Humanity: Terminator, Berserker

[Voidswimmer]

Simply put: Humans are badass unstoppable engines of destruction. Now on to details.

Humans tend to enjoy movie monsters that hunt via hyper-persistance, particularly if they hunt us. Our Slasher monster-men and aliens stalk us relentlessly over great distances, undetered by wounds and exhaustion.

Why? Why are we fascinated by the death by relentless chase?

Because it is us. We see our own methods used against us and, somewhere deep in our limbic systems, we feel the primal fear.

Humans nowdays, if forced to hunt without advanced tools, would probably opt for stealth and ambush, having lost the knowledge of our own power, but in the older times, the ambush was the first part.

A slighly sharp stick thrown from ten yards away isnt very fatal to a large deer or buffalo. But the persuit is. Quadropeds have their respiration and locomotion coupled, making them easy to exhaust with extended running. They also lack the falling-based movement that humans have, letting gravity propel us along. As a result humans have almost preternatural endurance when compared to the rest of the worlds mammels. Wolves are the only other highly evolved persistance hunter, and our common prey and hunting method is probably why we became such good friends over time.

The human hunters or wolfpack wounds a target, or at least startles it, and seperates it from its herd if it has one. Then they follow it when it sprints away. Wolves use their keen sense of smell and humans use their vision and pattern recognition to keep track of where the animal passed. The animal MUST slow down to catch its breath due to its coupled systems and every time it does the seemingly tireless terminator-like human or canine persuer appears once more. Eventually it can run no more and the hunters or pack take it down.

The exact limits of human endurance are hard to measure, but we know what WONT stop a deterimed human, hunting or not. Hugh Glass, a man of the old frontier days, was mauled by a grizzly and left for dead. He wasnt. He awoke 200 miles from civilization with a severly broken leg, no supplies, and a festering wound on his side exposing his ribs. He set off wearing nothing but his own death shroud and arrived back in the land of the living six weeks later.

Humans even have evolved the ability to shut our bodies down if drowning in cold water. A cold water drowning (and some dry freezings) can be revived with minimal brain damage, hense the medical adage "not dead until warm and dead."

So humans are more-or-less unstoppable short of killing them and then dismembering them to be sure. How about strength.

Well humans are stronger than we think. Modern humans tend to be comparativly unfit and social trained not to unleash our strength. And all humans have a hard time getting proper leverage with out bipedal stance and relativly weak grip.
Beyond that, humans have over-evolved safety sysrems on our muscles that require surges of adrenaline and endorphines to unlock.

Our muscles are too strong for us to use all the time. We would tear our joints and ligaments. Anyone who (like me) has touched a live electrical wire has experianced the effects of a tiny moment of pure uncontrolled muscle contraction.

So in emergency situations our muscles unlock, our ability to recognise pain and shock dims, and our capacity for rational higher though weakens. When the septagenarian Daniel M’Mburugu was attacked by a leapord he was HOLDING a machete and he THREW IT AWAY. He then killed the cat by forcing its jaw open and ripping out its tongue.

Humans tend to be overlooked strength-wise because we dont have our animal state on all the time, but pound-for-pound we habe some of the strongest muscles on the planet when we really need them.


I think when it comes to killing machines and monsters it's hard to beat the intelligent problem solving unstoppable hunter that, much like a video game boss, can go completly berserk when the chips are down.

[Rasec Wizzlbang]

No animal can can run for longer without resting than a human.

And pound for pound, yes, we are damn strong, but still laughable when compared with other primates. Still, you don't need to outmuscle a chimp when you can just outrun it.

[Four]

Or used our advanced tools and intelligence to destroy it.

[Nomic]

Chimps and mothe other primates use their arms not just for manipulation but also locomotion, so they pretty much have to be really strong. The tree-dwelling ones in regulargy hang from branches and support their entire body wiht just their arms. Humans are designed more for endurance than pure strenght.

[Admiral_Aorta]

lol where was this copypasted from

[odioustrident]

The persistence of monsters may come from an atavistic fear of ourselves, the invincibilty of monsters comes from our fear of the animal world.

[Spivsy]

I thought the persistence and invincibility of monsters was for continuity's sake. Monsters aren't any fun if they die.

[Mr. Cales]

Spivsy has a point, but that's not the whole answer. Why this specific sort of invincibility, the relentless monster? Why this overwhelming, won't stop, fanatical persistence?

I think to some extent it's to make the monster more human. Humans are like that. We don't quit and we are ridiculously single-minded.

A monster like that is more human, and we empathize- and recoil in recognition of that empathy.

A monster that acted like an actual animal would be boring. It'd attack you, or not, dependent on a bunch of factors- and it would almost always choose not to attack. That's boring. Inhuman. We don't understand doing things by instinct because, for the most part, we don't- that's why we evolved these great big brains, so we don't mindlessly repeat instincts.

Just my two cents.

[Cosbydaf]

I don't think it's so much about persistence being a more human trait/empathetic, as it is that "Monster that kinda-sorta wants to kill the protagonists but mostly just wants them to go away" doesn't make for much of a constant threat.

[SmashedPumpkin]

http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_mcdou...orn_to_run.html

I'll just leave this here then.

[Cosbydaf]

On the subject of the basis behind the monster idea:

I think the common idea of a monster comes from our built-in fear/genetic memory of predators. Bigger, faster, stronger creatures with sharp teeth that want to kill us.