Aliens want to eat meat from live humans (that is to say no cheating by growing the meat in vats). Exactly how they prepare it and so on is not relevant for this hypothetical, although you may wish to consider different alien “tastes” (e.g. do they prefer young or old meat, and does the exercise or whatever matter); what we have to design is the most humane possible system to provide the aliens with this meat. The humans do not necessarily have to be informed of their fate, that’s up to you.
I have my own solution (which I consider quite ingenious) but so as not to influence others I’ll provide it after a page or so of replies.
A portion of recently deceased individuals must be used for alien feeding purposes. Depending on the amount of meat required, this might require trampling on a few religions, making it impossible to expose the body in a funeral home and reducing the number of cadavers available for research.
Easy. Let them have all of the human “meat” harvested by hospitals every day (amputated limbs, appendices, gallbladders, uteri). The accelerating rate of uncontrolled diabetes would guarantee a healthy (hah!) harvest all year round.
Fat removed by liposuction comes to mind as well. Liposuction would probably be a lot more popular if someone was paying the “fat donors” for it, instead of expecting the donor to pay them.
Take a bunch of humans up to a ship and have them procreate. After children are born keep them healthy and well-fed in small containment areas on the ship.
When they turn 18 then you use a pneumatic gun to shoot a steel rod through their skull or just slit their throats if some of the aliens have religious dietary needs.
Ohhhhh, that not humane, you say? Maybe you shouldn’t be doing it to cows then either. Same diff, from the alien’s perspective. Seems cruelty is humane as long as it’s not happening to you.
Actually, if you farm people and euthanize them humanely, does it matter much how they’re prepared after that? I was thinking the OP is really asking: If the aliens eat people alive, what would be the most humane way? I’m thinking, brain first.
Well the point is that if I didn’t specify that then the aliens might be like how some Thais do that eating monkey brain alive thing, or how some Koreans do that eating live fish thing. I wanted to rule that stuff out.
Assimilating Our Culture, That’s What They’re Doing" by Larry Niven. The alien race in question uses DNA and cloning to grow other alien species for meat.
On Super Milk Chan some aliens cloned the Mayor in large herds to solve their planets food shortages.
I don’t think there is any moral way to allow humans to be used as food for man or alien.
Even cloning people with noting but a computer chip for a brain would be unacceptable. Really, once you start eating people why quibble over whether they have a brain or not?
I guess you could allow aliens to just bite a bit off here and there. Let them have an arm or a leg if they offer a good price and the technology to clone it back. It would be a good way for folks to make a few extra bucks and say you want a face lift, just let them chew off your face and get a new one. Everyone’s a winner!
Because if they don’t have a brain, they aren’t people. It would be just as OK for an alien to eat a brainless human body as it is for us to remove the organs of the brain dead for transplant.
Are you saying your ideal solution involves that no human whatsoever knows about humane aliens eating people, or that only those chosen for the main course will never know?
If it’s the latter, you can create an isolated community (an island, let’s say), that serves as a concentration camp of cloned children brought there, being cut off from the modern world and technology, they’ll be raised as uncivilized zealots, being taught to worship the Aliens as some sort of god or diety, and at the age of 18, they have the divine honor of finally joining their god(s) in their godly realm where they’ll blissfully spend eternity.
And, every 6 months, this great, brilliant and incomprehensible Chariot of Fire descends from the sky, the “honored” climb aboard overcome with joy and exhilaration as they’re greeted by the Holy Ones—only to be gassed unconscious and eaten.
Yeah, CMYK’s solution is the one I’d choose. You’d need to isolate/brainwash the livestock so their eventual disappearance won’t just go unquestioned, but celebrated. This all reminds me of my favorite Simpsons gag when they get kidnapped by aliens and find a dusty book onboard the ship, the title of which is revealed by blowing the dust off several times:
How to Cook Humans :eek:
How to Cook For Humans
How to Cook Forty Humans :eek:
How to Cook for Forty Humans
The aliens are so offended by the accusation that they were going to eat the Simpsons that they take them back home without the delicious banquet they were preparing.
When you say “live humans” is that just a way of clarifying “no vat-grown clones, etc”? Or do the humans actually have to be alive while they’re eaten?
If it’s just the former, the aliens may be in luck—Sky Burial (warning: images of human corpses, in various states of dismemberment) is still practiced by Tibetan Buddhists, in which the human body is not merely left in the open for vultures to eat, but in fact is actively chopped up (at one point in the process, smaller bits are even pulped and mixed with a flavored batter) and presented to the birds to eat.
The religious aspect shouldn’t be a problem—the body itself in considered merely an empty shell, and bird-feeding is not only considered more practical than burial/cremation, but in fact an altruistic act of providing food to living beings. The more of the body consumed, the better.
This might not be as large or as steady a supply of human meat for the aliens as, say, the cattle industry can supply, but this might simply increase the appeal—Human would become a delicacy, to be savored.
