If you fall into enough conversations with movie geeks, eventually the topic will turn to something survival based. How would you survive the zombie apocalypse? Could you repair a shopping cart like The Man did in The Road?How would you dodge or maim the camp slasher? Could you cut your own arm off? What would you do if you found a dead body? How would you handle Robert DeNiro stalking your family? These are the conversations that make social drinking enjoyable.
But one that rarely comes up is alien invasion. I suspect this is because unlike zombies, alien invasion is something fairly dark and terrible. (So were the scenarios of The Road and Mad Max, but I suspect we comfort ourselves with the knowledge that we’d be the first to go, or happily devolving into cannibalism.) If aliens land on our planet with hostile intentions, they already have the technological advantage, rendering any of our defenses feeble and ineffective. We will become whatever they want us to be – slaves, food or fertilizer source, or ashy shadows imprinted on walls. Humanity has a long and dusty history of successful conquests, and with those border changing victories comes the insecure knowledge that we could always be next if the technological equivalent of Romans or Spanish conquistadors came along.
Nevertheless, alien invasion movies have taught us a few things about survival, and we would be wise to heed them.
Rule #1 – Avoid Major Cities
As Independence Day, War of the Worlds, Battle: Los Angeles, Skyline, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Mars Attacks!, Signs, and V taught us, aliens who arrive in large ships and hover for awhile aren’t to be trusted. The moment you see a flying saucer, tripod, or strange electrical storm, it’s time to get out of Dodge. Run for the mountains, the high plains, the desert, or jungle. Stick to backroads and avoid highways. Aliens may methodically wipe out humanity, but you stand a better chance of surviving and perpetuating the species if you aim for uncivilized territory. Get as far as you can, and hole up.
Rule #2 – Get a gun
Obviously, you will need to gather up supplies. Among those supplies should be a shotgun. A surprising number of aliens (Independence Day, Battle: Los Angeles, Signs, V, Men in Black) can be killed with your standard Earth bullet. At the very least, you have it to fight off the inevitable Man/Woman Driven Crazy By Grief who endangers you all.
Rule #3 – Band Together With Scrappy Survivors
No man is an island. While you definitely need to pick and choose your allies carefully (disaster does bring out the crazy), you stand a better chance of surviving in the long term if you can join your resources with others. If possible, try to recruit a person from each profession – doctor, computer programmer, electrician, food preparation, soldier, and so on. As a bonus, you may be the first stirring of the rebellion that overthrows the alien overlords, and be worshiped as heroes for all time.
Rule #4 – Don’t Take Risks
While you make your slow and quiet way towards the safety of isolation, don’t do anything stupid. Don’t run off to fight an alien. Don’t climb a cliff to obtain a tempting can of gasoline or box of Twinkies. If it looks too good to be true (a completely untouched grocery store, perhaps, or a friendly elderly couple who welcomes you in) it probably is. Remember, this brave new world is just looking for you to receive a devastating wound that would be fixable in peacetime, but here kills you slowly and painfully.
Come on. Don’t be Mel Gibson in Signs, so intent on cursing God and wallowing in widower misery that you forget the family dog. It’s a movie statistic that those who remember their animal companions (Independence Day, I Am Legend, Mad Max 2, Alien) live longer and healthier post-apocalyptic lives.
Rule #6 – Don’t Have Unprotected Sex
Eventually, humanity will need to reproduce, but the early days of an alien invasion are not that time. Do you want to be that character giving birth in a burned-out gas station as aliens approach, and die in the process? No, you don’t. You should also keep in mind that the aliens might not be weird, tentacled, multi-eyed things. They might be incredibly hot. (Species, V, Barbarella) They will undoubtedly propose copulation as “a way of sharing knowledge of our species” or “brokering peace between our planets” or some corny pick-up line like that, but their motives will be surreptitious spawning. Make sure your birth control is up to date, or that you have some condoms in your pocket.
Rule #7 – Be Prepared to Wait It Out
If the movies are anything to go on, we’ll have plenty of time to pack canned food and water purifiers before fleeing the city. Once you find a secure location, just sit down and wait for Earth bacteria, water, a well-placed jet plane, or a computer virus to do its work. Though they’ve achieved space travel, invading aliens tend to be relatively easy to destroy once they’ve leveled our Eastern seaboard. Within a year or two, you’ll be back in the suburbs as if nothing ever happened.
