BATTLE: Los Angeles & "Extraterrestrial mass-extinction Philosophy"

[von.small]

  Quick take me to You Tube so I can see trailorz!

TL;DR > New movie out, it will hit screens pre-Independance day 2, but it hits screens at the right moment in human social existance when the thoughts, rumours, threats of Armageddon are circling.  What would you do come armageddon? Join forces with the rest of the world? Or salute our new robot overlords?

I'm looking forward to this movie, not 100% sure why because it's smacked full of the typical ingredients to get it to appeal to wider audience groups that pisses me off, and alas will probably suffer the same internet flames as Avatar did.  What the hell am I talking about...? 

The karma-messages in films, with Avatar it was all about 'corporation' ploughing through nature to get what it wants, at any cost.  So the underlying message there is one of earth conservation, but the internet picked through Avatars bones and made it suck because it had links back to Pocahontas or Dances with Wolves.

Along comes Battle: Los Angeles (part of a trilogy I think).  At the right time? 2012 whether you believe or disbelieve (I am the latter) is a subject that many of us have heard of or know about, shit even my Mum knows about the Mayan calendar or lack of.  Yeah so, like we had in 1998 when disaster movies hit the stage pre-Millenium to prey on peoples Y2K fears, mass-extinction movies are going to be 2011's exit note, but what would you do in the event of extraterrestrial invasion, would you pick up a gun and join hands across the planet to fight foreign invaders, could you see that this is what the human race would acctually do?

IMO, the past 10 years have seen more worldwide calamity than anything the cold war could have given us.  It's like we are indeed stood on the precipice of some kind of mass extinction or reboot.  It's like the media is almost ushering us to 'do it'.  Nature has tried with Bubonic Plague and Aids etc, but I think ultimately the only thing to spread a little world love would be if aliens invaded and gave us a dam good kicking we all joined forces and acctually forgot our petty differences.

[Lightning]

If aliens did invade, they would have to be a huge leap ahead of us in science and technology. I find it highly unlikely that they would come down and fight us on our own turf. They would probably engineer some sort of virus to kill off 99% of us, then used localized radiation device to kill the biggest groups and finally capture the rest of us and put us in the zoos of Xenoblarg prime.

The only thing you can do is die or ask for more bananas.

[Eat Uranium]

They would probably engineer some sort of virus to kill off 99% of us, then used localized radiation device to kill the biggest groups and finally capture the rest of us and put us in the zoos of Xenoblarg prime.

And that's only if they want our planet to live on.  If they just want the minerals, well, a few asteroid impacts would break up the rock a bit and make extraction easier

[Kev4000]

well technically if lifeforms exist on another planet, they're likely no smarter than your average pine cone.

What's up there in space I wonder? Yarrr, ther be monsters!

[von.small]

pine cones eh? You know the more I understand about human DNA, the more I am being swayed into thinking that we are the result of some intervention either by ourselves from the future ...ooo paradoxical, or by some passing benevolent not nefarious alien race.  (Benevolant in this case could be simple pan-spermia, bringing just a single cell organism to our planet that rocks the foundations of our of ecological system.)

It started with some bullshit beer talk by a lamer I know who was going on and on about the bees dying out and human geneome being 80% junk DNA.  I looked into this, the 80% 'junk' is attributed to evolution and different earth climates that our ancestors lived in, we may not need the DNA now, but chances are it could be useful in the future if another ice age is round the corner.  ...But, the birth of mankind as a super-race is so proposterously close to impossible from the resources that nature had available or to be blunt, the step from Ape to human is so inconceivable in the time-span that it supposedly happened, 'intervention' is logical word you would circle to escape the mind-fuck of such questions as "why are we here".

[IrishReloaded]

I also think the NASA bullshit saying "oh this planet got 400°K, there cant be life" can be so wrong. Who tells us that this form of life needs Oxygen, normal temperature, ect. They resently found a bacterium thats metabolism is based on Arsen. . . So even on earth not every form of life needs oxygen.

Form of life outside our planet yes, why: because the change that we are the only one outside there is illogical. When some mircale like life happend here, there were 100 of millions other galaxies that could have had the same circumstances like our sun system.

Is life outside there inteligent or not: who knows, personally I think there are forms of life that are like microorganism and some like great cultures.
But I doubt that mankind will ever get into contact with them. They would need some kind of "time room travel" machine, which is, mhm, stupid 

The only way we could get contact in with them is due to radio signals, which is one of the major parts of outa terestial research

[Eat Uranium]

I also think the NASA bullshit saying "oh this planet got 400°K, there cant be life" can be so wrong. Who tells us that this form of life needs Oxygen, normal temperature, ect. They resently found a bacterium thats metabolism is based on Arsen. . . So even on earth not every form of life needs oxygen.

The life form was the first documented using arsenic instead of phosphorus.  Anaerobic life (i.e. no oxygen) has been known about for decades.  They guess at these temperatures (273-373K) because that is where water is liquid - and liquid water is a very useful thing for life to have (I'm quite sure that there are no known anhydrous lifeforms).

Oh btw, Kelvins are just K, they don't have degrees.

[Capten_C]

von.small. If you haven't read it, get your hands on a copy of The Gods Of Eden by William Bramley, it's fookin' full of this kind of theory, I'm open minded on these things, but it's a bloody good read nevertheless! 

[Rawhide]

If aliens did invade, they would have to be a huge leap ahead of us in science and technology. I find it highly unlikely that they would come down and fight us on our own turf. They would probably engineer some sort of virus to kill off 99% of us, then used localized radiation device to kill the biggest groups and finally capture the rest of us and put us in the zoos of Xenoblarg prime.

The only thing you can do is die or ask for more bananas.

I'm confused, can this be a mad form of a dream crush?

[Dukat]

Why do people always think in terms of yesterday when they arrange conflicts of tomorrow in a movie? Like people running from frontlines to safe-zones. Narrowed down to territorial wars with territorial warefare. Heck, we actually don't have frontlines in actual conflicts anymore. This planet is a ball and you can't hide. If I were an Alien about to take over earth, I'd cause nuclear chain reactions by bombing nuclear facilities. Or I'd hack into our poor computers and cause world war III. But troopers occupying american soil with their bare presence serves only fears of the 19th or 20th century that appear to be still present in the States. Honestly, the last country I'd occupy would be the USA. No economy, no oil, gun nuts hiding in the hills....you can really have it.

[Oddball]

Well, lets not all be optimistic today. 

[Lightning]

It started with some bullshit beer talk by a lamer I know who was going on and on about the bees dying out and human geneome being 80% junk DNA.  I looked into this, the 80% 'junk' is attributed to evolution and different earth climates that our ancestors lived in, we may not need the DNA now, but chances are it could be useful in the future if another ice age is round the corner.

Actually, about 98% of human DNA is non-coding. That doesn't mean it doesn't have a function though, some of it does, but by far the most of it is simple copied genes that have been mutated so many times they've lost any sort of function. You have to remember, our DNA is changing with every generation and the only thing that's stopping it from changing too much, is that if the change is in a coding protein, the organism stops functioning. Non-coding DNA is free to change, so you cannot 'store' DNA temporarily, as you seem to suggest. It would simply deteriorate into nonsense.

...But, the birth of mankind as a super-race is so proposterously close to impossible from the resources that nature had available or to be blunt, the step from Ape to human is so inconceivable in the time-span that it supposedly happened, 'intervention' is logical word you would circle to escape the mind-fuck of such questions as "why are we here".

Perhaps a bit misanthropic, but see mankind more often as a glorified ape than some kind of super species lately. Also, I can't say any kind of intervention sounds particularly logical. Especially considering the knowledge we have about our genome. If it was somehow 'designed', I'm sure we would see some sort of evidence of that, but it's just a complete mess.

I also think the NASA bullshit saying "oh this planet got 400°K, there cant be life" can be so wrong. Who tells us that this form of life needs Oxygen, normal temperature, ect. They recently found a bacterium thats metabolism is based on Arsen. . . So even on earth not every form of life needs oxygen.

I don't think NASA ever officially would make such direct statements about what is possible and what isn't. In fact, it was a NASA team that discovered the bacterium which used arsenic instead of phosphorous. Do mind though, that life which does not need oxygen is extremely common. In fact, life on this planet started out being anaerobic, so it would make sense to find alien life is anaerobic as well.

[Sander93]

In a summary;

the universe is so immensely big the chance of having lifeforms somewhere out there are pretty big eventually. But it's not worth breaking your mind over it. Either it's smart enough to find us, or it's not and it's not worth finding. Any way in my opinion not something worth wasting your time thinking about.

[[130.Pz]I.Kluge]

I doubt they would bother with our planet.
It is relatively tiny, little resources (If they are so advance, it would only take a matter of days to harvest earth; not worth their time and resources) and besides there are bigger fish to fry(?).

Earth is like that hip place you used to go to get drunk and hope you cup a feel or get laid.
A dump.

Edit: Can't wait for this film though.   

[HadrianBT]

Khm, seems I agree with everything Lightning posts these several days. Well, I also agree with Irish

Anyway, "aliens attacking earth" technologically is same as "Germany (or any other similar country) attacking pigmy people". With the same outcome, same reasons. By which I mean: Why the hell would "Germany" attack pigmy ppl??!! The whole UN would condemn "Germany" and the person who started this would be serving his sentence for crimes against humanity. In fact, even taking one pigmy for experiments would require the said pigmy to sign some paper which would officially allow some social experiment on him (like teaching him Mathematical Analysis or Quantum Physics).

And yes, I do believe that there are plenty forms of life outside of Earth, but, as mentioned previously, we would first contact them by radio or some other means. WAY before we could actually be able to see them ourselves (Or has somebody already developed space travel with the speed of light and I have missed it?).