Are Sci Fi monsters and aliens too hard to kill?

uk 75

uk 75

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It has been a long established staple of Sci Fi films and TV series that aliens and monsters are resistant to the best weapons humankind can throw at them.

View: https://youtu.be/aNJGpUTdmi4?si=O_8QWxIb9oZ6nJS8


The Bomb whether A (1950s War of the Worlds) or H (1990s Independence Day) is equally useless.

But is this convention realistic? We know on this site more than most how potent modern weapons are, and how quickly new threats are countered?

The so-called cosy British Sci Fi thriller Day of the Triffids does have alien monsters that can be killed. That is, unless you've been blinded by a night sky light show.

Some Aliens can be killed (The Lizards in V or the Pod people in Them) but make sure noone in the military wants to.

Just for once I would like a decent evenly matched scrap. Or am I just wrong?
 
uk 75 said:
But is this convention realistic?
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Depends on the aliens. Also depends on just how stupid the writers make the humans and/or aliens. Take War of the Worlds (1950's version on) with "deflector shields." OK, the shields can protect them from a nuke. Let's just assume that. But a *smart* human would, upon realizing that, bury the damn nuke *under* them. If the war machines are walkers and not floaters, set off multiple nukes around them, convert the field they're walking on into lava or vapor. Drop a bunker buster nuke a few dozen meters away, set off few dozen meter underground, and bury the walkers under a mountain of debris.

If you want "evenly matched," then you need to go up against The Race or The Fithp. But more likely humanity will go up against the Vorlons or the Shadows or the Q or the Qu or Cthulhu, entities/races that have such a head start on us that our best science can't hope to even understand what we're looking at.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Depends on the aliens. Also depends on just how stupid the writers make the humans and/or aliens. Take War of the Worlds (1950's version on) with "deflector shields." OK, the shields can protect them from a nuke. Let's just assume that. But a *smart* human would, upon realizing that, bury the damn nuke *under* them. If the war machines are walkers and not floaters, set off multiple nukes around them, convert the field they're walking on into lava or vapor. Drop a bunker buster nuke a few dozen meters away, set off few dozen meter underground, and bury the walkers under a mountain of debris.

If you want "evenly matched," then you need to go up against The Race or The Fithp. But more likely humanity will go up against the Vorlons or the Shadows or the Q or the Qu or Cthulhu, entities/races that have such a head start on us that our best science can't hope to even understand what we're looking at.
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The Thing would be pretty damn difficult to eradicate even if it had no weapons.
 
sferrin said:
If they can get here their technology would be well ahead of ours.
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Not *necessarily* universally true. Sometime in the 80's I read a story in Analog: turns out hyperdrive is *stupidly* simple. So simple, humans never considered it until aliens invade. The aliens are the great conquering race of the galaxy, because they have the highest technology. Their invasion force spills out of their ship ready to lay waste to humanity, and open up on us with their muskets. The National Guard mows them down and gleefully pokes holes in their cast-bronze starship; then we poke around inside, figure out the hyperdrive, smack ourselves upside the head while saying "Do'h! It's so simple!" The alien leaders, now prisoners, look on in horror as they realize what they've unleashed onto the galaxy.

Realistic? Nah. But fun as hell, and an interesting thought. *IF* interstellar travel was somehow far simpler than we thought, the galactic empire might not be as advanced as we fear. This sort of thing would basically require "magic," like everyone else in the universe are fairies and elves and the like, or Potter-esque wizards. Such beings would likely never develop advanced tech, because they don't need to.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Indeed. Biological weaponry is tough to fight. *Intelligent* biological weapons that are driven to consume you? That's kind of a nightmare.
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One problem; biology is not "absolute" science. Aliens would hardly be able to knew more about Earth biology than we, humans (we live here for hundreds of millenias, and still learning more and more about how Earth life works). Unless the aliens are advanced to the point of utterly Clarke's Third Law for our point of view, their knowledge of Earth life biology would be extremely approximate and inferior to human's.
 
A real story,

that was published in Egyptian magazine from 1990s,a man lived in desert,
and he saw at night as he claimed,a flying saucer (UFO),in front of his house,
and when the alien was waking on earth,after Alien got off his craft, he secretly stalked him, and killed him with a huge stone from behind. He buried his body behind his house and also hid the flying saucer under the sand. It is clear that he was living in a desert oasis - of course he asked for money in exchange for people knowing his whereabouts, but no anybody turned to him or responded to him - there is no confirmation of this, of course
 
sferrin said:
If they can get here their technology would be well ahead of ours. Think of the difference even 40 years make. (Nimitz going back to WW2 for example.)
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Not exactly. Imagine, for example, alien specie naturally capable of anabiosis. They would have far little problems making interstellar flights even on 1960s nuclear-pulse technology.
 
uk 75 said:
It has been a long established staple of Sci Fi films and TV series that aliens and monsters are resistant to the best weapons humankind can throw at them.

But is this convention realistic? We know on this site more than most how potent modern weapons are, and how quickly new threats are countered?
Click to expand...
Tough enemies are allows for a long challenging struggle to fill a visually presented, what the normal viewer considered a "even" fight. Enemies that operates on ICBM offensive tempo wouldn't make a interesting story, but that doesn't even require new technology. Enemies with weak offensive capabilities is needed to enable a narrative when modern destructive firepower happens fast.

There are alternative opponents that may have threat horizons far longer than life spans, for example space native organisms but that usually doesn't result in a simple visually presentable story either.

With written stories where the time scale of natural humans watching film is not a issue and readers work off imagination, some massive changes in time scale does happen. The stories of FTL warfare where a second is eons to hypercomputers and time compressed humans is one trope, while there are millennial time framed STL interstellar conflict as well.
 
A whole bunch of sci fi stories, TV shows and films have had 'peer' opponents to Humanity.

Perhaps only a certain viewpoint would overly focus on the 'overpowered' aliens.

Of course the ultimate overpowered aliens would just alter your species minds to accept their benevolent rule. Or perhaps commit species suicide to remove yourselves from their list of potential threats.
 
In practice if any of us got hit by a stone club we would be as dead as our caveman ancestors. In practice it’s hard to visualize portray being out matched without “Tanking”
 
Then you have the idiot humans from Avatar. Decades of interaction with the Na’vi and still no weapons than can quickly kill them. Not to mention lower gravity creatures would not be manhandling us.
 
Dilandu said:
One problem; biology is not "absolute" science. Aliens would hardly be able to knew more about Earth biology than we,
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Imagine advanced aliens with hyperdrive and a thirst for conquest. Will they send their invasion fleets out to unexplored worlds... or scouts? Scouts make sense. They'd examine the place form orbit, then set down somewhere out of the way and start studying the biology. They would not need to be much more advanced than we are to be able to point a tricorder at a pile of lawn trimmings and know just about everything there is to know about terrestrial biology.

And "The Thing" is a whole different order of biological horror, given how it operates. It would be able to convert the bulk of terrestrial biomass into Thingmass in a matter of months.
 
Bruno Anthony said:
Then you have the idiot humans from Avatar. Decades of interaction with the Na’vi and still no weapons than can quickly kill them.
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Not entirely true: humanity could level the whole place in a few hours using the starship engines. The question is: why don't they? There's a whole lot of industrial grade stupid in those movies. "Unobtanium" is silly, but kinda comprehensible as a reason for interstellar commerce (though unless it's a new element, rather than an compound/alloy, the humans should be able to process it anywhere). But the Eternal Youth Serum from A2? That's just dumb. Yes, people would go to great lengths to obtain it... but these people have *mastered* cloning. Simply ship some biosamples back to Earth and clone the whale glands. Grow the stuff on an industrial scale.

If your Alien Invaders talk to you, they'd best have a good reason *why* they're invading. "Avatar" gives utter crap reasons. If you don't have a good reason... don't *give* a reason. Leave the invaders motives a mystery. That makes them all the more horrifying.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQlIA-JDnbI
 
“the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across - which happened to be the Earth - where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.”

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
 
zen said:
A whole bunch of sci fi stories, TV shows and films have had 'peer' opponents to Humanity.

Perhaps only a certain viewpoint would overly focus on the 'overpowered' aliens.

Of course the ultimate overpowered aliens would just alter your species minds to accept their benevolent rule. Or perhaps commit species suicide to remove yourselves from their list of potential threats.
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What these aliens will do depends on what they want. With a little patience, they could probably tailor a disease that would do something subtle like sterilize all human males (iirc, the concept behind "The Screwfly Solution," by Alice Sheldon); this could leave the biosphere pretty much unaffected. There's also no reason for them to actually set foot on the ground: they're likely to have robots and AI.

One sf author (Anne Leckie) suggested that the alien invader (in her case, the Raadchai) would simply nuke a few cities first, then generally behave like the Mongols wherever there's any resistance.
 
1635yankee said:
The trouble with that idea is that "what doesn't look right" is so damned subjective. I can see that logic shooting a lot of innocent people with CP or Parkinson's.
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Problem is, in the event of a Thing outbreak, "massive over-reaction" will likely be too little. And shooting individuals won;t do diddly to stop a Thing outbreak; you'll need to cleanse whole regions in nuclear fire, likely repeatedly and very, very thoroughly.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Depends on the aliens. Also depends on just how stupid the writers make the humans and/or aliens. Take War of the Worlds (1950's version on) with "deflector shields." OK, the shields can protect them from a nuke. Let's just assume that. But a *smart* human would, upon realizing that, bury the damn nuke *under* them. If the war machines are walkers and not floaters, set off multiple nukes around them, convert the field they're walking on into lava or vapor. Drop a bunker buster nuke a few dozen meters away, set off few dozen meter underground, and bury the walkers under a mountain of debris.

If you want "evenly matched," then you need to go up against The Race or The Fithp. But more likely humanity will go up against the Vorlons or the Shadows or the Q or the Qu or Cthulhu, entities/races that have such a head start on us that our best science can't hope to even understand what we're looking at.
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Ah, the Martian war machine from the 1953 film. They used magnetic repulser beams the same way as mechanical legs. I think you could get away with planting normal mines to disrupt them, and when they topple over, then attack.
 

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1635yankee said:
What these aliens will do depends on what they want. With a little patience, they could probably tailor a disease that would do something subtle like sterilize all human males (iirc, the concept behind "The Screwfly Solution," by Alice Sheldon); this could leave the biosphere pretty much unaffected.
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Similar to "Worldwreckers," where a planet is being slowly depopulated by means of generators that put out a sex-interest-dampening field. In the story the generators are discovered and shut down, but *who* made and placed them is left undiscovered. A genocide was attempted, but no retaliation was possible.

 
zen said:
A whole bunch of sci fi stories, TV shows and films have had 'peer' opponents to Humanity.

Perhaps only a certain viewpoint would overly focus on the 'overpowered' aliens.

Of course the ultimate overpowered aliens would just alter your species minds to accept their benevolent rule. Or perhaps commit species suicide to remove yourselves from their list of potential threats.
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Always happy to learn. I admit to not reading much Sci Fi literature. I have read the Footfall and Turtledove books mentioned already.
Am too stupid to get what you mean by:"only a certain viewpoint".
 
An interesting point about Potteresque magic. The old SPI boardwargame firm did a space wargame where crews had to have special powers to use their starships.
 
You can't compare interest in porn (for women) and sex, with is reinforced since sexual reproduction, with neuroatypical interest in scientific potential applied to the future, an idea that is not even 200 years old and have basically no evolutionary backing.
 
shin_getter said:
neuroatypical interest in scientific potential applied to the future, an idea that is not even 200 years old...
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The point: a few decades ago the sci-fi section would have been HUGE compared to what it is today. Regardless of what the ratio of sex to sci-fi should be, interest in sci-fi literature *seems* to be way down. At the same time, interest among young men to date, and interest among women to reproduce, are way down. Insert your favorite sci-fi plot points to explain that HERE.

There is a growing lack of interest in the future, both in sci-fi stuff like space colonization and the like, and in creating future generations. Hard to not speculate that aliens drooling after terrestrial real estate might be messing with us. A dandy way to win a war against an alien species without putting your own at risk. So how will humanity fight this devious scheme? How will plucky mankind win the day against a more powerful foe?
 
Orionblamblam said:
Problem is, in the event of a Thing outbreak, "massive over-reaction" will likely be too little. And shooting individuals won;t do diddly to stop a Thing outbreak; you'll need to cleanse whole regions in nuclear fire, likely repeatedly and very, very thoroughly.
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Enough to sterilize all the bodies. That solution may result in a very pyrrhic victory. In the original story ("Who goes there?" John W. Campbell, writing as Don A. Stuart), the alien had survived his starship's crash a very long time ago. I want to say millions of years, but I read that story long before the latest movie version, and didn't like it enough to re-read since.
Orionblamblam said:
Neither is much of anyone else. Go to a big book store (B&N, say) and check out what's bigger: the sci-fi section or the "teen girl supernatural romance" section. *Especially* when you weed the clear fantasy out of the sci-fi.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1781490900880838949
View: https://x.com/UnwantedBlog/status/1781490900880838949
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It isn't likely to be the local B&N; that sort of shelving decision is mostly made by corporate and by the publishers. Genre is primarily a marketing decision. Frequently, it's because YA fantasy/romance sells very well
 
Orionblamblam said:
Problem is, in the event of a Thing outbreak, "massive over-reaction" will likely be too little. And shooting individuals won;t do diddly to stop a Thing outbreak; you'll need to cleanse whole regions in nuclear fire, likely repeatedly and very, very thoroughly.
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If you can get your hands on it, there is a trilogy by Christopher Rowley that was the Halo developer's inspiration for The Flood. First book is "Starhammer". (But, while similar, even these guys pale in comparison to the Thing.)

51YpmiE3TzL.jpg
 
1635yankee said:
Enough to sterilize all the bodies.
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Not just that: you need to sterilize every last *cell.* Including the cells of that infected bat that flew deep into the cave, the infected mole that dug deep into the dirt, the infected mudskipper that swam to the bottom of the lake. And probably the infected plankton that sank itself to the bottom of the ocean.

Basically, if Thing-infection breaks out of Antarctica, you flee the planet and blow up anyone who flees after you. Then you build a giant sun shade at L1 to freeze the planet solid, which will give you time to build an even bigger reflector system (likely a system near Mercury to turn sunlight into a Death Star laser) that will allow you to turn the entire planet into Neo Venus and finally cook the whole thing down to the mantle. Re-terraforming the place is not a priority, even for the deep future... just making sure the whole infection is well and truly dead. Because Thing-biomass about the same as a single human is smart and resourceful enough to build a one-man starship.
 

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