I think Sandy missed an important point about radiation weapons (which includes nukes): ionizing radiation creates reactive chemicals (UV creates ozone) which means the Proto-plasm of the Shoggoth will quickly fill up with reactive oxygen species, free radicals, or ions that would prevent, or at least greatly inhibit, the Shoggoth from changing itself at will. This may not kill it outright but make it more vulnerable to a secondary attack - cold, heat, chemical, etc

"A Lighting gun is good for killing a Shoggoth" So I think we need to call an old pal that uses one, and I think you know him too.

Even Gandalf, who defeated a Balrog, didn't want to mess with shoggoths. "Far, far below the deepest delving of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day." Although I think Gandalf says "nameless things" because Lovecraft was not yet public domain when LoTR was published.

Them blowing up The Thing at the end of the movie being dumb was kind of the point. They all know it's probably not going to work, but they're desperate and have no real other choice.

Shuggoths vulnerability is their being physics based. It still has to have some mechinism for taking in oxygen and distributing it through out its form. Either freeze them so cold that they stop moving entirely (not killing them, but...) or keep burning them with acid or fire until you have worked through all of its mass. I must say that I am more and more liking the idea of getting rid of things by dropping them into massive gravity wells. Like Jupiter, which has gravity so strong it is theorized that the hydrogen takes on metallic properties. Even One Big Muscle will get squished pretty small and find it hard to do anything.

...it's been a fairly interesting Sunday when, through a string of events you can't really recall, you wind up learning what to do in a fight against a f*cking Lovecraftian monster from what amounts to a genuine authority on the topic on KZfaq, and then subscribing to the channel.

"Don't. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk"

I'm going to homeschool my kids and have them learn this, and I don't care what my wife has to say about it

A sphere of flesh weighs 60 tonnes... That was a sentence and a fact I was not expecting to hear today.

Buy it a beer. Or a meat and cheese tray. "You guys are children of the Old Ones/Elder Things too, huh? What a bunch of neglectful precursors, am I right? Have a beer!" At this point, we do the same thing we do with everybody else: Win them over with food, drink, entertainment and booty. The Shoggoths are on a high-protein diet, so we offer to de-bone their meat for them, cover it in BBQ sauce, and deep-fat fry it. Next, we sell them cigarettes and whiskey. With the ability to grow new lungs, Shoggoths could have a 20 packs/minute habit and never die. As for entertainment: "It's time for the horde to vote: Who will be Antarctica's Next Top Piper for the year 1943? Ululate '1" for Ulglsplrp, and '2" for Qwerployfgrt." For the final point: Shoggoths must replicate somehow. We figure out how, and start a dating service for them. After all, they are going to be spread out across the globe doing construction work, and meeting other Shoggoths is probably going to be difficult. Even eldritch abominations will think twice before they annihilate the race of apes that get them laid. Shoggoths can get all the air, food and water that they need on their own. We'll just offer to add the zing in the form of vaping, french fries and Pepsi. If we can get them sex, drugs and rock 'n roll they want, I suspect we don't need to fight them. They'll fight for US.

Using our standards, they seem a mass of undirected stem cells. Their physical strength is most likely far more than you're giving them; why make a muscle when hydraulics provides far greater force? Also, assuming they're able to split parts of themselves off, shuggoths could fling bits of themselves at aircraft or ships. One of sufficient size to exhaust on-hand ammunition would be impossible to destroy. It could armor up with vehicles, buildings and infrastructure, also using those as weapons or projectiles. We'd be doomed unless we could co-opt or reason with them.

4 options: 1. Electrocute it (it's mostly water-based cells) 2. "Cook" it with copious amounts of high-penetrating radiation, enough to to through its whole body and kill all cells it touches (basically a ray gun). 3. Trap it in an incinerator. 4. Drop it in a foundry crucible or some other vat of molten material, or an active volcano if you can find one nearby.

Nuke it from orbit. Just to be sure. Hope you continue this "how to fight" series. Migo, flying polyps, hounds of tindalos, etc would be cool to see. Keep it up Sandy!

Grenade Launcher + Flamethrower/Acid. Explosion will let you attack more surface area with your flamethrower.

Could a Shoggoth that size not be a hollow sphere in theory? Since they morph, could they not hollow themselves out to become bigger? Just an extra possibility to think about.

More how to fight videos, please? Even if the answer is always, "You cant" I waaaant it

Re: Poisons. If you can get a small part of a shoggoth you can run some tests, find out what they're made of. Once you find that out, you simply need a molecule that will react with one of the main components. Then its as simple a stoichiometric ratio, weigh out enough of your reagent and you will molecularly destroy the shoggoth. Basically any poison works by simply incapacitating a vital component of the poisoned, like the blood cells or the neurons. If there is no vital component in a shoggoth then you just react the majority of the creature. A simple acid or base, for example, might only need a way to enter the creature, such as through a 'needle'..

7:47 yes, however shoggoths clearly do require sustenance to survive and the smallest the shoggoth is, the less likely it will be able to sustain that sustenance. Shoggoths are likely to grow quickly however that need for food will slowly kill it if you can deprive those bits. They are likely omnivores, and in anarctica it had the penguins to eat, but like with a tree if you cuts bits off those bits MAY die. You would probably need something like a minigun with specialized ammo to do any REAL damage to it that it couldn't reform fast enough. That reforming likely requires a lot of energy and therefore food. This actually gave me the idea a while back for a "Colour out of Space Shoggoth" where through some dimensional havoc a Colour out of Space was stuck inside/combined with a shoggoth like a star trek teleporter accident. As a result the colour is continuously eating away at the shoggoth while the shoggoth itself is continually consuming everything it can get its hands on to keep enough mass to live. The Colour itself is just trying to get free but can't. And the shoggoth just can't expell it as the two are fused at a molecular level. Continuous hunger and continuous, rapid entropy.

I’ve been considering combining elements of “Call Of Cthulhu” with “Traveller.” I was thinking about using a type of shoggoth that could function in the vacuum of space. The weapon I was thinking about giving to the players is the Fire Web Generator, (The Space Gamer, #36, page #4.)

Oh man, this is inspiring me to use more slimes and oozes in my game, only they're fast and smart. I love it.

Still, explosives sound fairly effective with the right tactics. Even at current level of tech a platoon can carry a fair amount of rocket propelled granades, recoiless rifles, granade launchers, rifle granades and so forth and so on. Peppering a shoggoth with, say a rotary granade launcher or light mortar to keep it in place and dismember its appendages would allow heavy hitters to take pot shots until the shoggoth stops functioning.

So what you are telling me is I need a back mounted unlicensed particle accelerator. Got it.

Can we all just take a moment and acknowledge just how thankful we are that NONE OF THESE THINGS ARE REAL?? In fact, say how thankful you are about it at the dinner table on Thanksgiving when your family forces you to partake in the obligatory "what I'm thankful for" circle declarations. Dad: "So, Timmy, what are you thankful for this year?" Timmy: "I'm thankful that Shoggoths and all of Lovecraft's other monsters don't exist! And I include the monsters created by authors who took inspiration from Lovecraft too!" Dad: "... ... That's great son... let's have dinner. (I worry about that boy, Mable)."

17:30 - It should not be more of it, percentage-wise, since if the Shoggoths are that large, that outer surface area would be immense. The big difference is that the Shoggoth could adapt to resist and likely nullify the effects of fire while it would be hard-pressed to resist directed energy of that magnitude (it's a trap?). While on a planet it might form a conductive channel and ground itself out, but in space it would have nowhere to shunt the energy. As far as explosions being useless, I'm not so sure. Most of its defenses are based on manipulating an area to form some shell or protect a segment. If you blast it to increase that area and then napalm and/or gas it, it has a lot more area to protect very quickly. You could essentially hit it everywhere at once if you spread it out enough. It wouldn't be easy and would have to be well planned, but it does not require a technology we don't have. You can also apply multiple vectors. If you shoot at it with a lightning gun, it should spread out like a huge sail or in to a series of connected nodes, like a 3D molecule model. That would give it maximal dispersion so that the beam is either more likely to miss or only annihilate a tiny bit of mass. If you however pair that with an attack that exploits a large area, like fire and/or gas, you can create a scenario that no single tactic could circumvent. You must cause their strength to become their greatest weakness so that they march themselves willingly in to oblivion ... (ahem).

This might be useful, because I have a Shoggoth lair on my farm, and I was wondering how to get rid of them... Now to find a Masakari class battlemech...

If a Shoggoth is made of Earth goop, I imagine the otherworldly "matter" some beings like but not limited to Great Cthulhu are made of would give them an upset stomach? Cthulhu had "a shape that was not made of matter" that I imagine would be indigestible by Shoggoths. Obviously this isnt helpful to humanity without friends in high places, but I imagine that "not matter" Cthulhu is made of is present in other lesser being as well

Hey Sandy, I'm against the assumption that the weapons the Old Ones used Yithian Particle beams to fight them. It's for slicing and dicing, and shots, not destruction outright. I am thinking if they used it, it would be more like a lamp or shotgun than a beam. At the Mountains of Madness describes the Old Ones using "weapons of atomic and molecular disturbance" against the Elder Things. For me this implies a device which would disrupt the molecules and atoms in a Shoggoth to either dissipate, or destroy the shoggoths on an atomic level. I am assuming it broke/redirected bonds on an atomic level without splitting atoms which would cause a nuclear explosion. Maybe a kind of ray or device which could be projected onto a shoggoth. Shoggoths are smart and see well so maybe it was more long range, like a flying drone or the like (or a flying elder thing). This makes the most sense to me but shoggoths could just grow long range eyes like hawks. But yeah something to disrupt or reduce the strength of, atomic bonds might've been the best bet. WE can't do that, but i'm betting the Elder Things certainly could. I mean, to them "If you break an atom it's a nuclear explosion" is probably like "fire hot" to them. Or at least "Propane tanks can explode." I'd assume via the creation of Shoggoths that they have a stronger handle than we do on playing with Atoms and dealing with Atomic radiation... something it seems like not a single space faring Lovecraft species has ever had to deal with.

WHAT IF A Xenomorph fought a shoggoth? Would you get Xenoggoths?

Just an aside about Shoggoth's speaking...Larry Correia's character Julie Shakleford has a pet shoggoth named, "Mr. Trashbags" that was originally sent to kill her as a child but it fell in love with her. Trashbags speaks in almost child like manner...calling Julie "Cuddlebunny" and is not huge as he tends to ride in her pocket alot. Julie has to rein him in on occassion...especially if it has potential to involve eating someone. She usually has to tell him "No Killing" His reply usually involves toes. He is a cute addition to one of the MHI universe. Ans he can be quite funny.

what sci-fi weapons(railgun, coilgun, plasma, laser, antimatter, etc.) would be most effective in destroying shoggoth? force-field the shoggoth and throw it into a black hole maybe?

How about super-cooled Liquid Nitrogen such as in Terminator 2? We could just hose it down with the stuff. That stopped the T-1000's morphing ability (programmed nanite "cells" - similar to what you describe the sentient blob of earth spawned protoplasm) and led to its kneecap shattering doom.

I wonder what sonic weapons might do. If you could shake the shoggoth apart, disrupt the very plasmid it was made out of and reduce it to baser elements, that would probably work. Time to put a Shoggoth in a centrifuge. For Science.

Shoggoths had never fought against The Old Ones. Those two had never met.

One might even say, too much napalm in an air strike!

Am I the only one intrigued by the idea of trying to _talk_ to a shoggoth? As in not fight them but try to engage them? If they're as intelligent as you're suggesting, trying to communicate with one sounds like an interesting experiment/experience... provided we could calm them down enough to try.

Maybe the trick isn't to actually kill it, but rather, trap it in some kind of substance or room? Like, lure it into a pit of concrete, or maybe dump a bunch of gorilla glue all over it, or since it's weak to electricity, you could create some kind of electrified platform to lure it onto (preferably in rainy conditions)

Just found your channel. love it. keep up the good work

I am not saying the old ones are dumb, or that humans are smart, or that they weren't/aren't significantly more technologically advanced. But every time I hear how much smarter than us they supposedly are all I can think is how they seem prone to the same arrogance of "Lets do this really cool thing" without thinking through all the potential ramifications. See: Shoggoths.

There are many who think that The Thing was .based on the Mountains of Madness . The simulularities between The Thing and a Shuggoth are amazing . Even discounting the cold locations of both stories .

What about viral/biological countermeasures? There's plenty there that a creature of protoplasm would be susceptible to. Exposing a Shoggoth to something like a hemorrhagic fever strain would be an interesting thought experiment, given how contagious and rapidly debilitating it is.

I think Proto-Shoggoths from Malleus Monstorum more "take-able" for a party as you can actually run from them. They can also be brought out of any human being I believe due to the suggestion that elder things or mi-go created it in part of our genes. I remember someone once saying a shoggoth was one of the more "take-able" things in loveceaft's mythos which now seems hilarious. They seem far more like throwing a dragon at 1st level characters in D&D. Call of Cthulhu is still so lethal that I had TWO of my players get badly injured in a recent gunfight that involved only 2 human beings. One of them got unlucky on a dodge roll after they ran within sight range of a cultist with a single blast from a sawed offd shotgun (one armed by the way, a player earlier on shriveled that guy's arm as he held them at gunpoint so he was firing off-handed) and it broke her shin from the force. Earlier on I had one PC get hospitalized from an encounter with Alex Hearne from the Arkham sourcebook, who had been swayed by the cultist. ONE good stab put him in the hospital for a solid week and the robber only had an empty gun and a pocket knife. THAT is good HP statting to keep within realism.

in the book differently morphous I think they use salt :)

An interesting analysis, but one must consider one important fact: a highly malleable and amorphous creature composed of cytoplasm (like an amoeba) is only a winning or viable design at a microscopic (or at least very tiny) scale. The reason for this is that the cystoskeleton that allows an amoeba to maintain any structural integrity at all simply cannot withstand the rigors of gravity at a macroscopic scale. It would quickly collapse under it's own weight (water is very heavy). Think about a water bed, and how everyone of a certain age knows of a story of one rupturing. This is why (thank goodness) we don't see creatures like the blob or a shoggoth in the real world. Earth's gravity requires musculoskeletal systems, composed of specialized and differentiated cells for macroscopic multicellular creatures (such as ourselves) to keep it all together and move around. Now it IS possible that a creature with a large repository of undifferentiated cells could exist, one that could repurpose them to form new organs and structures on the fly, but the laws of physics would still require those structures (enervated muscle, bone, and internal organs) to conform to some design approximating what we see in other real world creatures of a similar size (whales, elephants, etc.), and therefore would be subject to the same vulnerabilities that those creatures have to things like fire, acid, cold, and explosions. Furthermore, the first and second laws of thermodynamics would require a massive input of raw material to make the kind of large scale repairs you describe in your analysis (which is why creatures capable of healing lost limbs in the real world, such as starfish and certain lizards, can only do so over a prolonged period. A shoggoth, having sustained massive damage, could retreat and definitely heal to fight another day, but it would be far from unstoppable. Having said all this, one could wave it all away with, "because elder things", but I think it's only fair to mention these points if one is going through the trouble of examining the issue. Biological form is not immune to the laws of physics, except in awesome pulp stories and B movies. Love your channel by the way, just subscribed.

Acid sounds pretty good I mean it breaks matter down to a molecular level...depending on the acid or lava isn’t bad either

I got the impression in "the Shadow over Innsmouth" that there were multiple shoggoths in several houses throughout the town.....

We have lightning guns, that's what we use for radio therapy

That's what a TedTalk by people with a PhD with Xenobiology will sound like in about 300 years when we finally discover Shoggoths.

Great video but Mustard gas when used will blister the outer layer and the liquid in the blister has mustard gas in it also, so it will perpetuate the blistering effect.

HUMANS DO HAVE LIGHTING GUNS they are called tesla coils. build a big ass tesla coil and then shock the shoggoth. portability could be an issue so maybe they would have to find a way to lure it to the Tesla coil. that could be cool. people trying to figure out what can kill a shoggoth, making the Tesla coil and then trying to lure the shoggoth to the tesla coil and then turning the tesla coil on once the shoggoth is in range

I would think that intense short wave energy could be capable of cooking the shoggoth from the inside. You could in theory set up a number of small satellite dishes and coordinate them on the target. Something that malleable should be susceptible to that kind of energy.

The Elder things killed them with molecular weapons, yes, they are killable

Sandy, how do you know how much a 15 foot diameter sphere of flesh weighs? Is there something you're not telling us?

if you are fighting a shuggoth with regular firearms the game is already tits up

What about radioactive substances with a short half life? Radiation doesn't just damage DNA, it ionizes everything, causing destructive chemical reactions, and alpha and beta radiation is some of the most dangerous (although it's short-range) stuff. If you could load a fragile dart full of Radon-222 (alpha emitter), Iodine-131 (beta emitter), or Fluorine-18 (beta emitter) you could maybe poison the shoggoth with it, and if the dart is fragile (or perhaps using some kind of coated pellet gun), perhaps there'd be too many "hot spots" of radiation for the shoggoth to compensate for? I imagine it'd be some weird sort of government plan- they'd need to generate a large amount of this material, process it safely into perhaps a powder, a gas gun, or some kind of liquid coating for shotgun slugs, then distribute it as evenly as possible within the shoggoth, killing it over the course of hours or days. I thought of something you could use for your games! Radiation poisoning hurts stem cells the fastest, which is why short-lived and fast-dividing cells like sperm, bone marrow, the intestines, and skin are the most affected by radiation poisoning. Perhaps radiation wouldn't kill a shoggoth, but perhaps it would force the shoggoth to avoid eating things for a while? Perhaps radiation would force it to "adapt" by ossifying into as much resistant material as possible? Make it dormant while it waited for the decay products to fade?

adam ne güzel hayat dolu ya özendim

if i had your name my gamertag would be GritCock and thats pretty rad

it's mostly water so what about microwaving a shoggoth , would it be killed?

what is a proto shoggoth are they different from regular shoggoths, did regular shoggoths create life?

The only way to join a shoggot is to be its dinner.

So, Thor would be able to waste Shoggoths left and right

I shoulda got a degree in engineering and science and made a -lightning gun- particle cannon.....my wasted life! lolz

Just call Superman to pick it up and toss it into the sun. Problem solved. Oh, wait, Superman might be too kind to do that and instead might just bring it to some other planet where it will do no harm to anyone. ;)

This was a fun video! I've linked it in my article about shoggoths: alkony.enerla.net/tag/minispecies-shoggoth-cthulhu-mythos

A molecular disruptor

Wouldn’t explosives have effect by boiling their tissue? Life is mostly water and protein, and boiling water is usually enough to make proteins in the water denature and stop working. High explosives are very good at liquifying living creatures.

You said a Shoggoth cant reach a plain but you stated a shoggith can form anything and that they're smart fast and strong whats stopping a Shoggoth from forming wings or morphing into a winged like creature

Soak it in acid. If you have enough corrosive acid, it will dissolve the whole thing. Just fill a hole with enough acid, cover it with leaves, and kill it Looney Tunes style.

W… we came from… Shoggoths? (-10 sanity points)

So i know this is an old video, but i really don't get how a shogoth could be made out of protoplasm, because that is basically a liquid. it would make the shogoth a giant water ballon and shooting it with any automatic weapon would drain it pretty quickly, even if it can close the holes rapidly. fun fact: this is how t-killer-cells work, they make holes into cells to drain them of plasm. in my opinion the whole idea of the shogoth only makes sense if it is made of cells like most higher animals and plants. it would also explain how it can quickly reform parts of itself, because they are sectioned of from the rest of the organism. if it was one connected cell any enzymes or transmitters (or toxins from the outside) released inside the body would affect the whole shoggoth indescriminedly. and i think we can also see that a shoggoth would be made ouf cells if we look at nanite constructs from other sci fi. the reason they can do so many differnt things and can survive from being ripped apart is because they are made from semi independent entitys like cells and tiny robots. and since each of these smaller instances of the creature can specialize, you get all the cool stuff you dircribed like form explosives, release slime etc. in regards to how to beat a shoggoth, i think anything is fine as long as you acn do it for long enough. regenerating, moving as fast as a train all this should cost the shoggoth energy. plus releasing energy would gernarate plenty of heat, that the shoggoth would have to get rid of somehow, esspecially since it is so large, so i think exaustion trough hunger or heat could become a real problem for the shoggoth in a prolonged fight. plus any cellular metabolism known to us has toxic byprodacts that you have to get rid of somehow and since the its motabolism is that fast the soggoth is more strongly affected, so even if the shoggoth can find more food, it would probably poison itself over time. so tire it out throug evasion, then hunt it down to finish the job.

---how much is that SHOGGOTH in the window? The one with red hell-fire eyes?I sure hope that shoggoth's for sale....

Think about all of the contemporary art a shoggoth could/would love to make. Why fighting it when we could use it as a money laundering machine.

Vaccum? Deadly bacteria?

Elder Things video plz. Since they made the Shoggoths.

Getting into this :) Got a thought, though... Cytotoxins sound more interesting to me, 'cause if something like a Shoggoth were realistically possible, it be either be an amorphous mass of cells, or, technically, one enormous cell. There's not really another option given the way we define "cells". Whichever way that worked it would still need to at least have things like proteins and organelles and chromosomes (though probably not nuclei) in order for its body to function -- those things would essentially have to be the entire machinery of its body. You have a toxin that interferes with any one of those things, it interferes with those things whether they exist within something that you're calling a cell or not. Even if that machinery takes different shapes from the way it does in regular ol' Earthly life, it probably still functions on similar principles that can be disrupted in similar ways, especially if Earthly life evolved its own form and pathways from Shoggoths. This would mean that cytoplasm with its contents and shoggoth protoplasm with its own aren't entirely different from one another. And if you can disrupt that basic machinery enough, then you can disrupt everything the Shoggoth does -- turning itself into one big muscle, sloughing off damaged outer layers, you name it -- because while that basic machinery gives it that versatility, without any permanent organs and tissues it's also, really, the only machinery the beast has. Getting a large enough dose to kill it might still be problematic, but I wouldn't be surprised if a toxin like that would be more effective on an amorphous protoplasmic being like a Shoggoth than it would be on a more complex being with a lot of differentiated tissues and organs like a cat-thing or a human. There's another thing that occurred to me while I was writing all this, which is, that in order for such a massive beast to exist in any effective way on land it would need to form and maintain some kind of hardened structure within itself, or it would collapse under its own weight. Now bones are difficult things to grow -- just ask anybody who's ever broken one :) While the Shoggoth could certainly repair itself eventually from a break in that structure, that would probably be much slower than any other kind of self-repair it can do. If you break enough of the structure that the rest can't support the beast's weight and collapses in on itself, the Shoggoth probably wouldn't be able to overcome that weight in order to repair its "skeleton" while still on land, and... while it probably wouldn't die, it wouldn't be able to move or attack very well either. So with that in mind, if you were able to somehow cut off the Shoggoth's access to deep water (that's probably the hard part of this plan XD ), a lot of small explosives -- not big enough to split the monster into a whole bunch of smaller monsters, but still big enough to wreck parts of that internal structure it needs -- could work to put the beast into a vulnerable state where you could much more easily kill it by other means.

Aggressive prions perhaps?

They could be reasoned with, no?

Sonic guns and microwave guns would kill or debilitate them

I was curious about their limits. Could they grow wings and fly? Wheels like a transformer? Electric charges like an eel if their phone is running low on batteries?

id go for acid. you can use fire trucks and helicopters to put a LOT of acid on it. hopefully enough of it will get through

What about the use of Acid attacks?

So... Doomguy versus Shoggoth? Who wins?

Why am I watching this?

Hmm. Let's hear it people; if a shoggoth learned human English, what accent would be most horrifying to hear as 60 tons of sentient, shape-shifting, all-consuming protoplasm, hurtling at the speed of a subway car, bears down upon you?

What about CRISPR?

Big vat of acid?

Spoiler alert: You can't.

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