Pretty sure there’s some worms or something that live by deep sea vents which breathe sulfur not oxygen and are believed to live forever because of this.
There’s a bunch of creatures that don’t use oxygen but they’re mostly all prokaryotes, since oxygen metabolism unlocks a shitload of energy you can use for being large and complex.
Linus Pauling (the Linus Pauling) had a moment in his life when he became obsessed with the idea that antioxidants would make us all live forever.
It’s also worth noting that anaerobic organisms are a thing, and they die too. Yes, cells suffer with oxidation and this is indeed related to aging, but if you remove all oxygen from the equation, any replication of genetic material will still slowly age and eventually kill you.
the daily intake of natural antioxidant sources is very important in the prevention of oxidative stress, since it has many positive effects on our health.
From the pov of an organism in a high-oxygen atmosphere, thats true. But on a planet with little to no oxygen in the atmosphere, it would have to be added separately, the same way we add fuel
Is that the one where humans are consensually employed by all the comparatively more advanced alien species of our galaxy as their warriors or executives because even our weakest human is significantly more powerful to any of the nearest alien due to the nature of us all having been evolved from an ancient ape species that were prone to violence?
deathworlders.com - Dunno if it goes into that detail of us evolving from violent apes, but at least from chapter zero, seems to be mostly due to us being from a “high gravity” world and having “builtin combat drugs” (adrenalin)
Considering the amount of things that can kill us, both micro and macro, and the fact that we ingest poison (alcohol, drugs and even actual frog poison) for fun, it’s pretty easy for any alien life to look at us and think “holy shit, those creatures are fucking hardcore!”
I second the recommendation, it’s a great story. The writing isn’t perfect, but it’s absorbing and there’s plenty of good world building and characters.
There’s another series like that, the Human Chronicles Saga by T.R. Harris. Humans are super strong because the gravity on Earth is much higher than on other planets. Materials on the other planets are weaker too, simply because they don’t need to be as strong, so the humans can break through walls easily.
We are a species that came to prominence by literally throwing ourselves at monsters until we won. Injuries (such as a giant beast’s foot crashing at you at 80KmH) that would kill any other species 100 times over is basically a little medical treatment and a month of rest away.
Fun (and also not fun) Fact is that the reason why bullet caliber exists is because when settlers were doing their genocide they would often unload their entire magazine into warriors to no avail, they would just rush up unimpeded and chop the settlers to ribbons. The concept of stopping power was literally invented because of the sheer resilience of humans and the amount of damage we can take and survive.
The only lifeform on this plant which can take anywhere near the level of punishment we can are insects, and in those cases even one injury is often enough to permanently disfigure and condemn them to a crapshoot of maybe being able to reproduce before they eventually die, because for as resilient as they are, nature didn’t really build them for long distance survival like we did through our monster-hunting exploits.
Regarding bullets in ye olde times, I suppose a significant portion of immediate survivors had a hellish time dealing with chronic pain and lead poisoning. Also worth nothing: it was common for pre industrial ammo to shatter on impact due to imperfections, acting much like current day hollow point, which shreds tissue in a nasty way.
Fun fact: humans aren’t responsible for the first mass extinction caused by organisms polluting the atmosphere with poisonous gas. Blue-green algae did it first, with “a decrease in the size of the biosphere of >80%”.
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