If you find any "tone problems", could you please specify them? Other than that, criticism is very appreciated.
SCP-532 / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-532.
Yay! Finally a Keter. Haven't seen one of these in a long while.
very original idea, if a bit weird. any way to expound upon how it causes the freezing action?
it's scary and deadly and hard to contain and would be nearly impossible to notice in advance. let's hope it never mutates where it survives in all temperature ranges. Keter indeed.
Unfortunately, I'm not that much of a chemist, so I'm not sure what a fast-acting freezing agent is composed of. I would've said liquid nitrogen but… nah.
Personally, "freezing agent" seems fine to me. You could toss in a throwaway line like "full chemical analysis of the substance is available to personnel with sufficient clearance in document LOLJK-B3" or some such, if you like.
I really like the article, by the way. Nice and unnerving, with an edge of plausibility to the layman that makes it stand out on a site full of blatant fiction.
Unfortunately, this is the only sticking point for me. It's a great article otherwise. However, I'm not sure how a "freezing agent" could possibly be produced by any living creature. Heat doesn't work like that. Even if the bacteria produced an agent that evaporated quickly and dispersed heat, it would have to do so at an amazing rate.
I'm at a loss to come up with an explanation. Anyone else?
Yeah that was my problem too. I like this one, I really do, but a scientific plausible explanation for this would be much scarier to me than it just somehow producing a "freezing agent", which lies in the realm of fantasy currently. But then again many objects have unexplained and unexplainable effects, that's really what makes things qualified as SCP items in the first place, so it becomes a preference rather than a demand.
I'd like to take a moment to remind you all that this is fiction, and that asking for "scientifically plausible" explanations of things whose scientific impossibility is the point is an utterly futile and foolish waste of time.
Accepted so long as you have in mind that that's basically what I said in the second half of my post, that SCP items kinda defy science as a matter of course, that thats what makes them require containment
Simple, the bacteria produces two compounds that create an endothermic reaction. As for the exothermic reaction needed to create the compounds, catalysts and [REDACTED].
Something like this needs to replace "natural freezing agent." I won't quibble over how an endothermic reaction caused by bacteria wouldn't cause temperatures low enough for frostbite, because, as others note here, this is fiction. But the term "natural freezing agent" just rankles somehow.
If people are intent on at least a vaguely scientific explanation, perhaps it could "induce a highly endothermic reaction", or something along those lines.
if your reading this your gay
Precisely. My main beef is that there are NO naturally occurring "freezing agents" in the known world. If the foundation ran across something like this, the possibilities it implies would rattle the entire world. At least if you call it an endothermic reaction, you stick within the confines of proper parlance.
I still love this idea. Though, I think you missed the opportunity to call it the "Uncommon Cold."
Also, I'm kinda confused by how it manages to migrate back to the stratosphere?
That, sir, is a horrible, HORRIBLE, pun
Have my child
I didn't want to say it again, but after the host dies it, y'know, spreads its flagella and so on and so forth. That's why it prefers the dermis, because then it can leave the body once it dies.
Oh god so that's why there's been so much snow lately here and why there's measels and oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god
Well done, good sir. I want to move somewhere tropical now, so that I don't have to be anywhere near these things. Screw New England, there's death coming from the skies!
If the heat provided by the troposphere is above 0°C, SCP-532 will typically die before reaching the Earth's surface.
Instances of SCP-532 that land on a heat-providing organism will produce a natural freezing agent, causing affected cellls to freeze and die.
0°C is fatal, but somehow, 37°C is ideal? They rupture cells using an endothermic reaction as opposed to enzymes which digest the cells, the latter of which is much more efficient?
I want to like this, but it falls into an awkward middle ground; it's striving for scientific plausibility, but doing so only makes the impossibility and inconsistency of it more apparent.
That's negative 37°C, yo. Derp. Neeeevermind.
I'd like to take a moment to remind you all that this is fiction, and that asking for "scientifically plausible" explanations of things whose scientific impossibility is the point is an utterly futile and foolish waste of time.
I really like the article, by the way. Nice and unnerving, with an edge of plausibility to the layman that makes it stand out on a site full of blatant fiction.
You appear to be contradicting yourself. Here's an idea, you have your opinions and I'll have mine, and we'll both continue on our merry ways.
but permit me to point out a section of the article quoted in my post you appear to have misinterpreted, or rather, erroneously believe me to have misinterpreted.
Instances of SCP-532 that land on a heat-providing organism will produce a natural freezing agent, causing affected cellls to freeze and die.
Now go Google human body temperature and closely examine the second photograph in the article. Appears to be hands, no?
I shall choose to interpret your antagonistic attitude as the result of confusion rather than enmity. Let me clarify for you, sir smascher.
By no means have I ever said that plausibility is a bad thing. Anyone who says otherwise is either incorrect or lying. But.
"plausibility to the layman" and "scientific plausibility"
Y'see, plausibility to the layman means in this case "Can I believe this enough that it makes me a little paranoid next time I go out in the snow, even though I know beyond any doubt that it's not real?" to which the answer is a resounding yes.
Scientific plausibility, on the other hand, means "Is there a basis by which this could actually happen as defined by science as we know it, or a way we can make it seem like it could?" to which the answer is a resounding "are you fucking retarded?" no.
Science, as defined by reality, makes the entirety of the SCP series impossible on the most basic level. That's pretty much the point of the series, and really shouldn't surprise anyone. So when I see the same people who upvoted a zombie virus or a statue that kills people who don't look directly at it ask without a trace of irony whatsoever whether the author of an article would please make it more scientific I cannot help but wonder where I can get some of whatever they're smoking, so I can destroy it, because it makes people act stupid.
So.
In short, this is fiction. If I wanted to read legit science, I would not be reading this site. If you wanted to read legit science, neither would you. Believable, yes. Scientifically plausible, no.
We cool? We cool.
Bro.
Now, as to your other bit, you're right, I misread. I was probably thinking 37 as in Fahrenheit, as in just above freezing. Give me the handicap that I live in the southern bit of the US, and freezing temperatures are something I encounter slightly less often than leprechauns, Mobile joke, to say nothing of measurements in Celsius.
Still, I'm failing to see how that causes any problems for the article at all. Yes, the SCP thingy needs cold. Yes, the organism it's landed on is hot. Sure, heat kills them. But unless I missed something, it never says it kills them instantly. That would be the purpose of the freezing agent, ja? An adaptation specifically designed to allow the thing to feed on warm organisms without their heat killing it. And hey, there's some of those crunchy sciency bits for ya. Glorious.
Oh god I love you Yoric. I love this post.
Excelsior.
Only fair I clarify for you.
I don't ask that everything be scientifically plausible. If that was at all what I was looking for here, it is unlikely I would have written or assisted with such works as I have. My issue is when an article presents absurd explanations in an effort to sound more scientific when they would be better served by leaving something unexplained. This article does that, and is also inconsistent, as I have pointed out. As written, this bacteria simply can't survive. I think the core concept, infectious snowflakes, is interesting; however, I think it would be better if it was applied to something other than bacteria and revised to be consistent with itself.
I can give other examples of aforementioned absurd explanations if you like, if it'll help clear up the misunderstanding.
EDIT:
That would be the purpose of the freezing agent, ja?
It wouldn't have enough. You cool off a patch of skin, we'll say the size of a pencil eraser. The rest is still warm. Blood is still circulating heat, and you're all out of freezing agent, exposed to temperatures well outside your range of survivability.
Assuming we ignore the violation of thermodynamics, there'd be no reason it couldn't use said freezing agents to cool itself on its way to the ground and infect a cold-blooded amphibian in the tropics, and thus no reason why atmospheric temperatures above freezing would kill it.
Also, just to clarify, I at no point asked for more science in the article. I don't know where you're getting that from.
You ignore the true issue, master smascher.
Dexanote loves me more.
Alas, my life is now without purpose.
GENTLEMEN
It would typically take a snowflake at least a little while to hit the bottom, meaning it would melt or turn to slush in above freezing temperature (as it typically does). If it drops into a hot troposhpere, too bad, so sad, it's dead. A freezing agent is a secreted liquid, meaning the liquid would part from the bacteria as it fell.
The bacteria does not enjoy cold blooded organisms, due to them lacking energy in their outer cells. Also, do you really want to read about a SCP that kills ferns?
The bacteria reproduces at a rate of one reproduction per cell ingested. because it has enough freezing agent to kill more than one cell, it can effectively multiply before dying from the heat of the skin.
And this is why I downvoted. I've said all I need to say; good day.
Ok Smascher, I'm sorry. You can take over for me and make contagious snowflakes. kk?
I'm not putting this in the wonderfully long string of replies because my attempt at a plausible explanation has little to nothing to do with Yoric. In fact, at least one person will probably forlornly facepalm to read the paragraph poem of likely pseudoscience that is to follow.
There once was a microbe that lived in the snow,
It very much loved that nice and blue glow,
The cold would often fell an old beast,
And give this germ a mighty good feast,
But lo and behold,
The snow could not hold,
With summer the ice would meet its defeat,
The microbe could not let itself be so beat,
And so it evolved and twisted its genes,
It would make the nice cold by its own means,
It spread and it fed and its populous grew,
'Til it met a trail it must face anew,
This one little biome was still not enough,
For the world held quite a lot of good stuff,
It spread its cells wide,
To the sky it would glide,
And from there it would find a new feast.
Now in the high sky the germ learned to fly,
But in the warm air the spores often die,
The cells are so weak,
While new hosts they seek,
Until it can land on a man it can eat,
The germ cannot afford to run into heat,
It can then shed its airborne shell,
Extruding its endothermic gel,
Freezing its prey and eating away,
Eventually the target t'will slay.
Of course it has to do with me. It's a poem.
There once was a man named Yoric,
Who loved to write with rhetoric,
But he found the time,
To appreciate rhyme,
And now his love is historic
There once was a kid called corbet…
Wait, that isn't what I meant to say.
Was it maybe… corvette?
No? Oh well. I forget.
Meh. There once was this guy, anyway.
There once was a comic to show,
Where two images were set to go,
A young girl was one,
The other a skeleton,
"A lass; Poor yoric" was what read below
I don't mean to come on too strong,
but your syllable count's a bit wrong;
in line four you have put
it ahead by a foot-
it's a limerick, son, not a song.
In limerics it's all about rhyming,
Who cares about silly timing,
The buffalo sneezed,
and everyone breathed,
oajsdijoafihisudifhgsdygfdsjfhgdasgfhsadkfhds
If you want to write limericks, then fine:
there's a formula for every line.
Think of something to say,
rhyme a, a, b, b, a,
syllable count nine, nine, six, six, nine.
Yoric you have cured my poor timing,
But enough if this silly rhyming,
Let's call it a day,
And say what you may,
But I'm through with this poem grinding
This sounds like an organism that coats itself in a chemical which, when exposed to the complex carbon chains present in human cells, begins an endothermic reaction. This dramatically reduces the temperature of materials near the site of the reaction. As long as the organism is able to continue to reproduce, only a small amount of this reactive chemical would be necessary to keep temperatures very low.
But then, that would probably be too verbose for the article anyway!
There's also the Cat's Cradle approach - the organism could enable crystallization of water at well above 0ºC, possibly by doping the water with some yet-to-be-identified compound. Combine that with a compound that either reacts endothermically with organic tissue or an enzyme that triggers endothermic reactions, and you've got the scientific solidity without the internal inconsistency that kicked off this whole argument.
Seriously, stop trying to make science fiction conform to real science. Real science makes things boring.
Ice-9 is not real science, my friend, and I strongly disagree that it's boring. I think Leicontis and Adams are on the right track; that is, steering it away from the pitfall into which I feel it currently falls.
I think it's best to either commit and figure out a scientifically sound mechanism (with a few small liberties taken as necessary) or leave it totally unexplained. This seems as though it tries to do both and so falls short of either. I think it could be improved either by upping the science or simply saying how it does what it does is unknown. Either one would get me to reverse my downvote.
How many times were you planning on saying the exact same damn thing in this thread?
'bout as many as you do, I reckon.
Yeh, dude, but I'm at least responding to different people.
I said something you disagreed with, you responded. You said something I disagreed with, I responded. That's how conversations go, generally. I repeated myself because I was unsure if I had been clear, seeing as how your reply to one of my posts had very little to do with anything I'd said/intended to say. As such, I assumed you misinterpreted, or I'd been unclear.
Previous discussion aside, I would have replied in such a manner as I have above to anyone who complained that real science is "boring"; down that road lies memetic auras and unidentifiable energies. I find the notion to be absurd. You simply happen to be the person repeatedly espousing the belief that disregard for basic scientific principles within a supposedly scientific explanation is a good thing.
This is why I have replied.
When the Foundation's purpose is to contain impossible objects, and try to explain what they do and how they work (as if the latter happens at all), it'd be nice to be able to sustain some form of disbelief after a first-pass analysis/thought-game with some of the object's basic premises.
That said, discussing crystalline structures instead of just pointing out how silly a "freezing agent" is like everyone else did is silly. It'd be like trying to explian 586's effects as something caused by undetectable electromagnetic fields coming from the object or something.
I agree. Too much detail is given to the activities of the organism, I think. The reader spends too much time thinking to get scared about it.
As for the "freezing agent" naysayers, how about this:
"Instances of SCP-532 that land on a heat-providing organism will produce a natural freezing agent, causing affected cells to freeze and die. Victims of SCP-532 describe this sensation in a similar manner to the cold produced when any natural snowflake touches human skin. SCP-532 will then break-down the dead cell and reproduce."
changing to this:
"In the event that SCP-532 makes contact with a living organism, it immediately produces a chemical which begins an endothermic reaction with the victim's cells. This simultaneously kills nearby tissue and provides a suitable temperature for SCP-532 to reproduce."
It's just a suggestion, but there's nothing scientifically impossible or silly about endothermic reactions.
Might be prudent to specify that it reacts with the lipids comprising the cell membranes or else injects the chemical into the victim's cells. If the former, it could simply be coated in the chemical - bit more plausible than the spontaneous production.
Noted. "releases" would probably be better than "produces" in my above suggestion. Or you could rewrite it as being permanently coated with said chemical. Either way would make perfect sense chemically.
God fucking damnit. You know what, just to shut you people up, I'll change it to endothermic reaction. K? K!
After looking over this once again, I have decided to replace the paragraph with the one Dr_Adams has suggested (with a few modifications). My only worry now is that this might not be anomalous enough to be held by the Foundation.
oh no, plenty anomalous….a bacteria that hides in the upper atmosphere and divebombs people disguised as a snowflake, proceeding to give them frostbite symptoms even if it's not cold enough to cause frostbite? the note about catching them on the tongue is all i'd need to be terrified of these.
WHAT IF EVERY CASE OF FROSTBITE WAS ACTUALLY INFECTION BY SCP-532 D:
I was being exaggerative. My apologies to anyone who may have been offended.
Pedantic nitpick: water molecules do not expand. I'm just not sure how to word that sentence so it's more accurate. (And my apologies if this has been pointed out already— I'm not in the mood to wade into the bulk of this thread.) Otherwise, well done, upvoted.
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
