Inspired by the "Weeds" episode of "Creepshow" and a newspaper article about some guy with a pea plant growing in his lung.
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(Note: Labeled as a time lapse in case of accidental public release.)
I'd suggest you take this out of the description and place it somewhere in the containment procedures, as it should very clearly belong there.
"All filmed records of SCP-504 exhibiting its anomalous behavior are to be labeled as time lapses in case of public release."
Another alternative would be to make your own video, but it sounds like way too much effort for an SCP.
Ohter than that, simple and straightforward concept, +1.
Hmm. I kind of like this one, though I think it might be better if you could film your own plant video, so you wouldn't need to explain the time-lapse title of the video.
Also, take out the last addendum. This is the Foundation. You don't need to explain why they're letting it live. The Foundation doesn't destroy things unless they really need to.
Got rid of the addendum.
I wish I knew how to make my own time lapse plant video…or de-label the one I posted.
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Use kickyoutube or some similar site to download the video file and post it under your own youtube account.
Do this, really. Time-lapse videos are not exactly for beginners…
http://www.zamzar.com usually does the trick for me. So does extracting the appropriate SWF from the cache, and converting it, but Zamzar does it faster and without the fuss.
I never thought I could be so disturbed by watching a plant grow.
went to fix the spacing on the blackbars there, noticed the lengths are different. is the company's name seven letters, or eight?
I like this one. Its simple, but still interesting and quirky in an SCP way, proving that every SCP does not need to threaten the existence of the planet, just some farmers crop in this case. Upvoted
Enocher, these things grow on anything organic.
Here's the creep: Humans are organic.
I wonder if that means that you'd have to "plant" the seed under your skin for it to grown, or if the seed would germinate just by touching you.
Both alternatives sound delightful.
I envisioned the seeds landing on you and starting to grow. It's one of the reasons this item is Keter.
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Maybe it'd be a good idea to make that explicit in the article? 'Tis a noteworthy trait, after all.
…can't believe that just now I noticed it, but why exactly is this Keter instead of Safe? Keep only a handful of seeds locked away and done, 'tis safe. After all, the article mentions that there is none of them in the wild and all other seeds where destroyed, and if you don't disturb them, they won't do anything at all.
Ah, is there any specific reason that we must guard them as fully grown individuals instead of just seeds?
The Foundation keeps a patch of them alive for experimentation…just in case there are more of them out there. You can never really be sure you got them all, or what the geniuses at will come up with next.
I labeled them Keter because out in the wild they would devastate the environment, and people would have to run around in biohazard suits to keep plants from growing on them.
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They would indeed be devastating in the wild; however, as it is now, and as far as the Foundation knows, they have all of them contained, so they are technically "safe" ('tis not like they can make active attempts to break containment, after all).
If the Foundation finds them in the wild, and reach the conclusion that they don't know how much they spread over the world, then I think it'd be upgraded to "keter" status.
I might me misinterpreting the labels, though.
No, you're right Enma.
The classes are more about the danger of containment, not the danger of the item uncontained. These would cause massive devastation in the wild, no doubt, but they behave in a fairly predictable manner that can be accounted for.
Safe items can still be horrendously life-threatening. A nuclear warhead would be safe.
Euclid items are unpredictable, but still effectively containable. Something Euclid might respond to the same stimuli in different ways in different tests, for example.
Keter items are so dangerous that even containing them involves great risks. These plants would have to be intelligent and malicious to be Keter, and that would also make this a lousy article instead of a very good one.
Eh, I wouldn't say that, Sorts. If they were only kept as seeds, that'd be true. But kept active and germinating? The filtration system would have to be extremely effective, with lots of redundancy. A single seed getting loose could potentially end mankind. Anytime the containment is opened, there's a great risk of something getting out.
And I think it says a great deal about the Foundation that they're willing to keep it active anyway.
I'd put a bit more into the containment procedures to reflect that point.
Granted, but even alive they wouldn't be so hard to maintain in a sealed environment. This isn't the kind of thing that would require the Foundation to bring in disposable convicts to handle.
I don't think it is really playing with fire to grow these things, but I could definitely see this getting a Euclid rating if all the rapidly progressing generations of plants started evolving.
I see your point about the classification and changed it.
I like the idea of the plants evolving, but am not sure what they should be evolving into.
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Don't worry about what they're evolving into. (It's not like evolution considers teleology anyway.) Consider instead what their current environmental stressors are — what natural factors keep them from already having replaced the whole biosphere — and note that they are beginning to overcome them.
Maybe their pest resistance is improving. For extra oomph, have them produce commensurately weird defensive toxins. (Be careful, though: too bizarre a poison could easily overshadow the SCP itself.)
Maybe they're adapting to tolerate nutrient-poor soils. That'll eventually be necessary, I suspect, since their absurdly accelerated growth will inevitably deplete soil nutrients beyond repair. Such a trend suggests as well that they might eventually adapt to non-organic substrates: geological formations, buildings, vehicles, power lines, infrastructure…
Maybe (and this one scares me the most, personally) they're adapting to avoid alerting living substrates (humans, animals) to their presence. Anaesthetics exuded from their tissues, perhaps: at present, the most advanced strains can take root and grow to maturity almost before you notice that your whole chest cavity is full of roots and leaves.
Now, does it grow around you (which would easy enough to brush off, depending on the quantity of seeds that have landed), or do the roots… you know… burrow?
It would mean that the roots would have to be much stronger or sharper or something then regular plants, but the mental image is horrifying.
They definitely burrow. I considered some sort of incident log where someone ends up screaming while trying to pull plants out of his own skin, but figured it was better to leave that to your imagination…
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Credit where credit is likely due - I read this yesterday, and had a dream last night involving aggressive plant life. Well done!
We could put some in SCP-197 and get friendly aggressive plant life!
And then we plant it in SCP-891!
And cross breed with SCP-504!
oh god this is why we have rules against cross testing
Hey man, I know some guys who want to cross it with SCP-420-J….
Actually, cross-breeding 506 and 504 would be, in essence, lethal punishment for bad jokes.
504 is already lethal punishment for bad jokes. Adding 506 would be Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
actually let's do it, let's combine all of these and get helpful, rapidly growing plant/cow warriors with delicious but lethal armor piercing tomato cannons. That are pretty mellow thanks to 420-j.
And then we can add 805 for playfulness, 891 for further lethality, 937 for little helpers — and hey, if we stack 628 in there it'll play its own soundtrack. :P Before you know it we'll have crossbred every plant SCP…
At least until 199 gets involved, and the two of them end up duking it out. The Ferns aren't fast, but they are very thorough and hostile to other plant life.
Only if we don't find some way to crossbreed them… Okay, got me there, it'd be like crossing a tarantula with a giraffe. XD Biologically improbable, to put it mildly.
I will never look at cucurbits the same way. Auuugh.
The Foundation, ruining any aspiring biologist's ability to look at plant samples with anything other than a mixture of awe and abject terror.
(account deleted)The containment procedure is missing a few things, namely:
- The enclosure the patch of dirt is in must be made of inorganic materials.
- The air filtration system must also be made entirely of inorganic materials.
- There should be an airlock between the enclosure and the outside world, made entirely of inorganic materials.
SCP-506 is inedible, as the seeds will [DATA EXPUNGED] if any are consumed.
So cooking doesn't kill the seeds? If the seeds are hard to destroy/kill, it should be noted in the description.
SCP-506 roots have been found to secrete a powerful anesthetic, explaining why Dr. K██████ did not sound the alarm or attempt to escape the area.
The SCP developing something like that in the given environment and time frame goes way beyond evolution to the SCP somehow knowing what changes it needs to go through to increase its reproductive fitness. This isn't a problem in and of itself, since this is an SCP we're talking about, but since "the ability to break containment" would greatly increase its reproductive fitness, it would be prudent to put in multiple heterogeneous redundancies into containment, in anticipation of it actively "evolving" ways to breach containment. For instance, the air could be doubly filtered, with the second air filtration machine working in a much different manner than the first, so if the seeds develop an immunity to one form of filtration they'll still be caught by the other method.
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
