Some Thoughts on Stereotypical and Partially Fictional Military Procedures

Do you ever wish you could leap through the TV screen, enter the movie, and violently kill all the highly annoying and pompous military personal who shoot first and ask questions later?

Yip. I hate them too.

I suppose I am more into Hamlet-ism  then Fortinbas-ism (those of you who have studied Hamlet as extensively as I have will understand).

Now, I suppose you were wondering what exactly prompted this sudden burst of fury towards the military. Well, it’s not exactly the real military, I have no real, concrete evidence to support this claim in the real world, but in the land of fiction and especially sci-fi, I see it so often.

I have just watched The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008 Version) for the 5th time and I just thought it would be interesting to talk about this in my first blog, because I have been meaning to write it for a while, I just have not thought of anything, so I chose this.

Anyway, this is how stories involving the ignorance of the military and aliens go. A highly advanced and kick-ass alien arrives on Earth, the military shoot it first, and, when it shoots back they wonder why.

Fools!

For once, I wish that they could think this through logically! This is what a normal person would do:

FIRST, these aliens can travel at approximately 3×10^7m/s (for those of you who are not physicists this is approaching the speed of light, which is approx. 3×10^8m/s or 299792458m/s. So, yeah, it is pretty fast), and SECONDLY, they were able to de-activate the human defense systems by unknown means, so, the last thing you would do is shoot them! DUH! But anyway, here are some more reasons (other than the obvious ones that have been given):

Scenario 1) If the aliens are peaceful, and are just here to say hello, or if they are here to ask for our help, nothing overly bad will happen, correct? BUT if you shoot at them before you know what the hell is going on, then you may anger the aliens slightly, and they may just, well, I don’t know, WIPE OUT ALL LIFE ON EARTH BECAUSE THE MILITARY CAN’T THINK IN A LOGICAL MANNER! So, if we shoot the result is total oblivion.

Scenario 2) If the aliens are hostile, then, obviously they know our puny human weapons are just about as useful as sore teeth, (well they may not know this, but it is safe to assume this for if we had weaponry that could destroy them, why would they choose to attack us so openly?) so shooting is not going to help at all. In fact it will ruin the slim chance we have at developing a truce between the aliens and us, so, DON’T SHOOT! And, so again, if we shoot (or if we don’t) the result is total oblivion.

So, the alien’s intentions don’t really matter in the end (well they do, but we will destroy any positive scenarios by shooting), what does matter is that we don’t shoot at them before we know what they are there for.

Furthermore, if the alien asks to go see the UN then you had better let him do that, or he’ll kill you, or at least incapacitate  you, and go and do it anyway.

However, I do agree with what the secretary in the movie did say, that in first encounters between civilizations, the weaker one is either wiped out or enslaved, however, those interactions were all between humans, whose to say it will be the same with the aliens? You cannot really make that conclusion based on that observation! Honestly, haven’t these people ever heard of uncertainty?

But hey, this is all just my opinion.

~ by emc7 on January 14, 2010.