Annihilation 's "Shimmer" Genetic Mutations Explained

the faults in our genes is not so much a concept but reality but frankly it's how you look at it that determines if it's an actual fault instead of a design plan sort of like how in games bugs become part of the gaming experience genetic issues are just a fact of life if you don't believe that think to yourself if everything was Immortal and nothing changed then how could life adapt how could things evolve out of their current state into potentially something better than they once were or anything new to come about it requires the destruction of the previous version which by perspective of that previous iteration would be pretty terrible due to the genetic instability that exists in varying degrees of specifically humans and really everything else in this planet changes take place over millions of years as a species will adapt to its environment to become better or in some cases worse suited to its environments with the latter meaning their end quickly as a result but that's what we are used to seeing on this planet things slowly change over time but what happens when something begins messing with the genetic coding of creatures on a more individual basis how would we react to genetic profiles begin to be blended with what's around it due to an outside influence apart from its native environment if you answered in abject Terror then you are correct as a meteorite touches down hitting a lighthouse and it's a meteorite because it has the right stuff to make it through the atmosphere and hit the ground meteors burn up in the atmosphere and meteoroids are still in space a shimmering in that area around the lighthouse would begin as it slowly spread outwards from there it would become apparent something was very wrong or right depending on who you ask about this material the light was twisted and refracted in ways radio signals would be scrambled and people who were in Lost months of their lives concerning time and began changing the animals that were trapped within became complete monsters but what exactly is happening to these plants and animals that were exposed to the Shimmer well let's find out in today's episode but before getting there first I want to thank you guys as always for watching and subscribing it was like a complete crawl from 600k to 700k and I was actually getting concerned that people were like not enjoying the content as much but being up to 820k after just reaching 800k a couple of weeks ago I really do appreciate you guys watching and interacting with me as well as with these videos also I've started posting actual real life horror stories over at Roanoke Tales instead of just Creepypastas only so it's like things that I research and look up if anybody's interested in that still getting my footing on it so kind of bear with me but I'm always interested in feedback if you guys want to check it out after this it's a video over why so many people just get completely got in Lake Lanier in the great state of Georgia anyhow let's get to it so we kick off our story with a woman in a room as everyone is standing around her in bsl4 suits questioning her he wants to know what she ate they had rations for about two weeks but they were gone for over four months which she doesn't remember by her recollection she was only there for maybe a few days or possibly weeks but not that long but definitely not as long as he's suggesting he goes on to ask her what happened to most of her team but she still has no clue but confirms that one of them is in fact six feet under he asked her what does she know which apparently is not very much we didn't get the thing style meteorite hitting earth and crashing directly into a lighthouse as material begins to spread outward and now it's time for annihilation jumping over to a cell undergoing mitosis as Professor Lena talks about how one cell comes from another cell and all those cells came from the first cell I'm thinking we must be in biology 101 but here I remember college there being a lot more you know hungover freshmen in that class they are observing a tumor cell and we'll be discussing autophagic activity which is actually pretty fun no seriously it is it's also good for your body too but moving on as Lena walks out of class Dan comes over to talk to her he invites her over for a barbecue that he and his wife are having but she declines saying that she is painting the bedroom man what Saturday plans we get some Exposition about how it's been a year and it's not an insult to his memory but I gotta be honest here there's a living insult to his memory that we learned of later that's a huge bra moment anyhow she continues to decline this nerd's barbecue and walks off we now get the most anemic song in existence I know you got like I can't play it for you because this will get copyrighted new Oblivion but go watch this movie and just listen to this song so she hangs out in her house remembering her husband she goes on and then starts painting the bedroom and I really hope she's putting kills down otherwise that's going to take several coats but who's this downstairs oh my God it's her husband he just randomly shows up and it's not like a hallucination like I thought it was gonna be but she questions Kane downstairs like where he's been and what he's been doing and why he's been gone so long but he has no idea of why he's even there what he's even supposed to be doing Claire Kane has some form of memory loss or something else is up but again the dude has literally no idea what's happening so she just continues to ask him fruitlessly she then asks him how he got there which he says he was just outside the door and saw her and recognized her hmm think of the psych evaluation might be on the next uh chopping block list here but he then takes a sip of water and blood pulls into it and he says he doesn't feel well so now it's ambulance time as they're transporting him she's all over him which bugged the crap out of me after doing my third writers for EMT school first first off the paramedic or aumt is going to be sitting in that little chair behind him not next to him usually considering he's got some form of internal bleeding second he's not going to be just watching the patient just hanging out calling stuff in he would be pulling Lena away to you know like administer Aid and actively help the dying patient whether that be with air or drugs like bro what is even happening back there anyway so Lena takes over the job of being the actual EMT here just not very well because she's not trained in it the evidence then gets tailed by unmarked cars with lights and Sirens confused the ambulance pulls over really just gets run off the road as they take Kane and Lena Kane ain't looking so hot at this point and Lena gets a shot to the neck and now they're headed to area X waking up in a government facility room which is always a good feeling she goes and throws up because the medication used on her apparently gives you a hangover which sucks because all the pain none of the fun the psychologist walks in and begins questioning her as Elena begins questioning back she asks her when Kane got back home but Lena really has no information on any of this as he just got there the psychologist says Kane is here but he's extremely ill and Lena says that she can help him which is a pretty bold statement but hey give it a shot so they take her outside and show her the Shimmer which is what they are dealing with meeting back inside they don't know what it is a religious event an extraterrestrial event a higher Dimension all theories but little information it started about three years ago as the Shimmer spread out from there everyone and anything that they send in there does not come back they evacuated surrounding towns but in three months it'll be where they are now which it appears to be moving rather slow if it's taking three years for it to get this far so I'm thinking it's time to go to the moon but eventually it will reach other towns and cities and is going to completely Encompass the globe changing everything so they need to figure out what this thing is before that happens Kane is apparently the first to ever have come back and that caught their attention we then get a flashback to Lena and Kane hanging out talking about God and the genetic faults in our genes that make us grow old which two degrees correct but again seems like a feature more than a bug I don't think our brains and their current states could even handle being Immortal to be honest with you we could barely handle 70 years of information so they get frisky as one does which we now go back to the rooftop eating area a woman comes over to talk to Lena and invites her back to their table as they all share beers they eventually Spill the Beans to Lena that they're going into the Shimmer with the psychologist from earlier so we have a physicist law enforcement and I think EMT as well another scientist she doesn't really talk about what she does and we all know we are about to have the most Alpha Chad division of science going in as well the biologist and that's Lena look I don't make the rules I just enforce them now continue talking about what happens in there but really nobody has any clue so their next to be sent in to try to discover what it is as only military and men have been sent in so why not send a different archetype of person to see if they fare any better Lena then goes to see Kane and talk to his unconscious body which after she does she goes to doctor of interest to say that she wants in on the mission she questions Dr Ventress about why she's even going in there to which she responds she's been sending people in there and they don't return but she's also leaving something major out so there's only so long that she could do that before she needs to see what's in there as well I mean I totally get that but she's also going in there for her own motives because she has cancer so she doesn't really have that much time left anyways so Lena then joins the mission officially which the men from earlier in the room continue to question her which then she extrapolates on moving towards the Shimmer it do be shimmering looking like my driveway after a rainstorm when the Impala has been parked outside 350 is a hybrid you know she Burns much oil as she does gas leaks too thank God I'm getting that replaced as I type this LS3 modern muscle modern engine modernish MPG I guess anyways I still need to re-gear it but I'm getting sidetracked so we see Lena doing the horizontal Mambo with wait a minute is that Dan oh well but then Lido then wakes up in a tent with literally zero memory of how she got there heading out it looks like a rain forest in there it's very pretty but the rest of the group is up and talking as well Lena says she's a little disorientated as somebody tries to talk to her to which thorinson says join the club as nobody can remember setting up camp literally nobody remembers anything after reaching the tree line but they have food missing that would imply that they were walking around for three or four days radic confirms that they're getting no signals from anywhere else to which Dr Venture says did we ever expect it to begin with and also their Compass doesn't work but Shepard is Mega based and knows that if you point your hour hand at the Sun and then split the difference between 12 and 2 that apparently that's South I've never heard this before but then again I'm not a navigator so somebody tell me in the comments that that's actually true because that's pretty good information to remember so they will head south towards the ocean and then follow the beach out of the Shimmer as now they're just trying to get out of there so the Trek through the woods continues as they walk along a lot of foliage has grown up around the area but once more interesting is as they walk through flowers appear in all different forms from the same Vine based on what Lena is seeing she suggests that they aren't even seeing the same species that are all growing together that's going to be important about 30 seconds it appears there is like a blending of genetics and not just in a mendelian way but instead it's almost pathological it looks pretty in flowers but would be pretty horrifying in humans as radic walks into the house Thorson and finds a boat and radic walks back outside which I gotta tell you that's a pretty cool last name but as she goes to say it's a band and she gets pulled in by something they run into helper as Lena jumps into the swamp water to pull her out they get her and then drag her outside as something breaks through the house and it's a giant gator it makes its way up on the land as they open up on it as Lena is able to take it out as in it decides it's had enough and then takes a nice nap so they start kind of examining the thing they open up its mod a fine that has concentric rows of teeth which Gators should not have Ventress suggests that it's a crossbreed but you can't breed species like that and these aren't even the same species these are different classes of animal in our classification systems which I'll kind of go over here in a little bit but at best you can maybe breed like a tiger and a lion to make a liger or a donkey and a zebra but only because those species are close enough and even then a lot of them are going to be sterile but due to the concentric Rose the gator has been crossed with the shark which obviously you're definitely not doing and yet the creature is still viable but this also explains why it was so aggressive and continue to chase them up on land it likely wasn't just hungry in fact Gators will come up on land I mean if you're close enough to the water but if you back away they kind of just leave you alone or you could just smack them with a shovel and they'll run off but this one was like it had their number so uh that would probably be the shark aggression but Lena then tells the group questioning her the mutations grew more out of control as they got closer to the lighthouse with duplicates arising which he says were like echoes from the previous animal this implies large strings of genetic coding would be incorporated into the surviving animal's body but this duplicate is just something else entirely the man then asks if these were hallucinations which is a valid question given what we will learn later as the group paddles through the water Lena checks the bruise on her arm as they are also moving way too fast for me paddling that slow they talk about Kane which Lena says he was Kia despite him being back at that Foundation her and Shepard talk about the team and how they've either lost someone or have no family or there's some shared issue amongst them like doctor of interest is cancer they then approach Fort Maya in the distance this was the headquarters originally if the Shimmer swallowed up Lena spots growth on the wall that look more like tumors than anything else which that's not boating well entering the fort they decide to set up shop there and then find evidence that others have actually been in there likely the men who were sent in this area earlier Lena finds Kane's name which she then deduces that the men were watching the fences so maybe they should too 2. they then find a plastic bag with the words for those that follow it's a memory card so they decide to watch it it shows Kane and one of his men as he exposes the rectus abdominis to the flashlight and you guys I I'm sorry you can't see this because I will get just completely demonetized but I'm going to explain it to you his intestines are twisting in and out as if there are worms or snakes things are not looking too good here so thornson then has a freak out over this as they continue to search the area as they do they find two guys just completely glued to the wall looking like a scene out of the new hit an upcoming Last of Us live action and I've actually kind of maybe heard it's not bad so if you've seen it let me know because God help me anything's better than the last of us too ah there's gonna be so many butt hurt people look if you like the last of us too it's okay you're allowed to like what you like I just didn't like it so we'll see what happens anyways it's two dudes glued to the wall by the same cancer that has been growing on the other wall so again that's really not a good sign this freaks out radic who says now they have to get out of there there but then we jump to a flashback of Lena and Kane they were going to drive out into the country which sounds incredibly lame I'm not gonna lie to you thank God my wife is not like this he has to go right now for a mission when really he's just gonna go get a beer or something because he does not want to drive out to the country so he nopes out of there that night Lena then wakes up and checks her blood cells that's also not good as the daughter cell splits away from the original cell it has a shimmer to it indicating that she's changing over time as well as she heads outside to survey the area she heads over to the guard shack to Dr Ventress if you look at the map to which Ventress says that they should head to the small town tomorrow that they evacuated that was relatively close to the lighthouse Ventress questions Lena why she didn't say anything about Kane but then after seeing the footage it makes sense the good doctor then goes on to explain the difference between sewer slides and you know what I'm talking about and self-destruction almost nobody takes a trip down the sewer slide but almost everyone self-destructs drinking smoking gambling making decisions that disrupt the status quo of your life like hooking up with Dan for instance everyone does it not everyone hooks up with Dan though so it's sort of like ourselves that self-destruct we are just a macro expression of a micro phenomena Ventress says self-destruction is encoded into all of us as they hear something break through the fence Shepard then gets grabbed by something and taken into the woods they all take off to run after her but the screaming stops which that's maximum oof which imagine saying maximum oof in 2023 the next morning the rest of the group packs up and talks about leaving as they have been attacked twice which you have a force multiplier for a reason I mean you know they weren't just there for funsies and they have lost one of their own uh yeah so has like everyone else Dr Ventress says that they need to keep moving as they haven't even reached the lighthouse yet see I agree with her you're here for a reason not just oh it's not as easy as I thought it was going to be time to leave Thorson then gets upset by this but doctor of interest just sort of walks off letting them decide for themselves Lena says you know they're right they should be getting out of there but they are six days away from the edge of the woods where they came in but only two days away from the post it makes more sense to keep going Lena says that she believes the coast is the best way out but again thornson is losing it tiptoeing Through the Tulips crossed with maple trees crossed with field grass crossed with other field mice they end up finding I don't know I think that's a boot with a foot in it I gotta be on with you I can't really tell what it is Lena says that while she could still be alive okay bro sure but Dr Ventress says hmm I think that's highly doubtful and agreed so they need to know but Lena goes off on her own to you know no safety in numbers or deal figure out what's going on with Shepard also if you aren't picking up uh sort of the religious themes here this is sort of like the Garden of Eden when Eve went off on her own and ate from the Tree of knowledge sort of deal there's a lot of like parallels between life and this movie itself religion and all that but mainly I'm here for the science specifically on this but I have to say it was a really good movie and I loved a lot of the hidden meanings behind stuff and I mean I probably missed some too I'd recommend giving it a watch as Lena walks along she spots a deer who is in perfect sink with another as they then spot her and run off that's going to be important later as well moving through well she spots Shepard and she's done so that's gonna have to be a little bit of a blur screen over her neck heading back to the group she reports what happened and they continue moving on what's interesting is she wasn't eaten heading to town that's been evacuated and everything is way more overgrown than three years would suggest but as they move through they find a group of plants in human form and apparently they grew that way gonna have to probably say not radic seems to understand at this point what's happening at first she thought the radio waves were blocked which is why nobody could communicate but they aren't blocked they're just refracted it's all there it's just scrambled if they genetically sequence the leaves that are in human form she says that they would likely get human Hawks genes basically these genes are responsible for the body plan of humans and how we look so with the plants that's why they are human they are basically using Hox genes instead of their naturally occurring DNA to build structures that they need or at least that's what they think Lena goes on to say that's literally not possible which I agree but if it's right in front of you and it's happening right in front of you it's happening and their own DNA is likely being affected as well which is kind of a horrifying realization so here's something interesting though you see how things are like mimicking each other and Lena mentioned earlier about duplicates if you look at this house that they enter that's exactly like her home the stairs the table in the background the opening which if you remember when what Kane said earlier he recognized this place so he came in so where's Kane from who knows that's the fun as they walk through thornson begins looking at her fingers and gets freaked out as she glares at Lena that night Lena gets up once again and takes her own blood to see what's going on the parent cell is now the shimmering as it has another shimmering blood cell then they get a flashback of Dan the canned man and Lena so here's something that I completely cannot stand with any ounce of my body and it is people who cheat it's disgusting uh you're lame so basically they start talking about them hooking up and she now regrets about cheating on her husband after the fact and then she tries to take like the moral High ground and dance talking about that he he loves her and loves his family and she's like really you forgot about your wife bro you cheated don't turn this around and absolve yourself of it she tells Dan to go because Kane has figured out that they were cheating with each other and she hates Dan for it I really hate Lena at this point so Thorson then wakes Lena up and she gets knocked out which uh I don't know I'm not saying you deserve to be knocked out but if you're having a dream about making the other person out to be the bad person for cheating when you're the one cheating maybe you deserve to you know get butted in the face I don't know but all three of them wake up tied to a chair as thornson found Lena's lock him with Kane so that ties her to this area see now questions how long they knew now here I think she's just losing it because they all know about this area she's under the impression she was somehow kept out of the loop of some information but she volunteered for this position again I don't really get what point she's trying to make as this was all her choice nobody knows anything that's going on she was given the exact same information and she really doesn't need to be having this freak out right here but like I said her brain's probably a little scrambled at this point but that's really the only explanation I have for this anyway thornson goes on to say she never saw a bear take out Cass yeah because she wasn't there and everything is hinging on Lena's word and also doctor of Interest Who said it was a bear I don't know and apparently Lena's a liar because she knew who Kane was like why is it a crime for you to have your husband in the military and he got sent out here for this Dangerous Mission and then she shows up looking for her like these are normal events right then again human consciousness is refracted this is such a dumb part anyways I guess fear also is what's making her do this because she looked at her fingerprints and saw the move so she starts questioning if her insides are gonna move like the fingerprints but you know she's gonna have to cut them open like that person did and so she hears Shepard yell for help at this point which just getting back to the original point I mean yeah probably so what your intestines are going to move a little bit it's not that big of a deal anyways so she heads in there as a Bear Grylls and Thorson stops talking the bear moves into the room as they all sit there interestingly as it growls it starts yelling help me and remember it tore out Shepard's throat which that information for the vocal cords was in the area which then altered the bear the bear has also altered to a degree as it appears quasi-human in the face and Thorson comes over and opens up on it but then gets totally got can't show that that's that's gonna have to be a little bit of a blur over its face and then it attacks Lena but radic is able to take it out before it ends all of them so that thornson issue kind of resolved itself pretty quickly but Dr Ventress starts getting her stuff together she says they are disintegrating their bodies as fast as their minds which is agreed y'all are not doing so hot the next morning Lena and radic head outside Lee net goes up the radic and says they should go they discuss what's happening at this point Lena says the refractions have affected her so it's affected all of them then the bear took on the last part of Shepard and she's also developing plant growth on her arm everything's not good as she begins walking through the woods it's sort of like a a real kind of peaceful thing but Lena loses her behind some Bush but then comes out to an area where there were people walking everywhere and they've all turned into plants so radic is gone they continue questioning Lena asking her well then how did she survive to which we get the anemic song Once More God I hate this song while Lena and Kane are on the couch with him looking at her like bruh are you cheating so Lena has a good cry in the woods and then keeps moving finally she reaches the Coast drops her gear and then heads through moving past some of the crystalline trees and plants basically prism trees heading towards the lighthouse things apparently went pretty bad here his bones were laid out in patterns moving inside she spots a hole in the ground where the meteorite had struck through and then sees a burned body on the left sitting cross-legged with a camera pointing at it heading over to watch it she sees the bones were already there whenever the camera got there as well but then it's her husband Kane also his name is Kane like Adam's son see connections to religion and that thing sitting in the basement or hell is corrupting The Garden of Eden or Life as we know it into something else kind of like Lucifer you know it's all there so continuing to watch Kane is sitting on the ground talking to the camera as he is speaking in fractured memories and sentences that are basically a word salad as his brain is going he then takes a phosphorus forced Detonator and tells them to find Lena and tell her that he loves her and then basically pulls the pen and counts to what and then a man walks up and it's also came the cane that came to see her in her home shutting the camera she heads to the hole in the ground the sitting down inside the thing went pretty deep into that ground she then finds doctor of Interest down there she says it's the last phase before she vanishes into the Havoc she's kind of speaking in reals as well she asked her what they spoke of and that she needed to find what's inside of the lighthouse and that it's also inside of her she says it's unlike them she says she doesn't know if it wants at all or if it just grows and fragments their minds which results in Annihilation as she turns into just a bunch of light material floating around the room I'm telling you this won't be good for the economy if it gets out this results in the thing Beyond human comprehension appearing before Lena some would say a Biblical representation of an Angel looking into its deadlights is never a good thing and then it sort of takes some of her blood and begins growing it rapidly and uses that information to take on a hominid form she then goes ape mode on it and open fires but it approaches her so she runs upstairs sending the tunnel it's already up there because mimicking her movements as well like a reflection more than a refraction similar to the image but different it's essentially a duplication getting the creepy Tick Tock sounds it lays down next to her as she runs but then it Bear Hugs her the more she pushes against it the more it pushes against her until finally she passes out from being hugged too tightly this causes the thing to pass out to or at least lay down so they have a good nap together as the creature gets up with her so at least a marginal amount of analysis much like the deer who had the version of it present and like the Holmes paralleling the inside of the Shimmer versus the outside this thing is paralleling humans as well which if it can do that the question explains why Kane had another version of itself what does that mean though exactly I think the real question is does it actually have to mean anything at all it just is it's kind of like an outside of human comprehension no motives no wants or needs it just exists and that does I know kind of sound like a cop-out but kind of think of it as coming up with a concept is easier than explaining the concept right so if you can conceptualize a dark matter Engine That Could somehow Propel a ship faster than the speed of light just because you can conceptualize it does not mean you can explain how it works because if you could do that for the love of God please go tell NASA immediately so we can get off this rock so it approaches Lena as she starts Waltzing with it before picking up a phosphorus concussive Detonator she hands it to the creature and it begins taking on her form as the genetic material needed is now Incorporated she hands it the round as it detonates but it seems kind of unfazed by this and goes back to the body on the ground touching it it now has feelings for it or always had feelings for it and then touching the material around it it ignites it which then results in all of it burning Crawling Back To The Source itself it lights everything on fire which you may be confused by this one but I'll explain a second as it burns everything down all the shimmering effects created around it also begin to dissipate as the Shimmer itself Falls away and everything kind of goes back to normal back at the powwow being held they suggest it was alien she continues to not answer any questions about it because she just doesn't know Lena says it mirrored her because she attacked it so it was attacking herself she says it wasn't destroying everything it was changing everything they inform Lena though that everything was Ash so whatever it was is now gone Lena then asked what happened to her husband and apparently after the Shimmer was destroyed he just randomly stabilized heading in there she realizes it's not actually her husband but it's actually one of those things however seeing as it has all this genetic info and apparent memories or at least feelings Kane had he is attached to her but what's this Lena also appears to be altered as her irises are the same as his so before getting into the Science Why did that thing burn down its own area see the life that was changing everything was different from the life on this planet to a degree and there were no Faults in its genetic coding there were no issues with its immortality it existed because it exists and was perfect as a result when coming into contact with our planet's genetic coding or at least a life here which has a literal self-destruct button encoded into it it created problems as the coding was not perfect this created the mutations around it so when Lena came into contact with her perfect form DBZ style it didn't know about self-destruction but once interacting and absorbing her coding and creating herself it became aware of its self-destruction having read the Bible and being a Christian myself I can see the similarities being presented which again isn't a complete reflection but a fraction of the story you can think of the self-destruction sort of like sin almost in the Garden of Eden it did not exist man was Immortal and nothing bad could ever be conceived but once Eve and subsequently Adam were tempted to eat from the Tree of knowledge which could be compared to I suppose the Shimmer bad things began to happen for us eating from the Tree of knowledge would have caused the self-destruction or faults in our genes which was imperfectness which is why religion wise we are where we are today as Mortals introducing a perfect organism to our faults our sin that being the self-destruction on a cellular level leads to its own destruction which sort of actually makes humans like the tree of knowledge for this own organism's fall because of this by its own choices it burned down basically everything around it just by existing as a flawed being which led to the destruction of its own Paradise or its Garden of Eden as a result you could think of it not completely as a mere reflection but more again as a refraction of what happened in the Bible shimmers the Garden of Eden where life was made humans with the tree of knowledge the perfect organism that at first just mimics what it was once exposed to humans it makes a non-mirror choice that destroys which much like our choice led to our Annihilation its Choice sort of LED it to the chose to kind of act like man by incorporating our genetic sequences which makes it part man and like I said this movie is pretty interesting and it's it's I analytically wise I'm not the strongest person to be asking about what movies mean in their interpretation or anything but this is what I gleaned from it and again the science within is going to be interesting to talk about regardless so we're about to move on to that but this part I did find very interesting but with that I do have to acknowledge the other accepted concept of what this might be which is basically planetary cancer as the comment strikes the planet and begins emitting this mutagenic effect nothing will self-destruct any longer sort of like why cancer cells will not undergo apoptosis even after being told to by immune cells if being found at all then over time it continues to spread until eventually it will overtake the entire planet so you can think of humanity almost like chemotherapy then entering the cells or at least entering the cancer and ultimately destroying it once getting to the core of where the really badly mutated cells in organisms were alright so you're sitting there wondering what the name of all that is Holy is going on with the Shimmer itself how is it actually doing what it does I think really the way we can identify that or at least attempt to is highly based on what it isn't now this had me stop for quite a while I ran through like down the first line of thought of what I could possibly think it was in the second and third and fourth of what is causing people to basically turn into this and here's a few things that we know that it's not first this is not organic while it has an impact on organic creatures as clearly it's scrambling genes well at least to a degree it's impressing these genes upon the body and that method by which it affects cells is not going to be like through a vector like a virus but I believe there still is an intermediary thing going on which is causing the cells to be able to uptake this genetic information because they are being destabilized and we'll get to that in a moment continuing on they talk about how this is like energy and energy itself can have profound impacts on the genetic stability of any cell and can render real world consequences look at fire for instance it can literally cook cells radiation it can destroy your DNA UV light it can cause your DNA to bind up in things called thymine dimers so bear with me on this because literally while I wrote this I'm still actually feeling out what I believe this to be this process requires this energy to essentially exist to create a Cascade of consequences for genes but what I do believe is also for it to be fully successful it requires the alteration of function within the body as well as on the outside of the body to achieve the splice effect that we have seen and if that sounds confusing it was confusing to write but I'm gonna pretty much cover all this so as mentioned previously in the movie itself I went on the side tangent about how you cannot just combine organisms for funsies you know Pig and elephant DNA just won't splice the results of mixing this DNA will either cause the embryo to terminate or if it was even possible for the fertilization process to begin or if the creature even lives to adulthood then a lot of them will be sterile and even then the creatures have to be very closely related on a Genus level to produce viable young in the first place so they can really only be separated by a handful of a couple of hundred thousands of years so for something like a shark and an alligator diffuse that would require a lot of things and be very difficult as they are not even the same class but the same phylum so it goes kingdom phylum class order family sub family genus species notice only some instances of interbreeding naturally can be found in the genus so that's literally one step above species but with sharks and alligators being separated by a phylum that is six class orders above so it's impossible as we know it was standard biology for these creatures to interact genetically which is a good thing because otherwise we just have a bunch of Cronenberg monsters running around so take how difficult it would be for these genes to splice into one another then take that back to literally a different Kingdom of life so with phylums you're talking hundreds of millions of years right well with different kingdoms you're talking like back at the beginning almost and this Shimmer appears to be capable of causing this to exist so when they continue to near the lighthouse the effect got stronger which led to their bodies changing underneath them fingerprints would move intestines would turn into worms plants would begin growing under their skin all this hints at what's happening as the energy from the Shimmer becomes more focused then with the bear we see the largest contributor to this theory that I have on how this would be happening for genes from a literal different branch of life to begin growing within humans and for humans growing within it requires a massive intermediary process to be happening within people one of the premises that I am running on currently is from what I have seen whatever people are touching seems to affect them radic was touching the plants quite regularly after finding the human-shaped plants which after she's literally turned into one all the human-shaped plants were not just grown from Human Ox genes or even with the addition of the entire homeo box genes which actually is the floor plan for your whole body in fact while Hawks genes are great at determining what the anterior and posterior of you are going to look like popular box jeans are in all eukaryotic cells and encode transcription factors that have the basis and knowledge which is kind of a colloquialism but that's pretty much what you call it for our actual shape and complexity of that shape they're in so again those plants are shaped like that because people were infected and then just wandered off and became the plants as their cells became a hybrid of animal and plant we see this with a bear when it tore Shepherd's throat at it it came into contact with her genes and likely the bear had been eating the whole time as well but we never see it come out of the darkness so we don't know if it really had any other mutations on it prior to grabbing Shepherd it's clear that once it came into contact with our cells her genetic information was absorbed to a degree and became part of the Bear's genome the soldier whose guts were like worms is also explainable by thinking if you were in there for a year and Lena was really only in there for what she says was like what a week or two it was actually four months then by extrapolating that out it may have been up to six weeks the soldiers were Shimmer which means food would have been running low or would have been completely out by then causing them to eat naturally occurring animals that were there and they may have thought inside of the dirt was more safe so they had possibly eaten worms as a result and this means that his intestines were changed to incorporate the worm DNA and really be no different than say like a bear eating meat of Shepherd so not just exposure to the Shimmer but exposure to things housed within the Shimmer first and then your body just recently exposed to the Shimmer seems to be main factors here which let's go over the process of events real quick kind of getting into how I believe people are being altered apart from just DNA absorption there's like more to it than just that we haven't even begun to talk about the intermediary portion which is the most critical I believe for this to work upon entering the Shimmer you are clearly more affected the closer you get to the center this would imply that it works like any other form of energy the closer you are to the source the more energy you absorb this energy does something to your DNA in a way that destabilizes it and this May imply a few things either it is destabilizing it like energy as we know it on and off Earth can do which is the destruction of the DNA or it's influencing enzymes themselves to behave in a certain way and I believe to be the latter over the former for the main fact that if it were genetic destruction Lena would be riddled with cancer along with everybody else by the time they actually even got out and they would have been dealing with what amounts to radiation sickness in their cells as they became less capable of operating since their Coatings were being destroyed but as we can see when Lena takes her blood her body is having no issues continuing the process of Survival by mitosis they are just changing so this implies the energy does not destroy it again just changes and the best way of changing without destruction is enzymatic activity if we can assume this then we can also assume that as time passes it's a lot like walking into the water in Fallout 3 to talk to the dude about the nuke in the center of Megaton you could stand far away from it and it may take longer but you will be changed or you can get right up close and personal with it and it'll change you faster the closer you are the more chaotic this enzyme activity becomes concerning your DNA as we know enzymes work by lowering the activation energy of chemical reactions within the body I believe this Shimmer is affecting these enzymes in a way which then lowers the threshold for the cell making typically more controlled actions more readily completed and potentially even random overall this causes the cell to destabilize and may even introduce new functions not previously seen for the overall internal molecular biology because it causes it to shift a cell's main purpose is to control what's going in and what's going out while that's difficult concerning things like water it's more easily done with salts and potential genetic material found in an environment typically a virus is the most recognized way for genetic material to enter another cell from another but you have to wonder based on cells as we know them and the acquisition of mitochondria is it possible something else is going on now stick with me on this just like with the movie It's Kinda gonna get out there back in the day it was assumed how we acquired mitochondria was that one cell engulfed another cell and then decided not to destroy it to this day we still have this cell and it's known as a mitochondria it actually has its own DNA but over time you know being an organelle of a larger cell it has lost a lot of its functionality and now just serves as the PowerHouse we also have cells in our body that engulf other cells regularly known as macrophages I'm sure you all know about that but the point is if we come from one sperm cell and one egg cell that initial coating of 46 chromosomes houses all the information to make you even with the differentiation of your cells that means genetically all of your cells know how to engulf other cells they know how to move around neurons know how to divide like skin cells and Bones know how to produce mucus like the lining of your stomach but those genes are Switched Off allowing for the cell to behave and certain way that benefits the rest of the organism by doing its job so that another cell does not have to take over that job so here's what I propose is happening but even still it's not the whole picture the Shimmer has caused those cells to basically remember these other traits that were switched off that is supported by a couple things first when thornson mentions how she can see the ridges in her skin moving on her fingertips those are not supposed to be moving as you might know which means the cells have taken on new traits also the dementia building up in all of them because their brains May literally be having neurons within behaving like other cells in the body and moving around breaking connections they lost four days and have complete Amnesia which may have been the initial shift in the brain basically stopping them from remembering because they're no longer behaving in the way they're supposed to again all this is to show it's not destruction it's change and given enough time I believe this will literally melt the organism down into the cancerous like substance we see on the walls as cells become so chaotic there is no differentiation amongst them anymore and they go back to basically being a single-celled organism all because the Shimmer is messing with enzymes basically when everything's different nothing is different but I can hear you now yes Roanoke you have mentioned inside several times and you still have not told us what's happening correct basically because this video is an exercise in me trying to figure out what is happening in real time you're literally watching or listening to the Gear's turn right now so as I write this it's taking longer than normal because every paragraph I have had to stop and think about how this connects to the next thing that I want to say I've literally had to throw away several ideas because there's huge flaws in it and it would ultimately just not make sense to which this one that I have appears to be on the right track still it's contingent on something in the middle life does not exist by itself humans love to believe that our brains are kind of in the driver's seat but really with the gut microbiome impacting Us in such a way that may as well be operating the gas and brakes while we steer there's a lot more Nuance to life so for reference there's about 37.2 trillion human cells I believe funnily enough there's about 39 trillion bacterial cells prokaryotes are much smaller than eukaryotes typically so that's the reason why it really only represents about two to six pounds of your body mass and about a 200 pound person this comes out to 0.9 to 2.72 kilograms and a 90.7 kilogram person but there is is something in those prokaryotes that is much more readily available than in our cells and I believe this is absolutely critical to explaining what's happening in our cells the Shimmer first and foremost affects all cells plant animal fungi bacterial it doesn't matter it's clear it is messing with the internal metabolism and functionality of cells causing genetic crossover events and how this may be possible is with it specifically affecting something called a restriction enzyme restriction enzymes are found in human cells as well as bacterial cells basically cells in general as well as some tissue interestingly enough but its purpose is to cut DNA at specific sequences now this is an incredibly complicated process and there's a lot more to it that I'm saying here but the enzyme serves as to cut away some DNA which leaves a sticky end of that DNA from here DNA ligase will then come in and Link genes to this strand if the strands are matching the boom it is able to form a single unbroken molecule of DNA in things like cloning ligase is used to insert genes and other pieces of DNA into plasmids specifically now what is a plasmid well it's a circular free-floating form of DNA that is typically found in prokaryotes plasmids are what's typically responsible for things like antibiotic resistance for example now that's all well and good but how does that relate to specifically eukaryotes if this is found in prokaryotes again I think it goes back to all the cells becoming undifferentiated which is leading to engulfing cells at first you're still relatively differentiated right your cells still have a job you're still in a human shape the longer you stay there the less differentiated your cells become which is why you change into things due to the amount of naturally occurring bacteria within the body containing these restriction enzymes I think it may be possible that cells ended up engulfing surrounding bacteria but unlike macrophages who have the ability to destroy within golf a lot of cells lacked this capability so once undergoing this process they were not able to destroy the bacteria or to properly encase an evacule to keep it contained what this did was cause the bacteria to fuse with the eukaryotic cell and with it newly acquired genetic information like plasmids now I'm not suggesting that the plasmids are only responsible for these changes that are seen but I think they have a hand in creating the genetic combinations that we see as more and more eukaryotic cells engulfed prokaryotic cells what was happening is the cell itself would begin to change having these plasmids floating around with enzymes continuing on as normal with the DNA membrane still intact dictating to the rest of the cell the standard function of day-to-day life with some obvious changes basically being brought on by the new influence dictating the outside of the nuclear membrane that ribosomes and original prokaryotic instructions are now affecting like again I know this is getting way out there but so was the movie this would cause the cell itself to begin to take on even more strange abilities due to the new incoming information and one of those is the fact of the cell is now blending eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells this continues to serve a purpose when we look at how genes are acquired and this idea to me at least would make sense why it ceases after Lena leaves the Shimmer prokaryotes in nature do something that eukaryotes at least when it comes to animals do not do and they have plasmids and can pick up these plasmids from the environment or genetic fragments from dead prokaryotes something to note about that statement is plasmas exist within fungi and higher plants but not animals picking up environmental DNA is definitely a bacterial trait that has made them quite adaptive and successful and this can be done in two ways through the process of conjugation bacteria will create a tube to transfer plasmids between two living prokaryotes and this is actually how antibiotic resistance is transferred the other way as mentioned previously is they will absorb free-floating genetic coding that may be beneficial to them which is a bold strategy if you think about it picking up the remains of something that already got got with a gamble that'll help you but the functionality is why I believe it is critical to explain the adoption of new genetic information judging by what we see with the bear's face covered in Shepherd's blood and it going into its mouth this genetic information was in the environment the prokaryote and eukaryote mix of cells were to be present in the bear which I believe is highly likely considering it was changing then it would have scooped up this information and brought it into the cell from here it is not clearly known if it was brought into just plasma DNA or if it was transported in the actual human genome but either way the cell itself took on some of the characteristics of the cell that it picked up the information from I'd be more inclined to believe it is outside of the DNA Envelope as the bear cell is still kind of holding strong as a bear but it is absorbing different characteristics than it is expressing them but something to note here is that this is just the first generation of these cells something else will happen over time which we will find out is actually critically important and it'll show kind of like the permanent changes in Lena and why those existed this process can can again be seen with radic when she touches the leaves and rolls it between her fingers she is releasing some of the cells onto her skin then she picks up that genetic information as it moves deeper into her body and enters her blood it's why it appeared on her arms first and then rapidly took over from there but then what about the mitosis itself well if you saw during the first mitotic division of Lena's blood cells at first it was clearly one of her regular cells then there was a shimmer cell that was different then later it was a shimmer cell producing another Shimmer cell indicating that all the cells in her body by this point have been affected by this process I believe this explains why the process goes from something as simple as minor characteristic changes to completely changing you the longer you're in there as the cell enters mitosis one of the critical things I keep saying critical but there's a lot of like very very important parts but it's important for you to remember it's not supposed to be in there there's not supposed to be plasmas flowing around in the eukaryotic animal cell and the nuclear envelope also does dissolves during this process upon the membrane falling away this may now open up the human genetic coating to incorporation of other animals DNA because the cell doesn't expect it to be there while undergoing this typical process it likely happens after the unzipping of the DNA using helicase that basically integrates fines of DNA and it's like yo what's this doing here and then adds it in assuming it was just like a broken off piece or kind of damaged and this now becomes a part of the human genome once this happens things like with the alligator it's concentric teeth right what would happen is the alligator appears to be the aggressor at some point and ate the shark you may have just found the shark completely God who knows but there were shark blood in there and that would get into its mouth and that information would be absorbed which would eventually Inspire the new trait and it isn't just a surface level we also see that the alligator itself is white and it looks like shark skin and it appears more deeply that the alligator's genome was affected because those teeth are now permanent now likely because it's still a part of the Shimmer and it's still in the Shimmer it can continue to absorb new incoming information until it absorbs some lead this is how I believe all this is happening once you enter the area of effect for the Shimmer the energy it is releasing causes enzymes in your body to kick it into overdrive which then may lead to the activation of other genes causing your cells to basically undifferentiate considering the Hawks and homeobox genes are brought into this that would imply it is deeply influencing the human genome and deeply influencing everything's genome once this happens cells pick up new coding that is then accidentally added into the initial coding during mitosis this leads to a hybrid cell that is no longer a person that's in there it's really more genetic noise that gets added leading to a person become basically a mutation of its original Self and fall away from what they once were and become many things versus just one thing then when the Shimmer is destroyed the cells would go back to normal or at least a normal operation status it would likely realize there's DNA in the cytoplasm and then just destroy it as it's not supposed to be there enzymes will return back to normal activity and as a result the cell would return to its standard differentiation however the body itself genetically would be forever changed which would be interesting to see that with the long-term effects of this are but with Lena we see her eyes shimmer as there still is a change even after the mutation effect has stopped her body is going to be forever changed which means they're going to have like three-headed kids that have shark tails I don't know but we finally get just a an off-topic you know thing that I wanted to discuss the thing at the very end if you thought the rest of the video was out there we'll strap in looking at this thing this is completely my opinion and it's not confirmed but seeing as Einstein proved that energy is related to mass there is clearly something going on with this creature you can think of it as a template of pure energy creating mass based on what comes out of Interest she went from being you know a creature of matter to being one of pure energy Consciousness is probably lost during this process and again if you look at it from like a religious perspective that's like her soul being released but if this thing is capable of moving you from Mass to energy then it's not too far-fetched to believe that it may be capable of reversing that equation and moving you from energy to mass the thing it creates is a physical representation of energy that it is but it is simply a template after pulling some blood from Lena that's when it becomes like her the stem cells it created now have the human genome in it which all cells on this planet code for its self-destruction so it too was coded for that now kind of a bad move on its part to be honest with you but that's what I believe it is obviously the movie is just insanely open to interpretation as to what's really going on but I hope at least I kind of adequately shed some light on the cellular process that may be taking place with the gene expressions Whitney how I want to thank you guys for watching if you enjoyed then leave your life would be great and subscribing is a great ways to stay up to date on what I post I'll drop my Twitter Roanoke Tails Channel Discord and patreon in the channel description if anybody's interested in that and speaking of patrons I'd like to thank mine real quick first use thank you once again to our astronaut Wesley Weaver Jr thanks man I also like to thank our astrophysics desk dancer in Phoenix as well as our scientists Countryside limbo and lacunae and the rest of my patrons I thank you guys as well your help goes a long way towards keeping everything running it is always greatly appreciated alright so that's gonna do it for me I hope everyone enjoyed see y'all in the next one

Channel: Roanoke Gaming

Views: 1,126,399

Keywords: annihilation, annihilation movie, how to beat annihilation, how to beat, nerd explains, dead meat, foundflix, ending explained, annihilation ending, annihilation explained, Roanoke Gaming, annihilation bear help me, annihilation bear scene, annihilation mutations, annihilation shimmer, annihilation explored, annihilation movie explained, annihilation shimmer explored, annihilation bear explained, annihilation alligator shark, annihilation trailer

Id: RFle630qpMU

Length: 52min 40sec (3160 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 20 2023