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

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 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 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, 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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

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

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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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. 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, 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. 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 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 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. 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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

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.

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 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 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. 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 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

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, 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? 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 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 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, 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.

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

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 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 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. 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 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.

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, 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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.

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 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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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. 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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

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. 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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

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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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

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, 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, 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? 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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

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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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. 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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, you can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.