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Comic Books
Wonder Woman: Smells like death.
Barda: There's no place like home.
Batman: [narrating] The concept of Apokolips is, at best, difficult to explain. A blazing inferno of misery, the planet exists in another universe. The gates of Hell can only be opened via Boom Tube.
Barda: There's no place like home.
Batman: [narrating] The concept of Apokolips is, at best, difficult to explain. A blazing inferno of misery, the planet exists in another universe. The gates of Hell can only be opened via Boom Tube.
"[D]on't worry about logistics for the time being. Do worry about Poseidon. Never forget — it is not your home. Poseidon doesn't like you. We're not built to live there. [...] Look, I know how it is with scientists, but we can't have any absent-minded-professor shit down there. If you miss the next ship and stay six years, Poseidon will be your last home."
— Flores, Deep Gravity
Fan Works
In a move The Flash had taught her and Superman long ago, they began to lose the vibrational pitch that attuned them to Earth-One, and to slip into another plane of existence. The deadliest one she knew of.
<STOP,> thought M’nagaleh, and, indeed, she had to fight the impulse to stop right then and there. But she didn’t.
Within seconds, she saw a similar but different Earth below her, and a different solar system and set of stars about her. She felt the bee-stinging of contramatter particles against her body, and knew if she remained more than a few seconds here, she would be in more danger, perhaps, than M’nagaleh could offer.
Below her was the anti-matter Earth of the universe of Qward.
<YOU ARE FOOD,> thought M’nagaleh, his bulk coursing towards her. <YOU WILL BECOME ME.>
<You will become toast,> said Supergirl, and thrust the towers away with all her strength. A tentacle reached out for her face, brushed it, missed.
The mass of metal and monster hurtled towards the rotating globe below. In seconds it was within the outer atmosphere, and small bursts of flaming explosion were seen. By the time it got to slightly denser atmosphere, the anti-matter fully reacted with the positive matter of the towers and what was on them.
It exploded, greatly.
<STOP,> thought M’nagaleh, and, indeed, she had to fight the impulse to stop right then and there. But she didn’t.
Within seconds, she saw a similar but different Earth below her, and a different solar system and set of stars about her. She felt the bee-stinging of contramatter particles against her body, and knew if she remained more than a few seconds here, she would be in more danger, perhaps, than M’nagaleh could offer.
Below her was the anti-matter Earth of the universe of Qward.
<YOU ARE FOOD,> thought M’nagaleh, his bulk coursing towards her. <YOU WILL BECOME ME.>
<You will become toast,> said Supergirl, and thrust the towers away with all her strength. A tentacle reached out for her face, brushed it, missed.
The mass of metal and monster hurtled towards the rotating globe below. In seconds it was within the outer atmosphere, and small bursts of flaming explosion were seen. By the time it got to slightly denser atmosphere, the anti-matter fully reacted with the positive matter of the towers and what was on them.
It exploded, greatly.
Lana: Deserts and life do not cooperate. Sandstorms, monsters, wind-
Cia: Wind?
Lana: Oh, yeah. He had a sermon about that on the Great Sea. Days are blazing hot, and nights are bitter cold. The wind itself carries death.
Cia: Wind?
Lana: Oh, yeah. He had a sermon about that on the Great Sea. Days are blazing hot, and nights are bitter cold. The wind itself carries death.
— Intervention in the Era of Calamity
, a Hyrule Warriors fic, on the Gerudo Desert
, a Hyrule Warriors fic, on the Gerudo Desert"I sailed almost this entire world, from the clouds in the sky to the ocean floor, across the deadliest seas and against opponents the most powerful anyone could imagine. And when it was over, I decided that I didn't want to be a part of it anymore. I reaped the fruits of the strongest sea, and I chose to use them to ensure that I would never have to return to a life of paranoia, where every puff of smoke, every ripple on the water was a reason to keep your guard up, lest it kill you in a new, creative and utterly ludicrous way."
—Buggy the Clown, This Bites!
Films — Live-Action
This is a Class 1 quarantined planet. The threats we will be facing are real. Everything in this planet is evolved to kill humans. Every single decision we make will be life or death.
— Cypher Raige, After Earth
Oscar: What's it gonna be like up there?
Truman: 200 degrees in the sunlight, minus 200 in the shade, canyons of razor-sharp rock, unpredictable gravitational conditions, unexpected eruptions, things like that.
Oscar: Okay, so scariest environment imaginable. Thanks. That's all you gotta say, "scariest environment imaginable."
Truman: 200 degrees in the sunlight, minus 200 in the shade, canyons of razor-sharp rock, unpredictable gravitational conditions, unexpected eruptions, things like that.
Oscar: Okay, so scariest environment imaginable. Thanks. That's all you gotta say, "scariest environment imaginable."
You are not in Kansas any more... you are on Pandora, ladies and gentlemen. Respect that fact every second of every day. If there is a Hell, you may want to go there for some R&R after a tour on Pandora. Out there, beyond that fence, every living thing that crawls, flies, or squats in the mud wants to kill you and eat your eyeballs for jujubes. We have an indigenous population of humanoids here called the Na'vi. They're fond of arrows dipped in a neurotoxin that will stop your heart in one minute. As head of security, it's my job to keep you alive. I will not succeed... not with all of you. If you wish to survive, you need to cultivate a strong mental attitude. You've got to follow the rules - Pandora rules.
— Colonel Miles Quaritch, Avatar
I said I would not harm them and I shall not. But Arrakis is Arrakis and the desert takes the weak.
— Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, Dune (2021)
One does not simply walk into Mordor. Its black gates are guarded by more than just orcs. There is evil there that does not sleep and a great eye that is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire and ash and dust. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume. Not with ten thousand men could you do this. It is folly.
"This is Eric Royce talking. Of the 19 men and women who have set foot upon the planet Mars, six will return. There's no longer a question of murder but of an alien, an elemental life force, a planet so cruel, so hostile, that Man may find it necessary to bypass it in his endeavor to explore and understand the universe. Another name for Mars is Death."
—Eric Royce, It! The Terror from Beyond Space
"You think that mosquitos, monkeys, and lions are bad? That is just the beginning. I've seen things you've only seen in your nightmares. Things you can't even imagine. Things you can't even see. There are things that hunt you in the night. Then something screams. Then you hear them eating, and you hope to God that you're not dessert. Afraid? You don't even know what afraid is. You would not last five minutes without me."
— Alan Parrish, Jumanji
"It is an ugly planet! A bug planet! A planet hostile to life as we know it!"
"This is the gulag Rura Penthe. There is no stockade, no guard tower, no electronic frontier. Only a magnetic shield prevents beaming. Punishment means exile from prison to the surface. On the surface, nothing can survive. ...Work well and you will be treated well. Work badly and you will die."
— Klingon Commandant, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Literature
"God created Arrakis to train the faithful."
— Fremen proverb, Dune
"And oh, what a terrible country it is! Nothing but thick jungles infested by the most dangerous beasts in the world - hornswogglers and snozzwangers and those terrible wicked whangdoodles. A whangdoodle would eat ten Oompa-Loompas for breakfast and come galloping back for a second helping. When I went out there, I found the little Oompa-Loompas living in tree houses. They had to live in tree houses to escape from the whangdoodles and the hornswogglers and the snozzwangers. And they were living on green caterpillars, and the caterpillars tasted revolting, and the Oompa-Loompas spent every moment of their days climbing through the treetops looking for other things to mash up with the caterpillars to make them taste better - red beetles, for instance, and eucalyptus leaves, and the bark of the bong-bong tree, all of them beastly, but not quite so beastly as the caterpillars. Poor little Oompa-Loompas!"
— Willy Wonka describing Loompaland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
"They got Hood-damned demon farmers! Sowing seeds, yanking teats, spinnin' wool - and chopping strangers to pieces! Gesler, old friend, I hate this place, you hear me? Hate it!"
— Stormy, Malazan Book of the Fallen
"Procedure programs for visiting Gamorr consist of a single line: DO NOT VISIT GAMORR."
— C-3PO, Star Wars: Children of the Jedi
"Hunters.
Oh, y'all believe me now? Yep, those are the hunters I told you about. The ones I - me, your barkeep - personally beat the fuck to death with my own bare hands. And the stupid bastards made the mistake of raiding a hockey game? This, boys and girls, is going to be fucking funny.
See, they have this planetary classification system for temperate worlds like ours. Category One is, like, the Garden of Eden. You could drop any species in the galaxy down there completely buck bare and they’d be happy as Larry for the rest of their lives. Most planets are like, a Four to Six or so. You don't want to get caught in the rain and you'll need to work for your food, but generally it's pretty easy living on those worlds.
Anything above Class Ten is considered a deathworld. Deathworlds have things like high gravity, poisonous plants and critters, lots of carnivores, nasty little microorganisms, natural disasters like earthquakes or volcanoes, acid rain, high background radiation, stuff like that. Like I said, a deathworld is everything Class Ten or above, and anything that evolves there is supposed to be really goddamn dangerous.
Earth is a Class Twelve."
Oh, y'all believe me now? Yep, those are the hunters I told you about. The ones I - me, your barkeep - personally beat the fuck to death with my own bare hands. And the stupid bastards made the mistake of raiding a hockey game? This, boys and girls, is going to be fucking funny.
See, they have this planetary classification system for temperate worlds like ours. Category One is, like, the Garden of Eden. You could drop any species in the galaxy down there completely buck bare and they’d be happy as Larry for the rest of their lives. Most planets are like, a Four to Six or so. You don't want to get caught in the rain and you'll need to work for your food, but generally it's pretty easy living on those worlds.
Anything above Class Ten is considered a deathworld. Deathworlds have things like high gravity, poisonous plants and critters, lots of carnivores, nasty little microorganisms, natural disasters like earthquakes or volcanoes, acid rain, high background radiation, stuff like that. Like I said, a deathworld is everything Class Ten or above, and anything that evolves there is supposed to be really goddamn dangerous.
Earth is a Class Twelve."
Hoth is far from a soft assignment, though. Daylight temperatures average only -32C even in the temperate zone near the planetary equator. At night, temperatures can plunge another twenty to thirty degrees, made worse by high-velocity winds tearing across the tundra. Few life-forms can survive in this environment, and those that do survive are not... pleasant.
—Major Kenn Monnon, The Illustrated Star Wars Universe
EIDOLON: planet in orbit around Epsilon Eridani. An Earth-like garden planet teeming with native life, none sentient and most either poisonous or hostile. The colony there has the highest mortality rate of any settled planet.
"Make no mistake, Io is one of the worst places in the solar system. Tectonically unstable and radioactive as hell. Easy to see why they hid here, but do not underestimate the peril that just being on this shit moon carries."
— Sergeant Bobbie Draper, Caliban's War
"Apocalyptic explosions, dead reactors, terrorists, mass murder, death-slugs, and now a blindness plague. This is a terrible planet. We should not have come here."
— James Holden, Cibola Burn
Live-Action TV
Archer: Twenty-eight below!?
Shran: Lucky for you, it's the middle of summer!
Shran: Lucky for you, it's the middle of summer!
— On Andoria, Star Trek: Enterprise ("The Aenar")
Your world has food webs. Mine does not. Our species map is binary; one is either predator or prey.
—Lt. Saru discussing Kaminar, Star Trek: Discovery ("The Vulcan Hello")
"The Ordovician then, isn't exactly a picnic. Anywhere the air gives you a headache, and you can't go swimming without a chainmail suit probably isn't going to take off as a holiday destination."
— The Narrarator, Sea Monstersnote
Roleplay
Albert: So, what's your home like?
Ashes: Well Black Marsh isn't exactly the most welcoming place for humans, I guess...
Albert: (sips his drink) Why's that?
Ashes: Well, between the diseases, the flesh-eating flies, the hostile fauna, and the landscape clearly not friendly for non-amphibious folk, well...
Albert: Sounds like home. Minus the landscape.
Ashes: Well Black Marsh isn't exactly the most welcoming place for humans, I guess...
Albert: (sips his drink) Why's that?
Ashes: Well, between the diseases, the flesh-eating flies, the hostile fauna, and the landscape clearly not friendly for non-amphibious folk, well...
Albert: Sounds like home. Minus the landscape.
Tabletop Games
Life runs rampant on Venus, contaminating all imagined boundaries of season, species or ecosystem. The dominant landscape here is a cross between a rainforest, a greenhouse, and a dinosaur movie dangerous enough to consume Jurassic Park in one rapacious feast. Nicknamed "Bygone Venus," this realm of Venusian reality has infected and spread across the planet's Umbrascape. It's lifeforms have become virulent. Nature can be beautiful, but when you can't identify the poisonous animal that just injected you with a paralytic poison, it can get nasty, too. The Venusian Umbrascape is more than a greenhouse - it's a green hell.
Mold spores and mildew creep into the unprotected equipment of Venusian visitors. Unprepared wanderers have drowned or gone mad from rainstorms that seem to (and perhaps do) last for eternity. For Void Engineers, Technocrat technology can mean the difference between life and death.
—Mage: The Ascension - Infinite Tapestry
Not once in the history of Grixis has anyone died of old age.
—Magic: The Gathering, Flavor Text on the creature card Infectious Horror
Video Games
The krogan evolved in a hostile and vicious environment. Until the invention of gunpowder weapons, "eaten by predators" was still the number one cause of krogan fatalities. Afterwards, it was "death by gunshot".
TRAVEL ADVISORY: The ecology of Tuchanka is deadly. Nearly every native species engages in some predatory behavior; even the remaining vegetation is carnivorous. Travel beyond guarded areas is strongly discouraged.
This planet is one giant death trap.
— Liara T'Soni's succinct commentary on Tuchanka, Mass Effect 3
Don't tell me. Man eating plants? Giant moths that fire lasers out of their butts? Trees that have big angry faces on them and use their branches to attack poor defenseless travelers like that one part in Snow White?
You're feeling short of breath. The atmosphere is oxidising your blood, turning it to metal. In my realm, that which does not make you stronger... kills you.
— Theodore Wicker, The Secret World
The Mind Worms are the natural defenses of the living Planet - the white blood cells, if you will. In a world in which unassimilated thought represents danger, the Mind Worm seeks out concentrations of sentient mental energy and destroys them, ruthlessly and efficiently.
— Commissioner Pravin Lal - "Mind Worm, Mind Worm," Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Char. If hell ever existed, this is it. Oceans of fire, tectonic storms, and an atmosphere that will burn a man alive.
— General Warfield, Starcraft II
On Felucia, the Seps dug their metal heels into the muck of that alien hellhole and dared the Republic to come in after them. So we did, only to be met with month after month of flesh-eating diseases, shrieking nocturnal predators and other sights that haunt me to this day.
— Anonymous 501st clone trooper, Star Wars: Battlefront II
Detecting multiple leviathan class lifeforms in the region. Are you certain whatever you're doing is worth it?
— Upon entering the Dunes biome, Subnautica
Welcome to Venus! It'll kill ya.
—Eudico, Warframe
The Wasteland holds many gifts, but her most common one is a sudden and painful death.
—Chumbucket, Mad Max (2015)
People say Skyrim is one of the most dangerous places in Tamriel. I think they're wrong... it's magnificent, and I'm proud to call it home.
Relax! On Pandora, it's actually super-weird if something's not exploding!
—Claptrap, Borderlands 3
Pandora's a strange and harsh place. Sometimes, I get the feeling the whole planet is tryin' to shake us off like a tick-infested skag.
—Typhon DeLeon, Borderlands 3
Though it is scarcely an appealing home, there is no better prospect within our solar system for eventual colonization than our crimson neighbor, Mars. It lacks a breathable atmosphere, the radiation risk from both galactic cosmic rays and solar energetic particles is extreme, the soil is flooded with toxins, and the low gravity will weaken both bones and muscles and cause cardiovascular problems. Then there is the cold, and the minimal supply of water... And with travel each way also taking months, at least until such time as we have made profound progress in spaceflight technology, only the bravest and hardiest pioneers would dare take this chance. Yet if humanity is ever to explore the stars, or settle on further-out planets, or to trace our alien visitors to their own homeworld, there is simply no choice other than Mars.
— Mission to Mars technology blurb, Terra Invicta
Web Animation
Vulkan: Hohohohohoho! This planet humbles me to no bounds! Tank-sized scorpipedes, platoon-eating plants, and trench foot for the power-armoured!
Corvus Corax: WHY DO PEOPLE LIIIVE HEEEEERE?!
Corvus Corax: WHY DO PEOPLE LIIIVE HEEEEERE?!
— If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device, "Bro Trip 40,000: Catachan Capers"
Webcomics
It's not just the culture and technology. It's the whole Terran ecology. Horses! Cows! Ducks! And I understand there are creatures from Earth that are even more terrifying.
— Sam Starfall, Freefall
Ramden: Down there they have anti-tornado warnings.
Quine: Anti-tornadoes?
Ramden: Areas where there isn't currently a tornado.
Quine: Anti-tornadoes?
Ramden: Areas where there isn't currently a tornado.
— Starslip
Astronomer: We've discovered the most Earth-like exoplanet yet!
Audience: Yay!!
Astronomer: Well, it's in the habitable zone. Habitable-ish. "Habitable". The survivable zone. It's tidally-locked. And blasted with stellar flares. And probably meteors. And bathed in acid. (Beat) But we've detected water vapor! In between all the swinging blades.
Audience: I see.
Astronomer: We're hoping to find bio-signatures in the form of screaming.
Audience: Yay!!
Astronomer: Well, it's in the habitable zone. Habitable-ish. "Habitable". The survivable zone. It's tidally-locked. And blasted with stellar flares. And probably meteors. And bathed in acid. (Beat) But we've detected water vapor! In between all the swinging blades.
Audience: I see.
Astronomer: We're hoping to find bio-signatures in the form of screaming.
— "Earth-Like Exoplanet", xkcd
", xkcd Web Original
Life is war.
There is no safe place. [...] All the world is a vicious, hateful realm of violence and savagery and it wants to hurt you and destroy everyone you love for your tears and despair are as water to its roots.
To surrender to it, to accept any form of compliance or the slightest shred of a moment of weakness, is defeat. This defeat is death. Death a thousand times, ten billion times fold, and the worst of it will be your own certain knowledge that you lost.
There is no safe place. [...] All the world is a vicious, hateful realm of violence and savagery and it wants to hurt you and destroy everyone you love for your tears and despair are as water to its roots.
To surrender to it, to accept any form of compliance or the slightest shred of a moment of weakness, is defeat. This defeat is death. Death a thousand times, ten billion times fold, and the worst of it will be your own certain knowledge that you lost.
— Untitled drabble by hvkryter
by hvkryterGrixis has no morality, no spigot of life pouring out. Everything that's in the world has earned its spot. There's no greater environment anywhere to test one's mettle than Grixis. If you can survive there, there's nothing left in The Multiverse that should frighten you.
— Black to Mark Rosewater, head designer for Magic: The Gathering, Looking Out For Number One (also recreated here in video form)
(also recreated here in video form) Western Animation
"You know, no matter how long I'm in this world, I'll never get used to the piles of bones just lying around."
— Anne Boonchuy, Amphibia
Real Life
It's hard to tell now. The planet may have once been green, or even blue, but now it’s all browns and grays and blacks. If any liquid water—or even water vapor—once existed there, it’s long gone, evaporated a billion years before. Without an atmosphere there can be no liquid water.
[...] The star hangs over the landscape eating up a full 30 degrees of sky, as big as a dinner plate held at arm's length. The glowering eye of the star bears down on the planet's surface, which begins to heat up with the day. By midafternoon, the temperature is above the melting point of rock, and the surface of the dead planet begins to glow a soft red and liquefy once again. Mountains continue their slump, and continental shelves flow slowly, blurring into the dry ocean basins.
Finally, after hours of unleashing its crippling heat, the star sets, though its distended red glow lingers for hours. The rock begins to cool a bit, and by midnight is starting to resolidify. As the sky finally turns black, low wisps of rock vapor are illuminated from below by the still-molten lava shining through cracks in the ragged surface.
[...] It's a shame. The planet's past is a rich one indeed, in its full and lively role as the third planet from the Sun. But the Sun has since started its long descent into death, and the past of Planet Earth will be lost forever.
[...] The star hangs over the landscape eating up a full 30 degrees of sky, as big as a dinner plate held at arm's length. The glowering eye of the star bears down on the planet's surface, which begins to heat up with the day. By midafternoon, the temperature is above the melting point of rock, and the surface of the dead planet begins to glow a soft red and liquefy once again. Mountains continue their slump, and continental shelves flow slowly, blurring into the dry ocean basins.
Finally, after hours of unleashing its crippling heat, the star sets, though its distended red glow lingers for hours. The rock begins to cool a bit, and by midnight is starting to resolidify. As the sky finally turns black, low wisps of rock vapor are illuminated from below by the still-molten lava shining through cracks in the ragged surface.
[...] It's a shame. The planet's past is a rich one indeed, in its full and lively role as the third planet from the Sun. But the Sun has since started its long descent into death, and the past of Planet Earth will be lost forever.
Physics calculations give us an idea of what flight [on Venus] would be like. The upshot is: Your plane would fly pretty well, except it would be on fire the whole time, and then it would stop flying, and then stop being a plane.
The atmosphere on Venus is over 60 times denser than Earth's, which is thick enough that a Cessna moving at running speed would rise into the air. Unfortunately, the air it's rising into is hot enough to melt lead. The paint would start melting off in seconds, the plane's components would fail rapidly, and the plane would glide gently into the ground as it came apart under the heat stress.
A much better bet would be to fly above the clouds. While Venus's surface is awful, its upper atmosphere is surprisingly Earthlike. 55 kilometers up, a human could survive with an oxygen mask and a protective wetsuit; the air is room temperature and the pressure is similar to that on Earth mountains. You need the wetsuit, though, to protect you from the sulfuric acid. (I'm not selling this well, am I?)
The acid's no fun, but it turns out the area right above the clouds is a great environment for an airplane, as long as it has no exposed metal to be corroded away by the sulfuric acid. And is capable of flight in constant Category-5-hurricane-level winds, which are another thing I forgot to mention earlier.
Venus is a terrible place.
