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This question is heavily inspired by Netflix series Another Life

We build another worlds to be explored. Mostly by humans. However, reckless behavior of space crew of ship Salvare made me realize, how hard landing on other planet can actually be.

Setup: May there be another planet in habitable zone of its star. It has fauna and flora and even atmosphere very similar to Earth. However, the similarity ends there.

You get a branch under your skin? It will poison you. What we know as Ebola is "common flu" on that planet and every other virus there is even deadlier to the humans. Not even speaking about bacteria.

And even if we do not go to that extreme, one is clear: Most things on realistically alien planet will try to kill you, because that's what evolution is essentially about.

(How) can we realistically land on an alien planet and survive there, knowing that every single living thing there will evolutionarily consider you as a threat and treat you accordingly?

Ash
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Pavel Janicek
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    Possible duplicate of What would be the human physiological reaction to an alien biosphere? – Ash Aug 07 '19 at 17:13
  • While really related, I do not think it is duplicate. I know there would be reaction to the biosphere. I want to know, how to realistically overcome it, if its even possible – Pavel Janicek Aug 07 '19 at 17:15
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    I feel like this is off-topic, or at least too broad under the rules. Alien planets may be as hazardous as you're assuming, they may not. A more appropriate question might be : given a specific set of hazards, how would humans overcome them? Your question keeps the hazards open-ended, which basically makes an reasonable answer impossible. Voting to close pending edits to tighten up the question. – Morris The Cat Aug 07 '19 at 17:16
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    IMHO Another Life is an awful piece of world building. FTL travel and communication and no on ship discipline or ground control oversight? People can talk to their loved ones in real time faster than light and don't talk to their superiors? Disregarding AL without FTL (which is impossible at the moment) getting there is the hardest part as it would take thousands of years if not tens of thousands of years. Landing, we seem to have much more experience with that. – kleer001 Aug 07 '19 at 17:21
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    Since we don't really have a lot of life-filled planets to study, why are you assuming that other planets would be more hostile to human life than Earth is? I'm sure alien planets are just as likely to be filled with completely incompatible diseases as they are to be filled with zoonotic ones. – Giter Aug 07 '19 at 17:26
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    "I know there would be reaction to the biosphere." No you're assuming that for this particular scenario, which may or may not be valid, but if you are making that particular assumption then you've already answered your own question, you simply can't interact with that hostile a biosphere period. – Ash Aug 07 '19 at 17:29
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    '(How) can we realistically land on an alien planet and survive there, knowing that every single living thing there will evolutionarily consider you as a threat and treat you accordingly?' - This is wrong. Evolutionarily, they won't consider you a threat because you didn't evolve on their planet, unless there's a similar species to humans. – Halfthawed Aug 07 '19 at 17:40
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    Why would life on another planet "evolutionarily consider" me anything? It has had no contact with Earth life, and so no chance to evolve any relationship. Also, why would alien life be more hostile than, say, the life on Earth? The number of things on Earth that can poison me, crush me, bite me, eat me, drink my blood, brood eggs in me, etc., is huge. – puppetsock Aug 07 '19 at 17:41
  • Sorry, I'm not familiar with "Another Life". Can you elaborate on "We build another worlds to be explored. Mostly by humans." - because this seems to have critical importance for alien planet's biosphere. – Alexander Aug 07 '19 at 18:03
  • @PavelJanicek if you believe your question is different to the one it has been marked a duplicate of, you should edit it (or rewrite it) to make it clear exactly how it differs, and perhaps consider some of the comments, too. It can then be nominated for reopening. – Starfish Prime Aug 07 '19 at 19:45
  • For every living thing to consider us off-planet humans as an "evolutionary" threat, then we would have had to have evolved there with them in the first place until we somehow became a threat to every living thing there. Otherwise, in terms of evolution, it's going to take a long time for some of the life forms to respond to our presence as if we are a threat. If we are truly alien to that planet, upon arrival some will react as predator, some as prey, some a mixture of both, and the greatest majority as either only observers or no interaction at all. If our Earth can be an example at least. – N2ition Aug 08 '19 at 01:20
  • Humans have landed on the Moon, with an environment that is almost instantly deadly to them, and lived there for days before leaving. – M. A. Golding Aug 08 '19 at 15:39

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People can survive in hostile environments. In Australia, plenty of things can kill or poison you, including koalas and some plants. In Africa, plenty of western explorers died from yellow fever, but they pushed on. With proper discipline and scientific methods, it is a simple matter of identifying the hazards, finding ways to protect against them, and then deciding if costs justify the benefits.

Moreover, alien does not automatically mean poisonous. Human body has ways to protect itself again many substances. A proper ecosystem has large variety so some things in it will be safe for humans.

Bald Bear
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    +1 for Australia as a comparison model for alien environments where everything wants to kill you. – The Square-Cube Law Aug 07 '19 at 17:38
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    The problem with this answer is that the value of a human life is much more expendable on Earth where there are a lot of replacements hanging around (all of them, actually) however, on an alien planet you have fewer people to take over if you die exploring. – Muuski Aug 07 '19 at 17:44
  • I should give a -1 for mentioning Australia even though it is a good point of comparison in this case but actually you're getting it for "A proper ecosystem has large variety so some things in it will be safe for humans." just no, if the entire ecosystem has evolved from something similar to a diatom rather than our soft bodied bacterial ancestors then the micro silica in all it's organisms will kill everyone and that's a super mild example of an ecosystem that will be universally lethal. – Ash Aug 07 '19 at 17:46
  • @Muuski Early colonization (including that of Australia) has same problem of many dangers to colonists. But they still came, either to gain the promised riches, or b/c their life in home country was even worse – Bald Bear Aug 07 '19 at 19:30
  • @baldbear Early Australians didn't return home because they were convicts and would have been hanged if they did. – DrMcCleod Aug 07 '19 at 20:07
  • @Bald Bear Even if they had a choice to return home as DrMcCleod pointed out they didn't. Any dying colonists would have replacements at most a year behind them, along with supplies. An interplanetary colonist does not have the same luxury. – Muuski Aug 08 '19 at 15:57