Many alien invasion movies have the extraterrestrials coming to earth, raping the land of its resources, then leaving. Sometimes, we are the resource, which soon triggers a cat-and-mouse game humans would rather forget. Need I mention War of the Worlds and what the aliens did to our planet in that movie?
For this week’s Monday Mayhem post, let’s have a look at survival techniques when facing off against aliens. Let’s also concentrate a few moments on what we can do to thwart a possible invasion from our planetary neighbors.
Before I go on, let’s get something out of the way first. I’ve always been reluctant to use the term “we” in any of my posts. In fact, I try to avoid using it as much as possible. Some folks say it denotes inclusivity in order to place leadership in the midst of the people. In my mind, however, it has always set the speaker above the listener by way of privileged knowledge sharing. It also gives the impression the speaker is in a better position of distributing said knowledge than the listener—therefore, not making them equal in status, but privileged. So, it’s with some reservations I use the term “we” today, not because I feel privileged to lord it over you, but because, just like you, I’m part of the human race and wouldn’t know what else to call us. Besides, there’s no way I’d like for you to become equal to my insanity when I write these posts about zombies and aliens. That would be sick.
All right, what can we do to survive an alien invasion? Unlike zombies where we can shoot them in the head and it’s all over and done with, aliens require a new set of rules.
For instance, some aliens will hunt us with heat-seeking scanners, much like in the movie Predator. And we all know what happened there. Hadn’t it been for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character thinking of a brilliant plan, like the rest of his team, the creature would have also skinned and hung him from a tree upside down.
Some aliens will bleed acid, making killing them a virtual impossible task. I cite the movie Aliens and how in one scene, blood sprayed all over a soldier while attempting to shoot the ravaging beast. Not a pleasant sight, I might add.
Some aliens will eat us if we’re not careful. For this example, I call upon Men in Black where an alien bug ate Tommy Lee Jones’ character. Lucky for him he had a way out.
So you see, aliens come in different varieties. How on earth—pun fully intended—are we to defend ourselves? How would we be able to survive? Like I said, with zombies it’s pretty easy—one shot to the head and they’re over and done with. What about aliens? How would we do it?
Here’s my survival plan. Bear in mind, this is totally unscientific. I came up with this while shaving. If it’s a bit uneven, then you’ll know why.
Ready? Here it is…
- Run!
Simple, right? Would you have expected anything less than a concise plan from me? I don’t think so. The point of the matter is if aliens try to invade our world, we’d be dead. In an effort to eradicate them from our planet, I soon wouldn’t doubt a nuclear strategy being in the cards. Running north seems like a good idea, I’d say. Away in the woods where defending ourselves against bears would be easier than from organ-probing monsters.
Then again, maybe it’s all for naught.
Maybe, just maybe—they’ll come in peace.
RANGER MARTIN AND THE ALIEN INVASION, on sale October 21.
What would you recommend as another survival technique?
Looking to God 
In the immortal words of Arnie in Predator: “If it bleeds, we can kill it…” and “Get to the chhhoopppppaaaa…”
I think there’s a reason why “Run” is usually The Doctor’s tactic between forming a plan.
I’m with you on the running. Keeping a well-stocked hideaway helps with this, too, I suspect!
How about hide? I live near the Pentagon which is a huge building. That might work. Or maybe in some underground place. If I did run, I would go south. North is too cold and everything dies in the winter. I’ll be polling my family about this one! 🙂
When you say ‘run’ do you mean physically run, in which case you wouldn’t get very far if they were in spaceships. Or do you mean ‘run’ in a more generic term including all kinds of hiding tactics, and some running that might involve crawling and creeping, etc etc?
My own suggestions might be: 1 – we all wear Justin Bieber facemasks and make them think they’ve invaded a planet of psychos, or 2 – we make contact with them, then use guile to turn the vain egomaniac aliens against the paranoid aliens, thus provoking internal strife and them turning their extraterrestrial firepower on each other.
Human beings are so effective at dividing communities. It might work.
Reblogged this on Rare Films & TV Classics on DVD.
Thank you so much for the reblog!
A couple of things:
Re: the whole “we” thing – I think the problem you can run into when using this pronoun in this context is the danger of being perceived as using it as the so-called “royal we”, in other words, how the Queen of England speaks/spoke about herself. (Even that is changing, but if you go back and read Victoria’s speeches from the 19th Century you’ll see what I mean: “We are not amused.”). In other words, it can seem arrogant or at least snobbish. Don’t worry about it; in the blog context I’m not sure that’s possible when writing about alien invaders. 🙂
Playing Slim Whitman records was the key to defeating them in at least one film, right? Or you could take the cop-out route and hope for rain like M. Night Shyamalan did. (I saw that you liked that one but I thought it stunk, mostly because of that ending, but also because I thought Gibson’s character was written so badly.) But I guess what bugs me the most (pun intended) about the alien invasion movies is that both the aliens and their vehicles are always so impervious to our weapons. There’s always a convenient force field on the Martian craft, and the creatures themselves are always able to take an incredible number of explosive rounds without falling over because of lack of legs. (Think Starship Troopers, a movie which I really enjoyed, but it is more political satire than anything else so I forgive it the exaggeration.)
Strange Invaders did not suffer from these plot defects, although it had some other problems. Still, an underrated film, IMO.
” Mars Attacks ” – Slim Whitman could cause ANYBODY’S brain to explode !
I enjoyed Independence Day, but looking back, never could get how a computer virus from an Earth computer could cause their spacecraft to malfunction & shields to fail. There are 2 different systems, after all. AND terrestrial human viruses might not ALWAYS work, even if the extra – terrestrials were carbon – based.
Oh no !!! me not prepared for alien invasion yet 🙂 I guess I’ll run too.. but today I’ll prefer watching the meteor shower in the night instead.
Perhaps there are more peaceful extra terrestrials out there hat just want to observe us by long distance, then decide whether to initiate a ” first contact ” or just leave us alone.
Our fictional depictions of extra – terrestrials are mostly reflections of our own past. The Spanish Conquistadors in the Americas come to mind, or the British Empire in India & Africa. Or the white man & the Native American. ” War of the Worlds ” was an allegory of the British Empire & how the British might feel if they & other Western nations, incl. the U.S. were invaded by a superior power.
Run seems like the best tactic if for no other reason than it would give humanity time to find a weakness. There’s no way we could win the initial battle, so guerrilla warfare might be what’s needed. We know the terrain after all. It really depends on the type of alien too. Different tactics would be needed between Predator, War of the Worlds, and Mars Attacks!
We’d need vials of viruses ( Anthrax rapidly comes to mind ) for every man, woman & child. But if the extra – terrestrials’ bio – chemistry wasn’t carbon – based, we’d be up a creek sans paddle & we’d need a plan B.
I guess it would depend on what their biochemistry is then. Everything has a weakness.
If it was an invading bunch of largely inorganic beings like the Cybermen of ” Doctor Who ( Also the Daleks ) “, Cylons from either incarnation of Battlestar Galactica or maybe even the semingly unbeatable Borg from Star Trek : TNG / Voyager, all we’d need is a series of microwave energy bursts, or turn on an array of MRI scanners.
One could hope the solar flares that keep messing with my digital cable would help too. Unless that’s a lie that the provider keeps repeating. Have they ever had any of these robotic enemies come in contact with a powerful magnet?
In the poorly received follow up series to the original Battlestar Galactica, Galactica 1980, the Cylons slowly tried to invade Earth, & he was felled by a killer microwave ! Imagine what a controlled EMP could do to an army of machines. Or maybe just a very large taser. 🙂
It would certainly do the job, but we’d take out our own technology too. It’d be similar to a nuke in some ways.
That’s quite a conundrum. It would be like the setting in the ” Defiance ” series, even though technology is still present in a somewhat limited form.No iPads, iPods, laptops or cell – phones. ” Defiance ” isn’t exactly a post alien – invasion scenario, but close.
Good point. I guess if there was a way to preserve some of the technology in a place that is protected. Then you have those pieces to work off of and reproduce. I’d be scared of all the lost knowledge since so much is kept only in digital form.
Yes. It seems folly to digitize nearly EVERYTHING & store it in cyberspace in the event that the ” grid ” / infrastructure fails due to a massive catastrophe, whether it’s due to a nuclear exchange, alien invasion, a series of natural diasters, zombie apocalypse, Terminator uprising, whatever.
Can’t say humans are the best at long term planning.
Yeah. I myself am an impulse – buyer, as an example. I have to admit that I rarely plan ahead, at least in matters of fiscal responsibility. But if I saw a 2 – week long black – out or similar situation coming, I would at try to plan ahead. Or get to an unaffected region of the U.S. or Canada. I’d stock up on air – time points for my cell phone, for 1 thing, if I had limited communication access.
That does bring up another question. Would aliens give us the time and opportunity to make such an attack? What if we had to rely on more primitive tactics and technology?
We wouldn’t have time to figure out if it would take a terrestrial virus / series of viruses, a controlled EMP, or something as simple as salt water to bring them down. It might be something as simple as athlete’s foot fungus or flatulence.
High fiber offensive. Think that would most humans out.
Reblogged this on 3rdeyeviZion.
Thanks for the reblog!