You're supposed to take damage from the nitros in the beginning. That's the basis of the whole game.
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This game is very loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness.
“The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. ”
-H.P. Lovecraft