Aliens on Earth: Armageddon or Inconvenience?

[Hieronymus]

Completely agree. Even the writers of the one where Ripley kills herself to prevent Aliens wiping out life on Earth viewed the Aliens-on-Earth scenario as a no-go. You'd just nuke the infestation site from orbit and that'd be it.

At the time, though, we had no idea how quickly aliens would spread on a world with numerous population centers.  We saw one hive in Aliens because there was one population center; on Earth, for all we knew, a hive would start pumping out baby queens for every 20 warriors.  In such a scenario, if you didn't nuke the site within a couple of days, you wouldn't get another chance.

Of course, AVPR shows us that an infestation tends to be isolated to a particular location even after you have hundreds of warriors, but its canonicity is now up for debate.

Hadley's is a bit of a special case. There's nowhere to evacuate to, and the only weapons they had were hand guns and seismic charges. Even with these constraints, at least two colonists managed to survive for around a month during the infestation.

Two colonists out of 158 is a pretty low survival rate, and of course one of them was eventually caught.

[deezelboy]

I find it pretty high considering that you've got maybe 140 Aliens scouring a couple of square kilometres for hosts over the course of around a month. Other than hive building and sleeping, they don't seem to do much else.

At the time, though, we had no idea how quickly aliens would spread on a world with numerous population centers.  We saw one hive in Aliens because there was one population center; on Earth, for all we knew, a hive would start pumping out baby queens for every 20 warriors.  In such a scenario, if you didn't nuke the site within a couple of days, you wouldn't get another chance.

I dunno. It's an interesting scenario to speculate on:

Take an Alien invasion now. Assume you've actually got the political will to fully confront the situation, and you've worked out the Alien's life cycle. During that time, the Aliens have invaded one population centre.

You've got satellites, drones, air superiority. It's not going to help much in urban environments, but you should be able to detect Queens ambling between one population centre to another, assuming their aren't Queen-capacity-size tunnels intersecting them (and if there are, it shouldn't be too hard to seal them off and keep them guarded with serious ordnance).

You've got a functioning communications system and transport infrastructure, so you should be able to evacuate any infected population centre prior to razing it to the ground.

You don't have to worry too much about infected humans, because during most of the infection period they tend to be easily identifiable due to the facehugger clasping to their faces. Post-facehugger the infected are easily quarantined, as they'll most likely burst within a handful of hours. Plus the Aliens are actually helping you for the most part, segregating the infected by transporting them down to the Hive and cocooning them there.

What could go wrong?

[Darkfox]

I find it pretty high considering that you've got maybe 140 Aliens scouring a couple of square kilometres for hosts over the course of around a month. Other than hive building and sleeping, they don't seem to do much else.

Well, there were no more hosts and nothing else to do, if you discount Newt (and apparently, the Aliens lack the typical "bad guy syndrome" where they'd send their full force to get the last defiant human who dares to oppose their utter superiority! Grr). "Everything's cocooned or eaten, sir. What do we do now?" "Now, we hibernate."

I dunno. It's an interesting scenario to speculate on:

Take an Alien invasion now. Assume you've actually got the political will to fully confront the situation, and you've worked out the Alien's life cycle. During that time, the Aliens have invaded one population centre.

You've got satellites, drones, air superiority. It's not going to help much in urban environments, but you should be able to detect Queens ambling between one population centre to another, assuming their aren't Queen-capacity-size tunnels intersecting them (and if there are, it shouldn't be too hard to seal them off and keep them guarded with serious ordnance).

You've got a functioning communications system and transport infrastructure, so you should be able to evacuate any infected population centre prior to razing it to the ground.

You don't have to worry too much about infected humans, because during most of the infection period they tend to be easily identifiable due to the facehugger clasping to their faces. Post-facehugger the infected are easily quarantined, as they'll most likely burst within a handful of hours. Plus the Aliens are actually helping you for the most part, segregating the infected by transporting them down to the Hive and cocooning them there.

What could go wrong?

For me, a single Alien getting on Earth was already the greatest horror imaginable. The point is that those things cannot be contained. Imagine aliens getting into the sewers of a single city. Great. You can evacuate whomever you can, surround it, nuke it from orbit, and scour the sewers in case something survived. But if you can evacuate people from the city, surely some aliens would manage to "evacuate" as well. Even if we discount typical "accidents" like typical oversight of infected person being present among the evacuated (he's a random beggar who got facehugged behind the corner and when they found him, they had no idea he was infected, once he gets into the refugee camp where they're taking them, the whole thing can happily start anew, the possibility of aliens escaping everybody's attention increases with the chaos caused by the amount of refugees), even without this we can easily imagine random facehugger stowaway somewhere in a random car trunk or under a bench of a dirty truck where they are evacuating people. The aliens can also run away on their own. While my hate for AVPR is passionate, "try to hunt a facehugger in a forest" is a good point (well, that's actually why I hate it - it's unrealistic to think you could contain them after once being loose in a FOREST, man!!). The main point is, even if you create a perimeter around the city, you can never be 100% sure something didn't slip past you on a moonless night.

Another thing is, the hosts are not only humans, mind you. Evacuate humans, you have city full of street dogs and such. You have no way of knowing how many aliens you actually have or had around. Last of all, if the aliens are in the city sewers, let's assume there is some place where the water gets out, or in, or simply where it connects to some natural water flow. Or, in the worst case, some sea. In Resurrection at least the Aliens can swim, and I assume they don't need to worry too much about how far they can swim and possibly breathing either (given the merry Alien banging on Narcissus from the outside). Anyway, they don't need to swim far, but then again, who's to say a couple of Aliens can't swim from L.A. to Australia? And so on and so forth. Try to catch the Aliens in the oceans. No way.

And all of this counting on the fact that the infestation would be found out relatively early. The aliens could spread everywhere without you knowing. Especially with today's level of transport. "So, this facehugger walks to an airport..."

Basically: I believe the main problem is that once you get the Aliens on Earth, the only question worth asking from that point on is WHEN. It may take months, years, even hundreds or thousands of years, but you can never fully exterminate them once you get them there. That's exactly what their strength is. Survival.

[deezelboy]

Well, there were no more hosts and nothing else to do, if you discount Newt (and apparently, the Aliens lack the typical "bad guy syndrome" where they'd send their full force to get the last defiant human who dares to oppose their utter superiority! Grr). "Everything's cocooned or eaten, sir. What do we do now?" "Now, we hibernate."

I'm ok with them hibernating. I've no problem with that. I just doubt that 'Aliens on Earth' is an apocalypse type event if you can have two people evading 140+ Aliens whose only goal (presumably) is to snatch potential hosts, and where the people are seemingly confined to the geography of Hadley's Hope. That doesn't seem to suggest a very effective search strategy/algorithm for the Aliens.

(Although I fully concede that the Nice Lady Colonist might well have spent most of her time in one of the Colony tractors, well away from Hadley's, and only got snatched when she came back looking to scavenge provisions. Or when she might have noticed the Sulaco's approach, if you want to be particularly cruel!)

But inability to snatch Newt?

Imagine aliens getting into the sewers of a single city. Great. You can evacuate whomever you can, surround it, nuke it from orbit, and scour the sewers in case something survived. But if you can evacuate people from the city, surely some aliens would manage to "evacuate" as well.

But that's not much of a problem, given that Queens are born and not made. (Unless you've got Aliens who can transform people into Eggs as per Alien's DC, which I grant does make it a much bigger problem.)

We saw the Aliens continuing their business as normal strategy at the end of Aliens even though there were plenty of environmental cues to suggest that the Atmosphere Processor was not going to continue its own policy of business as normal for much longer. There are going to be very few environmental cues for a ten megaton airstrike for any Aliens to heed.

While my hate for AVPR is passionate, "try to hunt a facehugger in a forest" is a good point (well, that's actually why I hate it - it's unrealistic to think you could contain them after once being loose in a FOREST, man!!). The main point is, even if you create a perimeter around the city, you can never be 100% sure something didn't slip past you on a moonless night.

I agree that hunting facehuggers is not easy. But the Aliens aren't doing any favour for themselves through using a Hive set-up. Facehuggers are confined to the Hive, and the Aliens bring them hosts. This makes the Aliens very containable indeed. Wipe out the Hive, and you've ended the threat. There are rarely any stray facehuggers wandering around outside the Hive.

Evacuate humans, you have city full of street dogs and such.

That's ok. You're only evacuating humans so that they don't get caught up in the nuke you're about to detonate to get rid of everything else. 

 

Last of all, if the aliens are in the city sewers, let's assume there is some place where the water gets out, or in, or simply where it connects to some natural water flow. Or, in the worst case, some sea. In Resurrection at least the Aliens can swim, and I assume they don't need to worry too much about how far they can swim and possibly breathing either (given the merry Alien banging on Narcissus from the outside). Anyway, they don't need to swim far, but then again, who's to say a couple of Aliens can't swim from L.A. to Australia? And so on and so forth. Try to catch the Aliens in the oceans. No way.

The way I see it, Aliens are there to bring hosts to the Hive. They've got a maximum range. They stray too far from the Hive and whatever hosts they've brought back are dead through dehydration, so it doesn't make much sense to have too far of a range.

(Concessions: unless they're engaged in transforming hosts to Eggs, in which case they wouldn't be using Hives, or they're trying to establish a new Hive.)

You don't need to catch any escapee Aliens. You just wait until they start another Hive, enough people go missing for you to notice it, and then you restart your operation: evacuate people; quarantine potential hosts; nuke Hive.

And all of this counting on the fact that the infestation would be found out relatively early. The aliens could spread everywhere without you knowing. Especially with today's level of transport. "So, this facehugger walks to an airport..."

You're going to know very early on you've got a problem. The more people go missing, the more Aliens you have, the more people go missing. Population loss would initially look like an exponential curve. You wouldn't be able not to notice it within around a week, even going by very conservative estimates of how many people an Alien could snatch a day.

Basically: I believe the main problem is that once you get the Aliens on Earth, the only question worth asking from that point on is WHEN. It may take months, years, even hundreds or thousands of years, but you can never fully exterminate them once you get them there. That's exactly what their strength is. Survival.

Ripley walked into a Hive and killed it dead in Aliens with little more than a grenade launcher and a flamethrower.  I'd be putting my money on the humans in the event of an Alien invasion!

[Company Man]

Even if we discount typical "accidents" like typical oversight of infected person being present among the evacuated (he's a random beggar who got facehugged behind the corner and when they found him, they had no idea he was infected, once he gets into the refugee camp where they're taking them, the whole thing can happily start anew, the possibility of aliens escaping everybody's attention increases with the chaos caused by the amount of refugees)...

That threat can be easily neutralized. Just "eliminate" anyone deemed 'at-risk'. Just in  case.

[Darkfox]

I'm ok with them hibernating. I've no problem with that. I just doubt that 'Aliens on Earth' is an apocalypse type event if you can have two people evading 140+ Aliens whose only goal (presumably) is to snatch potential hosts, and where the people are seemingly confined to the geography of Hadley's Hope. That doesn't seem to suggest a very effective search strategy/algorithm for the Aliens.

(Although I fully concede that the Nice Lady Colonist might well have spent most of her time in one of the Colony tractors, well away from Hadley's, and only got snatched when she came back looking to scavenge provisions. Or when she might have noticed the Sulaco's approach, if you want to be particularly cruel!)

But inability to snatch Newt?

Look at it from the other perspective. There is only one person who survived. I am certain that in the case of massive-Earth-infestation, even in some "last stage", there would be hundreds, thousands of humans randomly wandering airducts and escaping Aliens to unlikely places. Sure. You can write a novel based on the adventures of such a bunch of lucky heroes. But the point is, most would go dead. Like in the case of Hadley's Hope.

But that's not much of a problem, given that Queens are born and not made. (Unless you've got Aliens who can transform people into Eggs as per Alien's DC, which I grant does make it a much bigger problem.)

While I am, personally, the representative of the opinion "the Alien lifecycle is still very much a mystery to us", aka I am neither strongly supporting or denying the egg-morphing aspect, let's put it aside for the sake of discussion. Still, you have queens - it is not determined how they are made - and my personal belief goes along the lines that "whenever it is necessary, some biological-thingy happens, and a queen is born". Maybe my mind is slightly clouded by the couple of Aliens books I have read, but I can very well imagine a random Alien worker, on the command of the Queen, snatching an egg and carrying it to safe distance. Funny idea perhaps, but hey, after all, that's what these fellows apparently do even normally, only within the Hive.

We saw the Aliens continuing their business as normal strategy at the end of Aliens even though there were plenty of environmental cues to suggest that the Atmosphere Processor was not going to continue its own policy of business as normal for much longer. There are going to be very few environmental cues for a ten megaton airstrike for any Aliens to heed.

Well, here I guess it's a matter of personal belief in the matter of Alien intelligence. For my stance on that, see my personal signature Let's just say that the Alien in Alien was able to evacuate himself into the evacuation shuttle, maybe it was luck, but somehow I think not. And, while I am very much not a fan of Alien: Resurrection, I am more than content with its portrayal of Alien intelligence. Sure, you cannot really predict a nuke strike. But I can very well imagine the Aliens, say, picking as the center of their Hive, of all the buildings in the city, exactly the one which is, in fact, a nuclear bomb shelter.

I agree that hunting facehuggers is not easy. But the Aliens aren't doing any favour for themselves through using a Hive set-up. Facehuggers are confined to the Hive, and the Aliens bring them hosts. This makes the Aliens very containable indeed. Wipe out the Hive, and you've ended the threat. There are rarely any stray facehuggers wandering around outside the Hive.

Well, I guess this goes very much into my personal opinion, once again. I disagree with the portrayal of Aliens based on the movie Aliens (and some AVPs) only, since it makes them just, well, dumb insects. Which obviously they are not, based on the other films. Yes, it seems that aliens within a Hive become somewhat much more "sedentary" and basically the focus shifts on the Queen's survival and making the rooms warm and cozy. Still, the Aliens are not complete assholes, I believe, and I believe they would learn.

The way I see it, Aliens are there to bring hosts to the Hive. They've got a maximum range. They stray too far from the Hive and whatever hosts they've brought back are dead through dehydration, so it doesn't make much sense to have too far of a range.

That is a good argument. However, we never saw what a Hive looks like once it is "settled" and exhausted its closest neighbourhood. We saw only the LV-426 Hive, which, after taking every living soul on the planet, had nowhere else to expand. I can imagine that a Hive in some later stage would be prone to expansion, maybe some workers would remain inside and some others would go out, search, scout? That would make sense to me, given the hostility of Aliens.

You don't need to catch any escapee Aliens. You just wait until they start another Hive, enough people go missing for you to notice it, and then you restart your operation: evacuate people; quarantine potential hosts; nuke Hive.

You're going to know very early on you've got a problem. The more people go missing, the more Aliens you have, the more people go missing. Population loss would initially look like an exponential curve. You wouldn't be able not to notice it within around a week, even going by very conservative estimates of how many people an Alien could snatch a day.

Obviously you will notice. The problem is, and that's what I am saying, that you won't be able to stop it. Once you get them on Earth, they will be there forever. You could even start winning at some unlikely stage. But after eliminating the "last" hive, after a couple of months, years, suddenly you will have them again appearing in some city on the other side of the country, just because you thought they were gone from there already, but in fact there was one lonely egg forgotten in the cellar...

To be honest, though, main reason for the Aliens completely screwing Earth up - and especially within the logic of the Alien universe - would be not maybe the Aliens themselves, but some stupid individuals who would want to catch them, study them, you know the story...

[deezelboy]

Look at it from the other perspective. There is only one person who survived.

I'm not sure I understand what your point is. I'd view Hadley's as being a worst case scenario - a Hive a kilometre away from which you can't escape from and can't destroy, and no effective means of fighting off the Aliens.  Yet despite this, one person survives for over a month after the Aliens are dominant.

Any Alien invasion of Earth is going to be a best case scenario - they've arrived exactly where you've got the man power and resources to fight them. So if the worst case scenario leaves one survivor, a best case scenario is going to have a far lesser mortality rate.

Well, here I guess it's a matter of personal belief in the matter of Alien intelligence. ...But I can very well imagine the Aliens, say, picking as the center of their Hive, of all the buildings in the city, exactly the one which is, in fact, a nuclear bomb shelter.

For what its worth, I've always viewed Aliens as being more intelligent than humans, but I don't think intelligence counts for much when compared to the capabilities of the two species. Any Aliens on Earth have to contend with being up against a tool using species with a planetful of tools.

So, yes, the bomb shelter is a great place for when the nuke comes down, but becomes rapidly less endearing when those pesky humans start pouring tanker-fulls of petrol down into it. And wherever they build the next Hive they're still going to have to contend with that annying mix of ingenuity and technology the humans have. Like them, we're a problem solving species.

Obviously you will notice. The problem is, and that's what I am saying, that you won't be able to stop it. Once you get them on Earth, they will be there forever. You could even start winning at some unlikely stage. But after eliminating the "last" hive, after a couple of months, years, suddenly you will have them again appearing in some city on the other side of the country, just because you thought they were gone from there already, but in fact there was one lonely egg forgotten in the cellar...

But that's not a problem, is it? Another Hive pops up, and you kill it. You're managing it like any other disease - identify and isolate the vectors whenever there's an outbreak and treat accordingly.

[Darkfox]

I'm not sure what your point is. I'd view Hadley's as being a worst case scenario - a Hive a kilometre away from which you can't escape from and can't destroy, and no effective means of fighting off the Aliens.  Yet despite this, one person survives for over a month after the Aliens are dominant.

Yes, yes - but if you fail to see my point, let me put it differently: the thing is, you had a colony of what, 168 inhabitants, or how many was it? And one person survived. I don't like using "pure maths", but for the sake of this point, let's use it: that is less than 1%. So if you have Earth of, whatever its population might be at some future point of Alien invasion, even if it was like now - cca 6 billion (or is it even more now... whatever) - with the same ratio, you get less than, counting with my feeble maths, 36 million survivors. And something like 5 964 600 000 dead. Now that is not very nice, is it. (Even though, like I said, this is pure maths and reality might differ mightily - but the point I am trying to make is clear, I hope. One person alive out of hundred and half is not a win, it is a rather terrible loss.)

Any Alien invasion of Earth is going to be a best case scenario - they've arrived exactly where you've got the man power and resources to fight them. So if the worst case scenario leaves one survivor, a best case scenario is going to have a far lesser mortality rate.

Nah, here I disagree. Aliens don't deal in manpower and resources. You had resources on LV-426, or you could have them, if you called in a bunch of Marines. You would be able to wipe Aliens out, because, eventually, on a barren planet with no other lifeforms, the Aliens will eventually stop their growth, so to say, and they would be contained. You only need to wipe them out, or you can keep sending in squads of Marines in hope that you kill more than they manage to kindnap and cocoon - once you learn from the first few unsuccesful drops, or you can just keep sending in combat androids for that matter. But you can't do that on Earth - once the Aliens are loose on Earth, you cannot keep them away from their hosts. You cannot isolate them the way you do on LV-426. And that's the problem. They will keep coming - in the best case, you will have Hives appearing here and there from time to time, and always have to wipe them out anew (while, of course, very often at least something escapes). In the worst case, they'll totally get out of control and spread and spread until the whole Earth is gone.

For what its worth, I've always viewed Aliens as being more intelligent than humans, but I don't think intelligence counts for much when compared to the capabilities of the two species. Any Aliens on Earth have to contend with being up against a tool using species with a planetful of tools.

So, yes, the bomb shelter is a great place for when the nuke comes down, but becomes rapidly less endearing when those pesky humans start pouring tanker-fulls of petrol down into it. And wherever they build the next Hive they're still going to have to contend with that annying mix of ingenuity and technology the humans have. Like them, we're a problem solving species.

I am still not convinced that technical superiority will help. The Marines were also technically superior, and look at them. Yes, they were not on Earth, but is the situation so different? Yes, humans are ingenuous, but Aliens are even more so, it seems to me. Also much more resilient. Eventually, if they survive long enough (and I believe they will), they would learn how to most effectively get rid of humans. First thing the Hive attacks in a new area would be a power plant. And so forth. Also, sometimes, the very same technical advantages humans invented will also prove to be a problem. Airducts, the wonderful invention of humankind. Sewer systems... we are back at it again.

But that's not a problem, is it? Another Hive pops up, and you kill it. You're managing it like any other disease - identify and isolate the vectors whenever there's an outbreak and treat accordingly.

Yes, but like I said: you never get rid of the disease again - in the best case. In the worst case, it slowly spreads, always a bit more than before, until it overwhelms you.

[deezelboy]

Yes, yes - but if you fail to see my point, let me put it differently...

I understand that losing, say, 99.9% of your population is a massive fail.

What I don't understand is why the mortality rate isn't 100%. Why are the Aliens incapable of catching Newt?

You had resources on LV-426, or you could have them, if you called in a bunch of Marines. You would be able to wipe Aliens out, because, eventually, on a barren planet with no other lifeforms, the Aliens will eventually stop their growth, so to say, and they would be contained.

Well, we saw what should have happened. Marines get called in, rapidly discover threat, pull out and nuke the site from orbit. That's how you deal with it, and the Aliens have no defence against it.

But you can't do that on Earth - once the Aliens are loose on Earth, you cannot keep them away from their hosts. You cannot isolate them the way you do on LV-426.

I don't understand. When you find out where the Aliens are, what's to stop you from evacuating the area to minimise loss of life, and then nuking the site from the air? Why can't you set up a scorched earth policy?

I completely understand that you might not get rid of them all, in exactly the same way that the Aliens are incapable of getting rid of all humans at Hadley's, but you are preventing an apocalypse-type scenario and instead instituting a pest control policy.

I am still not convinced that technical superiority will help. The Marines were also technically superior, and look at them. Yes, they were not on Earth, but is the situation so different? Yes, humans are ingenuous, but Aliens are even more so, it seems to me.

Doesn't Ripley win every time?

Eventually, if they survive long enough (and I believe they will), they would learn how to most effectively get rid of humans. First thing the Hive attacks in a new area would be a power plant. And so forth.

But that's ok because the more prominent any attack from them is, the more it alerts you to their presence. And then you nuke the Hive.

Yes, but like I said: you never get rid of the disease again - in the best case. In the worst case, it slowly spreads, always a bit more than before, until it overwhelms you.

Yes, but the likelihood of it overwhelming you is very very slim.

Look at it from my perspective:

Aliens, their strengths:
Very good at close combat.
Fast reproductive strategy.

Humans, their strengths:
Guns that kill at a distance
Bombs, napalm, nukes, lots and lots of really nasty weapons of war
Ability to communicate over long distances
Very good transport infrastructure
Drones and other remote controlled devices
Satellite surveillance

Stop the Aliens from reproducing using a scorched earth policy, and you can kill them at a distance with very little risk to yourself.

[Hieronymus]

Looks like I missed a lot.  A few general points:

1.  I wouldn't put any faith in evacuations.  Infrastructure and communication be damned, evacuations transmogrify into clusterfucks with alarming frequency as it is.  Add in an element of panic - for instance, if there's an immediate threat from space monsters - and you'd get total madness.  And even if you kept the whole "alien parasite" thing out of the press, the public would probably pick up on the "people are disappearing at random" element.

2.  Depopulation of Earth or Hadley's Hope may not happen in a linear fashion.  My guess is that you'd have some kind of polynomial population curve, with accelerating reduction in the beginning and middle, tapering off as the easy pickings are picked and only the best survivors remain.  For all we know, the population of Hadley's Hope dropped by 75% in the first week.

3.  Newt and what's-her-name survived for weeks, but one of them was eventually caught, leaving a single survivor, not two.  (Newt was also caught and cocooned, but I blame that on Ripley luring her out of her hidey hole.)  Even Newt may well have died in the next week or so.

4.  As has been mentioned before, the fact that one person survived out of 158 hardly means that the aliens would not be a threat on Earth.  Civilization would rapidly and catastrophically collapse under that kind of depopulation.  Hell, Newt was practically feral when Ripley found her.

5.  AVP:R took place over a matter of days.  In that time, two hives were established - one in the sewers, and one in the hospital.  (Granted, the situation was somewhat unusual in that there was a Predalien who could bypass the facehugger route and impregnate people with his face.)  It was only contained because of a trigger-happy general who detonated a nuclear weapon on American soil. That was a small Colorado town that, no offense to people from small towns or Colorado, would not really be missed; even so, the political consequences were probably a nightmare.  Would he have dropped the bomb on, say, Chicago or Manhattan?  If so, would he have wasted a few more days on less extreme (and less effective) solutions?  In that time, how many hives might spring up?

6.  The two hives in Gunnison were in a single town because the population was in a single cluster that was geographically isolated.  The Eastern seaboard is practically a 700-mile-long city.  How far might new hives spread with a population distribution like that?

[Darkfox]

I think I would second Hieronymus' points (even though I personally refuse to use AVPR as reference at all but it apparently does provide some good "model situation", even if we look away from the particularities and just imagine a similar scenario), and maybe add only a couple of notes.

Regarding Newt's survival, there is also the thing that she was surviving by hiding in the airducts. We don't know how long she would have stayed if the Marines had not come. I can imagine that eventually, she would have to e.g. start to look for food in more distant places once she has robbed the nearest fridges of all their content. One can imagine that forced to make a trip somewhere further away, she could be caught rather easily.

Well, we saw what should have happened. Marines get called in, rapidly discover threat, pull out and nuke the site from orbit. That's how you deal with it, and the Aliens have no defence against it.

In space. On Earth, the situation is different. LV-426 is an isolated piece of rock. Earth has abundant lifeforms to reproduce from. Leave Aliens in a small forest for a week and you will probably end up with at least a hundred. And once again, the forest has no borders. On LV-426, the borders of the area that could be "controlled" by the Hive was Hadley's Hope, simply because there were no more lifeforms out there. On Earth, the borders of a possible spread from a Hive are all over the planet - because there are hosts everywhere - maybe except some Antarctica (whoops, sorry, Mr. Andersson ) and other extremities where nothing lives (but not that the Aliens couldn't go there if they wished).

I don't understand. When you find out where the Aliens are, what's to stop you from evacuating the area to minimise loss of life, and then nuking the site from the air? Why can't you set up a scorched earth policy?

One problem starts, of course, already with minimising the loss of life. In my opinion, basically the safest way would be to really ruthlessly bomb the place immediately, because with every evacuated citizen or car, you are risking carrying some random egg in the trunk accidentally or some infected person around, as per my example above. Even barring Hieronymus' objection that most likely nuking New York City won't be welcome, okay, let us imagine ideal Earth where people don't panic and obey the evacuation orders properly, where the governing forces know what to do and do it right - even then I would be doubtful and wouldn't be sure if a couple of Aliens wouldn't manage to escape after all. But reality probably would be far less idealistic.

I completely understand that you might not get rid of them all, in exactly the same way that the Aliens are incapable of getting rid of all humans at Hadley's, but you are preventing an apocalypse-type scenario and instead instituting a pest control policy.

That is a big question, I grant you that - basically it is hard to tell if really a joint effort (in the case of ideal human response, see above) would not be able to reduce the Alien problem into "pest problem" rather than making it a "war" (however inappropriate I consider that word). Still, it would be a world where anytime you can wake up in the Hive, realising that over the couple of last days a Hive has formed in the abandoned factory on the edge of your city. But given the Alien reproduction rate, I really think that even in this best case, we would be faced with very interesting trend in world population, large numbers of people (and aliens) dying suddenly of infestations and subsequent nukes practically all the time.

(And that is not taking into account how much habitable would such Earth be after a couple of nukes...)

Doesn't Ripley win every time?

Ripley is an idealized heroine And after all, it is one case. Not really representative for statistics. And hey, even she got infected in the end, and brought it all upon the poor inmates of Fury 161. So, yes, if Ripley's fate means we would have a couple of heroes who manage to wipe out a few aliens and die in the process, maybe... but then we should also take into account assholes like Burke or Ash who would just mess everything up.

Aliens, their strengths:
Very good at close combat.
Fast reproductive strategy.

Add to it: superior survival tactics. That does not only rely on reproduction, it also relates to the ingenuity and intelligence which you said you have also acknowledged previously.

Let's face it, the Aliens were destroyed most of the time safely only because you could have blown them out of the airlock which, on Earth, isn't really possible Joking aside, we are back again at the problem that all the environments in the movies are in space. That is one of the reasons why I think AVPR is bullshit, because you simply cannot contain Aliens. Once they would be on Earth, they are here. No borders, no boundaries.

Humans, their strengths:
Guns that kill at a distance
Bombs, napalm, nukes, lots and lots of really nasty weapons of war
Ability to communicate over long distances
Very good transport infrastructure
Drones and other remote controlled devices
Satellite surveillance

Yes, but think of the situation. You have to use all of those in certain areas, places... you cannot nuke a bunch of Aliens hiding somewhere in underground network, deep under the earth. First you have to find them, anyway. Let's say some devices can help you do that, but how long will it take? How many nests will pop up elsewhere meanwhile? I think eventually you will get overwhelmed. Also, let's remember, you have to have the headquarters from where you are leading the attacks. But that is no ideal, transcendental place (unless you are doing that from e.g. Gateway, but already that means admitting you have lost the Earth) - it is a place as much at risk as anything else. So, it can always happen that something eats you before you manage to push the button, so to say.

[deezelboy]

1.  I wouldn't put any faith in evacuations.

Me neither. I just find it morally preferable to warn people that you'll be peppering their vicinity with nukes in 24 hours time.

I would advocate a very informative and graphic public information strategy through the communication networks. My view is that panicky people and dead people who failed to heed the evacuation notice are infinitely preferable to them becoming hosts and adding to the Aliens' numbers.

2.  Depopulation of Earth or Hadley's Hope may not happen in a linear fashion.

I agree.

3.  Newt and what's-her-name survived for weeks, but one of them was eventually caught, leaving a single survivor, not two.

I agree. My point is that even though there are 140+ Aliens now in the area, for what I suspect is likely to be three or four weeks, their ability to snatch survivors is limited by there not being many survivors left. The Aliens search strategies/algorithms are not that efficient.

Which suggests that in depopulated areas you may have a lot of success in simply walking your team into any surviving Hives (as both the Marines and Ripley managed to do in Aliens).

4.  As has been mentioned before, the fact that one person survived out of 158 hardly means that the aliens would not be a threat on Earth.  Civilization would rapidly and catastrophically collapse under that kind of depopulation. 

The key is in reducing that level of depopulation. This is why I refer to Haldey's as a worst case scenario.

If they'd had the means to evacuate once the threat had been realised, a lot more people would have survived. Instead they took the worst action possible because they had few other options.

5.  AVP:R took place over a matter of days.  In that time, two hives were established - one in the sewers, and one in the hospital.  (Granted, the situation was somewhat unusual in that there was a Predalien who could bypass the facehugger route and impregnate people with his face.)  It was only contained because of a trigger-happy general who detonated a nuclear weapon on American soil. That was a small Colorado town that, no offense to people from small towns or Colorado, would not really be missed; even so, the political consequences were probably a nightmare.  Would he have dropped the bomb on, say, Chicago or Manhattan?  If so, would he have wasted a few more days on less extreme (and less effective) solutions? 

I started off this exercise by saying that that if we've 'actually got the political will to fully confront the situation' - that is, if Aliens invade and we realise it's quite possibly an extinction level event. Political fallout from sterilising entire countries isn't an issue. Either people survive, and then they're quite right to start pointing fingers and appointing blame, or they don't.

I'd agree that we might waste a fair amount of time on more palatable strategies. I'd agree that, through not being extremely aggressive during the early stages, you might end up say, sterilising the whole of the UK rather than just London where they originally turned up. But I do not think the world's population would have any problem with killing 65 million potential hosts in order to save themselves. This is the same species that worked for decades on ways to ensure its own extinction rather than let the other side 'win'.

In that time, how many hives might spring up? ...The Eastern seaboard is practically a 700-mile-long city.  How far might new hives spread with a population distribution like that?

Aliens are reduced to walking/running so their spread isn't going to be that far. Off the top of my head I'd suggest a scorched earth policy of a few square kilometres for each Hive discovered and adjusting that in light of any further information obtained. I've no idea if that's a pessimistic or optimistic strategy. Any ideas on potential spread?

Regarding Newt's survival, there is also the thing that she was surviving by hiding in the airducts

I'm probably wrong, but I don't think that's much of an issue. The Aliens were perfectly capable of using those airducts, but were unable or unwilling to snatch Newt. (I admit I've always been a bit dodgy about Cameron's airduct explanation, given Alien!)

Earth has abundant lifeforms to reproduce from.

This is why I recommend a scorched earth policy. You find Aliens in a forest, you nuke the forest. Maybe you kill all the Aliens, but you're very much intent on ensuring that you've killed all potential hosts. You are essentially turning any Hive-infected area into the same kind of lifeless rock that LV-426 was.

Ripley is an idealized heroine And after all, it is one case. Not really representative for statistics.

No, but then neither is the Sulaco Egg, or the Alien on board the Narcissus or the Queen on the Sulaco. They are there to start films, or finish them dramatically. Statistically, most Aliens would walk into a hail of fire from remote sentries - but I'm quite willing to discount that as much as I am to accept that out of every 200 people there'll be one person who kicks off an Alien infestation and one who finishes it.

Add to it: superior survival tactics. That does not only rely on reproduction, it also relates to the ingenuity and intelligence which you said you have also acknowledged previously.

Yes, but then I'd have to add superior survival tactics to humans as well, and that'd cancel them both out. Because, really, we're much better at surviving than the Aliens.

Joking aside, we are back again at the problem that all the environments in the movies are in space.

I actually disagree here. I think the Aliens are much more of a threat in space. In space, you're isolated - there are no armed forces who'll turn up with Alien killing equipment to save the day. There are no tools other than what you brought with you, and the likelihood of actually preparing for Aliens is unlikely. In space, acid blood is a problem. In space, you can't deploy bombs because it will most likely mean wiping out your only habitable environment for light years - although sometimes you get lucky and don't have an infested lifeboat (but, obviously, not in the Alien films!).

If Aliens arrive in London, you can wipe out London faster than Aliens can spread. But not in space, where everything is closely confined. I'd go for Aliens wiping out humanity's progress in space, but it feels unlikely to me that it'd wipe out humanity on Earth.

You have to use all of those in certain areas, places... you cannot nuke a bunch of Aliens hiding somewhere in underground network, deep under the earth.

Yes, you can.

Let's say some devices can help you do that, but how long will it take? How many nests will pop up elsewhere meanwhile?

We both agree that finding Hives isn't a problem because the population around them crashes so dramatically, though.

Also, let's remember, you have to have the headquarters from where you are leading the attacks. But that is no ideal, transcendental place (unless you are doing that from e.g. Gateway, but already that means admitting you have lost the Earth) - it is a place as much at risk as anything else. So, it can always happen that something eats you before you manage to push the button, so to say.

The concept of a centralised headquarters went out very soon after WWII. We have nice convenient fictions about leaders with their fingers on the button, but the truth is that it's way more decentralised than that.

[SM]

I'm probably wrong, but I don't think that's much of an issue. The Aliens were perfectly capable of using those airducts, but were unable or unwilling to snatch Newt. (I admit I've always been a bit dodgy about Cameron's airduct explanation, given Alien!)

I don't have any problems with Newt being able to fit where the Aliens can't.  Ripley can barely fit in that duct.

Problems come in where they don't just rip their way in to where she's hiding.  Since they didn't it raises question on how Aliens actually track prey.  I've always been of the opinion that the fan above Newt's hiding spot dispersed her odour, making it difficult for the Aliens to pinpoint. This assumes Aliens can track prey in such a way of course...

[Company Man]

I rather like my chances here on Earth. But that is just me.