Project: One Tough Bastard.

[camwyn]

GOAL: The Ultimate Survivable Human.

Phase 1: Using only DNA from people currently alive, or with known, verifiably preserved body samples in existence, build the most survivable human possible. Sources must have demonstrated a genuinely outstanding, verified act of physical survival and/or stamina that did not leave them genetically altered (radiation survivors are going to have a hard time making the cut). The use/assistance of medical technology is permissible.

EXAMPLES: Viktor Yuschenko, survivor of world's second highest recorded dose of dioxin. (No name currently available for survivor of world's highest dose, a woman poisoned in 1997 in Vienna, but she's on the list too.) Jeanna Giese, first human being to survive rabies without the use of vaccine. Any one of the Kenyan prostitute cohort who exhibit resistance/immunity to HIV. Professor Stephen Hawking, diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 1963, still alive. Jackie Chan, who by all rights ought to be dead of repeated breaks, tears, rips, and strains but instead continues an action-and-stunt-based career. The unnamed man in Bulgaria who recently survived a blood alcohol level of 0.914 percent. Lance Armstrong. Martin Markwell, a British surfer who was caught unawares by the Boxing Day tsunami and was forced to ride the wave to shore; while he was not physically harmed, the sheer level of luck demonstrated by Mr. Markwell's act cannot be seen as anything but a survival trait.

Further suggestions happily being taken. Please present documented examples not debunked by snopes.com, James Randi, or similar.

Phase 2: Raise the resultant child in a fashion designed to bring about maximum long-term survivability through inner strength, resiliency, ethics, morals, and independence. 'Survival of the fittest' ideologies not welcome on the grounds that the vast majority are little more than justification of 'me first, everyone else gets the pieces' and rarely produce genuine long-term viability in those who bear them or their successors. The child's home should be one that establishes both a physically and a mentally healthy foundation for it to draw upon, while at the same time inculcating them to dangers, hazards, and the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to- but not excessively so. Long-term stress is bad for body and psyche alike and too likely to render the child unviable as an adult. For preference, the child's moral and philosophical exemplars should be drawn from the ranks of human beings who have endured terrific trauma / horror / upheaval and remained both sane and decent. Particular emphasis to be given to those who went through Hell and came out still themselves, rather than walking masses of mental/emotional scar tissue.

Suggested examples to include in the curriculum: Terry Anderson, Dietrich Bonhoffer, Elie Wiesel, his Holiness Tenzin Gyatso (the current Dalai Lama), Sojourner Truth.

Further suggestions happily being taken. As the curriculum is not being limited to those who wrote about themselves, feel free to point in the direction of others you consider appropriate, giving a link to some example or a title of some work of theirs not available on the Net.

ETA: Phase 2 is to include: a full-spectrum set of immunizations (preferably delivered one at a time where possible, and confirmed with blood titers afterwards- I was vaccinated against measles THREE BLOODY TIMES because #1 and #2 could not be demonstrated to have worked). Also, the child is to be raised in the presence of: dirt, legumes, a wide variety of foods, and at least two fur-bearing pets. Feather and scale exposure also a good idea. I am NOT going to have the OTB felled at age eleven due to peanut allergy and/or weird dander problems.

Comments

[mattador.livejournal.com]

This is an excellent idea.

[camwyn]

Thank you.

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

You mentioned Randi! I kiss you! =))

How about Nikola Tesla? He was so brilliant it was scary, survived repeated bouts of cholera as a child, needed almost no sleep, and according to his memoirs, once survived for several hours beneath a floating and moored dock by breathing the inch-or-so of air trapped beneath the dock. His physical survival record is so-so, though he was in awfully good health for someone as anorexic as he was, but his intelligence and ability to think his way out of a jam was phenomenal.

[camwyn]

If there's a chunk of him floating around somewhere, I'll take it. He's certainly a better candidate than the other Eastern European who wound up on the wrong side of the ice (Rasputin's definitely one tough bastard but he was so many chips short of a full motherboard...)

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

His ashes are entombed in a sphere in the Tesla Museum in Belgrade. If any of the proteins haven't denatured...

[camwyn]

Jackpot!

[midnightlurker.livejournal.com]

Tesla wasn't exactly the sanest guy on the block himself--he was riddled with neuroses and phobias. If you're going to include him you might as well toss Grigory Yefimovich into the pot. (Difficult at best, though, since Rasputin's corpse was burned by an angry mob two years after he died. I doubt anyone thought to keep samples.)

[subtle-guns.livejournal.com]

And here I thought I was the Ultimate Survivable Human.

I mean, WHAT are the odds I'm still alive?

[bastard-john.livejournal.com]

People who've got writers scripting their lives don't count, Castle. That's a fuckin' Hardy-Weinberg Equation violation if I ever saw one.

[subtle-guns.livejournal.com]

Spellcheck, jealousy doesn't become you.

You've beaten the odds into a bloody pulp more than a few times yourself.

Although the thought of you as the Ultimate Human puts me right off my tofu rancheros.

[bastard-john.livejournal.com]

There's nothin' jealous about it. Hardy-Weinberg says it doesn't count as evolution, no matter how much of a change in relative frequency of genotype or phenotype takes place, if there's artificially selected mating within the population. Having a script's as close as makes no nevermind.

And I don't think they'd want my genes in there. Considering.

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

I dunno. The insane resistance of your liver alone might be worth further research.

ClassicDrogn

[(Anonymous)]

Damn, pity I don't think there's a viable sample of Earnst Udet - the highest scoring WWI fighter ace to survive the war. He was made general of the Luftwaffe in the beginning of WWII, but didn't win enough for Der Fuhrer and met the fate of many a less than successful Dark General. Reflexes and luck in spades during his active flightline career, though.

Maybe we could get Jet Li as well as Jackie Chan? Just that combination alone is terrifying.

- CD

Re: ClassicDrogn

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

Jet's a piker. Jackie fell 60+ feet and landed on his head!

[duane-kc.livejournal.com]

Um, on the subject of breeding for luck...

One word: DON'T!.

CF Larry Niven's Ringworld series.

[little-birdy.livejournal.com]

Keith Richards XD

[camwyn]

Yes, one would think he would be dead by now... mind you if we're using anything from either him or the Bulgarian man, we're going to need to find some serious teetotalers to compensate. Tendencies towards addictive behaviour run counter to survival.

[little-birdy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, except for in him. 's weird, no? I think he must be preserved inside from all the stuff he's done..

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

Keith's actually been dead for about 10 years. No one's told him yet.

[little-birdy.livejournal.com]

XD Isn't that the truth.

[zed42.livejournal.com]

audey murphy? won several congressional medals of honor in ww2 and lived to make a movie about it...

[camwyn]

Oooh! Yes, I remember his story. He was a pretty impressive fellow. If there's a viable sample about he might not be a bad choice, and if there's not, well, he did write memoirs, so that's useful too.

[zed42.livejournal.com]

"Audie Murphy is buried in Arlington National Cemetery" ... i'm sure that some genetic material has survived...

actually, the bio also says: Murphy, who once said that he could only sleep with a loaded pistol under his pillow, was haunted by nightmares of his wartime experiences throughout his adult life.

so i'm not sure he'd be suitable for this endeavour...

[camwyn]

Mm. Maybe Eddie Rickenbacker, considering the bit with the life raft, assuming there's anything left.

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

Well, that's life experiences, not base genetic material. I think that sort of thing would be easily rectified with proper trauma counseling.

[camwyn]

Possibly. Depends on whether Mr. Murphy had a genetic predisposition towards depression or whether it was merely trauma, as you say. If we can verify that it's the latter, he makes the cut well ahead of Eddie Rickenbacker.

At which point we go run the gen-predisposition test on the remains of that park ranger who survived seven lightning strikes before killing himself rather than putting up with being Zeus's whipping boy one moment longer.

[(Anonymous)]

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<a href="http://info.med.yale.edu/external/pubs/ym_au02/findings.html"The family"</a> that's basically from the movie Unbreakable - they've got a confirmed mutation that gives them bones much denser than normal. It's interesting that in a different article I've seen, they tracked all the descendents in the US to one 17th century Scottish sea captain.

RMH

[almeda.livejournal.com]

If you can't get the Kenyan girls, a personal friend of my mother's is another (American, male) example of innate HIV immunity.

I don't have to mention how much it sucks to watch every single member of your 1970s community get sick and die in front of your eyes from something that doesn't affect you ...