02 April, 2011

PREVIEW - 5 Places You Don't Want To Live In

The world is filled with inhospitable places that no man, woman or creature should ever have to live in. However, thanks to our natural human arrogance, we constantly strive to prove Mother Nature wrong. “Damn you and your incessant burning, Volcano, I just want to live in you” is the common cry of such people.

Some people are forced to live in horrible places, whilst others choose it. Here, I attempt to explain some of the reasons why you are much better off staying put in your cushty little house than seeking adventures elsewhere.

5. Space

Let me just make it clear that I don’t mean ‘living in space without a spacesuit’ or anything like that, else this article would be entitled ‘Places you don’t want to die in’ and the content would read “everywhere”.

The only reason why you may want to invest in extra-terrestrial real estate that I can see is to get away from noisy neighbours. Apart from that however, things aren’t great.


For example, for each earth day, there will be sixteen sunrises because you will travel round 16 times a day. I don’t know about you but personally I think one morning every day is already 3 too many. Not only that, but these mini-days will wreak havoc on your internal body clock causing dizziness, confusion, and tiredness. This is such an issue that windows on space shuttles are blacked out at night to allow a ‘normal’ sleep for the crew. A small plus, however, is that the lack of gravity may cause your partner to stop snoring, allowing you to catch up on the vast amounts of sleep you will inevitably miss.

On top of this, thanks to the lack of gravity, your muscles will begin to waste away, which would be a total catastrophe to all the rugby playing public school boys out there. Furthermore, food will begin to lose its taste until everything has the flavour and consistency of wet cardboard. And the fact that all food must come in paste form doesn’t really help either.

There are four fundamental forces in this universe, one of them being gravity. Unfortunately, after too much time in space, astronauts tend to forget that this force even exists. Upon coming back to earth, not only do they have to contend with the crushing pain in their legs and spines, but they must re-learn to interact with gravity again. It is somewhat depressing seeing their hope quickly turn to a sad realisation when they witness the item that they attempted to place in the air clatter to the ground.


There is also Space Adaptation Syndrome to be wary of. The fact that it has been identified as a ‘syndrome’ should be indication enough that this is some serious shit. Symptoms include, but are not limited to: feeling upside down (in a place where the word ‘down’ literally doesn’t mean anything); blinding flashes in your eyes (courtesy of the comfortingly named ‘Cosmic Radiation’); and forgetting where your own limbs are.

The final reason you should aim to keep your feet on terra firma is if you ever wished to vocally convey your pain or fear because, remember “in space, no one can hear you scream” and that must be true because it was in a film once.

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