Hey, that was the plot of H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness!

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/mm.aspx

Spoilers:

"...But we were not on a station platform. We were on the track ahead as the nightmare plastic column of foetid black iridescence oozed tightly onward through its fifteen-foot sinus; gathering unholy speed and driving before it a spiral, re-thickening cloud of the pallid abyss-vapour. It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and unforming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. Still came that eldritch, mocking cry—“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!” And at last we remembered that the daemoniac shoggoths—given life, thought, and plastic organ patterns solely by the Old Ones, and having no language save that which the dot-groups expressed—had likewise no voice save the imitated accents of their bygone masters."

> Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding land and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.

It's pretty writing, but it is also pretty hard to read if you're used to the way people write nowadays.

Of course, I grew up reading a lot of books and short stories from that era, so maybe it's easier for my old brain, like riding a bicycle.

I should have said "it's practically poetry" :)

Though I do like "crushing the frantic penguins".

I read a lot of H.P. Lovecraft some 25 years ago, and I still have vivid imagined visual memories of the “unspeakable ancient horrors” described. Given this background, I find it strange that someone would get, or see, “absolutely nothing”.

I'd say H.P. Lovecraft is the literary equivalent of H.R. Giger. Different sub-genre of fiction, of course, but they've both contributed a similarly unique genre-defining take on things.

Xenophobic isn't quite the right word. Racist is closer, but even that misses the mark. Every story he writes is terrified of black voodoo savages, or toothless white hill people, or inbred decadent Boston brahmin families, or fishermen that are half-white-half-Chinese-half-fish.

Aristotle, by contrast, isn't that concerned with gender. He is happy to treat it as a topic, but he has nowhere near the same level of preoccupation.

I do think you're right that Lovecraft's ability to write effective horror was largely because he himself was fascinated with terror at the world. But I don't think his weird xenophobia is what he ended up actually communicating to most readers or what he's famous for. He's more known for misshapen tentacle monsters and cosmic-scale horror. For example, Lauren Beukes' novel Broken Monsters is often considered Lovecraftian horror, and it has fairly modern sensibilities.

Seriously though, why not call it "tribalist"?

More than the people of his time?

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20060507063256/http://blog.urban...

I don’t care how many stars a chef has. If his food is hard for me to swallow, well, I don’t like his cooking. And that’s okay. I don’t have to eat his food. And I don’t have to read Lovecraft’s works. And I don’t have to be a Nobel Laureate to have an opinion. And you don’t have to listen to my opinion.

There are no penguins in the Arctic (Antarctica only) so nothing to fear.

"I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why. It is altogether against my will that I tell my reasons for opposing this contemplated invasion of the antarctic — with its vast fossil-hunt and its wholesale boring and melting of the ancient ice-cap — and I am the more reluctant because my warning may be in vain. Doubt of the real facts, as I must reveal them, is inevitable; yet if I suppressed what will seem extravagant and incredible there would be nothing left."

Whatever, drill away!

A group at Harvard found that the traits that now enable enterococcal survival and transmission in hospitals were an advantage in the Paleozoic [0] and suggest that the multidrug resistant (i.e., untreatable) strains seen in hospitals were trained to be that way millions of years ago. There was also a split between commensal/friendly and unfriendly enterococci around the time of urbanization. So it's certainly possible that we'd encounter something we don't have an answer for. It has already been seen, in a way.

[0] http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30478-6

Something like maybe a Rodesian Ridgeback (lion hunting dogs) might stand a good chance however.

First time I've been scared of a dog since I was three. When a pit gets mad at you, you can kind of convince yourself you can keep it down by kicking and pushing it. Your neck is out of its immediate range unless you fall down. The Rodey was big and heavy enough that I would have had basically zero time to react if he jumped up. Humans are just so squishy. If you can throw a good punch, you can knock out 99% of people with one good hit to the chin. A strong hit to the liver will incapacitate anyone and kill them without treatment. Unlucky hits to the face can kill people as well.

I was very acutely aware that no matter how hard I hit that dog, I wouldn't be able to knock it out and my only option was basically to let it chew on me while I tried to hurt it as much as possible. Just keep punching anything that looks soft until it decided I wasn't worth biting, and do my best to keep it away from my neck and nuts.

Those are huge dogs and aren't afraid to scrap. I'd still happily take on one of them for my life given the choice vs a velociraptor :)

They'll bluster and charge to defend young against a curious city dog, but will flee up to roost if challenged by a pack of hunting dogs. If you find a cornered turkey, don't try to catch it or let your dog attack: you'll probably win from sheer mass and from having predatory weapons, but you will be badly bloodied.

The idea that more recent species are "more evolved" than ancient ones is not completely absurd.

I do wonder how many Cretaceous critters were intelligent to the degree of ravens or dogs or primates, if any. We know they weren't as good at terraforming as we are, or there'd be some evidence in the strata. But the Cretaceous was longer than the current period, so I wouldn't be shocked if something we could call intelligent evolved.

Mutation takes place very quickly once the revived microorganism makes contact with the outside world. I would think the outcome is highly unpredictable.

Filmed in Iceland, set in Norway. Slow paced but quite excellent.

(S2 was not as good as S1, however)

Do we have a cure / vaccine?

This is stupid. A medical waste dump from "decades" ago leads to issues..... How do we jump to this science fiction and quotes below from NPR of unbelievable????

"Officials don't know exactly how the outbreak started, but the current hypothesis is almost unbelievable: A heat wave has thawed the frozen soil there and with it, a reindeer carcass infected with anthrax decades ago."

Waste dumps from the past cause issues in the future.. How on earth is this unbelievable? How is it even related to global warming? They dug a hole when it was cold, it got warmer in summer one year and defrosted?

It also only killed one person. And we were prepared for it. This makes for a crappy SciFi novel by any standards.

Your thesis other than being fictional also is an emotional appeal to the concept that what is natural is desirable which is wholly unsound both on its face and because any die out sufficient to be effective is entirely likely to not only take civization with it but also reduce our ability to take effective measures to manage our environment as our technology dies with our civilaztion.

The way forward to a managable population size is through raising everyone up to a relaively modern level and the way forward to that population living sustainably is via education.

Edit: Your philosophy that its ok for the more developed nations to wreck the environment leading to mass death presumably among those you regard as your inferiors while relax and have a latte safe behind our metaphorical walls is pure insanity.

Can you provide a citation for this? My understanding is that humanity have spent most of its history near the carrying capacity of the environment -- world population was very stable, and the major increases in population happened due to humans figuring out new ways to increase the carrying capacity (e.g through farming), or lucking out into them (e.g. through lactose tolerance genes). At least, could you specify what excatly you mean by "modern times"?

Agree that "natural" is too often used as synonymous with "good" when our lives are far superior to what "natural" humans would experience.

The black death was a singular public health crisis precipitated by sanitation not an example of the world population periodically resetting to a manageable level.

I am not unaware of the black death I just don't think it represents an example of what poster is arguing for.

The only way to manage population is to control breeding. That is not a scaleable solution.

And that physical limit is much closer to 100 billion people, than it is to 1 billion.

Population growth is already on the downward trend, and we are expected to reach population growth neutrality by 2040.

Unless you can educate the world that the Earth has limited carrying capacity and that GDP and population growth aren't necessarily the be-all and end-all.

Is there any evidence for this assertion?

Through defensible positions even if we ultimately believe the conclusion is wrong we learn new ways to reason about life and the world around us. New tools to inform our interaction with the world or at least new thought processes to communicate with our fellow humans.

The bald statement that 2+2 = 17 or even that 2+2=4 is worth nothing if you can't explain why you think its correct.

But it seems like the opposite is true. Quality of life is still massively improving basically everywhere.

We are not running out of resources.

This is not controversial. We are living on borrowed time - our civilization currently relies on the consumption of non-renewable resources, and the non-sustainable consumption of renewable resources.

Even if this is sustainable for 10, 20, or 100 years, it is not sustainable for longer time horizons.

https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/0784d9d63336606d4ca025...

This may be at least in part due to the shifting of energy-intensive industries to countries like China, but it does show that countries can continue to grow their GDP (per capita) while dropping their energy usage per capita, which bodes well for the future.