I love a good HFY / Humans Are Space Orks post, and I think one element of Humans weâre sleeping on is an instinctual understanding of ballistics.
I mean, I get why itâs not as popular here on Tumblr dot com, given itâs kinda a jock/military adjacent thing, but like. Our ability to just. Pick up a small, firm object, judge its internal inertia and mass by holding it for a bit, and then flinging it with the kind of accuracy and speed Humans are capable of is.
Like thereâs another post about how Humans in an alien zoo would probably be breaking out constantly, since we consider escape rooms to be a fun courtship ritual, but
imagine the aliens who are designing the enclosures just so happen to pick up, say, a devoted amateur baseball pitcher. Not even a legend by any means, just somebody whoâs practiced with intention. And one day theyâre watching her pass some time and blow off some steam by doing some pitching practice and they realize to their mounting horror that this gal can turn literally anything she can wrap her digits around into a ballistic weapon.
this reminds me of a paper I read a while back about how the way our shoulders work to enable us to throw anything from rocks to pointy sticks - plus a brain trained to think in 3D from climbing trees while also capable of calculating future trajectories from living on the savanna - is how we survived terrifying predators and came to dominate the world


























