A Quiet Place

[Swindle1984]

Did a search, didn't see a thread on this topic, so apologies if I'm beating a dead horse.

The creatures in A Quiet Place don't make sense. They have super sensitive hearing and use it to hunt with. The survivors can only make noise in the presence of a waterfall, which the creatures avoid because it's too noisy. The military was completely ineffectual against them.

So this brings up a number of questions:

1) They're apparently bulletproof, unless they raise the armor plates on their face while in pain, in which case a shotgun blast to the face will do one in quite nicely. The military, which has machine guns, including .50-cals that are much more powerful than a shotgun, never hit these creatures in a vulnerable spot? Nobody hit one with a grenade launcher? Even if their armor could resist the fragmentation from a grenade or even, say, an anti-tank rocket or a JDAM dropped from a plane, wouldn't the overpressure from the blast itself harm them? Are they fireproof? Did they try napalm, TAP, or thermobarics? They had trouble with the thin sheet metal of a grain silo and an old truck, what are they going to do to a tank? How does something with armor strong enough to withstand any of this move at all, much less as quickly as the creatures in the film? They can't be that heavy, or they'd have fallen through the wooden floors/stairs in the house.

2) If their hearing is so sensitive, and the noise from a waterfall repels them, then how were they not deafened by gunshots and explosions, which there must have been a LOT of when the military was battling them? Why weren't cities safe, considering how noisy they are? Remember how quiet things were after 9-11? And that was just from a lack of airplanes flying overhead. Think about how much noise there is from road traffic, music playing in stores, A/C units, people walking and talking, machinery, etc. in a city. Wouldn't these things be repelled by all the noise in a major metropolitan center like they are by the waterfall?

3) Judging by the notes, articles, and reaction from the survivors, killing a creature is incredibly rare, if not unheard of. They attack anything that makes a noise. Even if their armored hides are invulnerable, nobody ever tricked one into swallowing a pipe bomb? Or getting them to eat an animal covered in poison? Their biochemistry is similar enough to ours to eat people and local wildlife, shouldn't they be affected by toxins the same way we are? Hell, nobody ever put an alarm clock on the end of a long pole hanging off an overpass and tricked them into falling several stories? Are they immune to gravity too? Can they swim? Can you drown one by trapping it in, say, the pool at the gym? Trick it into jumping into the water, then close the cover on it.

It's a great movie with amazing atmosphere and good characters, but the creatures don't make any logical sense.

Discuss. How would you deal with them?

[Swindle1984]

Dammit, somehow posted this in the wrong forum. Mods, would you mind?

[LadyTevar]

Dammit, somehow posted this in the wrong forum. Mods, would you mind?

Moved, as per request.

[Solauren]

First, you need to watch the movie again, and pay more attention to the little details.

1 - The creatures were NOT bullet proof. They were incredibly fast and agile.
We have no idea about military engagements, or how things got to the situation there were in. For all we know, the main characters were in an area that was isolated after the infestation. With anyone not able to get out of it, left to fend for themselves.

2 - The noise from the waterfall was NOT repelling them. It was masking the sound of people speaking.
It acted like sound-proofing. I mean, have you ever been near a waterfall and tried to have a conversation? Beyond a few feet, it doesn't work without a lot of yelling.

That's whhy all the ash trails for getting around, and sound proofing in the house. To dampen the noise, so the creatures couldn't hear them.

Otherwise, if they were sensitive to all noise, helicopters with speakers would be a deadly weapon.

They were only sensitive a whatever frequency of sound the modified hearing aid was putting out at the end of the movie.


3 - As I said, we have no details on what happened to get things to that point. I'll admit, it looked like it was hard to kill them with civilian level weapons, but like I said, possible exclusion zone.

[Swindle1984]

1) The newspaper clippings flat out state that the military cannot stop the creatures, with a quote along the lines of "we cannot protect you". Presumably they didn't merely use small arms, which aren't much different from civilian small arms.

2) The father stated that the creatures didn't go near the waterfall. It wasn't simply the noise masking their speech, which was obvious to anyone watching the film, the creatures flat out didn't go there.

3) I assume by 'ash trails' you mean sand. Along with pointing out the super obvious that, again, everyone watching the film picked up on, so I'm not sure why you felt the need to explain that, yes, the creatures who hunt by hearing do indeed hunt by hearing.

4) They have massive ears which are sensitive to even quiet sounds. You don't think the noise from a bomb going off, much less the overpressure from that explosion, would damage those ears?

[Solauren]

1) The newspaper clippings flat out state that the military cannot stop the creatures, with a quote along the lines of "we cannot protect you". Presumably they didn't merely use small arms, which aren't much different from civilian small arms.

There is a difference between 'we can not protect you', and 'we can't kill them'. I will admit, it does raise alot of questions about military effectiveness.

2) The father stated that the creatures didn't go near the waterfall. It wasn't simply the noise masking their speech, which was obvious to anyone watching the film, the creatures flat out didn't go there.

Would you go into a dark room if you didn't have to? If the waterfall masked noise, then the entire area would be a blindspot to them.

3) I assume by 'ash trails' you mean sand. Along with pointing out the super obvious that, again, everyone watching the film picked up on, so I'm not sure why you felt the need to explain that, yes, the creatures who hunt by hearing do indeed hunt by hearing.

That was SAND? Where the hell did they get all that sand from them? (Not related to the main topic, I honestly thought it was very fine ash)

4) They have massive ears which are sensitive to even quiet sounds. You don't think the noise from a bomb going off, much less the overpressure from that explosion, would damage those ears?

Unless I am mis-remembering, the creatures had the ability to close their ears. Fortunately, a little looking around on the internet reveals some stuff about the creatures, direct from the director himself.

http://collider.com/a-quiet-place-monst ... -krasinski

In short; Confirmed Alien Invasion.
He also goes on to say that the creatures evolved to be effectively invulnerable, except when they open their ears up, at which point they become vulnerable. (They came to Earth via Meterorite from a destroyed planet. The things survived their homeworld blowing up, interstellar space, and then crashing to Earth.)

So, basically, organic walking high speed tanks, that when there ears are closed, our weaponry can't hurt them.

They only become vulnerable when their ears are open. And no doubt they close them in response to loud sounds going off near them.
(That would explain why they avoid the Waterfalls. Like I said, it makes them blind. They have to close their ears to put up with the racket.)

The only exception seems to be the high-frequency noise that modified Hearing-aid was generating.

Anyway, since we now have it from the horses-mouth the things can't be hurt unless there ears are open....

The ways to go fighting such a creature are -
Chemical weapons - Problem is, what chemicals would work on them? Obviously, common elements are not going to work, nor are common compounds. I doubt bug-spray would work (it would be ironically funny if it turns out DDT killed them), so really, you'd have to go nuts testing out weapons on them. Odds are, you'd Scorch the Earth fighting back.

Sonic Weapons - It would take time to find frequencies that worked on them, however. In the end, you'd have to have vehicle with big-ass speakers on them acting as mobile-stun weapons, while you blast the things where they are vulnerable (ears).

The only other thing I can think of would be grabbing them with helicopters somehow (nets, fishing hooks), and then trying to drown them.

[Dass.Kapital]

Or... bullets that travel faster than sound and... snipers....?

What materials can said creatures 'claw' their way through?

How much load bearing stress can their bodies take?

[Solauren]

The only problem with supersonic ammo and snipers is the distance needed to do so safely. (Unless the sniper rifle is near completely silent).

The sniper needs to be clear of the 'creatures', or at least far enough to get away.

That also means, the creature has time to close up it's vulnerable points before the bullet hits.

Not really useful in mass combat. Wonderful if you can find a nice place to set up a sniper nest for him to take shots on them all day.

The rest, we don't know, unfortunately.

[Gunhead]

The only problem with supersonic ammo and snipers is the distance needed to do so safely. (Unless the sniper rifle is near completely silent).

The sniper needs to be clear of the 'creatures', or at least far enough to get away.

That also means, the creature has time to close up it's vulnerable points before the bullet hits.

Not really useful in mass combat. Wonderful if you can find a nice place to set up a sniper nest for him to take shots on them all day.

The rest, we don't know, unfortunately.

... If the bullet is travelling at supersonic speeds, it will hit the target before you can hear the shot. All rifles disregarding some using low velocity .22 ammunition fire bullets at supersonic speeds. Most 9mm pistols fire supersonic ammunition. But if we're talking about just your average assault rifles using 5.56mm x 45mm or 7.62 x 39, the monster will not have time to close it's vulnerable points if you're firing at it from about 350-400m. If it's reacting to the sound of the gun firing, the bullet will hit before it can hear it as it still traveling faster than the sound of the gun firing.

-Gunhead

[Solauren]

And can the sniper now get away from any of the other creatures before they rip him to shreds?

That is the point I was trying to make.

[Gunhead]

And can the sniper now get away from any of the other creatures before they rip him to shreds?

That is the point I was trying to make.

That wholly would depend on how many are there, how close they are and how fast they can move. Someone using an actual sniper like.. .338 Lapua, could conceivably kill one from 800-1000m and if the critters only use sound to track people they'd would be totally clueless where the shooter is after the report of the gun fades, unless they can somehow immediately pinpoint the origin of the noise. This not taking into account using some sort of noisemakers to confuse the monsters. I haven't seen the movie and it's not likely I ever will so I'm not at all familiar with the monsters you're talking about aside from the description in this thread.

-Gunhead

[TheFeniX]

If your meaty bits are capable of being destroyed by a shotgun round, then the idea of invulnerability is way out.

“And the other idea was [the armor is] also the reason why they were able to survive kind of the explosion of their planet and then survive on these meteorites, because they’ve evolved to be bulletproof. Until they open themselves up to be vulnerable, they’re completely invulnerable.”

I like John Krasinski as an actor and a director. But like a lot of writers, he isn't exactly versed in.... a lot of anything. Like the guy from the shitty Bale Terminator movie who wrote, shot, and released an ending where a veterinarian performs a heart transplant in a windy tent without the end credits saying "John still died because 'fucking duh.'"

Being bullet-proof doesn't make you "invulnerable." And bullet-proof is a rather wide definition as well. We make armor right now that can make you immune to small arms fire and we also make different "armor" for bomb disposal teams. But even the heaviest armor in that category will not save you when a large enough explosive device (even if someone 20 feet away would barely suffer from burns) because the concussion has to be absorbed by something. Namely: the meaty parts. Shock absorption isn't about "armor" really, it's about either being so fucking tough it doesn't matter or spreading the energy out over time and space/distance.

Even with some kind of "magicky" shock absorbing evolution-armor BS: you can't magic away all the energy.

If they could actually survive the explosion of their own planet and all multiple ridiculous forces involved in that, then it's stupid to think their meaty bits could eat it from a couple thousands joules. Yea, I understand there's a difference between force applied over a large area versus small (explosion vs penetration), but there's a fucking limit where you can't say "Oh, you could totally kill Superman if you shot him in the mouth while he was yawning. He just has super-tough skin! Even though he can somehow take punches that knock him 1000 feet back while he smashes through buildings."

Surviving the meteor ride to Earth alone means they have to be capable of withstanding, what? a couple MEGATONS (at LEAST) in impact and thermal energy? Their armored skin is better defined as "+5 Armor of Invulnerability" and was gifted to them by Tyr or something.

But "doomed humanity against invulnerable aliens TAKEN DOWN BY ONE WEAKNESS accidentally figure out by lone protagonist because military, which is exceptionally GOOD at finding ways to kill things, is too dumb." The movie actually looks good, but the tagline reads like cliche Sci-Fi garbage. Just turn your brain off.

tl;dr: the idea of these aliens being a realistic (as in like "could this shit happen?) threat (WRT the entirety of humanity) is completely ruined when a lifeform who can survive a ground-zero nuke explosion AFTER surviving the impact of riding in on the object that caused said nuke can somehow how get offed by a shotgun because "this one frequency annoys them."