Giant monsters have been savaging our cities in the world of cinema for many years. King Kong did not enjoy his first trip to Manhattan in 1933, Godzilla did more damage to Tokyo than the USAAF, and San Diego apparently is not a good place to walk your tyrannosaur.
Most such movies have a Message, though, and Brave Heroes who often thwart the monster, usually through some brilliant scheme. The recent movie “Cloverfield” attempted to portray a giant monster attack in a realistic style. For those who have not seen or heard of the movie, it’s shot as if by a person’s personal video camera from the perspective of some ordinary schmoes who are in Manhattan when a hideous monster the size of a football stadium suddenly ambles out of the Atlantic and starts knocking down buldings and killing people. The movie follows some friends as they run around Manhattan in terror. The Army is shown fighting the monster, largely without success. That’s pretty much the film. There are no scenes beyond the perspective of a small group of terrified victims.
Of course, the movie was not universally beloved, and might have made some errors in its guesses as to how this sort of thing would unfold. So let’s explore what would happen if this shit really happened.
Suppose tomorrow an enormous, 40-storey tall monster emerges from the Pacific Ocean and begins destroying Los Angeles. (I’ll give NYC a break.) For the sake or argument let us assume this monster is blessed with the Cloverfield monster’s strength, alien hideousness, and resilience to most conventional weapons; a nuke will vaporize him and maybe a massive carpet bombing attack will kill him, but it’s going to take a lot. As long as the monster is in a built-up urban area, whatever method you use to destroy him will result in a great deal of collateral damage. There was no warning and no chance to prepare for this at all; the existence of the monster was completely unknown to any human prior to noon Pacific time, June 1, 2008, at which time he suddenly walked out of the ocean, up the Marina del Ray, and started kicking ass. There is no reasoning with the monster, no luring him away; he comes out of the ocean and starts eating people and destroying buildings and that appears to be his only aim in life.
How do you think this would go down? There is, obviously, no real life event that has ever happened to human beings that serves as any sort of precedent for this.
How would the government - we will assume this happens in the USA - react? Quickly or slowly? Would they be delayed by disbelief, or by incompetence, or by FEMA? Would they nuke the monster? Nuke Tehran?
Would the media cover this well?
How would people react initially? One assumes people in the monster’s path will run and scream a lot, but what about in greater LA, where they might be an hour from destruction? Across the USA? The world?
How would the sudden realization that we might not be the apex predator on this planet affect society’s outlook on itself? Would it result in greater international cooperation to deal with future Cloverfields? Would it change our perspective in any way? How would this different if there were no monster attacks for some months after the first one, versus perhaps another monster strolling up the Thames to eat London just days after the Los Angeles monster?
Slowly at first, and then with increasing force until we pretty much leveled wherever the monster was. FEMA would, of course, take forever to actually help anybody, but we’d be doing real good with hammering the monster in a shortish period of time.
The media would go freaking insane. Expect 25/8 coverage, with its own fancy banner on CNN and FOX, something like “Monsterama 2008!” Perhaps Sanjay Gupta would be eaten.
Most of LA would try to evacuate, and end up snarled in hundred mile long traffic jams. Others would hole up with weapons and ammunition and try to ride the thing out. Others would take to looting and general crime. The rest of the US would react with shock, then sadness and horror, then a blinding desire to annihilate the monster. The rest of the world would probably be baffled at first, then maybe talk about sending humanitarian support. A popular television series would start in the Middle East, claiming that The Jews were behind the monster’s attack.
Probably wouldn’t. We already have other ‘top predators’ that kill millions of humans every year. I am, of course, talking about various germs and such. Our cultural reaction to a giant monster would be an abiding hatred and genocidal fury at any and all giant monsters. We’d call them “freaks”, thus ensuring that such “freaks” didn’t actually challenge our supremacy.
Any real monster consisting of protplasm would be taken out by an Apache helicopter with a couple of rocket propelled grenades. If it was some other monster not of his earth I’d rather just let the monster wander around town and design an appropriate feeding system with some sort of birth control rather than employ the nuclear option. We could probably make money selling tickets at the super monster zoo. We all know how well that worked out in Jurassic Park.
Militarily, we have tactical nukes, which should be able to take any monster out without wiping out too much of LA (no great loss, though. ) I suspect someone would figure out how to attract it to some unpopulated area.
I agree that people would get in their cars and get out, and that there would be looting. The news copters would be working overtime. OJ would say that the monster did it.
Afterwards there would be a big memorial service, the establishment of a Department of Monster Security, the death of irony (again) and no monster movies shown on TV for six months or so. There would be a crash program to look for more monsters, plus a ready response force.
I don’t think it would hurt the ego of our species at all. Plenty of things are bigger and more powerful than us, and we can whup them anyway. Only a species smarter than we are would be a problem.
The Parasite Act would be instigated, we would begin a War on 'Saurs, designate dangerous species as the Amphibians of Evil, divert our attention to a not-all-that-threatening pit of rattle snakes in the Mojave Desert; all the while Cthulu escapes into an underwater cave just off the coast of Iceland preventing us from going after him.
I came in specifically to predict that they would have a CGI intro up and running within an hour. I picture animated letters rotating onto the screen, and a dramatic voice-over: “When sea dragons attack, the Channel 8 I-team has the news you need.”
Weellllll…a 40-story tall monster would either be extremely light boned or else it would never be able to leave the water. Essentially it wouldn’t be able to move under it’s own power due to gravity. I assume this monster would be a living creature and not some high tech alien thingy using some sort of powered exoskeleton or something like that.
So…say it was a monster like a really big dinosaur but with (to paraphrase) ‘teeth like this…and able to leap like THIS…and…well, look at the BONES MAN!’. What then?
I’d say they would react rather quickly to a multi-tonne dinosaur like monster rampaging through the city. Certainly the local government would be mobilizing…probably the local police and local guard units first. Nukes? No way. Wouldn’t be needed in a real life scenario. Not even really big bombs. My guess is a couple of mopes with a 40mm grenade launcher or two could take down the biggest monsters possible on earth…no sweat. Certainly a tank or attack plane (imagine what the gun on an A-10 would do to something like a dinosaur?? Be like shredded dinosaur mush) or attack helicopter.
Does the Pope shit in the woods? Oh yeah…would be a media feeding frenzy. Think about how the media goes nuts when a regular animal wanders into a town (a few years ago, IIRC, it was a bear or something like that and they went nuts)…and multiply that by several orders of magnitude. Especially if they could get footage of the beast snacking on someone like John Mace or one of the other California 'dopers (just kidding John!)…or perhaps stomping it’s big food down at Grauman’s (maybe in some fresh concrete…).
Even if there were a whole herd of them I can’t see it being a national problem…more a localized event. My guess is that people in the immediate area would panic (if you saw something the size of a sauropod but obviously a carnivore coming toward you, you’d probably run for the hills to…I know I would), some bolting completely, but I imagine most would seek shelter in their homes…which would be the smart thing to do as even a big dinosaur is probably not going to be smashing down buildings if it doesn’t have to. My guess is that this is what most people would do initially…and once the monster was paste they would probably come out to see what all the ruckus was about.
I can’t imagine humans not being the apex predator on earth as long as we are here. Unless we are going to speculate on some advanced species moving in, a simple ‘monster’, no matter how fierce, powerful, etc, just wouldn’t be able to compete with our technology. Even if you speculated that thousands of the biggest sized dinosaurs with the largest teeth suddenly materialized out of the sea and began rampaging through California (there is a cheery thought, ehe??), they would pretty much be paste in short order…they wouldn’t even be able to find a good place to hide like the few remaining top predators left on earth. Think about it for a moment…our ancestors went up against things like mammoths and saber toothed lions and cave bears with pointy sticks with (perhaps) the advanced technology of a piece of stone tied to the front and (if they were lucky) a bit of stick to throw it with or perhaps a bent piece of wood with a string attached. And they pretty much not only held their own but managed to dominate in that world with only the occasional hunter turned into snack food.
I saw Cloverfield of course, and while it was a cool movie, the monster was unrealistic. It was too big and too massive…gravity would have done it in alone. Even if not for gravity, if it was alive then something like a 20 mm cannon on an A-10 would cut through it like butter…let along 500 lb bombs or the assorted other mayhem available to the average national guardsman or police officer (not to mention the nastiness available to the regular military).
I don’t see why a fleet of F-14s would not be on their way within minutes. With a known target, and assuming the Beast From Beyond is subject to the same laws of physics as the rest of us, I would imagine we would muster up a welcome to such a guest in, say, thirty minutes at the outside. If a plane can take out a tank, I bet a bunch of them could deal with any monster able to move under its own power.
2 : There would be attempts by various fundies to link it to the Beast from Revelations.
3 :There would be a major attempt by everything from the military to any company interested in biology or the material sciences to analyze the remains and figure out what made it that tough.
“A 90 foot tall reptilian monster destroyed 11 blocks in Denver today before burrowing into a mountain. Scientists are split between labelling it a genetically mutated lizard and a species of dinosaur previously believed to be prehistoric, but the Bush Administration has said that FEMA will take action after a meeting on the third of next month to determine whether giant reptiles are indeed a natural disaster and in the meantime will launch wiretapping in metro Boston to find out if the thing that attacked Denver is indeed prehistoric. In other news, is Britney pregnant with a third baby less than a year after her first two were removed from her custody? Then we’ll see just how the $92 that Larry Birkhead used for the late Anna Nicole’s baby Dannielynn’s impending birthday party was spent, and was Obama’s comment about not liking chicken soup really intended as a slur against Jews, the elderly, and the disabled? We’ll discuss this with political analysts Ben Stein, Rosie O’Donnell, and the kid who played Arnold’s best friend Dudley on Diff’rent Strokes after these messages from our sponsor when Anderson Cooper 360 returns.”
It will be discovered that three months before the monster attacked Condi Rice gave Bush a memo titled “Giant Monster Attack Imminent,” but there were no pictures in it and he filed it away under his mothballed golf clubs. An urgent meeting to discuss the expected monster situation had been scheduled for next month, assuming that everyone was in Washington.
I never understood why giant monsters are impervious to conventional weapons. Like some kind of penetrating bunker-buster bomb to the face wouldn’t hurt it?
Does the Pope shit in the woods? Oh yeah…would be a media feeding frenzy. Think about how the media goes nuts when a regular animal wanders into a town (a few years ago, IIRC, it was a bear or something like that and they went nuts)…and multiply that by several orders of magnitude. Especially if they could get footage of the beast snacking on someone like John Mace or one of the other California 'dopers (just kidding John!)…or perhaps stomping it’s big food down at Grauman’s (maybe in some fresh concrete…).