Aliens Dismissed Humans as Weak, Until They Scanned Earth's Atmosphere | Best HFY Stories
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- čas přidán 13. 04. 2024
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In a galaxy where oxygen is a deadly toxin, humanity's first contact with the Galactic Council takes a shocking turn. Alex, a seasoned diplomat, and his team are blindsided when a routine introductory meeting turns into a quarantine crisis. As the Council scrambles to contain the 'biohazard' that is humanity, Alex must race against time to prove that Earth's unique atmosphere holds the key to unlocking revolutionary advancements, not just a death sentence.
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Original story written by Starbound Stories.
✫ Welcome to Starbound Stories, the premier destination for sci-fi enthusiasts and admirers of human ingenuity. Our channel is dedicated to HFY (Humanity, F**k Yeah!) content, blending the awe of science fiction with the remarkable potential of humanity. Explore narratives where humans outwit aliens, triumph in interstellar wars, and showcase resilience in uncharted galaxies. Our collection includes space exploration epics, time travel escapades, and tales of advanced human-created AI, all celebrating human triumphs and innovations. Each story is a testament to human spirit and creativity, perfect for those seeking cosmic adventures where humans are the heroes. Join us to experience the exhilarating journey of humanity's indomitable spirit in the vast expanse of sci-fi fantasy. ✫
HFY Stories, Short story for sleep, fantasy sleep story
#scifi #scifistories #hfy #redditstories #scifi #writingprompts #shortstory #hfystories #hfy #writingprompts #scifi - Věda a technologie
Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe. How could any alien life not have familiarity with it?
It's also very errosive and when it was introduced on Earth 99% of all non oxygen based bacteria died...
Prior to the great oxygenation event 2.4 billion years ago there was a abundance of oxygen-averse bacteria that rusted to death when the event happened. I wonder how different life would be without oxygen?
It's fiction pal. Doesn't have to adhere to observable science.
More to the point, how were the humans let into the presence of alien diplomats without said diplomats.or the techs around them not learn that humans breathe oxygen?
Exactly the 3rd most abundant element in the universe and they have to import it from Earth? This is such a stupid concept, even if they are non-oxigen breathing life forms they must have delt with oxigen just to become space faring, hell you can't even have fire without oxigen.
The ancient Greeks had one single word for both medicine and poison, with the understanding that it was essentially all a question of dosage. That amount cures, but that amount kills.
This duality still exists in english, represented by the word drugs mixing addictive substances and medications into one pile, because paid "medicine" in capitalistic sistem aims not to return a person to a healthy state, but to make him a source of permanent income.
But the ancient Greeks lived in ancient times, they didn't have millennia of time to come up with words for everything. And what excuse do you have?
Look no further than fentanyl. Extremely deadly drug in very small doses. But used appropriately, the most widely used anesthesia for surgical procedures.
@@user-zv6th8fh8v Or you know we just don't know what fucking works half the time and it takes a ton of paperwork to get anything through the FDA. Drugs all have different effect based entirely who you give it to some will cure while to another it will only stem the symptom or just kill you. Shit chemo our best weapon to fight cancer does not work for everyone and your cancer still can come back a year after you are "cured". I will say that there is a incentive for companies not to create a perfect cure for financial reasons; not only because it is hard to make that magic drug, but yes it is better to treat then cure for money. But should you also have to acknowledge that frankly there is just too much degree of error to the effectiveness of a any drugs from person to person. Not to mention there is the problem that humans are real fucking dumb and sometimes don't take their drugs as the doctor told them to so the effectiveness can really be fucked, and end up with having to do it again and again and again to cure them; so in a sense they become the "source of permanent income" due to their incompetence.
@@user-zv6th8fh8v Considering humans have existed for over 100,000 years they absolutely had time to develop more than one word to distinguish between medicine and poison. They simply didn't feel the need to do so. As for your question English speakers have developed more than one word to distinguish the two. You used them yourself in case you didn't notice.
"drugs"
Only in English. The corresponding German word "Drogen" refers exclusively to illicit substances.
so they don't even check the being biochemistery before inviting them into their ship? those alien are pretty careless, any alien could be walking poison
Its basic first contact protocal to find out what keeps your visitor alive =p
“What is there that is not poison? All things are poison and nothing is without poison. Solely the dose determines that a thing is not a poison,”
- Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, or Paracelsus, father of Toxicology
I give a scientific amen to that, brother!
Even food allergy is similar to poison. It is indeed a quantity issue poison is medicine and medicine is poison.
Man what is that name.
everything is edible at least once
@exuletempus please don't go eating rocks like I dodo bird
Actually we breath air, but use the O2 for life. Air is 78% nitrogen, 20.9 % oxygen, .005 % carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, ozone, pollution etc.
Air is just another word for atmosphere, and it can be any composition possible. You have to take a breath as often as you do because you're trying to get your oxygen needs from a composition where the thing you need is only 1/5 of the whole. We get nothing from the nitrogen and it goes back out the same as when it came in.
And yet, so many people these days are afraid of that 0.005% Carbon Dioxide. It takes all kinds, I suppose, even lunatics.
@@tremedar "You have to take a breath as often as you do because you're trying to get your oxygen needs from a composition where the thing you need is only 1/5 of the whole."
Your lungs only absorb a very small portion of the oxygen you inhale. That's why you can breathe in and out of a balloon for a while. And breathing pure oxygen, at 1 atmosphere of pressure for too long, will kill you.
@@wegner7036 you’d probably spontaneously combust before you could even take a breath with 100%@1 atmosphere. A spark, small amount of friction and wooof.
@@wegner7036 but we are able to handle for some amount of time pure oxygen, some jobs make people breath pure oxygen for the benefits like, more alertness, hold you breath longer.
Funny how close Earth was to flat-out saying: screw you guys, im taking my toxic flammable gas and going home!
Technically oxygen itself isn't flammable. But it makes most other things flammable. Oxygen has highly exothermic reactions with a lot of things, but not with itself
@@dominiklehn2866 fun fact - that's actually the reason we live! oxygen allows for very energetic reactions, and humans do take a lot of energy. There are other means, like sulphur-based reactions, but they aren't as effective and require special sources,, for example the smokers at the bottom of the ocean
@@hisupwassup If that is the case, then shouldn't it be the ideal in higher organisms to run on o2 based biochemical systems? Same with silicon versus carbon life. Silicon bonds just aren't as versatile as carbon ones. Hence carbon and o2 based systems should predominate because, well, physics.
@@Mady-lo6qb if i understood your comment correctly, that is exactly what is happening. Life based on carbon is extremely prevalent on earth, unlike, as I mentioned, alternative energy based ones. There's a lot less anaerobic bacteria than aerobic, and, like, nothing is anaerobic past bacteria, because it's too inefficient
@@hisupwassup We are basically running on combustion engines, which is funny to think about.
Oxygen is fairly common in the universe, draining Earth's atmosphere to give to aliens would be highly detrimental to life here. Since water is very abundant you could split it to get oxygen.
Free oxygen is not common at all, it's far too reactive to last long in an atmosphere without photosynthesis to continually replenish it.
@@drtidrowbut is more easy to make it from water that drain planet and replace what be lost. Alos 20% vs sploit watery into 1/3 from what i remeber
life started off without oxygen, when oxygen was introduced a lot of life died
@@mrseriousv1 but non of them have good energy system. Alos rly no one try use that dangerus but popular in univers element ?
@@Darlf_Sevil I didn't watch the whole vid yet so idk about good energy system but, they probably do use it but they just steer clear from it for biological purposes because its like trying to use uranium-235 as a medicine.
How can they not survive oxygen dispite having chlorophyll?
That was my question... The moment a species was mentioned to have chlorophyll, I was like "They produce oxygen..."
Yeah when tey said that humans are a plague is stupid we consume oxygen and they produce it they are the ones that are dangerous@@ShadowReignhart
@@ShadowReignhart Chlorophyll absorbs sunlight, and that energy can be used to produce molecules like sugars, with oxygen as a waste product that is expelled. However, that does not mean it HAS to produce oxygen. Remember, photosynthetic oxygen production is the result of evolution, but chlorophyll itself precedes this evolutionary step.
If all plants were to double their growth rate, they would consume the very oxygen they produced, so no atmospheric oxygen... (Plants use oxygen during the night.)
The oxygen that's deadly is the normal form of Oxygen in its Diatomic form which is mostly not being used.
Yea they dont survive it for the same reason we dont survive CO2 we produce it but we would asfixiated in large amounts
How did the Aliens not know humans breath oxygen? This Council even has files on how we metabolize it.
I think those were files on the human ship not the council database
Do the aliens not have spectrometers?
If an alien race only knows that O2 is deadly. They would do anything in there power to avoid it. So it would be kinda normal? In a way? But I fully agree with you.
@@m002plaguewalker4Really hard to avoid though... it's everywhere. Plus if it was deadly I'm pretty sure you'd become good at detecting it. The story is just strange.
@@m002plaguewalker4 It still makes no sense though. We've studied plenty of atmospheres that are toxic to us. That's no excuse for this obvious huge plot hole.
I know some people don't like to criticize others, and look for the most ridiculous excuses, but I'm sorry, this story dropped the ball on this one. Can't win them all...
It's a cool idea, but I would point out that harvesting water from comets and getting oxygen from there is better than going to the Earth for it all.
No, because you won't get as much of it as quickly than if you just went to earth
@@green8017 I would also point out that there is a limited amount of atmosphere and we use it to stay alive.
@@13Bbeards yes but chemistry is a thing and we can take their stuff too
@@green8017 Even better would be exporting algae to carbon dioxide planets for more free production.
Unless an atmosphere is at least 16% oxygen, fire isn’t possible which would make it hard to evolve beyond a Stone Age.
Well... fluorine would be an acceptable substitute.
@@TheAgamemnon911 -it’s too reactive and barely exists as a gas in nature. Without fire to make glass, steel etc, you couldn’t synthesize it.
There are many other exothermic reactions available to provide heat, even to the extent of melting other elements... the part that does not really make sense is that Oxygen, being the third most abundant element in the universe and one of the highly critical elements within a vast number of chemical reactions, makes for a rather difficult storytelling. Especially when one considers the ubiquitous nature of oxygen within both water and many variants of carbon. The story remains interesting for speculation of a sort, because there are creatures and bacteria on earth that are anaerobic, but most plant life uses both a carbon dioxide cycle AND an oxygen cycle...
Methane too. If diluted enough. Oxygen started as a fart by ancient bacteria.
Maybe a volcano for cooking food like how they do in Iceland but I don’t see anyway to get much further than that
kind of a massive plot hole, but how exactly did these human diplomats plan on interacting with the council if the atmosphere in the room isn't breathable for humans
Hard to imagine a suite of advanced species wouldn't have r even a passing familiarity with one of the most abundant elements in the universe. I know it's sci fi but good sci fi extrapolates science, it doesn't ignore it.
Just consider it an au where oxygen isn’t one of the most abundant elements. Is not that hard.
@@108wee if i have to ingnore basic science in a science fiction story.... why even read it? the idea is to take science to its exteme. not ignore it.
@@108wee Dude, we begin learning about the table of elements in middle school.
It's ridiculous to assume a space-fairing civilization would be so terrible at the most basic levels of chemistry.
i think they know what is oxigem but they did not thought some species could breath it
@@ratopetista4508 there would be absolutely no f****** reason why first contact with any species wouldn't involve basics like, what do you breathe? Do you carry any diseases? Do you have any special needs for atmosphere? And there would be absolutely no way in hell and advanced alien species would not first run medical scans of some sort, looking for pathogens or incompatibilities. Any species dumb enough to not do these things would have died out long ago. It'd be like landing on an alien planet without checking the atmosphere first and then just stepping outside to take a big breath of air. "Oh my God the air is full of sulfuric acid!!! If only we'd known! But there couldn't be any possible way to check before breathing it in!!!"
I can roll with that aliens could be working on different chemistry, but Oxygen is a super common element. Even if they avoided it as dangerous, their science would have had to studied it for all sorts of uses along any other elements.
Wait until the aliens learn what snipe hunting is from a human who is annoyed with them by their questions.
I don’t get why the digital communication was cut for the quarantine. What, am I going to text them a plague?
The alien prejudice against oxygen breathers is responsible for the 'disastrous' first contact situation.
Ridiculous.
You broke my suspension of disbelief.
Don’t treat me as if I’m 10 years old.
10 year old know better.
In the process of setting up the database of languages for the Humans' and aliens' translators... both sides somehow missed all the other info such as what gasses each race can tolerate?
This set up could work if we were given a reason why both side would know next to nothing about one another while having the language barrier broken for them... Like... What if both the humans and aliens were ALL abductees dropped off into a gameshow-esque interconnected network of habitats.
Also, salt is made up of two compounds that could kill any living thing if taken by themselves, which is crazy since salt is basically one of the biggest discoveries for nourishment in our history of hunting/cooking.
And water is made of two flammable Gasses
@@DavidCase-ov5uo And Microbes
Even in Stargate they kept checking the atmosphere before entering, and that was a covert comedy show. I briefly followed the HFY genre until I realized that "HFY" is just a euphemism for "widely grinning US politician widely grins while bombing a foreign planet and then grins widely", but this shit really takes the cake.
Sturgeons law once more applies to this genre of story as well.
90% of the stories are crap, but at least 10% is pretty good quality
Any molecule that has Oxygen in it can be undone to it's base elements.
Im sorry, I just have difficulty suspending disbelief when the author does not know the difference between a biohazard/bioweapon and a Chemical hazard/weapon. Oxygen is a chemical, it is not biological.
Technical the "human being" is a biohazard. Just our bleeding is hazardous.
13:31 The atmosphere on earth is only 21% oxygen. I don’t think 21% is very high.
Why was that not looked into with the years of planning?
Consider us humans in our oxygen rich world. We think oxygen is a normal thing in any livable world.
Nowadays, considering that there could be a civilization living in a world where oxygen is poisonous would be considered preposterous.
@@hahnpark1037 In the TV show Alien Nation, salt water was like acid to the alien skin. The alien guy thought it creepy to be living on a planet with oceans of the stuff. Whoever wrote that probably thought, "What preposterous stuff can I make to be toxic to alien beings. hmmm" lol.
I would like to think that advanced civilizations have imaginations and probably have wild sci-fi stories too. So yes, they should have thought of it. The reverse is needed too. Suppose they breathe atmospheres with high levels of hydrogen cyanide gas in it. Or low pressure. They would need to ensure that we wouldn't die after being exposed to their atmosphere.
@@Mady-lo6qb Truth.
Thank you. Also: you should Mark your thumbnails as "human read". It's just my taste but I imagine I am not the only one who preferes human narratores over sterile AI voices. ❤
That's a good idea!
@@StarboundHFY 🤓
@@StarboundHFY I second the notion. Stories read by a person are smoother, even if the story is written by ai. With the ai over saturation lately, it would help your channel stick out better.
The quarantine protocol was a bit much. Sealing the air exchange? Fine. Locking comms? What? Then again we on earth had comms lock a while back about certain info. Still stupid but remembered. I hope we don't forget.
Supposedly they had meticulous planning for this meeting but atmospheric needs were never discussed?
I get its a story but hard to accept super smart space travel but super dumb basics of life.
This makes no sense... they are in a room where they clearly breath oxygen, which is basically everywhere anyway, but are then quarantined from the room because of ... oxygen contamination. Er.. What?!
Very entertaining thank you,keep them coming!
Always love stories like these where super simple things that we don't ever think much about, end up being extreme deciding factors.
Why export atmosphere instead of seeds?
Plants constantly produce oxygen from carbon dioxide. If left alone, one plant could grow to threaten entire alien worlds due to the piosonous oxygen it would spew out 24/7.
First video of this channel I've watched and already know I'm gonna love it here!
Glad you enjoy it!
why would they not have more oxygen then just a short duration of a few hours for talks that could take weeks?
“Yes, but we exhale Carbon.”
Most of our breath contains o2
Thank you for being a human and reading this nice story. 👍
"The lungs of the galaxy" That's so badass.
Sorrry, I tried to llisten the story fully but the first couple of inutes of the narraitive turn me off.
First why the ove rreaction to oxygen from the council... even if every member bology tcosider O2 as poisonus, as space faring species ttheir tec should be prepared for that type of environments.
And secondly, the council despite Having 'FIrst conact' protocols, those protocols don:t cosider environmental analisys and biological requrements of the memeber spicies to be welcomed??? that is plainly stupid
I think you forgot how to spell words
imagine when we join an intergalactic organization like that, we gain acess to an intergalactic internet how much our tecnology will improve
Love the voice of the Varix. Is it the same voice of the triceratops in The Good Dinosaur?
DEBBIE !!
This is about as credible as Spaceballs 😂 exporting the planets atmosphere, are these aliens all water free? Who waters the plants
Not only do they breathe Oxygen but they also drink H2O ! 😲😨😱 The Horror, The HORROR ! 😱☠💀👻
"...Years of meticulous preparations... " and no one checked who breathes what?
How is it that they made plans for decades yet nobody thought to ask what kind of atmosphere was available? Imagine traveling lightyears across space without knowing this basic fact.
For your information, Starbound is the name of a video game by Chucklefish. (Funny thing is, im playing it rn while listening to different storries like this)
I so want to find out what happens when the humans 'adjust' their exports.
Aliens:they breathe oxygen?
Eminem:aint me
that actually sound like a fun job. a scientist who test oxygen on Foren plants
Technically we are nitrogen breathers who consume oxygen...
The person who wrote this must have just learned the term "begrudgingly" and decided to use it at every single possible moment 😂
The premiss of this story doesn't make much sense when Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe. Shoot, there are whole gas nebulas of the stuff in our galaxy. A perfect example of this in another story is Larry Niven's The Integral Trees.
Give it away and what do we breath?
Pls make another one that was really cool
i tried to listen to this one but it was just bad story telling by the author, not the narrator, just to be clear
5:27 I wonder what human biochemistry is classified? Oh wait ...
As someone named Alex: I feel like CZcams is threatening me by recommending this rn
Harvesting ice asteroids would be more practical. You wouldn't want to remove oxygen from Earth's atmosphere in the amounts that would be needed. But you could certainly harvest interplanetary ice and produce vast Oxygen and Hydrogen quantities as needed.
I enjoyed this alot
1:41 Chlorophyll inherently produces oxygen in the presence of light and water. Chlorophyll is the specific word we use for the plant origin chemicals that do photosynthesis. This makes no sense in less than two minutes L. Ron Hubbard would be proud. Also: O2 the molecular form of oxygen we breathe is very rare in nature outside of photosynthesis and caused an extinction event when it evolved on earth.
5:07 "revolutionized by exposure to oxygen" ok, this could be in fact, a brilliant idea especially as someone in the comments said that o2 is highly reactive and therefore good for high energy systems. If they are running off of something else (which should make their air unbreathable to humans but we'll ignore that for now) then it is possible that their systems are running at a low energy. It might adapt to running off oxygen in the same way that some blue-green bacteria can switch from sulphur compounds in the depths of the ocean to running off carbon di-oxide if exposed to sunlight. Maybe if they ran off oxygen, they would have a little more imagination and could have prevented this atmosphere muddle in the first place.
Except of course, how would they know o2 is toxic to them if they hadn't watched someone die in an industrial accident from o2 exposure? Logic please!!! It would be one thing if o2 was unknown to them at all. Like if they arrived at a low tech planet struggling on sulphur and all you do is add some blue green bacteria to get o2 in the atmosphere and the people become geniuses and it kicks off a technological revolution with tool-making etc. lol.
8:42 Ok, to be fair to the aliens, o2 is actually toxic in that in our own biochemistry, it can generate something called Reactive Oxygen Species which can be damaging to DNA and other cellular components if left floating around unchecked. So I am going to revise what I said earlier. Their systems may very well be able to run off o2 but it is possible they never evolved the biochemical systems to process the toxic byproducts. If that is the case, then some serious genetic engineering has to happen for them to have those systems too
Is there more to this story somewhere? I would love to find out what happens next.
chlorophyll rich skin?
they know what chlorophyll does dont they?
The part where the chlorophyll makes sugars, with waste products- the source of - the dreaded O2?
I like the story. I think it has interesting ideas.
Yea, if you do not have a brain
the first shot is always free
So, the implication I'm getting here is that enough research was done to identify that humanity carried no dangerous microorganisms, and yet, somehow, one of the most basic facts of human biology was missed entirely. That, or nobody even bothered to check that there was no fungal, viral, or any other potentially dangerous stuff by either side before skipping straight to full exposure... either way, that's a pretty huge plot hole.
Yep. We breath a caustic gas and drink a solvenic fluid. We bad ass...
The issue wasnt really the o2 levels in the pod, it was the co2 that would poison us faster
If we export oxygen in this story then how we make new one? We also need oxygen to live. Maybe by fusion?
The question is, how did the humans expect to breath? Like if Oxygen, or at least the concentration we have in our atmosphere, is deadly to any other species, then they'd need to be wearing spacesuits.
This story doesn't work for me, sorry. Too much fiction, not enough science. Quite illogical.
Poor baby. It's a story!
It's a stupid story. When meeting a species from a new world the first thing you need to know is what environment they require. What gravity level, radiation levels and atmosphere mixture. Those are the minimum if you plan to meet an alien race face-to-face. The humans knew their atmosphere would be toxic to the council, why didn't the council?
The AI slop art is a little bit over the top but it is such a breath of fresh air to hear a real person read these stories instead of that same narrator voice model every channel uses.
One thing i can say i may not like some of the stories you're still one hell of a story teller
Finally i found a human doing these
Hold on - We are told to eat blueberries because they are anti-oxidants??
Its really hard to find this story fun when it reuses the same words i see in most chatgpt writings
This would be a great story if Oxygen wasn't one of the most abundant elements in the universe. That makes this story kind of dumb.
I read a book called "Project Ave Maria" and it has a similar plot point. very interesting book by the way
A response to the end of the video. Let them fear the properties of Florine
oxygen is still slightly toxic to us we just slowly get the effects of oxygen like when you reach 50 it gets noticeable 100 really noticeable
So is there a 2nd part to the story?? You kinda left us hanging
Is there another part of this? I want to know what’s going on
Its water that is the ash of the universe. that is why humans are considered as bottom feeders.
before I even watch this.. oxygen is toxic and dangerous but extremely common.
Imagine aliens wouldn't come because oxygen was toxic for them.
I remember grunts from halo wearing these airtanks on their back because oxygen was toxic for them.
we were born to inherit the stars
It’s an example of being written by a non-scientific writer.
The stories get so much better if they are based on correct and plausible science.
Its kinda funny, since too much oxygen is toxic to us as well.
you make said like we breath in 100% oxygen , we mainly inhale nitrogen at 78% oxygen 21% 0.9percent is argon, and 0.1 other gasses like carbon dioxide ,methane water vapers and neon . one quick gogle search i knew about nitrogen and methane but not the others water vaper is a given since like hang on google searching since we have 71% water on land and the ocean holds 96.5 %? fwell thats confusing
Why not mine the gas giants or oort cloud?
Yes the blue gas giant maybe oxygen giants.
where is the co2 coming from to be converted into all that o2?
I'm guessing those worlds breathe CO2 instead of O2.
In the Halo lore, Covenant grunts breathe methane because anything else is poisonous to them so, at least, I see some logic in there.
So these technologically advanced beings would not know about oxygen? Would Earth be the only source of oxygen in the Galaxy, surely there would be other sources of oxygen in the Milky Way besides our home?
A very hard to believe story
It is a fictional story?
is there a sequel?
Part 2?
Are any of these stories in any kind of order I can't seem to figure this out
no, they’re all one-time individual stories
4Great story.
Wait till they encounter Beavis and Butthead.
While I could see alien races being surprised to learn of life adapted to an oxygen rich atmosphere I don't believe they could be so naïve to oxygen's potential uses. Humanity has long experimented and found uses for elements and chemicals that are extremely toxic to ourselves. Many such substances are now necessary in our manufacturing, medical and scientific industries. I don't see how an intelligent species could achieve the technological knowledge required to become a space faring civilization without some willingness to experiment with toxic substances.
why on earth would we sell oxygen. they can make it themselves from water through electrolysis. water and oxygen exist everywhere within our universe.