Hello and welcome back to Life’s Biggest Questions, I’m Ron McKenzie-Lefurgey.
We’re continuing our Journey through the Cthulhu Mythos, and today we’ll be looking
at Cthulhu’s first born, Ghatanothoa.
This Great Old One is usually nestled safely within the pages of Lovecraft’s fiction;
but what if it wasn’t?
What if it actually existed?
Let’s explore.
If you want more What If videos, check out our “Biggest What Ifs” playlist on the
channel.
Now get ready, it’s time to ask the question: What If Ghatanothoa Was Real?
As should be no surprise by now, we’ll start with a description of Ghatanothoa, since rather
few people know much about it.
Most haven’t even heard of it.
Ghatanothoa originates in Lovecraft's Out of the Aeons, but its story has been expanded
upon by other authors.
The Old One is said to reside beneath Mount Yaddith-Gho, in the continent of Mu, which
is said to have sunk to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
Stories say that it was brought to Earth from the planet Yuggoth by a group of aliens, who
sealed it inside the mountain to prevent it from wiping humans off the face of the Earth.
Ghatanothoa is described as an amorphous monstrosity, and like Cthulhu, it has significant effects
on anyone that gazes upon it due to its disturbing appearance.
If you look at Ghatanothoa, your body is petrified, turned into a living mummy.
This effect is often said to occur even if a person simply looks at a perfect replica
of the Old One.
Petrification is a horrible process; your body becomes leathery and you lose the ability
to move, but your brain and other organs continue to function, keeping you trapped in a terrifying
prison of your own body.
The only way to escape this torture is to destroy the brain, something that can take
an awfully long time if there’s nobody to finish you off.
Needless to say, this would be enough to drive even the most mindful person insane after
a while, so in a way, the result is the same as with Cthulhu.
If the beast rose and began to petrify people across the world, we would of course need
to try to defeat it.
Thankfully, the beast has been challenged several times over the years in various mediums,
so we can look to them to see how we'd fare.
This will help us to determine how durable the God is, how much help it has, and whether
or not we would be able to destroy it.
Friedrich von Junzt's grimoire Unaussprechlichen Kulten, or, Nameless Cults, told of how T'yog,
the High Priest of Shub-Niggurath, tried to defeat the beast.
T’yog attempted to use a special scroll to make him immune to petrification so he
could look at Ghatanothoa, but the Old One's priests replaced the scroll with a fake one
and T'yog failed.
One somewhat more ridiculous, but more successful, attempt at defeating the beast comes from
the Japanese tokusatsu show Ultraman Tiga.
In the final episode, the hero Daigo comes up against a version of Ghatanothoa called
Gatanothor.
Even in Ultraman Tiga form, Daigo stands no chance against the beast and is defeated.
However, he's revived as Glitter Tiga thanks to the light of humanity, and he manages to
defeat Gatanothor with the last of his power.
So, based on these battles as well as some I don’t have time to discuss, it seems that
we could potentially defeat Ghatanothoa, if we found a way to kill it without actually
looking at it, and had a weapon as powerful as Tiga’s colour timer attacks.
While it’s unclear just how powerful these attacks are, if we look at their effects on
monsters and the environment, it seems fair to assume that a nuclear bomb would be enough
to kill it.
This means that if the beast awoke, and rose to the surface, we would likely need to resort
to nuclear weapons.
Not only would the power be necessary, but the long range would allow people to fire
at the beast without looking at it.
Of course, this would result in collateral damage, but killing a relatively small number
of people quickly is certainly preferable to dooming all of humanity to endless mummified
lives.
However, given the involvement of Ghatanothoa’s priests in von Junzts’s story, it seems
likely that these cultists would be working to hinder humanity’s efforts.
So not only would we need to worry about the Old God that we can’t even look at, we’d
have to worry about the actions of its shadowy followers.
It’s possible that these people would have installed themselves into positions of power,
in order to prevent humanity from fighting back.
They would attempt to foil our plans, just as they foiled the plans of T’yog.
One important point to clarify is that the petrification seems to work even with perfect
images of the beast.
This means that we wouldn’t be able to use cameras or mirrors to get around it, like
we could with Medusa; anyone who so much as glanced at a photo or video of Ghatanothoa
would be rendered useless.
This means that much of the Earth may have seen an image of the beast before learning
of the dangers, and would thus be stuck in a petrified hell.
This would be especially harmful if members of government and military fell prey to this
petrification, since it would be more difficult to organize a nuclear strike.
Now, you might think, “Well that’s not too bad, because anyone who tried to take
a photo of it would be petrified, so they couldn’t share it.”
Well, the problem is, there’s a good chance that Ghatanothoa’s priests would attempt
to circulate images in hopes of petrifying humanity before they have a chance to fight
back.
This would make it much more difficult to defend against the Old One, and could lead
to humanity’s defeat.
In which case, the lucky ones would die, and the unlucky ones would be trapped in their
fully-conscious, but completely immobile, bodies.
Yikes.
And now we return to our question: What If Ghatanothoa Was Real?
Well, based on past battles, it seems possible that nuclear weapons would work on the beast.
The problem is, it would be difficult to coordinate without looking at an image of it, particularly
with its priests attempting to derail humanity’s defence.
If we managed to get a solid nuclear attack off on the beast, we might be able to kill
it, despite the collateral damage, but if we took too long, there might not be enough
non-petrified people around to do the job.
That is, unless we had a giant superhero who could use his colour timer to defeat it.
Which, well, we don’t.
Thank you for watching Life’s Biggest Questions, I hope this was interesting and informative,
and maybe even inspired you to look into it further on your own.
If you liked this video, please thumbs up and subscribe to the channel down below.
While you’re down there, let me know what other mythical creatures you’d like to learn
about.
Until next time, I’m Ron McKenzie-Lefurgey with Life’s Biggest Questions, wishing you
the best of luck, on your quest for answers.