Aliens on Earth

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 10:16 pm

Okay, after seeing AVP 2 yesterday night, I'm in a mood for some more aliens killing people.
So, here's how it goes. Q's doing his usual job of being a massive ass, and decides it'd be funny to throw a bunch of xenomorphs onto Earth, and see how far they get. Q has removed all copies of the Alien quadrilogy and the two Alien Versus Predator films from the planet, and made everyone forget they ever existed, except for you. Two scenarios:

A) The aliens start off in a forrest near a small, rural town of 5000 inhabitants. A queen sets up a nest in a cave in the forest, and starts off with fifty eggs.
What happens?

B) The aliens start off in the sewer network under a city, population 5 million. The queen has a nest in an old, disused part of the sewer network, and start off with five hundred eggs.
What happens?

Another twist; assume that you have somehow ended up in the city/town in question, as you're visiting a relative, or just moved there, or something. What do you do when you realise that these things are the aliens, and that no one else knows what they are? Can you think of any way to survive?

Post by **Captain Seafort** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 10:34 pm

Long term, the Aliens haven't got a chance. Artillery, tanks and automatic weapons > claws and acid blood. The second scenario is far more difficult than the first, but only because urban combat is far more difficult than any other sort.

Personnal survival scenario: get a vehicle and go to live with friends/relatives as far away as possible.

Jordanis · Post by **Jordanis** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 10:43 pm

Captain Seafort wrote:Long term, the Aliens haven't got a chance. Artillery, tanks and automatic weapons > claws and acid blood. The second scenario is far more difficult than the first, but only because urban combat is far more difficult than any other sort.

Personnal survival scenario: get a vehicle and go to live with friends/relatives as far away as possible.

Agreeing with this. I can't help but think that (eventually, if it came down to it) they would manage to figure out about the chestbursters, figure out a way to screen for them, then evacuate the city and rain some nukes and artillery and generally /stuff/ on it until there's no more xenomorphs.

Post by **Mikey** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 10:47 pm

Yeah. there would be a number of casualties before anyone with military authority were convinced, but once that happens a pretty damned heavy steel rain would fall on the xenomorphs.

Post by **Graham Kennedy** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:25 pm

Question is, how smart are the aliens?

Their huge weakness is numbers. They need humans to reproduce, so their ability to build an army is limited by how many victims they can catch. Once you find an area is infected, clear the people out; no more aliens can be produced there. Animals would be a complicating factor there, but large animals could probably be evacuated / wiped out pretty easily too.

Reproduction is further limited by dependence on the Queen. As far as we know, only the Queen can produce eggs. So work out where the queen is, drop a MOAB or tactical nuke on it, and all that's left is mopping up the drones.

So. Given that, if the aliens go out slaughtering and draw attention to themselves... then basically they're screwed.

BUT. If they are smart enough to lie low... snatch selected victims, steer clear of crowds and such... and build numbers slowly. Then they have a chance of at least much greater mayhem.

Given that New York is the way to go. Population of millions, so you could reasonably take ten, twenty a day indefinitely without being noticed, easily. A year of that and... well.

Post by **Mikey** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 1:27 am

Fits well with my point, if a bit better thought-out. That would be the deciding factor; if the get too greedy, they get found out, and the aforementioned steel rain fails.

Post by **Captain Seafort** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 11:54 am

The bottom line remains, however, that the Aliens have animal-type intelligence - geared towards survival and propagation. They rely solely on their (admittedly formidable) natural abilities. They're certainly extremely intelligent within their own niche, probably sufficiently so to pull off the strategy Graham suggests to build up their numbers in the New York sewers.

At some point however they will be noticed, even if it's only after they've built up a massive population base. Once this happens they've had it - even massive numbers of Aliens would not be able to survive in the face of a counteroffensive by a modern western military, especially the US military with its emphasis on vastly superior firepower. Even if they're resilient enough and have sufficient numbers to make frontal attacks against machine guns a viable tactic, there's still area effect weapons such as MLRS, B-52 strikes and tactical nukes to fall back on. Worst case scenario (which, if the Aliens manage to build up a sufficient population is quite likely) is that New York disappears under an number of very large mushroom clouds.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 2:41 pm

So, what kind of casualties would we be talking about here, in either stiuation? Thousands? Millions?

Post by **Captain Seafort** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 2:51 pm

Depending on how long it took before people twigged that there was something fishy going on, I'd say a few thousand low-end to hundreds of thousands to millions top-end. The latter figure being based on the worse case scenario if the Aliens were able to effectively take control of New York and prevent mass evacuation. In that case they would be present in such numbers that the only viable method of dealing with them would be to establish a cordon, evacuate as many people as possible from rural New York state and Pennsylvania, and then launch a strategic nuclear strike. Even then, you'd need to maintain the perimeter for a considerable time to deal with any Alien survivors. That is, however, unlikely. It requires that the Aliens build up a massive population base (tens or hundreds of thousands) without being detected, which I doubt they would be able to do. Thousands would probably be the limit before people realised something was up and did a runner.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 2:59 pm

Okay then.

One more thing, someone (I think it was Graham) mentioned that the aliens will be limited by only having one queen. Would the aliens not also be able to hatch the 'queen' facehuggers, like the one that got on the Sulaco in Alien 3? Also, wasn't there a scene in Alien where the alien on the Nostromo had laid eggs in Dallas, somehow?
Wouldn't this mean they'd have to prevent even single facehuggers, chestbursters, and drones from escaping?

For the sake of this scenario, I think it's best we just ignore the stupidity of the xenomorph reproductive system that was brought up in Aliens Versus Predators: Requiem

Post by **Captain Seafort** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 3:11 pm

Given the amount of chaos even a single xenomorph could cause among a civilian population, I'd say that preventing escapees would be an important task even without the risk of a queen escaping.

I must admit that I've never actually seen the films, and my knowledge of xenomorph capabilities is therefore gained mainly from sources such as Wikipedia, and from reading similar discussions on other boards. I'm therefore assuming, to be on the safe side, that they're tough enough that repeated hits from high-velocity military ammunition is required to bring them down, and handguns, shotguns, and low-calibre ammunition won't suffice.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 4:10 pm

You've never seen Alien? Are you sure you're a sci-fi fan?

On the topic of their endurance, from off the top of my head:
They seemed resistant to pistol ammunition unless fired at point-blank range. (Aliens)
Shotguns seem to work pretty well against them. (AVP:R)
Rifles need multiple hits to take them down. (AVP, AVP:R)

From what's been proposed, I'm guessing that there will be an initial major outbreak, costing a lot of lives, with smaller outbreaks caused by single escapees being contained in nearby areas. Would you agree?

Foxbat · Post by **Foxbat** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 4:21 pm

rent/borrow/steal Alien & Aliens (I can do w/out movies 3 & 4) and report back your findings please...

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 4:30 pm

Was that adressed to me, or Seafort?

Enkidu · Post by **Enkidu** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 6:11 pm

Alien and Aliens are among the best of sci fi films, and an argument could be made for Aliens been the best action film of the 'eighties. They are well worth a look, Captain Seafort.
I think AvP is on (UK) channel 4 tomorrow. It's not very good, but not Uwe Boll bad.