh So, without
further ado, let's go ahead and pop the hatches on
our helmets and breathe deep the Vault episode. Welcome to
Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,

(02:21):
you wasn't discussed to blow your mind. My name is
Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick and Boyd we have
a treat for you today because Robert and I saw
Alien Covenant this past weekend, right, yeah, on a Saturday.
Was Yeah, it was. So we're going to try to
avoid major plot spoilers, but this episode today is going
to uh spring off of an idea that came up

(02:42):
when we were watching the movie. So we are going
to talk about the movie a little in more general terms.
But if you absolutely cannot bear to hear anything at
all until you see it, you might want to pause
here and come back once you've seen it. Like I said,
no specific plot spoilers, but I mean, we've got to
talk about the movie, right, yeah, I mean, and I
don't agree with me talking about any more depth than

(03:02):
you would get out of the trailers for it. And
there were so many trailers for this film. I feel, yeah,
I feel like this was the most part of it.
May just be those sort of the algorithms of YouTube advertisements,
but I felt like I was absolutely bombarded to the
point where I just really wanted to respond and say like, look,
I I'm on board, I'm gonna see it. Just stop

(03:22):
making me watch trailers for it, because I'm gonna it's
gonna reach the point where I'm gonna start losing interest.
So Ridley Scott did the same thing with Prometheus, where
he didn't just do trailers, but he did scenes that
take place before the movie starts. Sit with him and
that thing. I don't know. I think maybe part of
it just like shooting a lot of footage, and then

(03:43):
with this film in particular, I felt like there was
this is so one of the things with the film,
like Alien Covenant, is that, by no means was just
a small movie. This is a large studio production. And
and over the years, Ridley Scott has has proven himself
one of these actors who knows how he has the
clout to work within that system, but he seems to

(04:05):
know how to to cater to expectations like you don't
not that I follow this kind of thing just religiously,
but you know, I don't remember ever hearing stories about
Ridley Scott's battle with the studio over something like he
seems to Yeah, it may have happened. I don't recall
hearing about that. It's not like hearing about David Fincher's
struggles on Alien three with Fox. Yeah, and part of

(04:28):
that is him having cloud you know, he's Ridley Scott
he's essentially, you know, a living legend of of the cinema.
But but I also get the sense that he is
willing to He's willing to work. He's willing to adjust
that or to um to to to adjust the settings,
the trajectory on that, on that that vision he has

(04:50):
in order to see it to the theater. What you're
saying is he'll play ball. Yeah, I get the impression
that he's a he's a guy who will play ball. Okay,
So here's so it is an alien movie. I will
say it's an alien movie in the Alien franchise. That
actually felt kind of like an alien movie. And here's
my short review. Almost all the things I can think
of to say about it are criticisms. I felt that

(05:14):
it had really similar problems with Prometheus. With the script,
the human characters are underdeveloped. Their personalities and motivations didn't
seem to be consistent from one scene to another. Parts
of the plot definitely went on. And this is a cliche.
I hate to use it, but it is the best
descriptive term for it. It was on autopilot in certain parts.

(05:34):
But I just really liked it. I enjoyed it. Nonetheless,
despite all that it was beautiful to look at. Of course,
Ridley Scott's always a great set designer, great at the
visual aspect of his movies, creative and interesting things to explore.
In the first half at least, I love the gleeful
sense of body horror repaired with this classically ponderous mad

(05:58):
scientist vibe, especially in the mid section of the movie.
And Michael Fastbender is just heroically fun. So to the
extent this makes any sense, I felt like the movie
was somehow both stupid and an intensely pleasing work of art. Okay,
well this actually this in ways lines up with some

(06:19):
of my feelings about it. It was definitely from me
a film that I saw it. I wasn't sure how
I felt about it, but I keep thinking about it
every day since I saw it, and and I feel
like for me at this point in my life and
only the way I interact with films, like that's how
I tend to judge it. Is it something more than
like the structural completeness of a film, or the or

(06:42):
the character motivations and the character development, Like is there
something in the movie that I came back to because
there's for instance, there's so many just sort of paint
by number superhero films, and there are a lot of
fun I enjoy seeing them, but it's just really into them. Well,
I mean, I'm into them. I get excited about I'm
I'm excited to say, see the next Guardians of the
Galaxy film whenever it's you know, I can watch it

(07:05):
on an airplane or however it comes together. But I
enjoy seeing them, and then I don't. I don't chew
on them afterwards. They kind of go in in in,
one year out the other kind of right. So with
Alien Covenant, I I kept thinking about in terms of
of of Scott's vision for this film and the fact

(07:26):
that he you know, like we said, well play ball
um because it's uh. Because just as the the Malevolent
Organism and the Alien series draws its form via the
life forms that it annihilates, so too does Alien Cove.
Its covenant Seema a chimerical beast. So it's a it's
a Prometheus sequel and body, but with appindages that call

(07:48):
back to Aliens Alien three even a dash of a
VP in there for good measure. And you know, the
monster's form varies, enabling the creature to better consume it's
a victims, but the genetic mission remains the same. This
you know, unstoppable will of weaponized evolution, created and recreated
by those who would take on the mantle of gods.

(08:10):
And it's such really, Scott, I feel like he allowed
Covenants form to encompass fan and studio demands for more,
for more monsters, for dashes of past installments in the franchise,
but still at its heart, it's a Prometheus sequel. It's
the the second installment in a new film Mark that
one commentator on called called quote a weirdly religious science

(08:31):
fiction universe. And uh, you know, I'm me personally, I
love both space horror and virtually anything that's weirdly religious,
so you know I'm on this bull's eye for me too. Yeah.
I love it though with I mean, the those aspects
you mentioned, I love that they're all there, but they also,

(08:52):
um would you say, so many of them are not
followed through on. It's almost like they set something up
to happen in the movie and then it just never happened. Yeah,
I mean, I would be interested to learn more about
sort of behind the scenes and what was added, what
was changed, because for instance, there's a there's a shower
scene not to not just spoil anything later in the film,
and it's very a VP and it feels feels a

(09:13):
bit tacked on. It's like the moment it goes Multiple
reviewers have commented on this that at some point the
movie suddenly becomes a slasher movie. It's like a Friday
movie for a few minutes, and that's sort of how
it felt to me. Yeah, and uh and I also
have to say that when it comes to the characters
of this film, like, really, this is a film about

(09:35):
two androids, and uh and and to A and to
a lesser extent, a third character who is Um who
is sort of like the associate captain who ends up
taking over the Billy CREDITU character. Uh. Everyone else is
is far less developed. But at the core, I mean,
a film about to androids sort of struggling to figure

(09:57):
out like where they stand in relationship to the to
these these these lesser creators are they are they their
their guardians or are they there destroyers? You know, I'm
I'm I'm on board of that kind of thing. Yeah. Okay,
so we got to get into the meat of the episode.
But one final comment about the movie, do you think
they're ever going to stop with the the title format

(10:18):
of franchise named colon, abstract noun. I'm so sick of it.
Alien Resurrection, Alien Coming, and all the franchises do it now.
It's you know, it's like, uh, Terminator, Genesis, whatever. It
makes me feel like the next one is going to
be called like Alien Gamification. It just feels like such
a product I hated. I wish they could give each

(10:40):
movie its own title. Well, the last one was Prometheus,
so thumbs up for that. I get the feeling that
it is about tying everything into this overarching brand. Yeah,
I think it's just to get people in the theaters.
And I mean sometimes we use the noun noun colon
additional keywords, uh template when say titling episodes of this podcast,

(11:02):
because a part of it is like I've only got
so much space, and I really need to convey what
this is about, So aliens Colon Covenant. That lets you
know that it's going to involve aliens, It's gonna involve
Colon's involve something quasi religious, and that's all you need
to know. But if we were to really follow this format,
every episode of ours, somebody called something like stuff to
blow your mind colon respiration, which is sort of what

(11:26):
we're going to get into today. So, without spoiling anything
significant about the plot, I wanted to point out something
this movie movie has in common with Prometheus. So it's
got space explorers, that's no surprise. Astronauts go into other
planets and they just plunge their faces straight into the
atmosphere and biosphere of an alien planet without protection. And

(11:47):
Prometheus they are these scenes where they take their helmets
off for no reason I can really remember. I think
they're just for the heck of it. In Covenant, they
just walk out of their landing vehicle without suits of
any kind. They're there's wear in some hats and some overcoats. Now,
I'm fine with characters behaving irrationally or unrealistically, and horror

(12:08):
and sci fi movies, I think that's a pretty common
element and I'm okay with it. Yeah, I mean basically
the whole movie Covenant, it begins with a hey, should
we go check this out scenario like so many horror films,
And if your characters were smart enough to stay on
the path right, then they would never we would have
no movie because what was that noise? In the bushes,

(12:28):
and it's horror stories are about going off the path?
Should we go off the path? Should we go explore that?
And yeah, you don't do that, you never get out
of the boat. But if you never got out of
the boat, we would have no film, right, So I'm
fine with that happening, providing I get provided that there's
some consistent level of realism. Most modern sci fi movies,

(12:49):
I would say, have a very healthy dose of fantasy
in them, And that's just one expression of that here.
But today we wanted to explore the topic of why,
if you're an actual exo play, a colonist or explorer,
you really shouldn't want to take your helmet off or
otherwise open yourself up to the alien environment and and
the sea of unknown possibilities that could come flooding in

(13:12):
upon you. Right. One thing to keep in mind here
is that that we're definitely looking at why you should
keep that that helmet on and the dangers that are
inherent to any any kind of alien environment we might experience. However,
I feel like an important caveat to all this is
that anytime we're looking at a fictional people landing on

(13:34):
a fictional world, and taking their helmet off. I always
have to wonder, Okay, would any sufficiently advanced civilization capable
of not only interplanetary but interstellar travel, would they have
all that worked out? Like, would they have sufficient scanning
technology to know just like down to the finest detail
that the air was breathable? Uh? Well, without spoiling too

(13:56):
much about Alien Covenant, obviously they don't know that. But
they're also religious fanatics. Not to have played David's advocate
too much, but but they are. They are driven by
by religious optimism in that film. So what you're saying,
Robert is you're a little more gung ho. I think
maybe you're saying, breathe in, breathe in, Brothers. I'm thinking

(14:17):
that if the tap, if your technology is not picking
it up, if there's a danger out there that you're
interstellar technology is incapable of picking up on, let it
act fast. Because movies movie movies like Alien Covenant show
it's like there's no there's no real victory, And being
a survivor, it's better to be that that individual that

(14:38):
gets that has something jumped out of him rather quickly.
Right at least you go out with a with a
burst yeah, a big chesty burst. Okay, well, so maybe
we should start by just acknowledging the concept of a
space suit. Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of easy
to forget why we have them because we end up
just focusing on how cool they look most of the time. Right, So,

(15:00):
a space suit is I think I remember reading a
NASA resource at some point a long time ago that
put it like this, and it was it's a spacecraft
for one person. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Uh. So,
for example, the extra vehicular mobility units that are worn
by astronauts. When you've got to go outside and perform
external work on the International Space Station and do a spacewalk,

(15:22):
you put this suit on and it cools your body
it uh. It supplies you with oxygen and breathable atmosphere.
It purges the CEO two that you exhale when you're
out there. Uh. It shields you from radiation, It shields
you from impacts from space debris. So, and these are
all very important things. But another important aspect of any

(15:43):
type of suit for extra vehicular activity when you're out
exploring the cosmos is that it's a contained environment. It's
supposed to create a sealed barrier between external conditions and
internal conditions. So this sort of means making the inside
of the suit as earth like as possible, no matter
what the outside of the suit is. And of course

(16:05):
this would also mean keeping out things that really just
don't go well with your Earth adapted biology, for example,
for and dust, gas, particles, radiation, and potentially life. Yeah,
it comes back to the idea of like the spacecraft itself,
it's it's the idea that we as humans evolved not
only to live on Earth, but to live within a

(16:27):
very um thin portion of the atmosphere and under very
specific environmental settings. And uh and and so there are
places on our own Earth whereof we we go, we perish,
and therefore we have to we have to bring part
of our world with us, even if it's just a
skin layer in a suit. Yeah. Now I can totally
understand the impulse to want to take the space suit off.

(16:49):
I can imagine if I was somebody colonizing an exoplanet
that was, you know, that we thought would be habitable,
that we could start living there. Obviously, protocols would be
to maintain that seal, to to keep the quarantine as
long as there was any doubt whatsoever that what was
outside could hurt us. But you just can't live that way, right,

(17:11):
I mean, anytime you go outside, you've got to wear
the suit. You you can't touch the rocks in the trees,
you can't interact by contact, by respiration, by anything except
through this barrier with the planet you live on. That
sounds like a horrible existence. Well, I don't know, you know,
environmental standards are changing a little every day, Joe, So
we'll check back in on this in a few years. Yeah.

(17:34):
So I guess now we should get into the five
reasons that we've come up with, at least why you
should really not want to take your helmet off on
an alien planet. Would be a good list to have,
you know, in in in reduced form as a sticker
on the inside of your helmet. And then if when
you're tempted to, when you're overcome by the beauty of

(17:56):
you know, exo planet. I love it when an exo
planet has a nice diaby lollical name like uh in
Furness b yeah or Mantibolga six, so you know, whatever
it happens to be when you when you land there
and you think, Ah, this place with this uh, this
creepy name is actually rather beautiful. I'm gonna get a
breath of fresh air. Look to the lower left hand
portion of your visor and go through this list. Pope

(18:20):
satan Alpi six e. Alright, so reason number one is
going to be the obvious one, the one that you
probably don't even need to think about. It's gonna be
atmospheric gas. Right. Can I breathe this atmosphere that I
am seemingly moving through? And we should be generous. This
is one that sci fi almost always takes care of.

(18:42):
There's a line in the script where somebody says, atmospheric
conditions nominal the air, we can breathe it. But it's
worth looking at what the atmospheres of other planets generally
look like. Jean Paul Starchas said, you know, Hell is
other people once you start looking beyond Earth. I propose
an update, which is Hell is other people's planets because

(19:03):
we are just so tightly adapted to the Earth biosphere
and and uh, and it's very particular balance of gases,
and to upset that balance significantly would be to change
the properties of Earth, and thus to change the biosphere
so we need our atmosphere to be the way it
is seventy eight percent nitrogen, one percent oxygen, about point

(19:24):
nine percent are gone, and point one percent trace gases,
primarily carbon dioxide, plus a lot of variation in water
vapor in the air. Now, we don't know exactly what
the atmospheres of terrestrial exoplanets are going to be. We
know we can see some gas giants orbiting other stars
in the galaxy, and those of course are going to

(19:44):
be composed generally like gas giants are like, they'll have
hydrogen and helium atmospheres. But as far as the terrestrial
exoplanets are go out there, we we don't know exactly
what their atmospheres are going to be. Like. If you
look at other terrestrial planets in our Solar system, you
do start to get a picture that might be local

(20:04):
to us, but we don't know. Venus atmosphere is about
carbon dioxide. Yeah, not good, not so nice. Mars has
an incredibly thin atmosphere. It's you know, a one percent
or kind of atmosphere, and what's there is about carbon dioxide. Yeah,
And of course of Venus to the reality is that

(20:25):
if you're breathing that on the surface. You're essentially standing
in a pressure cooker too, yes, so so yeah, But
you're just talking about just the breathe ability of the air, right. Uh.
And even if you arrived on Earth at a different
point in Earth's history, you would have encountered a very
different atmosphere on the primeval surface of Earth, say about
four billion years ago, we also had an atmosphere of

(20:46):
much higher CEO two concentration before the biogenic oxygenation of
Earth about two billion years ago you had the original terraforming. Now,
carbon dioxide is obviously not good to breathe. That is
what you exhale. It's a waste product of of human respiration,
and breathing it in can lead to bad effects at

(21:07):
low concentrations and death or asphyxiation or poisoning high concentrations.
I found an interesting chart put together based on research
on carbon dioxide toxicity, and the chart was made by
the International Volcanic Health Hazard Network, and it's got a
sort of ascending scale of CEO two concentration in the

(21:28):
air you're breathing and what the effects would be. So
they say, you know, two to three percent of air,
you're not really going to notice what's going on. But
there will be a shortness of breath if you exert yourself.
If at three percent exposure, you're breathing gets deeper, uh,
three to five percent exposure, you're breathing rhythm speeds up

(21:50):
and you might get headaches. At five percent exposure, your
breathing gets really labored. You're gonna have headaches, sweating, heavy pulse.
At seven point five percent exposure, you're gonna have really
rapid breathing, increased heart rate, headaches, sweating, dizziness, shortness of breath,
loss of strengthen the muscles, probably some mental fuzziness, like

(22:12):
inability to work things out in your head. You're gonna
get sleepy and hear ringing in your ears. At eight
you get the really bad stuff vertigo, vomiting, loss of consciousness, uh,
possibly death in this range, and then at you're gonna
have convulsions, rapid loss of consciousness and death. And of

(22:33):
course this is a situation too in control environments where
the CEO two level can can creep up. If if
things are are are out of wax, says in a
submarine environment, yeah, or in the space shuttle or or
like the Apollo spacecraft. If you don't have your CEO
too scrubbers working, you are in for a world of pain.

(22:53):
And so, as we said earlier, this is something the
sci fi movies usually do address. They're not just gonna
land on a plan it with the carbon dioxide atmosphere,
opened the doors and say breathe in. Well, unless it's
I feel like it. It It happened all the time and
Trek though, right, what they just beamed down somewhere and
they couldn't breathe. I don't know. I mean, it's been
a long time since I've really mainlined some Trek, but

(23:14):
it seems like they're always just breathing the heck out
of any atmosphere they came across, like every world was breathable. Uh,
And maybe there's maybe there was always an explanation or
maybe there's you know, some sort of transhumanist read where
they've all had like an operation that makes them able
to breathe carbon dioxide. Yeah, Like if if this were
Banks's Culture series, I'm sure that would be the explanation. Well, okay,

(23:35):
they're members of the culture and their their body is
automatically adjusting to some different atmospheric condition. Yeah, but I
wanna posit that you should still be careful here. So
imagine you are in this sci fi spaceship and you've
arrived at a planet and they analyzed the atmosphere. Hopefully
they've analyzed it before you went to the planet, because
they can do that via the spectral analysis of the

(23:57):
colors of light they reflect off of it. But you
should arrive there, and will you arrive there and they say, okay,
oxygen atmosphere, you can breathe it, it still might not
be safe to take that suit off, even just in
terms of atmospheric gas, because even though ambient carbon dioxide
levels might not be at a concentration to cause poisoning
or asphyxiation, there could be other possibilities of localized events.

(24:22):
So one thing I want to point out is on
August one night, there was one of the weirdest and
most tragic natural disasters in modern history. And this was
near Lake Nyos in Cameroon. Robert, I think you've probably
read about this before. I believe there's a House to
Works article on this. There is, there is. This is
one of the things I looked at. So Lake Nios

(24:44):
is a crater lake. It's resulting from volcanic eruption several
hundred years ago, and on this day in August ninety six,
the lake suddenly exploded. The lake exploded, sending towers of
water up into the air, and it produced this cloud
of gas that rushed out of the lake into the
surrounding countryside, and it ended up killing more than people

(25:07):
in the nearby town of Nios. Nearly every person was killed.
Only six people survived, and the killer was carbon dioxide. Now,
lakes and volcanic craters often accumulate dissolved carbon dioxide in
the water, but in most cases it gets absorbed into
the atmosphere more gradually, right it rises up and gets released.

(25:28):
In this case, it looks like what happened is that
the water under high pressure at the bottom of this
lake began to accumulate more and more dissolved CEO two
it really high concentrations without ever releasing it. And then
some unknown event could have been a small earthquake or
in anything, it caused the lake to suddenly release all
that carbon dioxide at once, and this massive cloud of

(25:50):
poison gas that traveled at about sixty miles per hour
across the surface of the land. So fortunately, now that
lake has de gassing pipes, and it's got an alarm
system that monitors the CEO two at the bottom of
the lake water, meaning you can prevent something like this
from happening in the future. But it goes to show
that local atmospheric conditions can be altered in a very

(26:11):
deadly way at a moment's notice. So if you're walking
around on a rocky alien planet with breatheable oxygen atmosphere,
should you also consider the frequency and location of geological
outgassing of this type? Yeah? Yeah, this sounds very much
like a planet that might be encountered in the chronicles
of Riddick World, like a a a regular you know,

(26:35):
occurrence that they can sort of plan the action scene around. Yeah, like, oh, everybody,
since you start going off. It starts going off because
a big CEO two surge is about to occur, and
then they're having to stop in the fight sequence and
get their masks on. Can I admit something you're probably
gonna hate me for was that I've never seen a
Riddick movie. Oh you've got a remedy to this joke,
at least with the first two. Yeah, how many are there?

(26:55):
So wait, it's it's pitch Black, Chronicles Narnia, ridic Chriticles
of Narnia, Ridica, uh, and what else? There's more after
I think that the third one is just Riddick, and
then then it's just ridd It's gonna be ridd or Dick.
And the next one, I guess, um, yeah, I mean
the first one. The first one is a fun action
film with some cool critters in it. Uh, and then

(27:18):
many people hold it up just as an objectively, you know,
good sci fi action flick. Yeah, the monsters are good
in that one. The second one is a bit silly,
a little flash gordiny. But but I actually probably enjoyed
that one the most just because it plays it plays
two things I like, and the kind of a goofy

(27:39):
um a space opera scenario. Yeah, and the villain. And
that one's really good too. Yeah, yeah, okay, I'll have
to check it out. But they often encounter this scenario
where like in the first one, the whole deal is
that the planet has these uh, these these plot centric
periods of light and darkness, and the monsters only come
out of night. But when to make the next one,

(28:00):
they should definitely consider a an explosive CEO two planet
because I can I can picture it working beautifully. Well,
that is one thing I guess we don't know. So
in this episode we're going to be raising things that
could be possibilities on unknown planets, but we don't really
know if there are planets out there where there is
very frequent c O two out gassing all over the planet.

(28:23):
On Earth, this can happen, and we've just shown examples
of how it can be deadly, but it doesn't happen
all that often. It's not like if you're just generally
landing on the surface, you'd expect to encounter that, because yeah,
you can imagine a scenario in which this is this
is every day. This is just a regular part of
life on Chernobyl six or whatever the name of the
planet is, and a human is just not going to

(28:44):
be evolved to survive that, right uh. And and it
is something that you might expect to happen on geologically
active planets all over the place. So you've got an
icy mantle, it's got materials in it, like a CEO
two or sulfur dioxide that erupting clouds that disperse the surface.
And it's true on Earth lots of the deaths that
are due to volcanic eruptions and other geologic events like

(29:08):
that are not always from the things you think of
like lava flows, mud and pyroclastic flows and ash fall,
but due to poison gas, inhalation and suffocation. And you
can even see that there are other objects in our
Solar system that have eruptions like this, like Jupiter's moon,
Io is incredibly geologically active, is full of volcanoes on
its surface that erupt with sulfurous glee. Yeah, and on

(29:30):
this other world they just might be used to it.
I'm reminded of the scene on The Simpsons where Marge
just casually it's a Treehouse of Horror episode where March
just casually says, Oh, it's the fog that turns people
inside out, creeping in, you know, and and in this world, Yeah,
that's just the fog that turns people inside out. It
just happens every now and then. It's just how life goes.

(29:50):
And uh, either you're you're evolved to to roll with
the punches or you're not. That's they sing a song
that they just one sniff of that fog and you're
hide out. Yeah, it's a big dance number with a
dog in it. Yeah, and come of going after Abe
Simpson's exposed visra Yeah, good times anyway, Okay, well, there

(30:10):
are some possibilities, but I think we should take a
quick break, and when we come back we will look
at probably the biggest thing to consider. All Right, we're back, So, Robert,
we assume that the gases of the atmosphere on our
exoplanet are safe. We we want to explore or colonize.

(30:31):
We've thoroughly checked it out. It has a breathable atmosphere
with oxygen. We've checked his geological activity. It's not going
to be belching poison gas on us constantly wherever we land.
We're we're pretty confident about the gas quality itself. Should
we just take the helmet off now? Well, then we're
getting into, yeah that the next big worry is going
to be what if there's some something in the air,

(30:52):
some sort of life form, be it alien spores, some
sort of alien disease. I have no idea what I'm
about to breathe in, right, right, So this is reason
number two pathogens. Obviously, it's not going to be spoiling
much about alien Covenant to say that this plays a
role in there. It's there in the trailers. You know
what aliens about. But in our so are we. We

(31:13):
did a live episode from September last year which was
Stuff to Blow Your Mind Live. Actually we put the
franchise title before the colon in that one day did
we did Stuff to Able Your Mind Live colon something
about Star Trek I think was the title. I mean
so many crows today, man. So yeah, it was Stuff
to Blew Your Mind Live Prime directives and planetary contamination.

(31:34):
And what we talked about in that episode was uh
NASA protocols for preventing cross contamination of life forms between
different planets, and that that follows up on Article nine
of the United Nations Outer Space Treaty, which contains the
following language. Parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies of
outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, to

(31:56):
conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their harmful
contempt a nation and also adverse changes in the environment
of Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter, and
where necessary, shall adopt appropriate measures for this purpose. Yeah,
and this comes down to the idea that sure, if
we went to the Klingon homeworld. Maybe we couldn't catch

(32:18):
the Klingon flu or whatever kind of ailment it happens
to be. Maybe, but could but maybe even if we couldn't, Yeah,
what could we do? Right? Yeah? But the idea too
is that we only have this one model of life,
and we have to sort of work forward with the
assumption that any kind of life that evolves in another
world is going to be Uh is the potential to
be a comfortable system? Right? We even if we couldn't

(32:40):
get germs from them, what if we could give germs
to them? So? Yeah, those are the two primary concerns
mentioned their forward contamination and bat contamination. Forward contamination is
this ethical scientific concern against contaminating other planets with Earth life,
which could potentially harm any microbes that already exists there
or obviously large organisms. But if there is anything like

(33:02):
that around us, we don't see it, or it could
be damaging the integrity of future scientific research on that
planet or moon, Like if you want to go there
later and try to figure out if there's any indigenous life,
you might have ruined your chances if you spread Earth
life all over it. But the other concern is more
akin to what we're looking at today, which is back contamination.

(33:23):
And this is based more on self preservation. We don't
want to endanger Earth life by accidentally returning alien pathogens
or other dangerous life forms to our home planet. Now,
of course, the primary relevance of this in the Outer
Space Treaty and in NASA protocols is the planets that
are within reach of us, right which, as far as

(33:44):
we can tell, look fairly devoid of life. We we
might get a surprise, but we're not seeing anything running
around on the surface. What would happen if we tried
to apply the bio containment principles to a planet that's
obviously teeming with life. If we go to an alien
world and there's stuff all over the surface that's reproducing,

(34:04):
should we feel safe to go down and walk around
with the helmet off and take in some air. I
would say maybe not. No. Okay, Well, there is an
article that I wanted to talk about I found in
Astrobiology magazine, and that's a magazine about the the hypothetical
study of of astro you know, applying astronomy principles to

(34:27):
other life forms around the around the galaxy. Obviously, we
don't know whether they exist, So it's all a lot
of hypothetical stuff, but it also deals with the origins
of life on Earth and microbial environments and things like that.
And the articles called alien Infection by Leslie Mullen from
August two thousand three and uh it draws in some

(34:47):
thoughts on the subject of whether we could be infected
by alien pathogens on another planet. So it cites the
American astrobiologist Christopher F. Chiba, and at the time he
held the Carl Sagan Chair at Setting. He's a professor
at Princeton. Chiba says, there are two potential types of
alien pathogens we need to worry about. One would be

(35:08):
toxic and the other would be infectious. Infectious are the
types of germs we share between us here on Earth.
They infect a host, they can be passed from host
to host, and they they are parasitizing your body in
a way. They're using your body to do something in
the reproductive cycle. Toxic pathogens would be merely those that

(35:29):
produce a poison or act as a poison that damages
the body, even if you're not the intended host of
this organism. So, first of all, there's some good news,
because we should think about how viruses and bacteria infectious
agents work here on Earth. The strain of a disease
that affects maybe dogs and chickens or even chimpanzees might

(35:51):
not infect humans. In fact, it often doesn't. Lots of
our parasites are co evolved, meaning they're they're finally tuned
to their preferred host organism. And in the same way,
animals evolved traits to live in a certain ecosystem. You know,
think away the hands and the feet and the tails
of tree dwelling primate specialized in climbing trees and hanging

(36:13):
from branches and swinging between branches that brackyation motion. Pathogens
evolved to certain ecosystems as well, but those ecosystems tend
to be the body of their primary host. Thus, if
you've got alien pathogens that are not specifically evolved to
colonize our bodies, they might not be able to. Then again,
this goes both ways. It seems unlikely that we would

(36:35):
encounter a space microbe finally tuned to infect our bodies,
but if we did, our immune systems would probably not
be finally tuned to defend against them. M that's true.
So what would this look like. So, for example, you've
got a microorganism that lives in the icy soil of Mars.
It might be able to get inside our bodies, but

(36:56):
the internal environments of our bodies that there are several options.
The our bodies might kill it, it might be too hot,
too wet, and it's just not how it's adapted. Alternately,
it could maybe occupy our bodies without really doing anything.
And you know, it could infect us, but it wouldn't
necessarily cause disease or illness, or rapidly reproduce, take over
our cells, or make toxic byproducts, or cause any other

(37:19):
kind of damage. But every now and then on Earth
there is one of these scary situations where a pathogen
that previously could only infect another type of animal crosses
the species barrier and becomes able to infect humans. And
so we wonder if the same thing could happen with
the microbes of another planet. So, like, if we're trying
to figure out how we could be attacked by microbes

(37:41):
that did not evolve to infect us, and that our
immune systems did not evolve to fight off, are there
any Earth parallels we could look to that would give
us an idea of what that war between us and
the microbes would look like, the author of this piece
does come up with an answer. So she talks to
John Rummel, NASA's former Planetary Action officer, and Rummel points out,

(38:02):
you know, there's one way to guess how our bodies
might be affected by microbes of other planets, and that's
to look at the effect of quote non specific microbes
on Earth, which is, are those that didn't co evolve
with the specific host. Now, one example would I think
fall more into the category I mentioned earlier of toxic bacteria,
and this would be the example of cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria is

(38:26):
all over the place on Earth. It's also known as
blue green algae, even though it's not really algae, and
you find it everywhere you go. So if you're out
walking on a dock and you see blooms of this
kind of turquoise scums sloshing around against the dock, you
might be looking at blue green algae or cyanobacteria. So,
cyanobacteria are capable of producing biological poisons known as cyanotoxins,

(38:50):
for example, neurotoxins that attack the nervous system and hepatotoxins
that attack the liver and blooms of cyanobacteria in alpine lakes,
the article points out, have been linked to the deaths
of cattle in the area around the lakes, even though
it's not that the cyanobacteria evolved to infect the cattle,
and it's not that they're specifically trying to protect themselves

(39:12):
from being eaten by cattle. It's just that the cyanobacteria
is poisons are very general and they work across a
broad range of organisms. So in the same way that
you might have if you can imagine a large alien
creature with a spiked tail, Yes, spike is very very
broad in its application. It can cut into and decapitate

(39:32):
and disembowe varying types of life forms. Right, this is
a brilliant analogy. And uh and and the same for
just a a a sufficiently deadly um strain of sano bacteria. Right. Okay,
So it's not like if an alien had I don't know,
a human shaped iron maiden design specifically to pierce human bodies.

(39:55):
That might not work on some cosmic jellyfish or gas
planet somewhere. But if you just got a big spike
on your tail. Yeah, he can use it on pretty
much anything. Uh So, Yeah, that's a good comparison. But
another example would be going away from the toxicity example
and more towards the infectious example would be, uh, the
bacteria Seratia marcisns. And this is a rod shaped gram

(40:18):
negative bacterium that can be found infecting an extremely diverse
range of hosts. The article cites this is as one
example of something that sort of works from one end
of the evolutionary bush to another. It can infect humans,
of course, and sometimes it's responsible for infections that are
acquired in what's supposed to be a sterile environment, like
hospital acquired infections, but it can also infect everything from

(40:42):
fruit flies to coral Yeah. Crazy. So if there are
organisms on Earth that can be that generalized in in
the types of hosts they infect, you can imagine the
same thing being true of some guidance of alien microbes.
Now the different there might be even bigger because they

(41:02):
are not even part of our evolutionary tree. But if
we're similar enough as organisms, it's it's possible they could
infect us. Yeah, similar enough. I think that's where a
lot of the danger lies. And in this I want
to I want to touch on parasites for just a
little bit. Nice. So, so here's the thing. Taking into account, Yeah,
all the variables of conversion evolution on a foreign world. Um,

(41:25):
that's one thing, but I'm not sure the greatest worry
is that you would have a fine tune parasite taking
to it to our body the way that it has,
you know, evolved to take advantage of a host. Because
even on our own planet, in the midst of our
own ecosystem, we see the harmful and even fatal consequences
of the parasite just getting lost and perishing inside of

(41:48):
the wrong host or even you know, the right host.
It just gets turned around. Parasitic death by misadventure. Yeah,
there's a misadventure you've gotta be a war weary of.
For instance, the pork tape worm is a prime example
of this. Tell me more so it needs to hold on. Sorry,
Is this what you'd get from eating undercooked pork burgers? Yea, yeah,
that's the name the pork tape worm. So this is

(42:09):
a This is a parasite that needs to venture inside
a pig to complete its life cycle, but the eggs
often wind up inside of a human instead. The eggs
hatch the confused larva uh, don't make it to the
human intestines. Instead, they burrow into the bloodstream. They're swept
through the body, often winding up in the brain forming cysts.

(42:30):
And this can destruct brain functions, damage the brain. It
can cod's hydrocephalus and the result and it can also
result in brain hernia. Is the cause coma or death?
Whoa this is? This is like some alien stuff? Yeah? Yeah,
I mean really really, if you want to, if you
want to explore some just complex you know, not only
xenomorpho esque, but like even beyond that level of complexity.

(42:54):
In terms of life cycles, the parasitic world is phenomenal,
especially when you have these crazy easy branching um life
cycles that involve multiple organisms. It's it's delightfully grotesque stuff. Um. So, yeah,
you these parasites you encounter in another world, They or
the parasites cana encounter you and even enter you. And

(43:16):
maybe they don't have the they have not evolved to
fully take advantage of you and serve as a proper parasite.
But what if they could still get inside you and
they get they get lost, They don't know what to do.
This is actually something I thought of quite a bit
in viewing Alien Covenant, because we see a few different
horrific scenes where these neomorphs, these uh, these these white

(43:36):
sort of proto xenomorphic creatures, they burst out of the
infected person, like through the spine or through the mouth.
It's uh, it really gave me the idea of all
these poor things. They don't know where they are, these
poor creatures, they're just lost inside this human host, and
they're just trying to get out wherever they can. Yeah,
it's funny if you go back to the old alien movies.

(43:57):
Maybe it's not funny. I don't know. If you go
back to the older alien movies, the aliens we see
in those movies have a much more highly specified life cycle.
They infect a person the same way every time, and
they emerge from a person the same way every time.
And these newer movies seem to be developing more more
general diversity in the way the alien organisms parasitize their hosts.

(44:21):
So again that's something to keep in mind. Uh My,
My basic point is the parasite need only gain access
to any of your major body systems or the body
cavity itself to really mess things up, So it's life
cycle might be might be doomed, But what about yours? Yeah,
so I think we should admit that we just don't

(44:42):
know what kind of dangers exists on real planets out there,
and to what extent we would be vulnerable to them
if they did. But the possibility space of fatal outcomes,
I would say, is vast, and we just don't know
what the probability of of real encounters is. Within that ace,
you could possibly have your body wrecked by an alien

(45:03):
parasite that doesn't know what to do with you, allow
the pork tape worm. You could effectively be infected by
a path of the pathogen that deems you close enough
to its ideal environment or host organism. Or you might
be poisoned by the toxic byproducts of defensive poisons in
a microbial life form that wants nothing to do with you.
But the story actually gets a little bit worse for

(45:25):
our intrepid colonists on this exo planet, because I want
to mention a couple things here that specifically have to
do with space travel. First of all, I'm sure you've
read about this Robert. Space travel jams up your immune system,
So for several years now, NASA has been studying the
effects of space flight on immune system responsive crew members

(45:46):
aboard the I S S. I've got a NASA news
piece here from August reporting the findings of the NASA
Integrated Immune Study and Clinical Nutrition Assessment, and so far
results have shown that astronauts have a problem one with
diminished immune capacity during their time on the I S S. Specifically,
NASA's Integrated Immune Studies showed that immune cells remained present

(46:09):
in the blood, but their activity was confused. Some cells
are overactive, other cells are underactive, and this leads to
a condition they refer to as asymptomatic viral shedding, which
means you've got dormant viruses inside your body that wake
up and become active once again without the host showing
normal symptoms of infection. And then in turn, this viral

(46:34):
reactivation triggers immune overreaction, leading to symptoms like allergies and rashes.
And so this is often times why you see you
might see people in the I S S like filming
videos and they look like they're having bad allergies. Yeah,
you know that this is a This touches on just
sort of the the general risk of course, interplanetary travel,

(46:57):
certainly interstellar travel is that it's not just you. You're
you're traveling from a hospitable world Earth to some inhospitable
world like diablow three. Uh you were you were trying
to get there. You have to travel a thoroughly inhospitable environment,
that of of of space, deep space without the protection

(47:18):
from well, this gets into you know, what kind of
technology would you have worked out to enable your trip,
but you know, not having a proper protection from radiation,
perhaps not having h you get into the mental realm
as well, like being isolated for extended periods of time,
like you get you're l able to show up at
that other world a little bit crazy sick without properly

(47:40):
functioning immune system, and then you still have to deal
with the rigors of a foreign biosphere. The idea is
that the day you meet a space microbe could be
the day your immune system is just about at its worst.
And so the article cites NASA immunologist Brian Crucian, who says, quote,
if the situation assisted for longer deep space missions, he's

(48:02):
talking about the the immune condition of people in the
I s s, it could possibly increased risk of infection,
hypersensitivity or autoimmune issues for exploration astronauts. Uh. And so
what causes this we don't fully know yet, but there
are a bunch of hypotheses. They focus on microgravity, stress,
lack of sleep uh, microbial environment or microbial exposure, isolation,

(48:28):
and exposure to radiation. On the plus side, I would
say all of these are things that we would hope,
as you just alluded to, Robert, you would be able
to address by the time we're an exoplanet colonizing species.
If you're trying to travel to exoplanets in a space
ship that doesn't have artificial gravity, that hasn't come up
with ways of dealing with radiation, exposure or stress, you've

(48:49):
got bigger problems. You know, you're you're probably not gonna
make it there. Yeah, I mean unless you're go in
with a sci fi scenario where basically everyone just needs
to get out of the pool. You know, everyone has
to get off of Earth and start on in these
colonies and it that's the motivation for getting there, is
that it's either go or perish totally. So that is
something we should keep in mind. The other thing I

(49:11):
had to mention so is space travel appears to make
us immuno compromised. Also, multiple studies have shown that space
flight conditions can increase the virulence of known pathogens. One
example would be Salmonella Tiffi mariam. So in some experiments,
when you took the strain of salmonella into space, once
it came back, it was more deadly to mice than

(49:32):
earth grown strains of the same bacterium. So if you
can imagine picking up a germ on an alien planet
and then ash overrides re Repley's quarantine procedure and you
get in the ship and take it back to space
with you, you could be making things even worse for yourself.
All right, Well, on that note, let's take a quick
break and when we come back we will discuss killer allergens.

(49:57):
Thank all, we're back, and I have to say, this
is an area that I had not really given much
thought off. When I think of risks on an alien world, um,
I tend to think of Yeah, I think of the atmosphere.
I think of diseases and foreign organisms. I think of
some of the things we're going to discuss in a bit,
like radiation. But the idea of just all my allergies

(50:17):
are acting up because um, because side is six. It's
just it's just really affecting my sinuses. Well again, I
just wanted to explore possibility space. So this is not
something that I think has been um widely explored. I
just want to think about it as a possibility. So
small bits of organic matter in the air, for example,

(50:39):
of the pollen of plants or other airborne life forms.
These are the kinds of allergens we encounter here on Earth,
and I wondered what people with allergic susceptibility might might
encounter on an alien planet. They might not be active pathogens,
they might not be germs trying to invade your body,
but that could make your body go haywire. That could

(51:00):
trigger this critical immune system response and and death by
asthma or anaphylaxis. So this process might not be as
speedy as some other dangers, but could represent a threat
to colonists who burned their helmets or otherwise open them
up and breathe deep of the alien biosphere. So to
look at whether this is a possibility, I think we

(51:21):
should take a quick look at how allergic responses work.
An allergic reaction is basically just a malfunction of the
immune system. It happens when a foreign substance called an allergen,
comes into contact with the body and the immune system
mistakes the substance for a hostile pathogen, right. It thinks
that you are being infected by a germ that needs attacking,

(51:43):
when in fact it's just some harmless stuff. It's a
piece of protein, pollen, something like that, you know, shrimp,
and this triggers an immune system response that is unnecessary
and self destructive. It's kind of like if you've got
an army base and the wind flows a tumble weed
up against the exterior fence of the base, and a

(52:03):
malfunction in the base is automated defense network responds by
shelling the area with heavy artillery, destroying part of the
base in the process. So we don't fully understand all
of the deep underlying causes of allergic reactions, like why
some people have specific allergies and other people don't. Twin
studies do seem to show that there's a strong genetic

(52:25):
component to allergies, but environmental influences are a factor as well.
According to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology,
a little less than about eight percent of adults in
the US have respiratory allergies, also known as hay fever. Worldwide,
it's more it's like ten percent to thirty percent of
people as far as we know. And so it's generally

(52:46):
true that allergic reactions to new substances don't occur immediately
the first time you get exposed to those substances. The
body has to encounter the allergen, produce allergy and specific
antibodies known i g e. Anti bodies, and then allow
those antibodies to bind two receptors on immune cells called

(53:06):
mast cells and basa fills. And the delay between this
first exposure, the sensitizing exposure, and then the potential for
the first dangerous reaction I think is usually considered to
be about a week or ten days. So this could
be something that sneaks up on you. You've been on
the surface of this planet for a while, you think
everything's okay, nobody's gotten sick in the first day or two,

(53:28):
but suddenly you might get really bad asthma. And so
this is more of a danger of prolonged exposure to
an alien biosphere. The first encounter probably wouldn't harm you,
but once this sensitization has happened, if the body encounters
that same allergy and again the cells trigger what's known
as an allergic cascade, and this means the body floods

(53:48):
with allergy mediators like histamine, which causes dilation of the
blood vessels, low blood pressure, itching, sneezing, digestive problems, et cetera.
And if this gets bad enough, it leads to, of course,
what we know as anaphylaxis. You know, this is the
really severe reaction that can be fatal if not treated quickly.
So I was wondering how how dangerous is anaphylaxis, How

(54:11):
fatal is it can? Can it cause death? Yes, but
the odds aren't as bad as you think. So aten
study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology found
that anaphylactic shock resulted in between sixty three and nine
deaths in the United States every year. However, that's only
about point three percent of cases where people presented in

(54:33):
hospitals with anaphylaxis. So if you can get to a hospital,
it looks like your odds are pretty good. Treatment usually
tends to be a big shot of epin efron, also
known as adrenaline, so you get the rush. Uh, and
exactly the EpiPen. It's a it's an epine an auto injector.
One hopes that by the time we get to these
foreign planets the prices have come down a little bit

(54:55):
and they can stock up the ships with them. Um,
it's less clear to me the survival rate without medical
attention or epinefron would be due to anaphylaxis. But of course,
on the surface of an alien planet, can you get
to a hospital or can you get your repine and
shot in time? I guess we would just hope that
your med droid is working well. It has It has
EpiPens for fingers to drive them in. That's right. Every

(55:19):
time it tries to hug you, you get the adrenaline injection. Uh. So.
The other the other thing to think about would be
asthma attacks, which can also be triggered by allergic reactions
to inhaled irritants, and they're often more deadly in the
modern day. So an asthma attack causes constriction of the airways,
and according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America,

(55:39):
about ten Americans die from asthma every day and inteen
asthma killed three thousand, six hundred and fifty one people.
So it's usually treated with inhaled broncho dilators like the
the emergency and haler that you have the rescue in
haler um. But it can be treated with other stuff
in the case of a real bad asthma attack. So

(56:03):
if you're on the surface of an alien planet, can
you imagine what types of things that go into your
body might cause a severe allergic reaction? Of course, it
could be pollen or spores from an alien plant or
some other kind of germinating life form. Could be alien
foods if you find yourself eating them, though, I guess
have we factored in Robert, do you consider if you

(56:23):
take your helmet off, do you also just eat the
stuff around you? I don't know. I was thinking about
this the other night because I watched um uh, the
new MST three K episode that deals with the Lost World.
You know, m Edgar Rice Burrows German submarine winds up
in this place where evolutions all walking, and you still

(56:44):
have all these dinosaurs and they immediately, like right after
they kill the first dinosaur, they cook it up and
they eat it, just no concerns whatsoever. Um it would
be it would be funny to see that utilize in
some of these sci fi scenarios where they kill a
neo morph in. They're like, out where we gotta eat?
So right, let's fire up the girl sick of this
freeze dried ice cream. But hey, how about another thing

(57:08):
for anaphylactic shock. What about the venom of an alien organism?
Oh yeah, I mean you look at the terrestrial example,
and you have plenty of of of small organisms that
pack a substantial punch thanks to their their neurotoxins. Yeah,
but it wouldn't even have to be that the or
the organism's natural venom is strong enough to kill you.
I mean, that could have been a reason we cited

(57:29):
all on its own actually would be the venom of
alien arthropods. But imagine that the venom is not enough
to kill you on its own, you still could have
one of these immune system malfunctions. Uh that you know it. Basically,
you get stung by the alien equivalent of a wasp
what would we call it, the infurnace seven hymen opteroid,

(57:50):
and it stings you and gives you a dose of
something that really just just meant to hurt, but instead
you have an allergic reaction to the insect, and according
to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma Immunology, up to
fifty percent of people who die from allergic reactions to
insects had no previously documented allergy, like they didn't know

(58:11):
they were allergic. So it sounds like it could be
a scary scenario on an alien world. Yeah, fear of
alien bees. Alien bees, by the way, also a brand
of professional lighting equipment for photographers. No way. Yeah, yeah,
they have a lovely, lovely logo. Dude, I just looked
it up. Yes, they give it. So they give him
the alien face with the large eyes. It's like a

(58:31):
gray except he's not gray's yellow because he's a bee.
And they make his wings yellow too. I'm not saying.
I'm not sure why I'm saying. He I guess it
looks kind of masculine in the logo here. But but
the bees we know and love are women, right. I
know about this because my wife is a photographer, and uh,
and there have been times in the past which she's like,
can you help me get the the alien bees? Make
sure you can? You can you get the alien bees

(58:52):
out of the car for me? So that the alien
bees have become a normal part of my life. But
then also on top of talking about potential alien allergens
that that could get you. I I don't know to
what extent that's a real thing to worry about, but
I thought that was worth considering. There's also this other
class where you know, we've looked at infectious agents and microorganisms,

(59:13):
and we've looked at allergens, which is like bits of
matter that upset your body. I wonder if there's also
categories of things in between that we haven't even reckoned with,
that we we don't even fully understand because there's just
not a strong analogy on Earth. It makes me think
about one of the picks from the My My Fiction

(59:33):
pick from the summer reading episode we did last year,
which was a sci fi book that I really loved
called Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. And a lot of
reviewers seemed to hate this book, I think because they
found it depressing and pessimistic, conjuring up this universe where
space colonist characters come to the conclusion that Earth might
be the only viable home for us in the galaxy.

(59:55):
And the reason is that based on a very small
sampling of planets. Planets seemed be either uninhabitable, unable to
sustain life, or already home to hostile micro organisms. And uh,
and so there's this organism. I don't want to spoil
too much about the book, but they go to a
planet whether where there is this organism that they just

(01:00:16):
don't really understand. It does seem to infect and kill people,
but it doesn't really work like micro organisms that were
familiar with. At some point, a character tries to compare
it to a fast acting preon, like the you know,
these misfolded proteins that make copies of themselves and damage
our tissues that way. But then they rule out, They

(01:00:36):
say it, actually, it doesn't really work that way. It's
just a sci fi scenario. But it does make me
think about the possibility that there could be tiny, chemically
active molecules and objects that act upon our bodies in
ways that are not even familiar to us. Uh, in
the ways we're familiar with from micro organisms or from allergens. Interesting,

(01:00:59):
I'm not that familiar with the with Kim Stanley Robinson.
Is there another work by this author that I should recognize?
This is the only book of his that i've read,
but I know he's well known for his He did
a trilogy of books about Mars, about terraforming Mars. Yes,
that that must be where I recognize his name from.
They're like different colors. I think it's called Mars. Yes, yes, yes, Okay,

(01:01:21):
I've not read those, but I have friends who speak. Yeah.
I haven't read them either, but I so. Despite the
fact that a lot of people didn't like Aurora, I
really loved it. I thought it was a fascinating counterpoint
to a lot of the space exploration fiction we usually see.
Are you ready to look at the next threat to
the unhelmeted space explorer? Bring it on? Helmet still on?

(01:01:41):
Ready to look at reason number four? Okay, how about
killer particles? So we discussed this in our episode Your
Health is a Mars colonist. Many alien worlds are likely
to contain extremely fine particles of dust and soil that
could cause health problems or even kill you. One thing
that we mentioned in that previous episode that I just

(01:02:02):
wanted to mention again. In December nineteen seventy two, you
have the crew of the Apollo seventeen walking on the Moon.
They're out there doing their extra vehicular activity did they
play golf? I can't remember who played golf. Yeah, I
can't remember off hand either, and some people play golf.
Maybe they did. Maybe that was somebody else. But astronauts
Harrison Schmidt and Eugene Cernan, and they were operating in

(01:02:23):
the location near the Sea of Serenity, and when they
got back inside the lunar module after the e v A,
Harrison Schmidt experienced what has been called quote lunar dust
hay fever, which was this respiratory reaction to inhaling fine
particles of lunar regulars. So the dust on the surface
of the Moon has these weird qualities. It's abrasive, it's

(01:02:45):
almost kind of been described like tiny fine shards of glass.
It sticks to everything, It smells like gunpowder. Apparently, it's
hard not to inhale it when you're messing around on
the surface of the Moon, and when you do, it's
not for your respiratory system, it it it messes you up.
Other planets also have other types of surface soil that

(01:03:08):
are going to be very different than what we're used
to on Earth, and we need to consider the possibility
that all of these surface soils could have chemicals in
them fine particles that could really be a threat to
our health and and could even kill us. Even on Earth,
there are situations where inhalation of fine particles can lead
to respiratory diseases. Like you can if you inhale a

(01:03:31):
lot of extremely fine silica, Like if you're a miner
or sand blaster or something, you can inhale this stuff,
this fine silica that it leads to something called silicosis,
and that's just not good for your lungs. It depends
on exactly what kind of exposure you get, but eventually
it can lead to progressive massive fibrosis, which is just

(01:03:54):
destroys your lungs. It's almost like your lungs filling up
with concrete. Uh. You do not want things like this
going into your lungs. And things like in these fine
grains could be present on many other worlds also. Mars
is a good example of places where the soil is
believed to contain chemicals that are not just dangerous in

(01:04:15):
terms of them being fine and uh and respirable, but
the Martian soil is known to contain perclorates, which have
detrimental effects on the thyroid and hormone production in the
human body, and we don't know what kinds of toxic
chemicals could be in the soil of alien planets. But
if you break the seal between the inside and outside,

(01:04:35):
it's difficult to keep fine grain particles separate. And of
course that's just assuming these are just straight up particles
and they're not radioactive particles, right, because even Earth has
naturally occurring radioactive particles radionuclides, which can be hazardous to
your health if you inhale them. And so we don't
also know the extent to which the surface of another

(01:04:57):
planet might be peppered with fine radioactive articles that you
can suck right in with a deep breath. Alright, so
we're down to the last item on our checklist before
opening the helmet. And again this is not just the
opening of the helmet, but the breaching of the mini
space suit and the presume protective layers that encompasses. Right,

(01:05:17):
So this one might be a little bit less helmet
focused and more just focused on the general barrier between
you and the outside. That's right. So radiation. We we've
done a few different episodes now where we've we've we've
discussed radiation, most most recently the episode dealing with like
the demon core idea and like what happens with what
happened with Chernobyl and the risks probe posed by radiation

(01:05:40):
to human health. Yeah, I haven't even thought about this
before before we did this episode, but walking around with
exposed skin on these planets, I mean, can you get
an infurnace six sunburn? Yeah? I would guess so, depending
on what the the the star or stars at the
center of the infurnace system or like yeah, yeah, because

(01:06:01):
both cosmic and solar radiation immediately become a problem once
you leave the neighborhood of Earth, and to your point,
even on Earth, solar radiation can be an issue depending
on what your skin situation is like and where you are.
Even on Earth's surface, we're exposed to a steady ambient
level of radiation from the Sun solar radiation UH and
the larger universe cosmic radiation. But Earth's atmosphere and magnetosphere

(01:06:26):
work together to protect us from most of the danger.
So even astronauts on the International Space Station two miles
above Earth, UH, they're exposed to much more radiation than
we get on the surface. They're still shielded by Earth's magnetosphere.
Which extends thousands of miles into space around the planet.
That's right, So even though they're outside the atmosphere, there's

(01:06:48):
still within this thing that repels a lot of this
cosmic radiation. Yeah. This so this sort of magic field.
It's not magic, but you know, it's this wonderful protective
shield shielding around the Earth. So you'll in on an
alien world, you're just thinking about breaching your suit taking
that helmet off. Does the planet have an atmosphere? Let's
go ahead and assume it does, Otherwise you really don't

(01:07:10):
have a good excuse. So if there's so, there's some
level of radiation shielding just by virtue of there being
an atmosphere. But is there a magnetosphere? So I'm going
to go ahead and guess there is, because one of
the things that happens when there's no magnetosphere is that
the solar wind strips most of the atmosphere off of
your world. Yeah, this is we talked about the thin

(01:07:30):
atmosphere of Mars. Mars does not have a strong magnetosphere.
I think doesn't have one at all. Yeah, we're talking
massive atmosphere loss in these scenarios. So yet to to
break down who has magnetosphere. There's Mercury, Earth, Jupiter, Ganymede, Saturn,
urin this neptune. Mars definitely does not have one. But
in the case of you know, an absence of a

(01:07:51):
magnetosphere massive atmosphere lost, there are there are many astrobiologies
that predict that that potential life on an exoplanet might
well be oombed without a magneto magnetosphere in place. At
the very least, it would mean that life would have
to flourish there, perhaps underground behind you know, beneath protective
ice caps or or artificial structures and systems. You get

(01:08:13):
into the same scenario when we start thinking about the
potential Mars colonists, like, how how would you effectively shield uh,
you know, a colony on that world? You want to
like dig underground or something. Yeah, Still, you've got this
protective space suit presumably provides some sort of protection against radiation.
And even a world protected by a magnetosphere and an

(01:08:35):
atmosphere can be a radioactive mess for creatures such as ourselves.
I mean it could be naturally occurring radioactive environments which
we we certainly encounter, or something compromised by an intelligent
species radioactive dumping. So to come back to the the
alien universe, we don't know what the what other crimes
the the engineers got up to. Toby decided to just

(01:08:58):
dump a whole bunch of radioactive waste done any particular planet.
It seems like the kind of thing we would do. Yeah.
Uh yeah, So that's the thing that I guess is
worth considering. What is the range of possibilities for the
natural ground based radioactivity of a foreign planet? I mean,
on Earth, there are natural sources of radiation apart from

(01:09:18):
just what's coming from the sky. We've got uranium in
the Earth. Uranium decays produces radon gas. If you inhale that,
you can have radiation exposure. Uh So yeah, I guess,
I guess we just don't know what's possible on other planets. Yeah. Now,
to put everything in sort of a uh in context
of what we have here, which is our again, our
best model for what we might find elsewhere. Uh. In

(01:09:40):
terms of natural radiation, again, everybody has to do with
some degree of terrestrial radiation thanks to naturally occurring radioactive
materials such as uranium, thorium, radium, etcetera. In the Earth
and the inhabited area on the planet with the highest
levels of terrestrial radiation is Ramsar, Iran, and this is

(01:10:01):
due to a nearby radioactive hot spring and building materials
that have been harvested from there. But I think I
recall reading because we did a now piece on this,
didn't read that that actually in rams Are like people
are not don't really have much worse health outcomes despite
the fact that they're exposed to elevated levels of radiation.
But yeah, that's my understanding. But but just in terms

(01:10:23):
of like the levels here and these are gonna be
this is what we're looking at, and this is gonna
be in ing wise or nano gray units and uh,
and it's gonna be per hour, I believe, so absorbed
rates of radiation in the air and Ramsar are going
to be between seventy and seventeen thousand, and again that's

(01:10:45):
the highest you're going to find for an inhabited area
on Earth. But if you're going to uninhabited, uh, then
this is the place that takes takes the cake. The
Black Beaches of guardapare Brazil, and they contain monosite, which
is a phosphate of rare earth metals containing uranium and thorium.

(01:11:06):
Uh so it's in the sand here, and it produces
absorbed dose rates of of ninety to ninety thousand en
gy wise um per hour. And now that's just natural radiation.
If you go ahead and you a factor in radioactive
pollution in our case by humans, but in another case
by some you know, it doesn't even have to be

(01:11:27):
an existing extraterrestrial species. You know, presumably you could have
the radioactive waste of a of a of an inner
planetary or simply planetary society that then later got onto
destroying itself. Like what if we arrived on an exoplanet
we realized, oh, the previous inhabitants annihilated themselves with an
atomic war. Uh, surely that's been explored. That sounds like

(01:11:48):
classic trek right there. But if we factor that in,
then the most polluted example we have on Earth is
a lake Karace in Russia. This is a long time
dumping site for radioactive waste, and by most estimates, the
most radioactive place on the planet now is that including
next to the elephant's foot in in chernobyl Um. I

(01:12:13):
believe so, yeah. I mean the idea here is that
we're talking like long standing you know, radiation. So this
was just a place where just a small ural mountain
lake where they would just dump stuff. They would they
would just dump radioactive waste continually and uh it they

(01:12:33):
let to researchers in in the nineties to analyze it
based on I think current satellite data. It's completely covered
and cement. Now there have been attempts to to manage it.
But in nineteen nine, uh, it's said if you were
standing on the shore of the lake, you more than
an hour of exposure would have been fatal. Wow, so

(01:12:54):
I think you know, you can you can imagine a
scenario where you you land on a world, maybe you
have of a preliminary radiation reading for just sort of
the world itself. You wander onto a black sand beach.
Yeah you want, you want onto the beach, and you know,
the next thing, you know, you're absorbing increasing levels of radiation,
which might not be an immediate problem, but it might

(01:13:14):
be um, you know a problem of prolonged exposure. Right. Well,
when we think about radiation again, there are there are
two main ways that you would want to keep yourself
sealed from your environment. It works in multiple ways. So
one is that you would have a suit. Hopefully they
would have some kind of shielding that proprides a barrier
against the ray radiation, you know, the bombardment of your

(01:13:37):
body with with direct rays like gamma rays or neutron radiation.
But then you would also want to keep your environment
sealed so that you don't have the interaction with radioactive particles.
And I think that could be one of the biggest dangers,
is the inhalation of these radio newclides. The more I
think about it just might be better to leave the
suit on, definitely, no matter how delicious the neomorphs same,

(01:14:02):
no matter how delightful that beach may seem, maybe it's
just better just to stay in the suit. It's I'm
sure it has a bathroom function. Okay, here's a question.
You're totally out of freeze, dried ice cream, no earth
food left. You're on the alien planet. You've killed a neomorph.
Do you starve to death or do you try to
eat it? Well, I guess you try and eat it.

(01:14:24):
I mean, geez, I don't know, of course, not knowing
what I know about the neomorph's now, I mean, actually
that maybe in a sense that's a survival method because
you know that you might live on in some sorts,
some form or another, right, right, at least you're parasitic progeny. Yeah, yeah,
that the neomorphs sandwich kind of becomes you and then
then you're good to go. Now you're completely acclimatized to

(01:14:47):
the environment. You're no longer remotely human, but you're thriving. Okay, Well,
I hope you have enjoyed this weird exoplanet speculation with us.
But but if we haven't convinced you knit by now
to keep your helmet on, we're probably not gonna right, Yeah,
it's probably off by now, I'm guessing you know. But
but hopefully we give you some good ideas here. Uh. Now,

(01:15:08):
that's not to say that I want you to go
in and just kneel de grass Tyson the heck out
of every science fiction film you see, because I think
there's there's ultimately little joy in that. But but it
it does. I do think it's always important to to
have the scientific reality and at least in the background.
You know, it's an act of disengaging from what you
know about the real threats of space exploration, as opposed

(01:15:32):
to just not knowing about it to begin with and
and and basing everything on the sci fi fantasy world
you're observing. Well, I think earlier I mentioned something about
how for me it has to its consistency. Really like,
if if a movie seems to have an ethic of
realism and hard science, I will be troubled by things

(01:15:53):
that are unrealistic. But if it doesn't, across the board
have an ethic of realism and hard science, then who cares? Yeah, yeah,
I guess you know it comes. It's kind of like
if you were to encounter a scene where the helmet
comes off in two thousand and one, right, Like that
would be a case where like, whoa, come on, Stanley.
Up until now, like we didn't even have sound in space.

(01:16:13):
We're being just really hard with our science, and now
you're just kind of thrown into the wind. But yeah,
does in the wind singing dust in the world. I'm
sorry for singing twice. Y'all? All right, everybody, Well, if
you like this discussion here today, head on over the
Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where we

(01:16:34):
have all the podcast episodes, and we also have things
like videos and blog posts, um, including my expanded review
of Alien Covenant that is on the website and that
will be on the landing page for this episode as well.
Also include links to other alien related and sci fi
related content that we've covered over the years, and if
you want to get in touch with us directly. As always,

(01:16:56):
you can email us at blow the Mind at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands

(01:17:29):
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