Risk vs Hazard vs Safety - Safety Risk .net - top100.realmoneybestgame.xyz

[first] [prev] [next]
Undrat knew he wasn't the brightest neo-sapient in the galactic arm. None of his people would ever be known for hyper-intelligence or cleverness or ingenuity. They were not grand philosophers or intellectuals. They admired intelligence, admired cleverness, even though comprehending it beyond acknowledging it was largely beyond their capabilities.
That did not mean his people were worthless. His people were the kind of people that slogged through history, their eyes on the goal, ever walking forward. In the long drawn out march of time they had discovered each thing slowly and progressed to the next even if it took centuries or millennia. It did not concern them that they were considered one of the less intelligent neo-sapience species, they knew what was important.
Hard work. Perseverance. Endurance.
For over fifty million years they had been one of the Neo-Sapient Species watched over by the Unified Council. Their home-world had been forgotten as they spread out among the Lanaktallan worlds. They were largely uninterested in colonies or expanding their race.
They were content to enjoy the finer things in life.
A job well done. A difficult and lengthy problem that the solution was perseverance being accomplished. Enduring whatever had to be endured.
Over the aeons Undrat's people had always worked for the Lanaktallan. They were proudest of the fact that they were often moved by the tens of thousands to a new colony to provide the manual labor that a robot had not yet been programmed and fashioned to do.
They had been part of the Unified Council for so long that most of the other species viewed them more as furniture or a standard issue part of anything that required labor.
Undrat's people were robust. Their thick skin let them endure harsh solar emissions, their thick bones and heavy muscles let them handle work on planets up to 1.6G, more than twice the preferred gravity of the rest of the Unified Council species. Their internal organs allowed them to eat and flourish on bare nutripaste without even most of the additives that the majority of races required. They could eat rudimentary crops and usually even local food species with no difficulties. They healed quickly, even from injuries that would kill most of the Near-Civilized and Civilized Species.
But they weren't the brightest or sharpest.
Undrat had worked in a warehouse when the humans came. He and his men had watched the humans land. Had seen them and had admired their form, much like their own. Bipedal, two arms, moving with power even if they didn't always move with grace.
He had largely ignored them, preferring to keep with his own work, which was carrying boxes and crates, running grav-dollies, and doing other hard jobs.
His muscles were thick and solid, his endurance deep and rapidly recovering.
He could work a whole nine hours and after fifteen hours of rest be ready to work again. He could lift his own body weight above his head.
The Lanaktallan who was his Overseer had always praised Undrat and his fellow workers. After all, the Tukna'rn people were the backs the colony had been founded on. He was valuable property of the Fu'uku'ugu'utmien Industrial Conglomerate, with bar codes down his arms, across his back, chest and forehead, and across the back of his neck that he had been born with, the bar codes tattooed into his very gene code.
If he had ever been curious enough to look he would have found that he and every one of his fellow Tukna'rn were more valuable to the Conglomerate than a fork lift. He would have just nodded, not really understanding why it should be surprising. He could work on any surface he could stand on, could work in different gravities, in different weather, with different cargos, without the need for programming or expensive mechanical maintenance.
Of course he was more valuable. He could be put in cryosleep to go to the next world and virtually ignored for centuries if need be.
The Terrans, the humans, had arrived and then came the great roars of THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE which made no sense to Undrat. Did not the dining facility have enough for everyone to eat? Was there not enough work to go around? Did not the Fu'uku'ugu'utmien Conglomerate not own all the resources of the planet and the people upon it?
The reply of THEN DIE ALONE! made no sense to Undrat either. He could not imagine being alone for long. Tukna'rn and every other species capable of thinking were always in groups.
Before he could be disturbed by having to contemplate the roars the sirens had gone off.
Undrat had been sent into a shelter beneath one of the great warehouses. He and his fellow Tukna'rn sat patiently, eating and sleeping and everything else according to the computerized schedule. At time the floor shook and faint vibrations could be felt.
Eventually the roar of THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE! had ceased.
The shelter had sounded the 'all clear' and Undrat and his fellow Tukna'rn had been allowed back onto the surface of the planet. They had emerged, blinking at the harsh light that somehow penetrated the thick cloud cover. Their skin flushed a deep bluish-green in response, reacting to the increased radiation from the sun and the clouds.
The Overseers had gone. Fled. Left.
The Overseer in charge of Undrat and his fellow Tukna'rn workers was confused and angry. He approached the Terrans and whatever it was that the Terrans told the Overseer seemed to anger the Overseer more.
Undrat himself heard the Overseer tell the Terrans that the Tukna'rn people were valuable assets, extremely valuable property of the Fu'uku'ugu'utmien Conglomerate and that he could not believe that the Conglomerate had abandoned them.
Then the Conglomerate had returned with the forces that kept unruly colonists and workers in line. MilSec, CorpSec, and the fabled Executor Security Forces arrived in ships. Undrat had heard the Overseer tell the Terrans that of course the forces coming in weren't hostile, they were just there to protect valuable conglomerate property.
Then the alarms sounded and the shocked and distressed looking Overseer led Undrat and his fellow Tukna'rn workers into the shelter again.
Strangely enough, for reasons that Undrat did not know and did not think to ask, even more workers were led into the shelters by the Overseer. Many different species, some of whom even did the more intellectually demanding jobs of monitoring computers and other important systems.
The Undrat simply sat in the shelters and waited. They counselled the other species not to complain, after all, there was food, air, water, and enough room to sit and even exercise facilities to maintain one's strength and endurance.
Again, there was the rumblings and vibrations.
The Overseer seemed extremely concerned, often wringing all four hands as he sat in the Facility Overseer's office.
At one time Undrat himself saw something strange. The Overseer was talking to a hologram of another Overseer, who was obviously giving the Overseer orders. The Overseer suddenly picked up a chair that the Tukna'rn used when sitting in the Overseer's office and smashed the holotank with it.
Three sleep shifts later the elevator came down and a squad of armored Overseers with "EXEC-SEC" written on them exited. They asked for the way to the Overseer's office. Undrat was tasked to show them.
Undrat knew his people were not considered very intelligent and that he was an average Tukna'rn.
But 'within standard species median' did not mean 'stupid.'
He heard the Executor Overseer sneer about how Undrat and his people were 'lounging in such opulence and safety' and how 'they would be better used to clog the guns of the Terrans' rather than 'inhabiting a shelter better put to use by their betters'.
His people were incurious not unintelligent.
Undrat did not like what they were saying. His people were not animals. They were not wastes of resources. They were valuable and coveted property of the conglomerate and his Overseer was proud of them and admired by his peers for overseeing such industrious properties.
When he got to the Overseer's office he was ordered to stand there, as if he was a robot. That did not bother him, he was used to short commands.
The Executors ordered the Overseer to 'evict the neo-sapients so they could be armed to force the Terrans to fight them' and the Overseer protested.
Undrat did not care about the argument at first. It was between beings who far outranked him and usually gave orders.
But one statement got his attention.
The ExecSec commander said it, pointing at the Overseer.
"Kill this fool."
Undrat reached out as the ExecSec officer drew his pistol, put his hands to either side of the Lanaktallan's torso, and twisted as he squeezed. Ribs crunched and the spine crackled as Undrat twisted the Lanaktallan's torso and bent it to the side.
The other Tukna'rn did the same. Undrat's father, Ildrut, brought both fists down on the armored flank-spine of the one next to him, breaking the Lanaktallan in half.
The Overseer merely stood and watched.
Neural pistols went off and neural bolts thudded into the Tukna'rn, who felt them as a slight burning tingle where they hit and raised welts like they had been bitten by a particularly aggressive insect. A plasma pistol was fired twice, catching the paper clothing on fire but only causing the skin of the Tukna'rn to darken and painful burns on the first two layers of skin to happen.
Then it was over.
The Overseer stood there and nodded slowly.
"You are loyal and valuable property," he said softly. "You did not betray the Conglomerate, the Conglomerate has betrayed you and every being in this shelter."
The Overseer looked up from the bodies of the dead Lanaktallan, killed by heavy strikes of blunt fists and the pressure of the Tukna'rn grip.
"Gather their weapons. Any who come down the elevator are to be killed until further notice," the Overseer said.
But no more came down.
Finally Undrat, who went everywhere with the Overseer, even slept in the same room as him, always carrying a riot shield and a heavy plasma rifle, saw the Overseer talk to one of the Terran lemurs on his vid-display.
It was nearly a month later when the Overseer stated that he, and a handpicked group, would ride the elevator to the surface and speak to the Terrans.
Undrat rode the elevator silently, holding onto the rifle.
If the Terrans attempted to harm the Overseer, then he would kill them.
Unlike the Tukna'rn, they would be as fragile as everyone else in a universe built to challenge even the Tukna'rn people. IF a fist did not do it, then he had a plasma rifle.
He would not let the Overseer, who had shepherded and cared for the Tukna'rn since the time of Undrat's father's father's father's father's time, to come to harm.
The clouds were low and heavy. The air smelled of burnt plants and like a greenhouse that had caught on fire. The air was heavy with soot and ash and lightning ripped at the clouds and the ground in equal measure.
The Overseer had been wise to order everyone into hazardous environment suits. The world did not look as it had.
Undrat looked around him. It looked as if a forest had grown where the tarmac of the great warehouse complex had once been, and had then been burnt away to leave behind sticky black ash.
There was a heavy vehicle present. A large tracked vehicle, with a heavy cannon on it. The back was open, a ramp leading from the interior of the vehicle to the ground. Six bipeds with two arms walked down the ramp, all of them in some kind of black armor.
Undrat could tell they were Terrans. They moved like the Tukna'rn people. With strength and power, even though they were taller and thus more slender. He nodded to himself that they all had weapons, after all, the Overseer had stated that the Conglomerate was fighting the Terrans over the Tukna'rn and other neo-sapients on the planet.
Of course they were. The Tukna'rn were valuable property.
Two of the six Terrans were carrying something fascinating to Undrat. They worse what looked like a kind of loading frame that Undrat had been trained to use when the object to be loaded was too much for even his strength. The frame was also attached to a heavy looking gun with a barrel as thick as Undrat's arm, the bullets leading into the gun were bigger than Undrat's fingers. It even had a small screen angled for the Terran to be able to look at it. A datacable went from the gun to the armored arm of the Terran.
While the Terrans and the Overseer spoke, Undrat stared at the large gun. Curiosity, finally stirred to life by the entire situation, tickled at him. A strange feeling, but one that urged him to ask a single question instead of just mutely staring.
"Is it heavy?" Undrat asked, speaking without first being asked a question. He was not addressing anyone of rank, he knew that. The Overseer was talking with the two who obviously had ranking. There were merely the two with the big guns and two others with heavy looking rifles that looked almost unfinished.
The Terran looked at him, its face hidden by the black front of his helmet. It hefted the big gun. "It's pretty heavy."
"How much does it weigh?" Undrat asked, curious as to how much a Terran could carry.
"Ninety-two kilograms outside the man pack frame," the Terran said. "Total weight with the gunner's man-pack frame is one-hundred-twenty kilograms."
Undrat's datalink, which helped him with things he was slow to do, told him how much it weighed, which was as much as he weighed.
"Is it effective?" Undrat asked.
The Terran gave a nod. "Light and medium armored fighting vehicles don't stand a chance. If a tank gives me too long, I'll rip it apart. The clankers and the dwellerspawn don't stand a chance."
"Then it is good," Undrat said. falling silent. He admired the gun's lines, how lethal it looked.
If he had that, he could keep anyone from harming the Overseer, the Tukna'rn people, or the other neo-sapients in the shelter.
The Overseer had stopped talking, turning to look at him. Undrat pointed at the heavy gun and the Terran carrying it.
"May I look at it more closely, Overseer?" Undrat asked.
"If it does not bother the Terran, you have my permission loyal one," the Overseer said. He turned back to the Terran. "They are a good people and I do not allow them to come to harm. They are loyal, work hard, and ask for little in return but what they need to survive."
"Answer his questions, Corporal," the Terran said.
"Thank you for indulging him. Curiosity from his people is not common," the Overseer said. "They are slow to act unless ordered, but ultimately a gentle and trustworthy people."
Undrat put the rest of what the Overseer was saying out of his mind as he slowly moved over to the Terran.
One always moved slowly and obviously when approaching a stranger.
"Have you had it long?" Undrat asked.
"This particular one? About a month or so," the Terran said. "Command ordered at least one heavy gunner per squad once the Dwellerspawn started spawning heavy units in greater numbers."
Undrat looked around. The vegetation looked weird to him and he realized he never really paid too much attention to the plants unless he was tending to a greenhouse or field of crops.
"What are Dwellerspawn?" he asked.
"Bioweapons from outer space," the Terran said. "They landed a month ago, we had to use atomic and biowarfare to counter them."
"Oh," Undrat said.
"Have you been in the shelter the entire time?" the Terran asked.
"Yes," Undrat said, still staring at the weapon. He could see how it operated, although he was not sure about the function of the large orbs attached to the back of each of the ammunition boxes. Perhaps more ammunition? But why store it in a round object when a rectangular box would be more efficient?
"How long?" the Terran asked.
"Five hundred twenty-three sleep cycles," Undrat said. "We will have to go to half rations soon."
The Terran nodded.
After a while the Overseer turned around and made a motion at the Tukna'rn. "Follow. We must prepare for something."
Undrat was slightly disappointed to leave the interesting looking weapon behind, but he followed the Overseer. They moved to one of the cargo loading areas for the shelter and the Overseer brought up the elevator. He ordered the Tunka'rn to rest and they waited.
After some time the Overseer waved at Undrat and his cousin Akdru to follow. They moved over to the heavy door and opened it.
Heavy blocky looking vehicles towing a heavy trailer were backed up to the door. The Overseer and the two Tukna'rn used hand motions to guide the three trucks as they backed up. When they reached a point halfway to the cargo elevator they stopped.
Terrans got out and moved to the back, lowering the ramps in the back.
Inside were boxes marked as food, medicine, clothing, toys, blankets, entertainment, and survival parts.
The boxes were thick heavy metal, the kind Undrat had only previously seen on spaceships.
One of the Terrans told the Overseer that he could have the boxes sterilized by fire or UV light, it was safe for the contents.
The Tukna'rn worked without complaint alongside the Terrans to stack the contents of the trucks onto the elevator. Once it was fully loaded, the Overseer and Undrat's father rode it down.
It was back in half an hour and Undrat was proud of his fellow Tukna'rn in the shelters for unloading the elevator so quickly.
It went on, until finally the Overseer told the Terrans that the shelter's stocks were full again.
Undrat was glad. He was tired now but did not want to show it in front of the Terrans.
When he rode the elevator down with the last load of supplies, the Overseer told them all how he was proud of them, how they had done their people, and all the people in the shelter, proud that day.
When asked how much longer that the people must stay in the shelter, the Overseer startled them all.
"Until the Terrans say it is safe. The mad lemurs of Terra fight against the planet itself as the planet was corrupted by something vile from outer space," the Overseer said. "They are winning, but it is slow. We will all be safer in the shelter."
"This is our home. Should we not fight beside the lemurs?" Undrat asked.
The Overseer looked at him. "I am proud of your willingness to fight next to the lemurs, but no, you are untrained in combat. I will not waste your life."
Undrat felt pleasure in the fact that the Overseer still considered him valuable.
So Undrat stayed in the shelter. Helping maintain it, waiting patiently for the Terrans to say it was all clear.
Less than a hundred sleep cycles passed before he was allowed to leave the shelter.
The habitation where he had lived was gone, a pile of scorched rubble now overgrown with grass and moss. The dining facility was little more than crumbled plascrete. The vast warehouses were flattened, the tarmac reduced to thick soil.
The Overseer led them to a place with thick walls. For almost a week he simply waited to be told what to do. He sat on his bunk for most days, watching the colorful programs on the vidslate he had been given, the cloth one piece clothing as comfortable as the boots.
After that the Overseer told them that they would help the Terrans.
He carried boxes, moved machinery, helped the Terrans as they kept "Refugee City Tau" working and providing comfort for everyone.
One day the Overseer came to Undrat's room that he shared with three others. The Overseer sent the other three out and sat down on a chair, folding his arms.
"Worker Undrat, while we were in the shelters you expressed a desire to fight next to the mad lemurs of Terra," the Overseer said.
"I did," Undrat said after a moment. It took him a moment to remember, but he remembered it with perfect clarity.
"Is that still true?" the Overseer asked.
Undrat sat and thought about it. The Overseer waiting patiently. Finally Undrat looked at the Overseer.
"It is."
The Overseer nodded. "The Terran Confederate Military Forces are recruiting neo-sapients like your people. You are a good solid dependable being and a hard worker. I will be pleased to refer your name to their recruiters."
"Thank you, Overseer," Undrat said, and meant it.
The Overseer left.
Two days later the Terrans came and got him. They had him take tests. Written, verbal, video. Tests of logic and math and spelling and problem solving. He answered the questions one by one if he could, if he could not, he simply moved to the next one once he realized he could not answer it. After that came the physical tests. Then tests regarding his emotional and psychological state.
Three days later the Overseer informed him that he was accepted into the Terran military and that he was to go and choose one of the many jobs he had tested for.
The Overseer urged him to be diligent in his studies when the Terrans trained him for his new job.
Undrat agreed.
A day later the Overseer came to see him off as the Terrans loaded him and others into a heavy vehicle to take them to Camp Alpha for training.
A year later, Undrat went to see the Overseer in his new uniform. The Overseer expressed pleasure in seeing him and expressed pride in Undrat at graduating from the difficult Terran military training.
He told the Overseer that he was a "Heavy Weapon Specialist" in the Terran Army now.
The Overseer urged him to be diligent and attentive to training and his duties, as the Overseer was in ensuring that the neo-sapients, the people, under his care received the highest level of comfort and necessities he could.
Another year passed. Undrat trained hard, mindful of the Overseer's words. He often wrote to his family, and the Overseer, about his training. He learned how to use many different weapons, from a simple magnetic acceleration pistol to the massive 155mm Hellbore crew served self-propelled gun. He learned to operate weapons from the doors of strikers, mounted on vehicles, or just plopped into the dirt. He learned how to call for close air support, for artillery, for orbital bombardment, for medical dustoffs.
The Overseer wrote back, praising Undrat for his diligence.
It had been two years to the day that Undrat had joined the Terran military when it happened.
The sirens went off again.
This time, the words from beyond were different.
YOU BELONG TO US
[first] [prev] [next]

Truck drivers fuck you....99% of you just to be fair to the rest

Suggesting the Eldritch Chorus Fruit, an End counterpart to the Golden Apple!

Eldritch Chorus Fruit

Crafting:
Picture version


Netherite Scrap	Netherite Scrap	Netherite Scrap
Netherite Scrap	Chorus Fruit	Netherite Scrap
Netherite Scrap	Netherite Scrap	Netherite Scrap

Appearance:
An Eldritch Chorus Fruit has the same shape as a regular Chorus Fruit, but the purple/white color scheme is instead black/red, respectively. It also glows as if Enchanted.
Effects:
The Eldritch Chorus Fruit is a powerful food item that, when eaten, will remove all effects (including fire and even velocity) from the consumer and spawn a single, temporary End Portal Block at the location of the consumer's head.
This End Portal Block lingers for 12 seconds and teleports any entity entering it to the center of the End's Obsidian Platform, the same destination as a Stronghold's End Portal Blocks. After 12 seconds, the End Portal Block vanishes, leaving either Air, Cave Air, or Void Air in its place depending on which would be appropriate for its location.
Due to the location in which this End Portal Block spawns, the consumer of the Eldritch Chorus Fruit is always immediately sent through, since the portal appears overlapping with their head. That is, other entities can also use the portal while it lasts if they enter it, but the consumer has no choice but to be sent through.
The Eldritch Chorus Fruit also restores the same Food Points as a regular Chorus Fruit (4 points, or 2 icons), but restores 9.6 Saturation points instead of the standard 2.4, making it the hunger-restoration equivalent of a Golden Apple (4 Food Points and 9.6 Saturation points restored).
Obtaining:
The Eldritch Chorus Fruit can only be obtained in two ways:

Crafting
Very Rare loot in an End City chest (same rarity as an Enchanted Golden Apple in Desert Temples).

Discussion

Overview
Unlike its Overworld counterpart the Golden Apple, the Eldritch Chorus Fruit does not grant status effects, instead causing a one-off instantaneous effect when consumed. Removing all modifiers can be beneficial in a pinch, especially since unlike a Milk Bucket it includes fire and velocity in this purge. The Eldritch Chorus Fruit is a total reset, though it does nothing for one's Health Points themselves.
However, the main effect is the creation of a temporary End Portal Block that leads to the End's Obsidian Platform. This has three primary use cases.
Escape
Whether the player be surrounded by mobs, caught on fire by lava, or even falling into the Void itself, the Eldritch Chorus Fruit can get them out of that situation and into relative safety (provided the Dragon hasn't been revived and they do not look at an Enderman, at least). Since the Eldritch Chorus Fruit even removes velocity, it can save oneself from a simple fall from great height as well. It is essentially the ultimate pre-Elytra safety mechanism for the hazards in the End.
This also somewhat applies to PvP situations, but is balanced by the fact that the player's enemies can simply follow them through the lingering Portal before it closes, which takes a rather generous 12 seconds; plenty of time if they were already chasing the escapee.
However, the Eldritch Chorus Fruit has one significant disadvantage compared to other 'saves' like the Totem of Undying or an Enchanted Golden Apple: It displaces you from wherever you were and resets you back to the Obsidian Platform, meaning that whatever you were doing is essentially over. Exploring? Having to use an Eldritch Chorus Fruit resets your progress. Looting an End City? Now you have to find it again; good luck.
End Access
Since Strongholds only appear near world spawn (at least, in Java edition), it can sometimes be highly inconvenient to go back and forth from the End for players that base themselves far from said central location. Although extremely expensive (requiring enough Netherite Scrap to make two Netherite Ingots), the Eldritch Chorus Fruit offers an alternative option to access the End. One must have nonetheless accessed the End normally the first time to have a Chorus Fruit at all, so this does not break game progression.
Long-Distance Mob Transport
An expensive, niche use, the End Portal spawned by an Eldritch Chorus Fruit could also be used to teleport rare and distant mobs (Pandas, Polar Bears, Shulkers) long distances by getting up in their personal space and consuming the Eldtrich Chorus Fruit to spawn the Portal over both oneself and the mob. After that, it is just a matter of getting them into a boat and into the Exit Portal, though the risk that the mob will just yeet themselves off the platform into the abyss the moment you load in is always there.
Crafting Balance
In terms of power versus expense, I would rank the Eldritch Chorus Fruit somewhere between a Golden Apple and an Enchanted Golden Apple. This is because while both the Enchanted Golden Apple and Eldritch Chorus Fruit are ultimate 'save' mechanics almost on par with a Totem of Undying, an Eldritch Chorus Fruit is purely for retreat, putting a stop to whatever one was doing before using it (as it teleports the user to the Obsidian Platform in the End every time). By contrast, an Enchanted Golden Apple makes one extremely powerful and allows one to continue with what they were doing, be that fighting off mobs in survival or players in PvP.
As such, the Eldritch Chorus Fruit is far more expensive to make than a Golden Apple (requiring enough Netherite Scrap to craft not one but two Netherite Ingots), but it can be crafted, unlike an Enchanted Golden Apple.
Summary
All in all, the 'escape' function is obviously the main draw, notably being the only viable method to save oneself after falling into the Void prior to Elytra. However, the 'End access' and 'transport' uses are both areas where the game could benefit from a new mechanic similar to this one; the Eldritch Chorus Fruit meets a need currently not addressed in both respects.
What do you think? Thank you for your time and feedback!

Since I am copy-pasting this so much I'll just add it to the post:

I've used Netherite for: Full Armor, 2 Pickaxes (one Silk, one Fortune), 2 Shovels (same), 1 Axe, 1 Sword, and 3 Lodestones, for 13 total. They all have Mending. Do you know what that means?
That means I'll never need another Netherite Scrap again.
As such, yeah, I could totally see making Eldritch Chorus Fruit, in the same way I use Diamonds for Fireworks nowadays. What else will I use Scrap for? Making my little brother a set? He can farm his own rofl
Besides, even if Netherite Scrap wasn't useless after you get your full Mending setup going, I think the Fruit has a niche among the Totem and Apple.
If you fall into Lava with 4 Skeletons shooting at you and eat an Enchanted Golden Apple, congrats, you're still slowly wading in lava with mobs shooting at you and probably more on the way, creepers in included. Eating an Eldritch Chorus Fruit instead removes you from the situation entirely.
It is a matter of assurance; peace of mind. Where a Totem or Gapple empowers you to escape your current situation, an Eldritch Chorus Fruit straight-up rescues you entirely. Eat a Gapple or burn a Totem and you are still in danger and must work your way out, while eating an Eldritch Chorus Fruit lets you sink back into your chair and sigh in relief as the End loading screen peacefully displays on your monitor.
That is,

Use a Totem of Undying when you aren't expecting death and need something you don't have to manually trigger
Use an Enchanted Golden Apple when you want to man up on and/or push through whatever the situation is
Use an Eldritch Chorus Fruit when you want to just GTFO right this moment lol

Can we get a tour of your truck? NO. Ok, we'll just break in..

Overweight Person Tries to Deploy and Jeopardizes Everyone’s Safety

Lets please not let this H1 Riser issue slide

Burned Alive or Buried Alive... If You Had to, Which Would You Choose?

Burned alive and buried alive, the two worst fates for any living creature that I could ever possibly imagine. If forced with the choice, which would you pick? Unbearable physical agony, or extreme mental torture? The most excruciating pain imaginable, or the utmost form of horror that the human mind is capable of conceiving? Up to a few years ago, I didn't know either. Why would you even consider it if not forced to? Well, one day I found out which I'd choose. One day so dreadful that there's no adjective in the English language strong enough to properly convey the horror of it; a day so awful that I struggle just to recall it, I had the choice put upon me. Here is what happened:
Years ago, I bought my first home. Being an overall fan of the macabre and, living in rural New England, I decided on a nearly ancient American Colonial style home. Reminiscent of something out of a Nathaniel Hawthorne or Arthur Miller story, it was the product of a bygone era. Though it was built in the early 1800s, as the cliche goes, it had good bones, and had been fairly well maintained considering it’s age. That being said, it still needed some work.
A few weeks after closing, while fixing some of the faulty old wiring in the basement, I came across a centuries old drain set into the stone flooring. It was maybe three feet in diameter and covered with a heavy iron grate that was worn with many decades worth of rough, brown corrosion. It resembled the entrance to a dungeon.
Like I mentioned above, I have a curiosity for all the dark and morbid elements of the world. Finds like this were the exact reason I wanted this house! So I decided to have a closer look at the forgotten thing. I laced my fingers through the dirty old grate and gave it a firm pull. It opened with a pained and rusty cry. I gazed down into the hole. A faint, acrid stink arose from its depths. It was as dry as old bone and quiet as a crypt. I assumed, due to the home’s location on the side of a small hill, that the basement had once been prone to flooding, and that modern technological developments had rendered that, like so many other things in this place, a relic of the past. I poked my head a little farther in and looked into the deep, dark recesses of the ancient plumbing. I could make out just the faintest bit of light at the far end. I went out into the yard and found the outlet hidden deep in a thicket of tangled brush. Evidently lacking access to chicken mesh, someone had covered it with a makeshift criss-crossing of merciless looking barbed wire, apparently to keep any unwanted creatures from crawling in during the night. I thought that whomever had done so had made a smart choice. The pipe looked nearly big enough for a person to squeeze through.
A few months later, I was back working in the basement. The previous owner had left boxes upon boxes of yellowed old newspapers, books and other forms of aged literature stacked under the stairs. I wanted to move out what I could as they were taking up a lot of valuable storage space and were a possible fire hazard, especially under the dry, splintery wood of the basement risers. Honestly though, I really wanted to look through them to see what sort of curious old volumes might be hidden within the dusty mound.
About thirty minutes into my task, I had sifted through and moved about five of the boxes without finding anything of much interest. In the sixth box, however, I came upon a strange volume bound in worn leather that looked like it must be older than the house itself. It had the words Kitab al Kanuz embossed on the cover and was written in what appeared to be Arabic, though I'm no linguist. There were English translations or notes of some sort written in the margins. They seemed to say something about the locations of lost and hidden treasures. This was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for! Excited by my find, I moved out from under the stairs in search of better lighting to read it by. I went over to a large flood light I had left in the basement from a previous project and flicked it on. The decrepit wiring running under the stairs sparked violently.
I spun quickly and, in doing so, tripped and fell backward. By the time I got up, the sparks had already lit a fire in the stack of boxes that stood nearly a meter high. It was licking and biting at the withered stairs like the jaws of a hungry animal. In hindsight, at this very moment, I should have sprinted through the flames to safety. Whatever burns I would have suffered would have paled in comparison the trauma I was doomed to endure by staying put. But, like they say, hindsight is 20/20. Instead, I sat frozen in shock of the sight in front of me. When I snapped out of it, I looked around frantically for any sign of something to douse the flames with, but of course there was nothing. Nobody thinks to keep a fire extinguisher in their basement.
The blaze rose higher, engulfing the staircase and spreading around the door jamb at the top like some type of hellish decoration. I tried desperately to hold back panic and think of a way out. My basement had no windows and no hatchway either.
Then the fire spread to the exposed fiberglass insulation in the ceiling. It jumped from section to section like a stone skipping across a pond. The air became thick with the baking heat. The sound of the flames crackling was now constant and unrelenting. Smoke was filling up the already close air, curling and twisting through the space. Every breath I took tasted of hot ash.
I finally decided my only hope was to sprint up the stairs through the inferno and pray my injuries weren't life threatening. Thoughts of pink, stinging burns, blisters, wet peeling flesh and skin grafts flashed through my mind. I hesitated. I tried to steel my nerves against it all. Then the staircase collapsed.
I drew back against the concrete wall behind me, hoping for respite from the sudden gust of fiery air that followed. It didn't help. It was like standing too close to a bonfire, but with no way to back up.
I looked up at the doorway. The threshold was 15 feet up and surrounded by flame. I moved away along the wall, desperately searching for any relief from the heat and smoke. Everything was on fire now. I could barely see. My eyes burned and every breath choked my lungs. I was beginning to feel light-headed and nauseous. I was going to die down here, asphyxiated and burned alive. I prayed to God to feel as little as possible.
I got down on my stomach hoping to delay the inevitable. My hands felt cold metal on the floor. I heard it grind and shift with my movement. My fingers slipped through elongated holes. I was lying on top of the drain.
My heart jumped and then immediately dropped to the pit of my stomach. I had a way out, but it meant squeezing through hundreds of feet of suffocating underground tunnel.
I pulled it open and it gave that same rusty cry as before. I put my head inside. The air felt cool and fresh compared to the basement. I looked at the spec of light way down in the darkness. It looked miles away. I tried pushing myself inside. My shoulders pressed against the sides of the drain, pinning my arms tightly to my sides. Claustrophobia hit me like an electric shock. I scrambled back up immediately.
I couldn't do this. It was so narrow. I would get stuck in the pipe and slowly die in there, deep under the earth. I sobbed and cried out in utter despair.
The fire was closing in around me. I could barely breath anymore. The heat was like being in an oven. Like baking to death. I felt flames lick at my back and I jumped forward. Fire burnt the skin of my face. I pulled back. I had nowhere left to go. Without stopping to think any further, I shoved my body headlong into the hole.
I wriggled in like a worm, the flames burning at my feet and legs giving me the dearly needed motivation to move forward. My arms were pinned to my sides again. Because of the "L" shape of the drain I had to go in upside down. It was like being trapped in a coffin. It was like being stuck in a cave miles below the earth's surface. Dread and anxiety like I've never felt before consumed me.
I wriggled and squirmed and kicked. I moved mere centimeters with each desperate effort. The sides of the pipe clenched around me like a fist. Every move felt like it would wedge me hopelessly in the pipe. In my position, I couldn't even see where I was going. I had no idea how much progress I was making. If I was even getting closer to the opening. The darkness was total.
I sobbed and screamed and squirmed further, scraping my skin on the rough sides of the dried up old pipe. My mind was pure panic now. I pushed with my legs all I could, but I only had room to lift my knees a few inches. I struggled wildly to keep moving, the sides of the cylinder grinding against my shoulders and hips. My manic breathing and hopeless cries echoed deafeningly in the pipe.
Then I came to a rise. I could feel it like a ridge under my back. The build up of centuries of rock hard mineral deposits created a stalagmite like formation underneath me that gradually rose up the sides of the passage. I kept pushing and squirming as feverishly as ever until I felt my shoulders squeeze right up against my neck. I kicked and I twisted and I yelled, but I could not move. I was pinned within the jagged ridge. There wasn't room to move forward and I had no way to back up. I was stuck. Completely and totally stuck. I thrashed my legs and jerked my torso violently. I whipped my head around and cried out like an animal in a trap, banging my forehead against the top of the pipe and scraping the skin off. Still my body wouldn't move.
I cried and I screamed until I was exhausted. Then I cried and screamed even more. I began to fade in and out. I dreamt that I saw the faces of the dead climbing out of the earth above me. I heard the voices of demons in my ears chanting and laughing at me in strange languages. I could feel the pipe squeezing and tightening and relaxing just to play with me. The world spun uncontrollably at times, making me dizzy and sick. Other times I floated paralyzed through the void. My thoughts whirled violently round my brain like mad, biting flies. My head felt like an oven with my brain baking inside. The salt of my tears burned my dried up eyes. I was going to die in here. Alone. Stuck. Unable to move.
I completely lost my sanity during those hours. My consciousness turned to a soup of constantly churning, manic thought with nothing resembling rational or ordered cognitive activity remaining. Consequently, it was my wild, animalistic screams that finally alerted the firefighters to my whereabouts deep within the pipe.
They had to wait until the fire had died down before they could call in an excavator. Eventually, the heavy machine became too risky, as it could easily have collapsed the decaying old tube, burying me within. So they set to work digging it up with shovels. After they moved enough earth to expose the pipe, they had to cut out the section I was entombed in with a large saw. I know people were speaking to me during this time, trying in vain to keep me calm, but all I remember is the deafening, metallic shrieking that echoed through the pipe, stabbing at my eardrums like ice picks.
Once freed from the rest of the conduit, they lifted the section that held me out of the ground with a small crane and set it down in the yard. I vaguely remember another floating sensation. I had hoped I had died.
Soon they went to back to work with smaller, yet barely less hideous sounding saws. It was night at this point, so I didn't even get the miniscule benefit of daylight to ease the suffering. Other than the noise, it felt no different than when I first crawled in.
Finally, it felt as if a great weight was lifted from all sides of me. My body seemed to expand in all directions. Cool night air brushed across my skin. I was lifted up and carried away.
This, like I said, was years ago. I am just now regaining the sanity needed to be able to process these events and write them down. My therapist tells me it's a good idea. That it will help me get past the event to whatever degree possible. He says it may help with the night terrors too. I can barely sleep without teleporting right back into that suffocating space. The other patients in the hospital are used to my nightly screaming by now. So are the nurses and orderlies. It was they who gave me the details of my rescue. They tell me I was stuck in that pipe for nearly ten hours before the rescuers got me out. They also tell me that crawling into it was the only reason I survived. The house was nothing but a pile of ashes after the fire and, because of its subterranean location, very little heat or smoke got into that awful drain.
So, in the end, that nightmare is the reason I'm alive and able to write this. Though, if I could go back to that day, to that moment standing above the ancient grate, surrounded by roaring flame, I'm not sure I'd make the same decision again. I may let the flames take me. I may let myself burn alive.

Starship won’t launch people this year, but could it house them on orbit instead?

Something that recently crossed my mind (again) was the whole “when will Starship fly people” discussion. To me the answer is simple: whenever NASA and the FAA consider it a safe and reliable enough vehicle to do so, which even if Spacex further accelerates the already mind-numbingly fast pace of the Starship program, definitely will not be this year, considering it will take dozens of launches and landings before crewed flight will (or should) be considered, maybe as many as a hundred (meaning we’re talking late 2022 at the absolute earliest, and even that would be an historic achievement and require virtually no failures or setbacks). So no, Starship 100% will not be taking off with people on board this year, and this is coming from someone who would take a bet that Starship will have reached orbit by this year’s halfway point (1st of July).
However, something that I haven’t seen brought up on this subreddit (though perhaps I just missed it) is that crewed spaceflight doesn’t require a crewed launch, at least not necessarily on the same vehicle, and Spacex is uniquely positioned to make use of this thanks to their prior contracts with NASA.
The Crew Dragon vehicle has now been certified by both NASA and the FAA to launch, fly, re-enter and land with people on board. Is it really that big a stretch for Spacex to put one or two docking or berthing ports on the side of a Starship and dock a crewed Dragon to it by the end of this year? I really don’t think it is. Here’s how I see it happening:
Spacex would offer NASA the deal of a lifetime. shortly after reaching orbit with SN15 or whichever it will be, they will build a crewed version of Starship with as much redundancy crammed into it as they can: 10+ tonnes of reserve food on board, 10+ tonnes of reserve water, lots of back-up air and air scrubbers, radiation shielding and a bunch of batteries with some deployable solar panels. None of this needs to be high-tech or highly efficient either, it just needs to sufficiently reassure NASA that their astronauts will not run out of power, air, water or food under any realistic circumstances. The Starship will have no heat shield to save mass and to allow two redundant and separate docking ports, one on each side of the ship. It might have an airlock or it might not, depending on what NASA prefers: all the life support systems should be accessible from the inside besides the solar panels, and an airlock is an inherent weak point in a pressurised vehicle, so I’m not sure whether they would rather have it or not. I don’t think that massive window will be there though. Really hope I’m wrong, but NASA probably has a thing or two to say about that.
The big win for NASA would be that they get at least 50 tonnes of mass to play with for scientific and industrial equipment depending on how heavy Spacex’s (deliberately) over-built life support system is and how much mass Spacex would want to keep for their own tests and experiments. I imagine Spacex would want to test all sorts of devices like ovens, zero-g washing machines, large-scale zero-g food production, solar storm shelters etc. If I’m not mistaken though even 50 tonnes would be the most mass NASA has been able to send up in one launch since skylab, and if a single crewed Starship does indeed have the pressurised volume it is expected to have then this would also be the second-biggest and second-heaviest space station ever, easily beating Skylab and Mir in both counts and being not that far behind the ISS in terms of shear volume. If Spacex felt like it they could even sweeten the deal by making the whole thing free from NASA’s point of view; a free launch of dozens of tonnes of scientific equipment followed by a free Falcon 9 + Crew Dragon flight to it would (you’d think) be a very hard deal for NASA to turn down, provided Spacex keeps everything as safe as possible. For Spacex it seems like a no-brainer: the total cost of a single Starship and a single falcon 9 launch is probably under a 100 million dollars, and they only really throw away a second stage to do this. $50-$100 million is a lot to you and me, but not to Elon.
Obviously any such offer would not be taken seriously until Starship has reached orbit, but when it does I don’t see what objections NASA could have (again, assuming safety has been properly taken care of) that outweigh the positives. NASA already trusts Spacex to get their crews to and from a space station alive, which one can argue is harder than keeping them alive on one; yes the time spans are longer on a station, but a capsule is much more mass-constrained, has to survive a much wider range of environments and is not (effectively) at rest. It seems a much smaller leap then going from cargo to crew dragon was.
I won’t bother with a timeline (my best guesstimate would be q4 this year), but the chronological order would go something like this:
-Starship reaches orbit
-Spacex makes the offer to NASA
-Spacex starts building this first livable Starship before getting an answer. (“If you don’t want to, fine, we can just as easily ask ESA, JAXA or even China for astronauts, and we can legally launch them on dragon.”)
-Someone (probably NASA) makes a long list of safety requirements that this Starship must have in terms of life support. Spacex accepts and a contract is signed.
-Spacex builds this Starship a bit more slowly and carefully to ensure it meets all the criteria. Musk tweets it will take two weeks to make, every expert says it will take six months, it ends up taking around a month.
-Spacex launches this Starship into LEO and proceeds to carefully drain and depressurise the tanks (no reason not to get rid of that safety hazard if your orbit is high enough) and deploys the solar panels.
-Spacex and NASA (let’s be real it will almost certainly be them) then wait several weeks to see if there is any drop in pressure, if the solar panels and batteries are working as predicted, if the life support system functions as designed and so on and so on.
-If both are happy with what they see, the crew will launch on a Dragon capsule and enter LEO.
-After a final Starship and Dragon check, they will dock.
The mission will be simple: perform the experiments that NASA and Spacex want done, and monitor the Starship’s systems. It’s supposed to require almost no effort to keep working properly, so let’s see how well Spacex’s design performs when put to the test for real.
If anyone involved (Spacex, NASA or the astronauts) sees something wrong, the crew will immediately enter the dragon capsule and run a systems check.
If anyone involved sees something that is wrong and could threaten the safety of the crew, the crew will immediately enter the dragon capsule and decouple from the Starship. If it’s a false alarm or a fixable problem, they will return. If it’s something serious, they will put on their suits, spend a few hours (or days, depending on the timing) in orbit before re-entering and splashing down just like they would when coming back from an ISS mission.
If neither of the above happen, then they can stay on board for quite some time. The maximum length that makes sense to me would be nine months: that’s about as long as the longest practical earth-to-mars or mars-to-earth flight, and NASA probably wouldn’t want as many as four astronauts getting any more muscle and bone degradation than they have to, so I doubt that they would want a longer stay either. If both sides are up for it, they could send the next crew dragon with up to four astronauts to this “Starstation” (anyone got a better name?) a week before the first one is supposed to leave and see how Spacex’s life support systems handle a crew of up to eight: more data = more better right?
To get a (hopefully) productive discussion going, I’d like to ask you three questions:
1: Do you agree with this scheme, or did I miss something crucial?
2: What would NASA say and do if Spacex made this offer?
3: What will be the biggest obstacles to making this happen?

What would have happened had I stopped my car?

There’s a TL;DR at the end, though I definitely recommend reading the story to its entirety to get a better picture.
To preface this, I love to drive. Like, hours-long drives to nowhere with no destination in mind, just me, my music, and the road ahead of me. Living in Nebraska, I’d often take back roads or lonely highways cutting through the countryside to small towns and eventually cities, and I’d usually take these drives at night since there was less traffic to worry about. I’ve done it since I’ve had my license foufive years ago, and I’ve never once had any sort of issue, nor have I ever run into any trouble.
That was, until a few nights ago.
For reference, I’m a relatively small 22 year old female, and as I’ve stated before I often take these drives completely and utterly alone. They’re a good way to clear my head when I’m stressed, upset, or overwhelmed, or for me to get a plan together to sort personal issues out. I’ve also done these long and lonely drives to get away from the toxicity of my household when I used to live with my parents as a means of coping with their alcoholism, though now that I’ve moved out and am in a much better place mentally I don’t really have the urge to get in my car and just drive anymore.
However on the night this event took place I was feeling pretty overwhelmed, stressed, and anxious with a clusterfuck of personal issues I’d rather not get into. I felt restless and irritable around my boyfriend, couldn’t focus on anything else, and decided I would take a drive to clear my head. My boyfriend was understanding and told me to be careful and to not be gone for too terribly long, since it was getting pretty late. I agreed, gave him a kiss goodbye, and left.
I drove around our city for about thirty minutes, but I was still feeling on-edge about everything transpiring in my personal life so I decided to drive further north down those familiar, dark, winding one-lane highways.
I kept the car at a steady 65 MPH, taking the turns at a slower pace in case a deer jumped out around the bend and was just admiring the vast empty darkness of the snow-capped fields and barren trees. It was honestly a bit creepy being all alone with no cars in sight, in seemingly the middle of nowhere, the few houses miles back from the road lightless and the dead cornfields withered away and covered in the snow. It was like something out of a horror movie, and I half-expected to see a ghost pop up in my rear-view mirror or see someone clamber out from the patches of trees dotting the horizon. The only light came from my headlights, and even then I still strained to see through the inky darkness of the night. By now it was just after 11, and I told myself that once I made the familiar roundabout that would either take you to a small town or back up towards the city, I would head back to the city and home. That roundabout was still maybe 15-25 minutes away, but other than my imagination picturing the worst I wasn’t really all that concerned. I mean, I was by myself. I didn’t have any other motorists to worry about, right?
Wrong.
As I’m rounding another bend, I notice a vehicle with its hazards flashing maybe a quarter of a mile or something away from me. It was some sort of sedan, dark colored, and was angled to where only part of it was on the shoulder while the rest was jutted out onto the road, like they had to pull over in a hurry but didn’t quite manage to do that. The driver’s side door was flung wide open, and as I slowed my vehicle down and angled it towards the opposite side of the road to pass I could make out what looked like maybe blood on the inside of the open door. I didn’t see anyone on the road or in the car, and I was the only motorist in sight.
Cell phone reception is spotty at best in this part of the country, but more often than not you couldn’t get reception no matter how hard you prayed, which was definitely the case when I took a glance at my phone to see if I had any service. So, a lone female on the road, at night, pulling up near a vacant vehicle that looks like someone had been attacked on the inside, with no cell service.
Now, I’m no dummy. I’ve watched countless episodes of Investigation Discovery and Criminal Minds and read far too many true crime books to know that this had “bad” and “danger” written all over it. But there was still a small part of me that worried something terrible had happened to whoever was in that vehicle, and I thought I needed to help. These roads don’t get a lot of traffic late at night, and temperatures were well below freezing. If someone were hurt or in trouble, there was no one and nothing else to help them but me.
Still, I erred on the side of caution. I was still driving my car, though a bit more slowly, and as I approached the vehicle I rolled down my passenger window a bit, shut off the music, and called out.
“Hey! Anyone there? Are you okay?”
I didn’t hear a response. I worried they were passed out somewhere, but I wasn’t about to get out and look for them. I told myself I’d call out one last time, and if I didn’t hear anything I would leave and the moment there was reception I’d call it in. And if I did hear someone, well, I’d figure out my next course of action then.
So, again I shout, “Hey! What happened? Are you okay?”
There was silence for a beat, and then I heard rustling in the shadows of the trees, followed by a gruff voice saying, “Yeah.” I was relieved at first, and was about to say something in response or possibly even stop my car and get out, when I noticed three things nearly simultaneously;
As I inched my way past the front of the sedan, I noticed there was no damage to the hood or anywhere else on the vehicle, which I found to be strange considering the blood on the inside of the door.
In my rear view mirror, I caught a glance of someone coming out from behind the sedan and they were making their way towards my car, fast.
The person did not have any blood on them or appeared injured in any way, wearing a mask —not like a face mask for COVID or a ski mask or anything normal, but one of those masks you would see in the Purge movies, and they were holding something in their hand. I don’t know what it was, I couldn’t get a good look, but from its length and shape my guess was maybe a tire iron or a crowbar or something.
I don’t need to tell you that I slammed on the gas the moment I noticed those things and drove like a bat straight out of hell, my heart thundering in my chest and my entire body shaking. My window was still rolled down in my haste and the music was still shut off so I could very clearly hear someone, definitely a man, shouting at me, though I had no clue what they were saying. I just knew I had to get out of there immediately.
I stole one last look in my rear view mirror as I drove away, mostly to see if they were getting in their sedan to follow chase or if they had stopped. The man with the weapon was still standing in the middle of the road watching me, and right before I looked away from the mirror I saw a second man emerge from the trees that had been rustling earlier, also wearing one of those creepy masks and no trace of blood on him.
I probably broke every law for speeding that night, but I wanted to get as far away from those men as possible. As soon as I made it to the roundabout, I turned towards town, parked in the Walmart parking lot that thankfully still had cars from who I assumed were workers closing up shop, and proceeded to have a full-on meltdown. When I could pull myself together, I called one of my friends, T, who was a police officer to tell him what happened and what I should do. He was concerned for me and after asking if I was okay, where I was, did they follow me, etc., he told me since it was out of city limits he couldn’t do much on his end but he could get in contact with the local police/sheriff in that jurisdiction to take my statement and check it out. I agreed, thanked him, and while I waited for police to show up I called my boyfriend. Through my hysterical sobs and panic I managed to tell him what happened not even ten or so minutes ago. He was, as you could imagine, super freaked for my safety and wanted me to either come home immediately or drive down himself to take me home. I told him the police were on their way to take my statement so I couldn’t leave and that I was okay, but I stayed on the phone with him until I saw the familiar police cruisers pulling into the lot.
I gave the police my statement and they assured me they would go back to the spot I told them the sedan had been to take a look and that they would try to catch the guys who did it, though with no cameras, and no description of the men I wasn’t sure they’d be able to. I didn’t even get the license plate number, though at the time of my panic the thought never came to mind until the police were asking if I got it. All they had to go off of was a dark-colored sedan and two guys with masks.
After I gave my statement I went home and stayed curled up close to my boyfriend the whole night, listening to every sound the house made in fear it would be those guys arriving any minute to finish whatever it was they started. Since the incident I haven’t heard back from police about whether or not they have any leads, and I’m not sure they ever will. I’m just thankful I’m still here and that I didn’t stop my car or get out. I’m not sure what would’ve become of me if I had.
I still have so many questions that have no answers. What were they doing? Why? Was that blood on the inside of the car, or just a ruse to get more attention? If it was really blood, did they hurt someone else? What would’ve happened to me if I had stopped my car?
Needless to say, I won’t be going on anymore late night drives to anywhere, and I hope I never cross paths with those freaks again.
TL;DR: Man comes out from behind an abandoned sedan wearing a mask and comes racing towards my car when I slowed down to see if someone needed help, and a second man wearing a mask came out of the trees as I drove away.

[HEL-Verse] Still Untitled Spinoff Story [Chapters 1-3]

Happy Lunar New Year's eve to all my readers who are celebrating and feasting! Some notes for clarity on today's post...
-----
Q: What is this story?
A: This is a spinoff that I have been dabbling around with for the last few months on and off, based on the events of a commission from last January: The First Juggernaut
-----
Q: Why haven't I seen this story before if the 4th chapter is releasing today?
A: This story falls under the category of "one shots", which is content made available, at least initially, only to certain subscribers of my patreon. I am making prior chapters available to everyone today both on my patreon and below.
-----
Q: I am a patron, where can I read the latest installment in the untitled ~~goose~~ snake saga?
A: I will be posting it to patreon shortly after finishing this post and I will link it at the bottom of this chapter.
-----
Q: I am a patron, why can't I read the latest chapter?
A: Latest installment is available to anyone supporting me to the tune of $10/month or greater. As with the prior chapters, chapter 4 will eventually be released to the public.
-----
Q: Is this considered canon for HEL Jumper purposes?
A: Yes, unless something explicitly conflicts with the HEL Jumper in which case I made an oopsie.
-----
Q: Who is Drake and what is this snake of which you speak?
A: Read on to find out!
-----
Chapter 1
September 17th 2035, Human Dreadnought HMV Resplendent Dawn, Shuttle Bay
“Mr. Thane! Good of you to join us here in Udanis. How was your journey? Uneventful I hope,” the incredibly tall, dark-skinned man called out across the cavernous metal room. Delta Division shuttles could be seen darting in and out of the space almost constantly, ferrying goods and personnel between the dreadnoughts, cruisers, destroyers, and support ships that currently made up humanity’s presence in what was, effectively, a star-system wide DMZ declared by the Ghaelen and enforced by humans. Unable to stomach the reality of warfare in hostile conditions against even more hostile foes, the ‘space elk’ presence had long since fled the system. Taking his bearings, the stockier, tanned individual with unkempt black hair and a civilian’s uniform nodded to the approaching figure.
“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Rear Admiral. Until just now I didn’t even know the identity of my destination. Though I understand the need for secrecy now that I’m here. Drake Thane, it’s a pleasure.” The two men engaged in a firm handshake, the squeeze of the palm a tried and true test of such men. Beta Division did not have many Admirals, and Udanis did not have many civilians.
“You’ll have to forgive Admiral Freidrich, but our resident Juggernaut seems to be giving him the runaround again. Victory will go to a young woman’s head though, won’t it?” the taller man laughed. “I am Rear Admiral Natori Kaczynski, at your service. And yes, that is a Beta Division insignia. Though perhaps you might be able to appreciate such a thing? After all, Delta called you out here too, didn’t they?”
“With all due respect Rear Admiral, I don’t even know why I’m here,” Thane replied. “Only that the pay is better than the FBI was offering.”
“Mmm, significantly better I’d suspect. The HEL does have its means,” Natori agreed. “Right this way then, Mr. Thane. Perhaps you’ll understand better once you’re brought up to speed. Ah, how rude of me!” the Rear Admiral suddenly exclaimed as though set upon by a novel idea. “Can I get you something to eat or drink?”
“I indulged in a ‘final meal’ on the transport, sir. But thank you,” Drake replied. Natori cast a knowing smile his way.
“Very good then. I see you packed light so let’s head to the nearest briefing room then. Mary?”
‘How may I be of assistance, Rear Admiral Kaczynski?’ the ship’s VI requested.
“Has a briefing room been set aside for Mr. Thane’s arrival?”
‘Yes sir, forwarding the location to you now.’
“Useful little tool, isn’t she?” Natori asked as he turned on his heel and led Drake straight in the opposite direction down the corridor.
“I’m only familiar with the civilian models, sir. The US government hasn’t gotten around to upgrading its systems yet.”
“Surprising absolutely no one, but perhaps we should be thankful,” Kaczynski suggested as he turned a corner and carried on, saluting various soldiers and support personnel as they moved at a leisurely pace. “Were it not for the bureaucratic incompetence of Terran governments, who would want to join the HEL?”
“That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose,” Thane agreed. “And while it may not be my place Rear Admiral, isn’t playing escort below your station?”
Natori looked him over with an appraising eye. “How tactful, but such is to be expected from a crisis negotiator I suppose. Allow me to assure you, Mr. Thane, the current situation is very much the concern of men like me.”
-----
Over the next couple hours, seated across a polished wooden table from one another, Natori reviewed with Drake the timeline of the pacification of Udanis IV, from the discovery of life in the system in early 2035, to first contact, and eventual full blown war by the end of May of the same year. The conflict had ended on June 6th, with the first truly successful battlefield deployment of Beta and Delta division’s latest collaboration, the Juggernaut program.
“So you brought me here to deal with Lieutenant Lavinaga, sir? Was it something about the, what did you call it, Queen’s nest operation? How many of those… stimulants is she still on?”
“No and yes. Fortunately, Lieutenant Lavinaga is quite well,” Natori replied, reaching for the pitcher of water and glasses in the middle of the table. He unhurriedly poured for them both, and the two men paused to soothe their throats. “While it is true that you were brought here to negotiate with veterans of this conflict… perhaps it’s better that I show you. This way please,” the Rear Admiral proposed, leading Drake on a short walk that nevertheless felt like a mile. The Marines and other combat personnel he’d seen up to that point appeared to be in high spirits, already swapping stories about gallantry during the operation while reminiscing fondly about the fallen. Maybe years later they might need someone like him, but not then and not there.
Eventually they arrived at their destination, given away by the fact that Natori was required to provide biometric identification in two forms as well as enter a combination PIN to pass through a set of imposing steel bulkheads. Drake recognized the area immediately as an interrogation facility, with the Rear Admiral escorting him all the way to the back. It was a cell constructed for long term confinement, and the two men found themselves alone in front of what Drake was sure was a one way mirror. The only other humans in the area were the Marine guards stationed back at the entrance. It didn’t help his nerves that they were in full armor intended for combat in hazardous environments. “Who’s on the other side of that wall, Rear Admiral?”
“Not who, Mr. Thane,” Natori corrected with an unsettling fire in his eyes. “But what.”
With the flick of a switch light suddenly poured through the opening, allowing Thane to see the interior of the spacious but barren room. “Jesus fucking Christ!” he whispered. “Are you mad, Rear Admiral?”
“Quite, Mr. Thane. But so are most who labor for the advancement of humanity. I daresay if you accept this job you’ll be rather similar.”
“I speak Farsi and Arabic, Rear Admiral. I deal with veterans of the Middle Eastern conflicts. What in God’s good name do you expect me to do with a Gorgon?!”
“An excellent question!” Natori agreed. “For starters I’d like you to see if you could bring us to the point where she does not spit acid at anything that moves. The fact that they store them in the approximate location of human mammary glands lost its humor… rather quickly.”
Drake swallowed heavily and took a closer look at the alien. Its entire body screamed danger to him. Natural rock-like armor covered its entire, serpentine form, which took after the Nagas or Lamias of human mythology. Her yellowish-green skin was the same color as the acidic environments of her homeworld, and her whiplike tail seemed to be constantly searching for something to coil around, or perhaps lash out at like a flail. “How long has she been here?”
“Since June 7th, Mr. Thane.”
“It’s been more than three months? Rear Admiral, surely this is in violation of… something!”
Natori licked his lips and hung his head. “This is why we sent for you, Mr. Thane. We have tried everything, and I mean everything, to establish some sort of diplomatic relationship, or even communication. She eats heartily and tries to kill us whenever she can. She is one of the only survivors of the Queen’s nest, and we believe that such authority will be key in any sort of eventual alliance.”
“You really are mad,” Thane whispered as Natori placed his hands behind his back and looked at the Gorgon.
“Am I mad for seeking powerful allies for our species, Mr. Thane? The Ghaelen possess powerful technology, but the price of its acquisition was steep. We will only bring ruin to ourselves if ‘galactic policeman’ is to be our role. Let our own country’s history be an example on that matter. No, one day we will come across a challenge we cannot surmount alone. I would much prefer it if the acid spitting snake women were on our side in that event, Mr. Thane. After coming this far, I hope you’ll at least humor me.”
“And Admiral Freidrich, sir?”
Natori met Drake’s eyes. “Approved this operation personally, Mr. Thane.”
The crisis negotiator breathed deeply and ran a hand through his mop of hair. “Just… how many people have died before me?”
“None, Mr. Thane! And I have no intention of making you the first.” The civilian shot Natori a dubious look that obviously conveyed his opinion on that particular statement. “Yes well, there were a couple of men who needed emergency medical treatment and reconstructive surgery, but we have equipment that is rather resistant to Gorgon acid thanks to their sacrifices, among many others. Shall I fetch one for you?”
“With all due respect, Rear Admiral-”
“Ah, you know what they say about that little lead in,” Natori chuckled, the casual hand on his hip indicating he fully understood why Drake had afforded him his ‘due respect’.
“Then you’ll have to consider the month-long journey to be my gesture of good faith. I’d like to see everything you have on the Gorgons, ideally in printed form. And yes, that includes the classified bits. I’ll sign whatever NDA’s you deem reasonable. And a cup of coffee… maybe two. You can keep your acid-resistant suits for now. I don’t think she’s going anywhere.”
After a moment of consideration, Natori offered Drake his hand again. They shook. “I appreciate your consideration, Mr. Thane. I will oversee the preparation of said documents, as well as the necessary security clearances. In the meantime you are free to observe our captive, though might I suggest taking a pitstop in your cabin first?”
“You’re the type to get mixed up in the affairs of his subordinates, aren’t you, Rear Admiral?” Thane ventured cautiously. Natori’s smile was different somehow that time, almost unsettlingly so.
“Perhaps your keen eye will succeed where I have failed, Mr. Thane? We will be in touch and Mary is, of course, at your disposal. Welcome to the Resplendent Dawn,” Kaczynski finished, turning quickly on his heel and departing, saluting the Marine door guards as he left.
“Apparently he’s also one to leave civilians alone with alien captives,” Drake muttered, looking down at the control panel for the one way glass. Left there was a post-it note, a vintage technology that still found itself in use even in the era of shield generators, FTL travel, and VI’s.
Don’t activate the two way functionality. We’re running low on materials to manufacture more polarized glass.
Thane chuckled in disbelief and ran a hand over his face, captivated momentarily by the holes he could see in the alien’s forearms, a natural biological gap between the Gorgon analogs of the radius and ulna. At least he assumed she had bones. “What have I gotten myself into?”
-----
As it turned out, the answer to that question was a bit more complex than one on one prisoner or hostage negotiation, something that became readily apparent after an hour or so of reading in front of the alien’s cell. The coffee was surprisingly adequate, as was the insulated mug that kept it warm as he labored. He would glance up on occasion to observe his subject, not wanting to fully depend on unreliable witness testimony, more reliable autopsy reports, combat records, and the gruesome video feeds from the suit of one Lieutenant Lanvinaga. If Kaczynski’s tale was true, and he had no grounds to assert it wasn’t, the alien before him had not only retained the will to live after more than three months in solitary, she also retained the desire to kill and fight. She was sane and hostile. That was more than could be said for some of the veterans he’d talked down in the past.
“Or failed to talk down,” Drake allowed with a mutter, shaking his head. Movement caught his eye and he refocused on the alien, watching as she curled up on herself only to adjust and re-adjust, picking at the rock-like armor that seemed to grow from her very body. Scratching his head, the human consulted several images that he would have rather not dealt with, various post-mortem shots of Gorgons that had been killed during the pacification. Very few sported natural armor to the level of his subject, but not because she was some sort of unique specimen. Near as he could tell the Gorgon before him was quite typical for her species, but her natural armor was jagged and reminded him of a volcanic rock field. Much of his reference material depicted Gorgons with relatively smooth plating that rested underneath manufactured metallic armor. “It’s worth a shot,” Than shrugged, noting that it was 21:00 shipboard time. “Mary, is Rear Admiral Kaczynski still awake?”
‘Good evening Mr. Drake Thane,’ came Mary’s synthesized but pleasant enough voice. ‘The Rear Admiral has retired for the evening. Are you experiencing an emergency?’
“No no, nothing like that,” Thane clarified quickly. “I’ll just leave him a message then.”
‘Very well, you may begin recording when ready.’
“Rear Admiral, this is Drake Thane. In the morning I’d appreciate it if you could track down a couple of rocks and an industrial sander for me. I have an idea.”
-----
“I believe I’ve waited long enough to sate my curiosity?” Natori stated as he watched Drake sanding down one surface of the chunks of Udanian crust he’d been given.
“Fair enough. How familiar are you with the anatomy of beavers, Rear Admiral?”
“How familiar are you with the anatomy of beavers?” Natori barked with laughter. “Oh I definitely picked the right man for this job.”
“Save that for when I actually get somewhere, sir. The answer, I suppose, is that I’m familiar enough to know that beavers don’t just cut down trees to build themselves shelter. Left alone long enough without anything to gnaw on their teeth will continue to grow and grow, injuring or even leading to the death of the animal. These Gorgon appear to possess the same quality when it comes to their natural armor,” Thane postulated. Natori’s eyes lit up.
“You propose a gift?”
“I hope you don’t mind the loss of a belt sander,” Drake said shortly.
“Let’s not wait then. Her first meal of the day is scheduled around this time.”
“Good enough for me. Where’s this suit, the one that will stop me from getting my face melted off?”
“Storage locker on the left. We haven’t personally delivered anything for some time, so be prepared for resistance,” Kaczynski warned. “She seems to consider eating her meal off the floor worth the chance at an attack.”
“Duly noted,” Drake replied in a tense voice, finding a heavily fortified hazardous environment suit that would have looked more at home on a space walk where the Admiral indicated. A short time later, sweat beading on his brow, he unlocked the door to the Gorgon’s cell. The moment he entered, the alien puffed out her chest and spat a stream of sickly green acid from her mouth. Though the attack was exemplary in its aim and velocity, that also made it relatively easy to dodge if one was willing to simply drop to the floor. Well protected as he was, Drake did just that, squashing whatever manufactured nutrient cubes had been intended for her. In return, he chucked the first rock at her, earning a momentary reprieve as the alien tried to process the fact that one of the legged beings keeping her hostage had thrown a rock at her. It was enough time for him to roll the second one to the base of her body, a couple feet below where her torso met her tail, which carried on behind her for a good six feet or so. The fact that the second rock was ‘presented’ instead of ‘chucked’ was not lost on the alien, but that didn’t prevent her from compressing the venom sacks in her chest again.
“Oh for the love of-” Thane cursed, retreating out the door as the second biological attack splattered onto the surface just behind him. To his amazement, Natori was applauding even as two Marines rushed at him with decontamination equipment.
“A magnificent swan dive if I’ve ever seen one, Mr. Thane! And before you believe I’m having a laugh at your expense, come look at what our guest is already up to.”
At Natori’s insistence Thane shucked the enviro-suit as quickly as he could and returned to the one-way mirror. There, he could see the Gorgon ignoring her smushed breakfast entirely. After a brief contemplation of the rocks that had been given to her, she began banging at her own body with one of them, chipping off pointy bits of rock that clearly agitated her. At least Drake considered it could be fully fledged rock; he had no idea if aliens producing natural rock armor atop their own dermis was reasonable. Whatever it was, it was certainly tougher than keratin. The Rear Admiral ran a hand over his short, close cropped hair. “I would certainly call this progress, Mr. Thane. What is your next step?”
“To see if I can get her to look at a human for longer than a second without trying to dissolve him,” he replied tersely. “Do you have more of those rocks?”
Natori cocked a brow his way. “Mr. Thane, this is a Delta Division Liberation-class dreadnought. We have plenty of rocks.”
Chapter 2
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Drake Thane cursed, hauling himself to his feet after another harrowing trip into the Gorgon’s cell. She had accepted his gift of rocks, but had not made any sort of connection between the smooth and jagged varieties, instead using both to chip away at and then grind down the excess armor growing from her skin. That was how she spent most of her days when not eating or attempting to fight anyone who entered her enclosure. He had only been aboard the Resplendent Dawn for forty eight hours, but he’d read more than enough to make it clear that the Gorgon’s were highly intelligent and capable of advanced battlefield tactics. Humanity’s swift victory was primarily a technological feat, not a tactical one.
“Which leaves pride, an absurd amount of pride,” he muttered, debating whether to remove the helmet from his head and return to study or attempt something new. Exactly what, he did not know. Not willing to throw his life away or test the durability of the hazardous environment suit further, he began removing it in a process that took several minutes and assistance from one of the Marine sentries on duty. “Thank you. Let’s leave it out for now. I might try again later today.”
“As you say, Mr. Thane,” the Marine replied. “Not sure what you could do though. Nothing gets through to them.”
“Something will,” Drake insisted. “But I understand where you’re coming from.”
“Shall I inform the Admiral of this morning’s result?” the soldier asked
“No need. It’s status quo for now,” he said, heading back to the table that had become his workstation and opening up a portable computer he’d been provided with to review the various multimedia files that humanity possessed on the Gorgons. Ongoing attempts at communicating with the planetside populace had borne no fruit, with the various kingdoms going to ground the moment anyone tried to make contact. He had already checked once, but he double checked to make sure there were no records of torture, starvation, or unusual punishment of his current subject. He doubted they would have actually been logged, but there was continuity in the timetable. That was enough for him.
“How long can you keep this up?” he wondered of his new adversary. It was practically against the code of his profession to consider an interlocutor an enemy, but given that she had attempted to dissolve him without fail every time he stuck his nose in the door, he was willing to make an exception. “Yeah, don’t remind me. The answer is at least a couple months. At least the coffee’s still hot.”
Caffeine in hand, Thane instead opened up various combat records. He did his best to avoid the more gruesome ones, but a few caught his interest. There were several instances where gear had been retrieved and the combat logs analyzed to discover that the deceased had been engaged in one on one combat by individual Gorons, sometimes in the presence of entire enemy units. “Dear Lord in heaven,” he muttered. “They’re going to make a movie out of this, if it’s even declassified.”
The ‘this’ in question was a helmet recording from a Marine private who had been surrounded by an enemy platoon. With no ammunition remaining, he had fixed his bayonet and stood to face his death with courage. Instead of immediately spitting acid at him or ganging up on him, one of the Gorgons had stepped, or was it slithered, forward. After a long moment that took Thane’s breath away, the Marine realized that the spear-wielding, armored alien was challenging him to something of a duel. Most remarkable was what happened when the Marine proved victorious, ramming his bayonet into a gap between the alien’s armor and bringing her down in a writhing mass of rock and flesh after several minutes of testing each other. The remaining enemies retreated, and the victorious Marine had survived the hostile environment of Udanis IV long enough to call for backup.
“Only problem is I doubt I could land a hit on her to save my life, even if she’s unarmed and unarmored… well, no extra armor,” he mused. The idea of asking another to fight in his stead was equally unpalatable, especially since he wasn’t sure the Gorgon would submit to anything short of death. “This is getting me nowhere.”
Recognizing his own limits, Drake sorted his affairs and left the interrogation bloc, wandering around the ship and letting his mind drift until he drifted right into an imposing blonde soldier whose rolled up sleeves revealed several mechanical interface points embedded in her arms. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded.
“Drake Thane, crisis negotiator. I’m here at the request of Admiral Freidrich and Rear Admiral Kaczynski. It’s an honor to meet you, Lieutenant Lavinaga.”
“Christ, is it that fucking obvious?” she asked, glancing down at her arms. “Guess it is. You lost, Thane?”
“Physically? No. But maybe you can help me? I’ve got a bit of a Gorgon problem,” he admitted.
“The survivor? Should just space her if you ask me,” Lavinaga said dismissively. “Assuming you want that thing alive I’m not your woman.”
“And what if I want someone to go in there and wear her down so I can actually attempt to communicate with her and not get a face full of acid?”
“And I thought I was insane,” she laughed.
“It’s my job at the moment,” he shrugged.
“Would I get to wear my armor?”
“Of course. Don’t see how else you’d survive. You're still mostly flesh and blood.”
“I’m going to let that insult pass cause it’s been way too long. She’s in the interrogation cells, right? Meet you there in a few.”
“I actually don’t have approval for this yet,” he admitted. “I just had the idea when I ran into you.”
“Well you don’t worry your little head about that, Drake,” she simpered, clapping a hand down on his shoulder so hard he thought his collarbone might fracture. “You let me handle those Admirals.”
-----
Drake didn’t want to know how Lavinaga had gotten permission, but true to her word she appeared in her full star spangled glory about an hour after leaving him in one of the Resplendent Dawn’s many corridors. The hum of the ship and overhead lighting was drowned out by the heavy footfalls and hissing hydraulics of her suit. When she reached his side, the visor of her helmet slid open.
“You have no idea how awful this feels,” she said affectionately. “So, what do you need me and Ares to do?”
“I don’t really know. Just wear her down enough that I can show her how this works without dying,” he suggested, holding up the portable belt sander he’d used to smooth over a few rocks that were now the sole possessions of the Gorgon. Lavinaga just shook her head.
“If that’s what you want. Should be fun. I wonder how long she can go,” Lavinaga said with a bit too much anticipation in her voice. “Well, enough standing around! Let’s go see if she remembers me.”
Drake readied himself at the observation port as Lavinaga hefted her enormous shield and casually threw open the door to the cell. “Sup bitch? Long time no see!”
Thane watched, horrified, as the Gorgon assaulted the Juggernaut with a zeal and fury that she had never shown him. Her venom sacs were depleted within seconds, only scratching the paint of the wall of metal that made up Lavinaga’s shield. She threw what rocks she had and slammed her tail against the hulking monstrosity to no avail, the borderline psychotic laughter of Lavinaga her only reward for her efforts. Sweat dripped from Drake’s brow as his thesis slowly proved itself correct and the Gorgon’s blows slowly weakened and became lethargic. The juggernaut drove the point home by casually pushing her to the ground after about half an hour. “Now why don’t you just get comfortable down there? You’re lucky someone other than me is running the shots or I’d be testing my boot against your skull,” she warned.
“Lieutenant please, we don't know how much of our language she understands,” Drake said over the intercom. “Thank you for your restraint. I’ll be right in.”
On account of the mobile metal wall that stood between him and the broken alien, Drake steadied himself and managed to summon enough courage to enter the area without any protection other than the jeans and shirt he was wearing. In his hands were two stones and the sander. The Gorgon watched his every move, her acid green eyes still alert even as her body failed her. With no acid left to spit, she bore witness to him demonstrating the ability of the sander to grind down and polish rock. He didn’t belabor the point. Instead setting the tool down a couple feet from her. “I want to talk,” he said before turning to leave with the juggernaut. “Lieutenant, whenever you’re ready.”
“You eggheads think up the craziest things,” Lavinaga shrugged. “Am I allowed to taunt it again?”
“Please don’t.”
“Fine, but only because you’re handsome,” she insisted when they were safely outside. “Oh, also you owe me a few beers on account of the time I’m about to spend in the armory. See ya, Thane.”
Drake was so struck by her antics he barely had time to rush back into the cell when he was the Gorgon lifting the tool he’d left her to the one place on her body she had no armor, her neck. “Stop!” he roared, snatching it from her grasp before leaping back several feet as his brain finally caught up with what his body had done. “Why? You’ve been trying to kill us all for months!”
The alien’s eyes were narrow and downcast, and bits of her natural armor littered the cell where they’d been broken against the unyielding armor of Lavinaga’s suit. Small areas of her body were discolored, a deeper green than the rest. He could only assume bruising. “Maybe I am fucking insane,” Drake admitted, walking forward and turning the sander back on. “I didn’t defeat you, so I’m not going to be the one who kills you.”
The Gorgon hissed violently at him, but was unable to physically harm or stop him from grinding down and polishing one of her shoulders. With no other recourse, she simply refused to look at him instead. When Drake left, he took the sander and every rock with him, not wanting to leave her anything that might be used as a tool for suicide. As soon as the door to the cell closed, his legs gave way and he collapsed to the floor, feeling only the racing of his heart and the damp cling of his sweat-soaked clothing to his body. He did not return to the interrogation blocks that day.
-----
“You wanted to see me, Rear Admiral?”
“Yes indeed, Mr. Thane. I daresay you did something, I’m just not sure that something was good,” Natori explained as Drake entered the interrogation wing the next day, having spent more time than necessary grooming and feeding himself. His mind weighed heavily with the pain he’d inflicted upon his charge. The language of the Gorgons remained an inscrutable mess of low pitched hissing and other sounds, but hopelessness was a universal concept. It seemed that their captive was finally allowing that darkness to permeate her mind and influence her actions. Per Kaczynski’s report, gone were the consistent attacks against those bringing her food as well as efforts to eat it. “I am not usually one for threats, Mr. Thane, and I don’t precisely intend this to be one but I know you’ll likely interpret it as such. We cannot afford to lose her. Her potential is too great.”
“I understand, sir. I’ll head in right away,” Thane replied, acknowledging the Admiral’s concern. Instead of stopping by the locker containing his protective gear, he instead grabbed his coffee and walked straight to the cell door. Natori held out a hand but remained silent.
“Well I suppose I did threaten him,” he mused, nevertheless ensuring his sidearm was loaded, a round chambered, and the safety off. Precautions in place, Kaczynski settled in to observe what he was sure, one way or another, would be an eventful ‘session’ with the prisoner. To his most welcome surprise, Drake Thane managed to enter the cell and stand just past the threshold for several moments without getting attacked, dissolved, or impaled. The man took a long draught of his coffee before jerking his head upward in a moment of recollection. The Gorgon watched him all the while, almost unblinkingly, as he left the drink on her untouched breakfast tray and retreated to retrieve the portable sanding device he’d used on her the prior afternoon. He paused to speak with the Rear Admiral.
“Well, I’d call that an improvement,” he insisted. “You ever notice what it smells like in there?”
Natori cocked an eyebrow his way. “I can’t say that I have. I assume you’re about to share?”
Drake shrugged and tilted his head. “Nearest I can describe it is the Devil’s perfume, like if fire and brimstone smelled appealing, or at least rather inoffensive.”
“How curious,” Natori replied, leaning slightly to the right so he could look around Drake. “Though perhaps we should ruminate on that once we secure your coffee?”
Drake spun around fast enough to tweak his neck, finding the Gorgon with his coffee in hand. Her long, thin, black, serpent-like tongue was extended several inches and lapping at the dark brown liquid. The two men stared. “Has she ever been given coffee before, sir?”
“Just water, Mr. Thane. Curious as I am, I would like you to go and stop her now.”
Thane needed no further encouragement, bolting back into the room to snatch back his drink. The Gorgon replaced the disposable lid and offered it to him. Her eyes were still as menacing as ever, but the telltale contractions of her chest muscles that foretold a gout of deadly acid were missing. He tentatively reached out and accepted it, earning a low, complex hiss in return. Glancing down, he pointed at her untouched meal and then the sander. The Gorgon cracked her whip-like tail against the ground in frustration but complied, taking the food to a far corner of the room and beginning to eat piece by piece. Her eyes never left him even during her retreat as she demonstrated a rather remarkable ability to slither backwards.
Drake figured that was good enough, sitting against the opposite wall and opening his coffee. While it didn’t seem any different, he wasn’t about to take the chance that an alien with venomous pseudo-breasts didn’t produce oral toxins. Instead he stood again and approached her, keeping both hands on the cup so as not to arouse suspicion. He deposited it next to her and then returned to his position. With a curious hiss the alien opened the lid and, instead of continuing to drink, dipped the tip of her tail into the still slightly steaming liquid before continuing with her meal.
“What in the world?” Thane whispered, watching as the greenish skin underneath the Gorgon’s natural rocky plating shifted to a yellower hue, starting from the tip of her tail and moving slowly upward towards her body. The color change didn’t get all the way there before stalling out, but she seemed pleased with it to the point that upon finishing her meal she actually pointed to him, then to the sanding tool in his hands, and finally to her other shoulder. Unheard by the two of them, Natori threw his head back in laughter, amazed at the transition from murderous adversary to an imperious giver of orders. Drake shrugged but saw no reason not to comply. He’d been planning to attempt such a maneuver anyway as a further showing of good faith following the Lavinaga incident.
When he stepped within arm’s reach of her, the Gorgon straightened her torso and held out a thin, armored hand and poked him in the sternum. Even her fingers had the potential for danger with their rocky nail-like tips. Her other hand rested on her chest as she hissed a particular pattern of sounds twice in a row; she then poked him again. He nodded. “My name is Drake Thane. Sorry I can’t understand you.”
Undeterred, the Gorgon simply lowered herself back onto her coiled tail and presented her shoulder. She hissed again in a softer tone as Drake activated the sander, taking another glance at his coffee which now seemed to be serving as a tail warmer.
“Might as well get started then. You clearly have quite a bit to teach me.”
Chapter 3
Available to the public on my patreon here due to reddit's post size limit.
Chapter 4
Available to select patrons here

Landlord thinks I owe 8 months of rent Didn't know I knew tenant laws

Okay not sure this goes here but here it goes.
This took place during the middle of 2018. Me my wife and 3 kids were looking for a new place to rent because our current renter was selling and had given us a 60 notice to move. During this time my wife's mother had a friend lets call him Sam. Sam had a 4 bedroom 2 bath house that he was in the middle of remodeling to get ready to sell. Because of this certain parts of the house like some of the walls weren't fully painted and some of the floors were old. At the current time my family really needed a place to stay and our budget wouldn't allow us to rent any places over $1000 a month. Keep in mind I am a disabled Veteran and have a lot of time to sit and research things when I need too.
First part signing the lease and getting the keys:
During the lease signing we went over to the house for Sam to point out all the things that were being worked and what things weren't complete when we were moving it. For example, the kitchen floor was being replaced, the kitchen counter, carpet was being added throughout the whole house (currently all wood floors). When we got there we pointed out that there was still trash all over the floor and bug traps all over the ground he assured us that it would all be cleaned before we moved in. So we hand over our deposit and sign the lease for $1000 dollars a month. He says that he is going on Vacation out of state and wont be back for 6 months but that contractors will be stopping by to work on the house. He leaves me a list of the work that is going to be done and then we wait.
Move in date:
3 days later we are given the go ahead that we are able to move in at that he will be back in 6 months. We arrive at the house to find his 2 cars and motorcycle in the drive way with no where but the street for us to park (this becomes very important later in court.) The house is still just as dirty as the day we signed the lease. But with us really needing a place to stay me and my wife just take pictures and note everything wrong and get to cleaning. now remember this was a 4 bedroom 2 bathroom house however the owner left so much stuff in the house that the 4th bedroom was filled from wall to wall with junk we decided to just close that door and not use the room. keep in mind that because we didnt have access to the room because of the ownelandlord we were aloud to deduct that room from the rent. this deduction of rent becomes a pattern soon.
Living there:
Now we lived there a total of 9 months. during the first 6 months we tried to get ahold of the landlord by phone with a way to pay rent. But we never got a reply from him after the day we got the keys. so everything that went wrong we just kept track of. Place had bugs nails sticking out of the floors and many other hazards. finally on the 7th month Sam returns from his vacation out of state and retrieves one of the cars in the drive. tells us he sorry for not responding and tells us we will figure out the rent and fixing my issues over the next week. On month 8 I still havent paid him anything as I sent him a letter stating that I would be with holding rent until the safety issues with the house are fixed. Where we live this is legal. During this time instead of just fixing the issues and then getting rent from me we are served with an eviction notice. Keep in mind we have kept record of everything wrong with this house including everything to code.
Time in court:
First red flag in the eviction is the copy of the lease that was attached it was an altered copy of the original I still had so the documents didn't even match. So lets do a little math each month I withheld rent I gave a detailed invoice of all the charges I'm reducing the rent by. I send all of this in the return on the eviction and guess who shows up to the house 5 days before court. You bet its Sam he starts yelling at the front door telling me to give him my debit card so that he can go get my rent out right now. I calmly tell him that even though he is the Ownelandlord that under the current laws he must give me a 24 hour notice before being on the property unless it is an emergency. I call the cops so that I can document that he showed up and tried to scare me into giving him money on the spot. 5 days later we show up at court and his lawyer walks over to me and presents me with a deal. he tells me that his client (Sam). would like to just have me move out in 2 weeks and call the debt even. I tell no thank you and we can talk about it with the Judge.
I present everything on my part 100 of photos and invoices from each month about my rent reduction. Plus all the safety violations:
1 room no access - 250/month x 9 months 2 work cleaning and taking care of pool (was in lease to have pool guy never showed) - 100/month x 9 months 3 lawn care (also in lease to be provided) - 50/month x 9 months 4 Storage for 1 motorcycle - 25/day x9 months 5 Storage for 1 car - 55/day x 9 months 6 storage for 1 car - 55/day x 7 months (he picked this one up after vacation)
Safety Violations - No CO2 detector in the house, No working smoke alarms, all windows are supposed to have screens most were broken or missing, because of pool and no fence around it back door needed alarm to beep when opened ( County safety code ). exposed wires on most electric outlets, ceiling fans not installed but wires just exposed, improper foundation for rear stairs leading out back door, no license for inclosed backyard room ( had a 30ft x 20ft area off back door which was inclosed by a screened area ) county required a license for anything that was attached to the house. also the pilled up junk in the 4th bedroom was considered a fire hazard.
Now I picked the rate per day to store the vehicles at the house because legally I could of had them towed off the property even though they are the owners. This is the rate the impound lot would have charged per a day the vehicle was in lot. This added up to a total invoice of 36,750 - the 9000 owe for rent leaving 27,750 owed. After hearing both sides the Judge ruled in my favor giving my landlord 3 options.
1 He could pay me 9,999 Max allowed in small claims court here and I would have 7 days to be off of the property. 2 He could give me a normal 30 notice to vacate and I wouldn't pay anything and he would return my deposit in full within 24 hours after keys are returned. or 3 I could continue to live there but no rent would be owed until all safety issues were fixed and his stuff on the property removed.
He choose to go with option 2.
On a side note found out from my wife's mother about a year after we moved out some of the shady "upgrades" he did to the house caused a house fire and burned down. This wasn't anything I did but it felt so good to know that karma gets you in the end.
Edit: Noticed something in one of my comments that I pointed out that Sam was doing upgrades. He didn't start doing these said upgrades until after i had submitted my response to the Eviction. my response had to have everything i was showing in court so his lawyer was shown all the safety issues and all that pictures. basically he wanted to fix everything right before court and then say that the house had no issues.

Burned Alive or Buried Alive... If You Had to, Which Would You Choose?

Burned alive and buried alive, the two worst fates for any living creature that I could ever possibly imagine. If forced with the choice, which would you pick? Unbearable physical agony, or extreme mental torture? The most excruciating pain imaginable, or the utmost form of horror that the human mind is capable of conceiving? Up to a few years ago, I didn't know either. Why would you even consider it if not forced to? Well, one day I found out which I'd choose. One day so dreadful that there's no adjective in the English language strong enough to properly convey the horror of it; a day so awful that I struggle just to recall it, I had the choice put upon me. Here is what happened:
Years ago, I bought my first home. Being an overall fan of the macabre and, living in rural New England, I decided on a nearly ancient American Colonial style home. Reminiscent of something out of a Nathaniel Hawthorne or Arthur Miller story, it was the product of a bygone era. Though it was built in the early 1800s, as the cliche goes, it had good bones, and had been fairly well maintained considering it’s age. That being said, it still needed some work.
A few weeks after closing, while fixing some of the faulty old wiring in the basement, I came across a centuries old drain set into the stone flooring. It was maybe three feet in diameter and covered with a heavy iron grate that was worn with many decades worth of rough, brown corrosion. It resembled the entrance to a dungeon.
Like I mentioned above, I have a curiosity for all the dark and morbid elements of the world. Finds like this were the exact reason I wanted this house! So I decided to have a closer look at the forgotten thing. I laced my fingers through the dirty old grate and gave it a firm pull. It opened with a pained and rusty cry. I gazed down into the hole. A faint, acrid stink arose from its depths. It was as dry as old bone and quiet as a crypt. I assumed, due to the home’s location on the side of a small hill, that the basement had once been prone to flooding, and that modern technological developments had rendered that, like so many other things in this place, a relic of the past. I poked my head a little farther in and looked into the deep, dark recesses of the ancient plumbing. I could make out just the faintest bit of light at the far end. I went out into the yard and found the outlet hidden deep in a thicket of tangled brush. Evidently lacking access to chicken mesh, someone had covered it with a makeshift criss-crossing of merciless looking barbed wire, apparently to keep out any unwanted creatures from crawling in during the night. I thought that whomever had done so had made a smart choice. The pipe looked nearly big enough for a person to squeeze through.
A few months later, I was back working in the basement. The previous owner had left boxes upon boxes of yellowed old newspapers, books and other forms of aged literature stacked under the stairs. I wanted to move out what I could as they were taking up a lot of valuable storage space and were a possible fire hazard, especially under the dry, splintery wood of the basement risers. Honestly though, I really wanted to look through them to see what sort of curious old volumes might be hidden within the dusty mound.
About thirty minutes into my task, I had sifted through and moved about five of the boxes without finding anything of much interest. In the sixth box, however, I came upon a strange volume bound in worn leather that looked like it must be older than the house itself. It had the words Kitab al Kanuz embossed on the cover and was written in what appeared to be Arabic, though I'm no linguist. There were English translations or notes of some sort written in the margins. They seemed to say something about the locations of lost and hidden treasures. This was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for! Excited by my find, I moved out from under the stairs in search of better lighting to read it by. I went over to a large flood light I had left in the basement from a previous project and flicked it on. The decrepit wiring running under the stairs sparked violently.
I spun quickly and, in doing so, tripped and fell backward. By the time I got up, the sparks had already lit a fire in the stack of boxes that stood nearly a meter high. It was licking and biting at the withered stairs like the jaws of a hungry animal. In hindsight, at this very moment, I should have sprinted through the flames to safety. Whatever burns I would have suffered would have paled in comparison the trauma I was doomed to endure by staying put. But, like they say, hindsight is 20/20. Instead, I sat frozen in shock of the sight in front of me. When I snapped out of it, I looked around frantically for any sign of something to douse the flames with, but of course there was nothing. Nobody thinks to keep a fire extinguisher in their basement.
The blaze rose higher, engulfing the staircase and spreading around the door jamb at the top like some type of hellish decoration. I tried desperately to hold back panic and think of a way out. My basement had no windows and no hatchway either.
Then the fire spread to the exposed fiberglass insulation in the ceiling. It jumped from section to section like a stone skipping across a pond. The air became thick with the baking heat. The sound of the flames crackling was now constant and unrelenting. Smoke was filling up the already close air, curling and twisting through the space. Every breath I took tasted of hot ash.
I finally decided my only hope was to sprint up the stairs through the inferno and pray my injuries weren't life threatening. Thoughts of pink, stinging burns, blisters, wet peeling flesh and skin grafts flashed through my mind. I hesitated. I tried to steel my nerves against it all. Then the staircase collapsed.
I drew back against the concrete wall behind me, hoping for respite from the sudden gust of fiery air that followed. It didn't help. It was like standing too close to a bonfire, but with no way to back up.
I looked up at the doorway. The threshold was 15 feet up and surrounded by flame. I moved away along the wall, desperately searching for any relief from the heat and smoke. Everything was on fire now. I could barely see. My eyes burned and every breath choked my lungs. I was beginning to feel light-headed and nauseous. I was going to die down here, asphyxiated and burned alive. I prayed to God to feel as little as possible.
I got down on my stomach hoping to delay the inevitable. My hands felt cold metal on the floor. I heard it grind and shift with my movement. My fingers slipped through elongated holes. I was lying on top of the drain.
My heart jumped and then immediately dropped to the pit of my stomach. I had a way out, but it meant squeezing through hundreds of feet of suffocating underground tunnel.
I pulled it open and it gave that same rusty cry as before. I put my head inside. The air felt cool and fresh compared to the basement. I looked at the spec of light way down in the darkness. It looked miles away. I tried pushing myself inside. My shoulders pressed against the sides of the drain, pinning my arms tightly to my sides. Claustrophobia hit me like an electric shock. I scrambled back up immediately.
I couldn't do this. It was so narrow. I would get stuck in the pipe and slowly die in there, deep under the earth. I sobbed and cried out in utter despair.
The fire was closing in around me. I could barely breath anymore. The heat was like being in an oven. Like baking to death. I felt flames lick at my back and I jumped forward. Fire burnt the skin of my face. I pulled back. I had nowhere left to go. Without stopping to think any further, I shoved my body headlong into the hole.
I wriggled in like a worm, the flames burning at my feet and legs giving me the dearly needed motivation to move forward. My arms were pinned to my sides again. Because of the "L" shape of the drain I had to go in upside down. It was like being trapped in a coffin. It was like being stuck in a cave miles below the earth's surface. Dread and anxiety like I've never felt before consumed me.
I wriggled and squirmed and kicked. I moved mere centimeters with each desperate effort. The sides of the pipe clenched around me like a fist. Every move felt like it would wedge me hopelessly in the pipe. In my position, I couldn't even see where I was going. I had no idea how much progress I was making. If I was even getting closer to the opening. The darkness was total.
I sobbed and screamed and squirmed further, scraping my skin on the rough sides of the dried up old pipe. My mind was pure panic now. I pushed with my legs all I could, but I only had room to lift my knees a few inches. I struggled wildly to keep moving, the sides of the cylinder grinding against my shoulders and hips. My manic breathing and hopeless cries echoed deafeningly in the pipe.
Then I came to a rise. I could feel it like a ridge under my back. The build up of centuries of rock hard mineral deposits created a stalagmite like formation underneath me that gradually rose up the sides of the passage. I kept pushing and squirming as feverishly as ever until I felt my shoulders squeeze right up against my neck. I kicked and I twisted and I yelled, but I could not move. I was pinned within the jagged ridge. There wasn't room to move forward and I had no way to back up. I was stuck. Completely and totally stuck. I thrashed my legs and jerked my torso violently. I whipped my head around and cried out like an animal in a trap, banging my forehead against the top of the pipe and scraping the skin off. Still my body wouldn't move.
I cried and I screamed until I was exhausted. Then I cried and screamed even more. I began to fade in and out. I dreamt that I saw the faces of the dead climbing out of the earth above me. I heard the voices of demons in my ears chanting and laughing at me in strange languages. I could feel the pipe squeezing and tightening and relaxing just to play with me. The world spun uncontrollably at times, making me dizzy and sick. Other times I floated paralyzed through the void. My thoughts whirled violently round my brain like mad, biting flies. My head felt like an oven with my brain baking inside. The salt of my tears burned my dried up eyes. I was going to die in here. Alone. Stuck. Unable to move.
I completely lost my sanity during those hours. My consciousness turned to a soup of constantly churning, manic thought with nothing resembling rational or ordered cognitive activity remaining. Consequently, it was my wild, animalistic screams that finally alerted the firefighters to my whereabouts deep within the pipe.
They had to wait until the fire had died down before they could call in an excavator. Eventually, the heavy machine became too risky, as it could easily have collapsed the decaying old tube, burying me within. So they set to work digging it up with shovels. After they moved enough earth to expose the pipe, they had to cut out the section I was entombed in with a large saw. I know people were speaking to me during this time, trying in vain to keep me calm, but all I remember is the deafening, metallic shrieking that echoed through the pipe, stabbing at my eardrums like ice picks.
Once freed from the rest of the conduit, they lifted the section that held me out of the ground with a small crane and set it down in the yard. I vaguely remember another floating sensation. I had hoped I had died.
Soon they went to back to work with smaller, yet barely less hideous sounding saws. It was night at this point, so I didn't even get the miniscule benefit of daylight to ease the suffering. Other than the noise, it felt no different than when I first crawled in.
Finally, it felt as if a great weight was lifted from all sides of me. My body seemed to expand in all directions. Cool night air brushed across my skin. I was lifted up and carried away.
This, like I said, was years ago. I am just now regaining the sanity needed to be able to process these events and write them down. My therapist tells me it's a good idea. That it will help me get past the event to whatever degree possible. He says it may help with the night terrors too. I can barely sleep without teleporting right back into that suffocating space. The other patients in the hospital are used to my nightly screaming by now. So are the nurses and orderlies. It was they who gave me the details of my rescue. They tell me I was stuck in that pipe for nearly ten hours before the rescuers got me out. They also tell me that crawling into it was the only reason I survived. The house was nothing but a pile of ashes after the fire and, because of its subterranean location, very little heat or smoke got into that awful drain.
So, in the end, that nightmare is the reason I'm alive and able to write this. Though, if I could go back to that day, to that moment standing above the ancient grate, surrounded by roaring flame, I'm not sure I'd make the same decision again. I may have let the flames take me. I may let myself burn alive.

Tenant situation - I need advise please

putting estrogen in people through items we use everyday

So we all know there are conspiracies that range from the illuminati, to lizards taking over the world, to mole people living underground making french fries for an upcoming Earth Party. I have a conspiracy that i recently dug into, and im not sure how much of it is actually impactful on our bodies or lives, but ill put on my tin foil hat and share the information ive found so a discussion can be started.
note to all: im not saying anything about anything, i just went through a few links i found interesting and came up with a crazy conclusion. i am not a doctor and im sure i got some information wrong.
Firstly, is there a powerful group of people who try to control the general population? probably, but maybe not. if there was though, they definitely would be trying to alter and shape us in multiple ways, for multiple reasons. what if one of these ways is through giving us excess estrogen?
Estrogen is possibly being put into our bodies via everyday items containing xenoestrogen.
first, a little background info.
what is estrogen? how does it effect the human body?

Estrogen, or oestrogen, is a category of sex hormone responsible for the development and regulation of the female reproductive system and secondary sex characteristics.

It is basically the hormone that makes women, women.
okay, now regarding the conspiracy, recently i came across the rabbit hole of xenoestrogen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoestrogen . its basically a synthetic compound imitating estrogen. it can be found in common products that we use everyday. this is apparently everywhere. literally. xenoestrogen is found in BPA, phthalates, parabens, zeranol, insecticides, pesticides, and even the most widely used herbicide in the U.S. why is this important? we'll get back to that later.
well first, what is BPA? sinply put, BPA is used to make certain types of plastics. plastics we use every day.

"BPA-based plastic is clear and tough, and is made into a variety of common consumer goods, such as plastic bottles including water bottles, food storage containers (commonly called "Tupperware"), baby bottles,[3] sports equipment, CDs, and DVDs."
Epoxy resins derived from BPA are used to line water pipes, as coatings on the inside of many food and beverage cans, and in making thermal paper such as that used in sales receipts.[4] In 2015, an estimated 4 million tonnes of BPA-derived chemical were produced, making it one of the highest volume of chemicals produced worldwide.[5]
BPA is a xenoestrogen, exhibiting estrogen-mimicking, hormone-like properties.[6] Although the effect is very weak, the pervasiveness of BPA-containing materials raises concerns. Since 2008, several governments have investigated its safety, which prompted some retailers to withdraw polycarbonate products. Since then, BPA-free plastics have been manufactured using alternative bisphenols such as bisphenol S and bisphenol F, but there is controversy around whether these are actually safer.[7]

BPA Health Effects
>BPA's ability to mimic the effects of natural estrogen derive from the similarity of phenol groups on both BPA and estradiol, which enable this synthetic molecule to trigger estrogenic pathways in the body.[23] Typically phenol-containing molecules similar to BPA are known to exert weak estrogenic activities, thus it is also considered an endocrine disruptor (ED) and estrogenic chemical.[24] Xenoestrogens is another category the chemical BPA fits under because of its capability to interrupt the network that regulates the signals which control the reproductive development in humans and animals.[25]

BPA has been found to bind to both of the nuclear estrogen receptors (ERs), ERα and ERβ. It is 1000- to 2000-fold less potent than estradiol. BPA can both mimic the action of estrogen and antagonize estrogen, indicating that it is a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM) or partial agonist of the ER. At high concentrations, BPA also binds to and acts as an antagonist of the androgen receptor (AR).

In 1997, adverse effects of low-dose BPA exposure in laboratory animals were first proposed.[26] Modern studies began finding possible connections to health issues caused by exposure to BPA during pregnancy and during development. As of 2014, research and debates are ongoing as to whether BPA should be banned or not.
According to the European Food Safety Authority "BPA poses no health risk to consumers of any age group (including unborn children, infants and adolescents) at current exposure levels".[29] But in 2017 the European Chemicals Agency concluded that BPA should be listed as a substance of very high concern due to its properties as an endocrine disruptor.[30]
In 2012, the United States' Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the use of BPA in baby bottles.[31]
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also holds the position that BPA is not a health concern. In 2011, Andrew Wadge, the chief scientist of the United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency, commented on a 2011 U.S. study on dietary exposure of adult humans to BPA,[32] saying, "This corroborates other independent studies and adds to the evidence that BPA is rapidly absorbed, detoxified, and eliminated from humans – therefore is not a health concern."[33]
The Endocrine Society said in 2015 that the results of ongoing laboratory research gave grounds for concern about the potential hazards of endocrine-disrupting chemicals – including BPA – in the environment, and that on the basis of the precautionary principle these substances should continue to be assessed and tightly regulated.[34] A 2016 review of the literature said that the potential harms caused by BPA were a topic of scientific debate and that further investigation was a priority because of the association between BPA exposure and adverse human health effects including reproductive and developmental effects and metabolic disease.[35]
In July 2019, the European Union upheld a decision by the European Chemicals Agency to list BPA as a substance of very high concern, the first step in the procedure for restrictions of its use. The decision is based on concerns about BPA's toxicity for human reproduction.[36]
what are phthalates?

They are mainly used as plasticizers, i.e., substances added to plastics to increase their flexibility, transparency, durability, and longevity. Phthalates are used in a large variety of products, from enteric coatings of pharmaceutical pills and nutritional supplements to viscosity control agents, gelling agents, film formers, stabilizers, dispersants, lubricants, binders, emulsifying agents, and suspending agents. End-applications include adhesives and glues, agricultural adjuvants, building materials, personal-care products, medical devices, detergents and surfactants, packaging, children's toys, modelling clay, waxes, paints, printing inks and coatings, pharmaceuticals, food products, and textiles. Phthalates are also frequently used in soft plastic fishing lures, caulk, paint pigments, and sex toys made of so-called "jelly rubber". Phthalates are used in a variety of household applications such as shower curtains, vinyl upholstery, adhesives, floor tiles, food wrap film, and cleaning materials. Personal-care items containing phthalates include perfume, eye shadow, moisturizer, nail polish, liquid soap, and hair spray.[11] "

what are parabens?
>Parabens are a class of widely used preservatives in cosmetic and pharmaceutical products. Chemically, they are a series of parahydroxybenzoates or esters of parahydroxybenzoic acid (also known as 4-hydroxybenzoic acid). Parabens are effective preservatives in many types of formulas. These compounds, and their salts, are used primarily for their bactericidal and fungicidal properties. They are found in shampoos, commercial moisturizers, shaving gels, personal lubricants, topical/parenteral pharmaceuticals, suntan products, makeup,[1] and toothpaste. They are also used as food preservatives.
health effects

Most of the available paraben toxicity data are from single-exposure studies, meaning one type of paraben in one type of product. According to paraben research this is relatively safe, posing only a negligible risk to the endocrine system. However, since many types of parabens in many types of products are used commonly, further assessment of the additive and cumulative risk of multiple paraben exposure from daily use of multiple cosmetic and/or personal care products is needed.[8] FDA states that they have no information that use of parabens in cosmetics has any effect on health. They continue to consider certain questions and evaluate data about parabens' possible health effects.[9]

estrogen effects

Animal experiments have shown that parabens have weak estrogenic activity, acting as xenoestrogens.[13]The estrogenic activity of parabens increases with the length of the alkyl group. It is believed that propylparaben is estrogenic to a certain degree as well,[15] though this is expected to be less than butylparaben by virtue of its less lipophilic nature. Since it can be concluded that the estrogenic activity of butylparaben is negligible under normal use, the same should be concluded for shorter analogs due to estrogenic activity of parabens increasing with the length of the alkyl group.

but like they stated earlier in the article, >However, since many types of parabens in many types of products are used commonly, further assessment of the additive and cumulative risk of multiple paraben exposure from daily use of multiple cosmetic and/or personal care products is needed
what is Zeranol?

Zeranol is currently used as an anabolic growth promoter for livestock in the US[76] and Canada.[77] It has been banned in the EU since 1985,[78] but is still present as a contaminant in food through meat products that were exposed to it.[12]

what is Altrazine?

Atrazine is widely used as an herbicide *to control broad-leaf weed species that grow in crops such as corn, sugarcane, hay and winter wheat. Atrazine is also applied to Christmas trees, residential lawns, golf courses, and other recreational areas. Atrazine is the second largest selling pesticide in the world and *estimated to be the most heavily used herbicide in the United States.[12]

there are other sources of xenoestrogen in our every day lives, but this is getting a little long. basically though, a bunch of now banned/restricted pesticides had it. sources confirm that there are still large traces of all of these compounds in the soil, air, and water, due to their inability to degrade easy.
tldr;
even though xenoestrogen is apparently "less potent" than for example, estradiol, a steroid hormone, we arent only being affected from one source. we are being bombarded from everywhere. with so many different sources of xenoestrogen in things we use every single day, multiple times per day, and with no/few studies being done on how all of these combine and how they effect our bodies, i find it hard to believe that we are not being affected. what do you think?
sources 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estrogen 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoestrogen 3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A 4. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalates 5. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraben

what is a hazard in safety video

A hazard is any source of potential damage, harm or adverse health effects on something or someone. Basically, a hazard is the potential for harm or an adverse effect (for example, to people as health effects, to organizations as property or equipment losses, or to the environment). Hazard definition is - a source of danger. How to use hazard in a sentence. Did You Know? Hazard and Risk. Electricity; Lone Workers; Manual Handling; Pedestrian safety; Slips, Trips and Falls; Working at Height; What is a Hazard? When we refer to hazards in relation to occupational safety and health the most commonly used definition is ‘A Hazard is a potential source of harm or adverse health effect on a person or persons’. The terms Hazard and Risk are often used The poster can be downloaded here: Risk Hazard Safety poster portrait. RISK = the faith and trust required to suspend uncertainty to take an action. HAZARD = An object that is imagined to have the potential for harm. SAFETY = A temporary moment when physical harm is low Electrical safety is a general practice of workers who are exposed to handling and maintaining electrically powered equipment. It is a set of guidelines they follow to mitigate electrical hazards and prevent its dangerous effects in case of an incident. Unable to adhere to electrical safety can lead to accidents, near misses, or even fatalities. Safety hazard definition: A hazard is something which could be dangerous to you, your health or safety , or your... | Meaning, pronunciation, translations and examples / The e-Hazard Safety Cycle™ Many of the presentations over the years at the IEEE Electrical Safety Workshop have emphasized the Deming/Ishikawa model of Plan, Do, Check and Act. It serves as a solid foundation for continuous improvement and has application across many processes. Key points. Hazards frequently identified by the consultants include tasks related to working at height, chemicals, housekeeping, electrical, forklifts, lockout/tagout and confined spaces. Steps to help avoid potential tragedies caused by common hazards include providing appropriate employee training and equipment and instilling a positive culture A hazard is any object, situation, or behavior that has the potential to cause injury, ill health, or damage to property or the environment. Health and safety hazards exist in every workplace. Some are easily identified and corrected, while others are necessary risks of the job and must be managed in other ways (for instance, by using protective equipment). Safety Hazards. Safety hazards covered in this section include tools, machinery, materials, handling, tractors, welding, etc. Also covered are prevention of slips, trips and falls, as well as driving tips and working safely with compressed air. Safe handling and use of chemicals is covered in the "Prevention and Control of Hazards" section.

what is a hazard in safety top

What is safety And What is Hazard? #what_is_safety ...

Online Course:https://osha.oregon.gov/edu/courses/Pages/hazard-identification-online-course.aspxHazard Identification Topic page: https://osha.oregon.gov/Pag... Agar Mera video aap logo ko Pasand aata hai to hamare channel ko please subscribe kariyeअगर मेरे चैनल का वीडियो आप लोगों को पसंद ... Watch an interview with National Safety Council Senior Consultant JoAnn Dankert about common safety hazards she finds on jobsites.Read the article featuring ... What's the difference between a hazard and a risk? This video covers Lesson 2 of Talking Safety, Finding Hazards. It guides instructors in how to teach what a job hazard is, the different categories of job ha... http://youremploymentsolutions.comYour Employment Solutions safety manager (superstar) Jarum Stone shares the top 10 safety hazards to watch out for when tak... The control of hazards is a fundamental principle behind any occupational health and safety program. However, before hazards can be controlled, they must be ... Downed wires and other electrical hazards are dangerous. Find out why, and what you should do if you see one. Top 16 Hazards in Construction Site - #jppandeysafetyguru#jppandeysafetyguruhttps://www.youtube.com/user/JPpandeysafetyguruhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p...

Risk vs Hazard vs Safety - Safety Risk .net

what is a hazard in safety

what is a hazard in safety - win

Hawaiʻi subreddit for residents & visitors who want to prepare for natural disasters and more

Dynamite - It's Good For You!

I was having issue with trackpad clicks being too hard to press, someone on my other post suggested that it might be bulged battery so I checked and this is what it looks like. Can this be repaired or be used in any way? Or will I strictly have to get a new battery? since it's a safety hazard

What was this Porsche a bonus car for? (Like a specific set?) All it says is '97 Bonus Car Q4. Was there like a Hot Wheels club back then? It came in a Hot Wheels labeled bag (not on a card), but didn't say anything other than safety hazard stuff on it.

Do you believe it’s socially acceptable for men to wear earrings? Why or why not? If it is acceptable, is it ok for guys to wear earrings to work (providing it isn’t a safety hazard)? What industry do you work in? Do any guys wear earrings?

TIL that in 1959, Nikita Khrushchev was barred from going to Disneyland because it posed a safety hazard. His response was "What must I do? Commit suicide? What is it? Is there an epidemic of cholera there or something? Or have gangsters taken hold of the place that can destroy me?”

🚨Secretary of Transportation: Pete Buttigieg Confirmation Hearing

🎙 WATCH what Pete has to say about his nomination

Overview of DOT

Administrations within the DOT

First Contact - Fourth Wave - Chapter 414

Truck drivers fuck you....99% of you just to be fair to the rest

Suggesting the Eldritch Chorus Fruit, an End counterpart to the Golden Apple!

Eldritch Chorus Fruit

Discussion

Since I am copy-pasting this so much I'll just add it to the post:

Can we get a tour of your truck? NO. Ok, we'll just break in..

Overweight Person Tries to Deploy and Jeopardizes Everyone’s Safety

Lets please not let this H1 Riser issue slide

Burned Alive or Buried Alive... If You Had to, Which Would You Choose?

Starship won’t launch people this year, but could it house them on orbit instead?

What would have happened had I stopped my car?

[HEL-Verse] Still Untitled Spinoff Story [Chapters 1-3]

Landlord thinks I owe 8 months of rent Didn't know I knew tenant laws

Burned Alive or Buried Alive... If You Had to, Which Would You Choose?

Tenant situation - I need advise please

putting estrogen in people through items we use everyday

what is a hazard in safety video

what is a hazard in safety top

What is safety And What is Hazard? #what_is_safety ...