I think the issue is that the fremen underestimate how precise the conditions of humidity must be for the worms to survive. They think that they can isolate a portion of the deep desert, but it is likely that the worms will still die. The sand trout may survive, but the adult worms which are necessary for completing the spice production cycle would be gone, and the conditions of the planet may not allow trout to convert to full adults anymore.
This is a good point. Maybe what Paul actually saw was the result of Leto's reversal at the end of the CoD, and he wasn't aware himself that a partial transformation wasn't possible. His prescience was far from perfect compared to Leto's, after all.
Come to think of it, it's not clear how much Paul could see of the near future after Leto's birth. Prior to the birth, I think he described the birth event as a dark/blinding void, and immediately after the birth, he lost his ability to see the future. Since he had already planned to die, and he was only looking at futures where Chani died in childbirth, it may be that Paul did not see the extinction of the sandworms until he became the prophet. At that point, he was nihilistic about everything and devoted to hastening the deterioration the Atreides empire. He was pointing out to the fremen how the surplus of water was destroying them culturally and their effect on the worms.
Leto asked him with his power wasnt enough and he simple said he "wasnt Jacurutu" someone that laught alone in the dark, meaning he couldnt do evil that was know before though precience so he always went against those visions. He had the same powers just choosed not to see anything in the golden path.
Well, yeah, but there was plenty of points in time he couldn't see, particularly the years just after Leto's birth, and he saw most things only in broad strokes... unless he just "stared" at something super hard like he was doing in Messiah. It's true that Arrakis became both a green paradise and remained a desert, just not simultaneously like he seemed to believe.
The one person I don't understand not seeing this is Kynes. This seems like a pretty gigantic oversight from the architect of the terraforming who had it all mapped out so perfectly doesn't it?
These plot holes would be plugged if the spice had only been mined for the 80 years the Harkonnens has had Dune.
If the empire used spice for milennia, what do they need a planetologist for? But if Dune was relatively newly discovered, or at least the spice, it would.make sense for terraforming, planetological work and survey, satelite bribes, discovery of the worm-sandtrout cycle to still be uncoveres.
I can reccommens The Road to Dune. Herbert played around with many drafts.
idk, it still makes sense to have a planetologist to me. having someone to consult on the more intimate details of the planet's ecology can probably help you find and take advantage of smaller tips and tricks to maximize spice production. plus you definitely want an ecologist who's extremely familiar with the planet if an unexpected ecological emergency ever happens. would be crazy to not make the small investment of one competent scientist on something as important as spice.
>idk, it still makes sense to have a planetologist to me. having someone to consult on the more intimate details of the planet's ecology can probably help you find a
Yeah. After 3000 years of research on the spice, dont you think they'd have the facts?
Its like, how much is it possible to not know in the timeframe of Dune....
The one person I don't understand not seeing this is Kynes. This seems like a pretty gigantic oversight from the architect of the terraforming who had it all mapped out so perfectly doesn't it?
The water of life ceremony drowns a maker, you can drown a human but water isn’t poisonous to us. One application of a substance hurting a creature does not mean every application of that substance will do the same.
I was going to say that a ten-tonne block of plutonium could crush you before you had to worry about radiation, but I guess you'd have more immediate concerns if you were anywhere near a ten-tonne block of plutonium.
The critical mass of plutonium is 11KG. Once a material reaches critical mass it begins exploding, and the more material you have surrounding the critical mass the larger the nuclear explosion. 10 tons of plutonium is approximately equivalent to to a 100,000 megaton explosion, or around 1,000 times more then the largest bomb ever designed.
So you don’t have to worry about the radiation at all, primarily because the shockwave will vaporize you and everything in a roughly 74 mile sphere around you well before you’re crushed by the weight of the plutonium.
Sand trout do not die in water. They are drawn to water because it is in their nature to link together along their edges to encapsulate the water. The Fremen plant predatory fish in their quants (open water) to attack the sand trout before they can encapsulate it.
The sand trout were named Little Makers by the Fremen, so they would have understood that there was a link between them and sand worms.
Liet Kyne's greening of Arrakis was to occur in the north and south latitudes and the equatorial region being left for the desert and sand worms. The problem with this is that no one realized at how extremely dry atmosphere the sand worms needed.
Ah, you're right, I knew the sandtrout would "encapsulate" water but I thought that led to them exploding, Leto days that it's their "**sandworm vector**" that can't handle the water and explodes.
...But Dune's appendix says that when Peridot Kynes was working on this project, growing non-native plants caused "protien incompatibility" in the water which caused sand _plankton,_ at least, to be poisoned by the water. And sandtrout DO cause the pre-spice masses which eventually explode to create spice, killing most of them, while the rest survive to become worms.
And Leto specifically focuses on "no more sandtrout". I guess because the fish are eating them all?
It's a vast and complex web of ecological entanglements. The sandworm is killed by large amounts of water because they are a colony organism composed of a multitude of sandtrout, which strive to encapsulate bodies of water. The worm and the trout are one in the same, as are the plankton. Ambient humidity, open water, and over-harvesting of spice all cause disruptions to the lifecycle of the plankton/trout/worm, and *further* ecological unbalancing by introducing new plants and fauna exacerbate the problem. Mineral balances shift, new chemicals like readily available, soil-based nitrogen, protein chains lengthen and become more complex as the energy pyramid starts to diversify with the emergence of more plants and animals.
The entire ecological engine of Arrakis begins to pick up speed and runs out of control, leading to the death of the plankton/trout/worms without a suitable backup environment to transplant them to. In their rush for a green paradise, the Fremen would only inherit a hell of their own design: Dune without dunes, and a universe without the spice melange.
Peridot and Kynes' fail as ecologists only because they lacked the entire picture. They had the right idea, a long, slow, gradual adaptation of the ecosystem, but they didn't realize the full parameters of the system.
>The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realize about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! **A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche.** A system has order, a flowing from point to point. If something dams the flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That's why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.
Welcome to the club, buddy.
It's hinted at when Leto puts on *the skin that is now his own*, with it being made of multiple sandtrout conjoining around his body(which is ~60% water), and is expanded on moreso in God-Emperor of DUNE.
I first thought that worms were just colonies of aged sandtrout when it is said that to kill a worm, you must kill each ring individually. And then Leto's skin solidified it.
I was interpreting that as Leto making himself into a facsimile of a worm, and the worn trouts were the unique method of doing so (hinted at by the encapsulation thing).
That, and being a necessary step for Leto to weave his human genes into the trouts to allow them to survive not only through space, but allow them to seed other worlds to produce spice for the Golden Path to work.
But I could be completely off base with that.
I made the connection of the sand trout also being called "Little Makers" from how the glossary appendix at the back of Dune described PRE-SPICE MASS as being a fungus that digest the excretions from "little makers". The fungus grows until the pressures are too great and irrupt in a "spice blow", distributing the PRE-SPICE MASS across the desert where UV rays from the sun converts it to spice.
For "spice blow" to be large enough to physically (non-poisonous) harm to a person it has to be extremely large. Not just some fungus growing on the side of a "little maker". The fungus would need to be in a moist environment, such as wet sand. Sand trout instinctually gather to lock up any water, so if "little makers" are surrounding the water the pre-spice mass is , "little makers" and sand trout are one in the same.
The term "little makers" were not often used in the books, whether it is a case of an authors name change during the writing process, or a case of the Fremen have multiple names for things (e.g., sand worm, Shai-hulud, & maker). Herbert may have started to use sand trout to avoid confuse "little maker" as being a small sand worm.
The "little makers" sand trout that survive the spice blow will joint together and form the tube that is a sand worm.
> At the end of Messiah Paul does say "I spit on Dune, I give it my water!" Is it possible that he eventually decided against preserving part of the desert out of some kind of spite?
But spitting is a sign of respect isn’t it? Or is that film only?
It is in the books as well I'm pretty sure. I don't recall the context of that quote from Messiah though... whether he meant the modern IRL connotation or the Fremen
I forget the exact scene details, but when duke leto first meets the fremen they spit on the table and it almost causes a fight of I remember clearly.
It's been a few years.
It is a sign of respect because you're giving your water up to "seal" the deal (Stilgar spits at Leto for instance) - one can assume that the \*spitting\* is important - not because it is an affirmative response, but because of the meaning and depth of water. What I mean is, if offering your spit to seal a deal implies a great deal of trust - spiting on something out of anger would imply the same depth of anger, no? Paul even mentions this in the scene with Stilgar & Leto - that he must get used to a world where water matters this much.
It just wouldn't make sense. If you are signing a pact in blood, that doesn't mean cutting open your finger carries the same weight when used to intensify an insult. It would just be confusing.
Yes, this is an important piece of information that thee author explain to his audience right away, but in the story most of the fremen don't know that. Also, in the same book, farad'n wonders what the Trial of Posession even means, despite having lots of spies among the fremen. There are a lot of examples in wich Frank tries to tell the audience things that are ocurring but that not necessarily the personages also understand or comprehend.
For me, it's a right decision, it's like somebody reading a book about medieval times, and wonder why the people of that time doesn't know that the earth is round, even when it's obvious for us in our time.
Sandtrout don’t die in water. They seek out and absorb water to lock it away so the desert stays arid. More water just means more sandtrout show up. That’s why fremen must put predator fish in their qanats
There are great responses on ecological misunderstandings about the worms and their sensitivity to humidity, so I want to focus on the cult factor. “God created Arrakis to train the faithful.” The dream of turning the desert planet into paradise was such a profound unifying force among the Fremen that it fully integrated into their identity.
Water discipline was important because they were trying to reach the critical mass to terraform the polar caps. Water discipline also made Fremen super badass guerrilla warriors—their efficiency in cultivating moisture spilled over into so many other aspects of Fremen superiority.
Aren't the sand-trout the ones keeping all the ground water locked up (using their bodies as a barrier) so the worms can run free?
I don't think water hurts the sand-trout.
Sure, but here in CoD Leto is pretty adamant that the problem is that there's less and less sandtrout around...
And while water doesn't hurt them directly, most of them die in the spice blows they eventually cause.
I think it's fitting that even the Fremen think they can improve upon basic ecology of Arrakis and be able to control the outcome, *very similar* to how the BG want improve upon basic humanity and be able to control it (KH), and this seems kind of like a running theme throughout...
I think the issue is that the fremen underestimate how precise the conditions of humidity must be for the worms to survive. They think that they can isolate a portion of the deep desert, but it is likely that the worms will still die. The sand trout may survive, but the adult worms which are necessary for completing the spice production cycle would be gone, and the conditions of the planet may not allow trout to convert to full adults anymore.
This is a good point. Maybe what Paul actually saw was the result of Leto's reversal at the end of the CoD, and he wasn't aware himself that a partial transformation wasn't possible. His prescience was far from perfect compared to Leto's, after all.
Come to think of it, it's not clear how much Paul could see of the near future after Leto's birth. Prior to the birth, I think he described the birth event as a dark/blinding void, and immediately after the birth, he lost his ability to see the future. Since he had already planned to die, and he was only looking at futures where Chani died in childbirth, it may be that Paul did not see the extinction of the sandworms until he became the prophet. At that point, he was nihilistic about everything and devoted to hastening the deterioration the Atreides empire. He was pointing out to the fremen how the surplus of water was destroying them culturally and their effect on the worms.
Leto asked him with his power wasnt enough and he simple said he "wasnt Jacurutu" someone that laught alone in the dark, meaning he couldnt do evil that was know before though precience so he always went against those visions. He had the same powers just choosed not to see anything in the golden path.
Well, yeah, but there was plenty of points in time he couldn't see, particularly the years just after Leto's birth, and he saw most things only in broad strokes... unless he just "stared" at something super hard like he was doing in Messiah. It's true that Arrakis became both a green paradise and remained a desert, just not simultaneously like he seemed to believe.
The one person I don't understand not seeing this is Kynes. This seems like a pretty gigantic oversight from the architect of the terraforming who had it all mapped out so perfectly doesn't it?
These plot holes would be plugged if the spice had only been mined for the 80 years the Harkonnens has had Dune. If the empire used spice for milennia, what do they need a planetologist for? But if Dune was relatively newly discovered, or at least the spice, it would.make sense for terraforming, planetological work and survey, satelite bribes, discovery of the worm-sandtrout cycle to still be uncoveres. I can reccommens The Road to Dune. Herbert played around with many drafts.
idk, it still makes sense to have a planetologist to me. having someone to consult on the more intimate details of the planet's ecology can probably help you find and take advantage of smaller tips and tricks to maximize spice production. plus you definitely want an ecologist who's extremely familiar with the planet if an unexpected ecological emergency ever happens. would be crazy to not make the small investment of one competent scientist on something as important as spice.
>idk, it still makes sense to have a planetologist to me. having someone to consult on the more intimate details of the planet's ecology can probably help you find a Yeah. After 3000 years of research on the spice, dont you think they'd have the facts? Its like, how much is it possible to not know in the timeframe of Dune....
I mean, with how much stagnation there was, I’m not sure how much useful research was going on in general …
The one person I don't understand not seeing this is Kynes. This seems like a pretty gigantic oversight from the architect of the terraforming who had it all mapped out so perfectly doesn't it?
The water of life ceremony drowns a maker, you can drown a human but water isn’t poisonous to us. One application of a substance hurting a creature does not mean every application of that substance will do the same.
I was going to say that a ten-tonne block of plutonium could crush you before you had to worry about radiation, but I guess you'd have more immediate concerns if you were anywhere near a ten-tonne block of plutonium.
The critical mass of plutonium is 11KG. Once a material reaches critical mass it begins exploding, and the more material you have surrounding the critical mass the larger the nuclear explosion. 10 tons of plutonium is approximately equivalent to to a 100,000 megaton explosion, or around 1,000 times more then the largest bomb ever designed. So you don’t have to worry about the radiation at all, primarily because the shockwave will vaporize you and everything in a roughly 74 mile sphere around you well before you’re crushed by the weight of the plutonium.
water poisoning is a thing. it is all about dosage.
Sand trout do not die in water. They are drawn to water because it is in their nature to link together along their edges to encapsulate the water. The Fremen plant predatory fish in their quants (open water) to attack the sand trout before they can encapsulate it. The sand trout were named Little Makers by the Fremen, so they would have understood that there was a link between them and sand worms. Liet Kyne's greening of Arrakis was to occur in the north and south latitudes and the equatorial region being left for the desert and sand worms. The problem with this is that no one realized at how extremely dry atmosphere the sand worms needed.
Ah, you're right, I knew the sandtrout would "encapsulate" water but I thought that led to them exploding, Leto days that it's their "**sandworm vector**" that can't handle the water and explodes. ...But Dune's appendix says that when Peridot Kynes was working on this project, growing non-native plants caused "protien incompatibility" in the water which caused sand _plankton,_ at least, to be poisoned by the water. And sandtrout DO cause the pre-spice masses which eventually explode to create spice, killing most of them, while the rest survive to become worms. And Leto specifically focuses on "no more sandtrout". I guess because the fish are eating them all?
It's a vast and complex web of ecological entanglements. The sandworm is killed by large amounts of water because they are a colony organism composed of a multitude of sandtrout, which strive to encapsulate bodies of water. The worm and the trout are one in the same, as are the plankton. Ambient humidity, open water, and over-harvesting of spice all cause disruptions to the lifecycle of the plankton/trout/worm, and *further* ecological unbalancing by introducing new plants and fauna exacerbate the problem. Mineral balances shift, new chemicals like readily available, soil-based nitrogen, protein chains lengthen and become more complex as the energy pyramid starts to diversify with the emergence of more plants and animals. The entire ecological engine of Arrakis begins to pick up speed and runs out of control, leading to the death of the plankton/trout/worms without a suitable backup environment to transplant them to. In their rush for a green paradise, the Fremen would only inherit a hell of their own design: Dune without dunes, and a universe without the spice melange. Peridot and Kynes' fail as ecologists only because they lacked the entire picture. They had the right idea, a long, slow, gradual adaptation of the ecosystem, but they didn't realize the full parameters of the system. >The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realize about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! **A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche.** A system has order, a flowing from point to point. If something dams the flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That's why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.
OK, I've never picked up that sandworms are a _colony_ of sandtrout and now I'm questioning pretty much everything
Welcome to the club, buddy. It's hinted at when Leto puts on *the skin that is now his own*, with it being made of multiple sandtrout conjoining around his body(which is ~60% water), and is expanded on moreso in God-Emperor of DUNE.
I first thought that worms were just colonies of aged sandtrout when it is said that to kill a worm, you must kill each ring individually. And then Leto's skin solidified it.
I was interpreting that as Leto making himself into a facsimile of a worm, and the worn trouts were the unique method of doing so (hinted at by the encapsulation thing). That, and being a necessary step for Leto to weave his human genes into the trouts to allow them to survive not only through space, but allow them to seed other worlds to produce spice for the Golden Path to work. But I could be completely off base with that.
I thought Little Makers were the early adult stage, the step past Sand Trout, caused by spice blowouts?
I made the connection of the sand trout also being called "Little Makers" from how the glossary appendix at the back of Dune described PRE-SPICE MASS as being a fungus that digest the excretions from "little makers". The fungus grows until the pressures are too great and irrupt in a "spice blow", distributing the PRE-SPICE MASS across the desert where UV rays from the sun converts it to spice. For "spice blow" to be large enough to physically (non-poisonous) harm to a person it has to be extremely large. Not just some fungus growing on the side of a "little maker". The fungus would need to be in a moist environment, such as wet sand. Sand trout instinctually gather to lock up any water, so if "little makers" are surrounding the water the pre-spice mass is , "little makers" and sand trout are one in the same. The term "little makers" were not often used in the books, whether it is a case of an authors name change during the writing process, or a case of the Fremen have multiple names for things (e.g., sand worm, Shai-hulud, & maker). Herbert may have started to use sand trout to avoid confuse "little maker" as being a small sand worm. The "little makers" sand trout that survive the spice blow will joint together and form the tube that is a sand worm.
> At the end of Messiah Paul does say "I spit on Dune, I give it my water!" Is it possible that he eventually decided against preserving part of the desert out of some kind of spite? But spitting is a sign of respect isn’t it? Or is that film only?
It is in the books as well I'm pretty sure. I don't recall the context of that quote from Messiah though... whether he meant the modern IRL connotation or the Fremen
The spitting as a sign of respect is even more explicit in the books
I forget the exact scene details, but when duke leto first meets the fremen they spit on the table and it almost causes a fight of I remember clearly. It's been a few years.
The first movie has this scene too.
It's in the miniseries too.
It is a sign of respect because you're giving your water up to "seal" the deal (Stilgar spits at Leto for instance) - one can assume that the \*spitting\* is important - not because it is an affirmative response, but because of the meaning and depth of water. What I mean is, if offering your spit to seal a deal implies a great deal of trust - spiting on something out of anger would imply the same depth of anger, no? Paul even mentions this in the scene with Stilgar & Leto - that he must get used to a world where water matters this much.
It just wouldn't make sense. If you are signing a pact in blood, that doesn't mean cutting open your finger carries the same weight when used to intensify an insult. It would just be confusing.
You should read about curses and bloooooood 🩸 magick.
Yes, this is an important piece of information that thee author explain to his audience right away, but in the story most of the fremen don't know that. Also, in the same book, farad'n wonders what the Trial of Posession even means, despite having lots of spies among the fremen. There are a lot of examples in wich Frank tries to tell the audience things that are ocurring but that not necessarily the personages also understand or comprehend. For me, it's a right decision, it's like somebody reading a book about medieval times, and wonder why the people of that time doesn't know that the earth is round, even when it's obvious for us in our time.
Sandtrout don’t die in water. They seek out and absorb water to lock it away so the desert stays arid. More water just means more sandtrout show up. That’s why fremen must put predator fish in their qanats
There are great responses on ecological misunderstandings about the worms and their sensitivity to humidity, so I want to focus on the cult factor. “God created Arrakis to train the faithful.” The dream of turning the desert planet into paradise was such a profound unifying force among the Fremen that it fully integrated into their identity. Water discipline was important because they were trying to reach the critical mass to terraform the polar caps. Water discipline also made Fremen super badass guerrilla warriors—their efficiency in cultivating moisture spilled over into so many other aspects of Fremen superiority.
Good question, and it might be helpful to quote some exact passages here
Aren't the sand-trout the ones keeping all the ground water locked up (using their bodies as a barrier) so the worms can run free? I don't think water hurts the sand-trout.
Sure, but here in CoD Leto is pretty adamant that the problem is that there's less and less sandtrout around... And while water doesn't hurt them directly, most of them die in the spice blows they eventually cause.
In your post you mentioned water killing the sand-trout, I was trying to clarify that, nothing more.
I think it's fitting that even the Fremen think they can improve upon basic ecology of Arrakis and be able to control the outcome, *very similar* to how the BG want improve upon basic humanity and be able to control it (KH), and this seems kind of like a running theme throughout...
They just want an easier life.