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There are quite a few sci-fi stories and short stories built on a similar concept. One of my favorites is an alien ship lands on a random farm in the US and (leaving a lot of details out, read the book!) it comes to light that the aliens normally live at insanely hot temperatures like 900F (480C) and consider Earth an "Ice World" (that's also the name of the book). Anyway, one of the catches in the book is that farmer figures out the alien wants to trade (again skipping a lot of details) but all he has on him that he can give up is a cigarette (the farmer doesn't know it's super hot inside the ship). He does the trade and we later find out that most of the galaxy is INSANELY vulnerable to being 100% completely utterly addicted to nicotine. When the alien took in the cigarette it instantly vaporized and sent the nicotine into the air and they breathed it and became instantly addicted worse than any opiod addiction IRL.
You didn’t mention the book name, so how are we to read it?
The 'Death Breathers' thing is a primary plot point /story device / world mechanic of the ludicrous, over the top, MARS ATTACKS! from 1996.
Just any case anyone hasn't seen it and wants to avoid spoilers, don't open this
Basically, it barely makes any actual sense, and... thats part of the point, to be a parody of how stupid 50s schlock alien movies were...
The Martians only breathe Nitrogen, and seem to asphyxiate if their helmets and pressure suits are removed or comprimised.
This makes no fucking sense whatsoever for multiple reasons:
Nitrogen is much, much less chemically reactive than Oxygen, and it seems quite unlikely that any kind of Nitrogen based metabolism could evolve basically anywhere, in any organic being, because of this...
Earth's atmosphere is like... ~70% Nitrogen.
Do... they... need literally 100% Nitrogen?
It... doesn't seem like the oxygen in the atmosphere is like... causing them to internally combust/melt the way say mustard gas, chlorine gas, makes a human melt from the inside out, by nature of being way way way more chemically reactive than oxygen.
What they do is act like ... they're asphyxiating, they gasp for air, not cough and vomit, eyes watering and burning/melting the way mustard gas fucks up people.
Also, at one point, a ludicrously disguised as a human, martian... is able to go undercover, with no protective pressure suit... because they have... chewing gum, that... releases nitrogen.
Again, if oxygen had a similar effect on them as chlorine gas has on us... this disguised martian should... still be basically burning/melting from being exposed to all the oxygen, and thats overlooking the ludicrousness of... nitrogen releasing chewing gum
That's the exact theme of many stories on r/HFY
Unrelated but the bottom navbar in that screenshot makes me long for the Alien Blue days of Reddit. I also just miss that iOS design (along with the OS X Mavericks design)
Dude, I just had to use an old Mac with OS10.11 on it (I know not that old) to recover a laptop in target disk mode.
It still has the widgets!
I miss the widgets.