God Help Us All: MIT Study Says Plants Can "Feel Pain" and "Communicate"
Engineers at MIT have created a new system to monitor plants for signs of distress or physical damage.
The project, led by chemical engineering professor Michael Strano, involves injecting microscopic nanotubes directly into plant cells to monitor for hydrogen peroxide, which many plants release after experiencing distress or damage.
When they detect hydrogen peroxide, the nanotubes emit a fluorescent signal that can be detected by infrared cameras connected to a simple $35 Raspberry Pi-based computer system.
'Plants have a very sophisticated form of internal communication, which we can now observe for the first time,' Strano told MIT News.
'That means that in real-time, we can see a living plant’s response, communicating the specific type of stress that it’s experiencing.'
Well we're all fucked. Once this study is 'out there', there are only two (2) ways this can end for us, and both are terrifying:
1. Normal, rational people will now have to deal with a bunch of raging lib SJW freaks shoving this down our throats non-stop. A group called "PETP" (people for the ethical treatment of plants) will pop up with horrifying videos on social media showing farmers in Virginia slaughtering tobacco leaves in barns or whatever.
Newflash assholes, just like I don't care if a baby cow is caged up so it's nice and juicy and succulent when I eat it, I don't care that tobacco leaves are harvested and canned so I can shove them in my gums either. Besides, if I didn't eat that cow or chew that leaf they would have both died in vain. Just lived to die opposed to living, dying and winding up being consumed for my pleasure.
Oh, and #GreenLivesMatter will undoubtedly become a thing and one won't be able to even consume a side salad at a goddamn wedding without being chastised by these lunatics. Even cattle, horses and other herbivores will be judged for their dietary habits.
I get the willies just thinking of this sort of existence. Just an awful fate, but it doesn't hold a candle to what's next:
2. The plants get so pissed off at us for eating them for as long as humans and plants have existed that they evolve and eventually develop the ability to protect themselves from humans/herbivores by emitting airborne toxins that cause us to take part in mass suicides. It will be EXACTLY like the movie The Happening:
Was The Happening arguably the worst piece of shit movie ever to hit the big screen? Yes, yes it was. Mark Wahlberg embarrassed himself, Boston and the United States of America with that performance. But if plants actually can detect pain and communicate, then maybe M Night Shamalamalama was onto something. Maybe it was a warning shot. Maybe our biggest threat isn't Kim Jong Un or Iran, maybe it's the tomato garden your father so meticulously takes care of in the summer. Maybe it's the sapling planted on your block by the elementary school on your street.
Really makes you think
Either way, both outcomes take part in a world that I do NOT want to live in. Ship me off to fucking Mars or something.