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Bacteria

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The photo in the image relating you from the last page to this one is of a tardigrade, or waterbear. These are micro-animals, (so not bacteria of any sort) but are utterly unkillable. They can survive the harshest of environments that we can expose it to. These little guys are found almost everywhere on Earth, and they can survive without water by curling up into a little ball, where their cells start synthesizing molecules that "fill the tardigrade's cells to replace the water" they're in deficit of. They can survive over 100x a lethal dose of radiation, and they have been sent to space and then been exposed to the actual, oxygenless vacuum of space. Without a space suit. Just up there. In space.

Bacteria can also survive without water. What is important to note about bacteria is that there is very little in the way of individual families: there is no origin parent that spawns children which spawn children which spawn children, there is only the asexual reproduction that sees the bacteria split in half when quorum sensing allows.Bacteria are just as hardy, as well: some spores found in 250 000 000 year old salt crystals were revived in New Mexico in 2000.

Bacteria kind of don't die, really, so it's hard to imagine they care all that much about what happens after death.

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  1. Eschatological Concern Sam Henrickson

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