This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time. I'm returning this week to the alien universe, specifically to one of the minor creatures from the 2012 film Prometheus. Just to refresh, the film follows a high-tech exploration expedition to the distant planet LV-223 to investigate the possibility of an ancient interplanetary civilization responsible for seeding life on Earth. Guess what? They find it. But the crew of the Prometheus, including directed Pantspermia zealots propped up by a longevity-hungry CEO, get more than they bargained for when they encounter engineer ruins and the deadly alien pathogen Agent A03959X.91 or, as we commonly refer to it, the Black Goo. As I discussed in last year's multi-part series on the creatures of the alien universe, the Black Goo can be thought of as a biological AI that reprograms everything it touches. Perhaps following specific instructions of general directions, or maybe it's just left entirely to its own generative impulses. Whatever the case, it weaponizes organic life and spreads rapidly through an ecosystem, producing, in its extremes, deadly strains of xenomorphic life. I already discussed some of the forms this winds up taking in Prometheus, but one of the earliest we see in the film is that of the so-called Hammerpeed. The mission's woefully inept biologist Milburn initially interprets the organism as Reptilian, and it is indeed an elongated, limbless creature that we might well compare to a serpent, though I get a strong hagfish vibe, as well as an eel vibe from the creature. More on that in a second. Its nickname, Hammerpeed, apparently refers to earlier creature designs for the film that more closely resemble a centipede or a millipede. The origin of this creature, however, in the film, is heavily implied to be some manner of worms, like earthworms, either tracked in by the Prometheus crew or found in the soil of Planet LV-223. In either case, the Black Goo exposure rapidly evolves the worms into slithering creatures with a hooded head that it once mirrors a cobra and maybe a human hand throwing up a pair of devil horns. It's expansive mouth, displays four fangs, one at each point of the compass. It also boasts impressive regenerative powers. Now, when Milburn approaches the creature, it latches onto his arm, constricts it, and then breaks the underlying bones. Geologist Feffield attempts to cut him free, but the creature bleeds potent acid as xenomorphic organisms often do. Finally, it breaches Milbourne's suit, enters his helmet, and in a rather shocking scene, lodges itself in the victim's mouth. The same Hammerpeed, or maybe a different one, is later seen emerging from his corpse. Now, the Free League Alien RPG in the supplement Building Better World provides additional information or possible insight into what's going on here, stating that after suffocating the victim, the Hammerpeed will, quote, rearrange your internal organs to create a personal corpse den for themselves. Now, what does that mean? They don't go into a lot of detail. We have to speculate. Does it mean that it's going to carry out reproduction inside the victim? Is it eating the flesh of the victim inside? This rearranging organs certainly raises a number of questions, and of course, that's what I like about the description. It allows the game players to maybe decide what exactly is happening here. So let's get into the potential science here. Now, comparing the Hammerpeed morph to natural world organisms, we of course find little in the way of a direct match. Generally, creatures attempt to avoid entering the mouths of larger creatures. We do have some notable exceptions. Cleaner species, for example, we talked about this on Stuffable Your Mind Before, where you'll have, say, a smaller fish or aquatic organism that'll enter the mouth of a much bigger organism in order to consume, say, debris or even parasites, in some cases, that sort of thing. But that is not what's going on with the Hammerpeed. It also doesn't seem to be attempting to enter a potential host like a parasite would. For starters, it ends up killing the victim in the process. It suffocates the victim by lodging itself in the esophagus. A parasite generally has nothing to gain from a dead host. About the only way you could apply this and have it make sense here is if the Hammerpeed is really looking to get down the throat of a much larger creature and would otherwise be able to gain access. And there might be a case to be made here, comparing the large size of the engineers to much smaller human beings, but still there's some potential problems in trying to make that all work, the mental gymnastics involved. Now, we do encounter organisms that defensively make themselves difficult meals, capable of clogging an esophagus and choking a would-be predator. But again, not what we're seeing here exactly. While the Hammerpeed's method of suffocation is unique or seems to be unique, plenty of terrestrial predators employ suffocation via more time-tested methods, such as crushing the throat of a prey species. We see this with cats and various canids, for example. Also, we see, of course, constriction in some snakes, but constrictors can also cause cardiac arrest, so it's not strictly suffocation. Now, coming back to the comparison to the Hagfish, these marine scavengers will often enter the carcasses of large animals to consume them from the inside out, and they will enter through various ways, various natural openings, including the mouth, say on the large shark or a whale. They'll also bore through the flesh, so they're open to various entry points. Interestingly enough, a would-be predator of the Hagfish might find itself suffocating when the creature emits a defensive gout of slime to choke its attacker. So again, no super close earth analogs here, but the hammer-peed nicely invokes distorted, aggressive reflections of the natural world, while also featuring core alien themes of bodily invasion. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact, The Artifact, or Anima Leos to Pindium each week here in the Stuffed to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. As always, you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com. This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.
