Na'Vi and the Insects (Avatar vs. District 9)

[Majin Gojira]

The "Prawn" ship crash-lands on Pandora (this allows the Prawns an easier out, but does not mean the ship is completely inoperable), releasing its contents of thousands of "Prawns" (who can survive in the atmosphere of Pandora because of the *mumblemumble* organ located in their upper thigh, this also allows them to digest the food/flesh on Pandora). "Prawn" leadership is pretty much gone as per the film, but there remain a scant handful that are working to repair the ship, though it will take them perhaps 20 years to re-collect the fallen parts to do so.

Two scenarios are proposed:

1) The prawns crash 19 years before the events of Avatar.
2) The Prawns crash 4 years after the events of Avatar.

How do the two speices interact/view each other? Can they get along peacefully or...is someone doomed?

Will the Company in Avatar be worse than MNU or better?

How does their presence change things?

[Kingmaker]

I suspect that RDA will not have much success capturing and controlling the prawns, especially if they are just getting established on the planet. The prawns have drastically superior small arms, and unlike MNU, RDA does not control their access to food. On top of that, we saw in D9 that leaderless prawns are pretty belligerent. After having a few guys popped by the lightning gun, they will probably try to avoid the prawns, as they have no short-term benefit to dealing with them unless the prawns are attacking Hell's Gate or mining operations.

As far as how they fare in the Pandoran wilds, I'm not sure. On the one hand, they are starving and may not be able to effectively procure food before starvation-induced deaths take a serious toll. On the other, we've seen that they aren't terribly choosy about what they eat, so they may simply chow down on the first thing they see. I am confident that their weapons will enable them to deal with roaming wildlife.

Of course, Eywa may be pissed about the giant fucking spaceship that just crashed in the middle of the jungle and the horde of alien locusts that are killing and eating everything in sight.

[Hawkwings]

Outside of a few leadership prawns, do we even know if the "feral" prawns are able to effectively operate their own weaponry? They struck me as not too bright, but whether that was caused by 19 years without leadership or what I don't know. If they can't use their weapons and power armor well, then they're going to get munched by the wildlife.

[Kingmaker]

During the early part of the film, we see what looks like a regular prawn firing some kind of grenade launcher while a news crew watches. I think the bigger issue is that without leadership, they don't seem to do much at all besides mill about and eat. Group action seems beyond them.

[Themightytom]

the Prawns would have to get organized or they just die. There's no tech base from which to cobble together new weapons, just what they avhe on them, and pandora seems like a Dangerous Fucking Place.

[Hawkwings]

They would probably just turn into exceptionally well-armed savages, with maybe a small group of organized prawns centered around whatever leaders are still around. Don't know if the Na'vi would want to organize and wipe them out though. They probably would want to hunt down and kill the randomly rampaging feral ones, but any organized groups would probably give them a good fight. The organized ones would probably be centered around the crash site, which I bet has cleared a bunch of jungle and is leaking all sorts of wonderful poisonous chemicals into the ground, conveniently killing off any surviving nearby trees. Add in their super auto-aimbot weapons and that power armor and they may stand a good chance of fending off what the local Na'vi can throw at them.

[Covenant]

The prawns in D9 were immensely weakened by their longterm period of being stuck on the ship, malnourished and in awful shape. If we assume they land and are able to open up the doors to go outside before this gets as bad as it did in D9 (where they had to be cut out) then they might be vigorous enough to hunt on their own, and would probably blow the hell out of the surrounding wildlife.

They seem to be indiscriminating eaters. I am pretty sure that their addiction to catfood had a horrible effect on them, the same way rampant drug use has a terrible effect on people, and unless they find a similar analog on Pandora I would suppose that they would probably form into hunting parties and form a bunch of small communities. We know some of them robbed a bank, and other groups of prawns have been able to operate on their own (like they did when they shot at the MNU trucks) so they're not brain-dead.

The one highly intelligent prawn we see would be very capable of aiding his people, if it's an option, but even his less intelligent buddy wasn't a total idiot. The prawns are just, as said, belligerent. They are really quite strong, and would be even moreso on Pandora, so they could probably handle themselves just fine physically... and it's entirely unknown what the Na'vi would think of them. There's bound to be scuffles, but neither prawn nor na'vi seemed terribly interested with committing actual time and effort to hostilities.

[Gil Hamilton]

My impression is that catfood for Prawns was EXACTLY supposed to be like what hard drugs do to humans. I'm pretty sure that was Blomkamp's point. There was even that clip of the Prawns attempting to sell weapons to the Nigerians for 10,000 cans of catfood and settling for 100 because they were desperate to get it. The whole Prawns as a metaphor for native Africans runs deep.

What the Prawns really need to do to survive on Pandora is for some of their leadership caste to survive. It was largely implied (and stated outside the movie) that the Prawns we saw were worker caste that simply couldn't function well without someone telling them what to do. More Christopher Johnsons in the population could get them to organize and survive, since if Christopher is an example of the leadership caste, then they are quite canny.

[Oskuro]

I wouldn't put it past the Na'vi to actually try and help the disoriented Prawns (if the event takes place before Avatar, the Na'vi were willing to meet the humans at first too), and seeing how there wouldn't be the influence of corporate interests or rampant crime, it might actually work out, since both the Na'vi and the Prawns are somewhat feral.

Prawns are presented as scavengers, much like vultures, and in such a rich ecosystem as Pandora I'd bet they'd find their niche without causing too much trouble.

As for weapon usage, regular prawns were able to drive the power armour (they brought it to the nigerians themselves) so they'd be hardly defenseless.

[NecronLord]

I think this would be a big damn disaster. That many crashed prawn-people probably couldn't be supported easily, and would likely destroy the local environment. Though of course, at least some of the prawns' violence must come from how they've been treated. The RDA probably doesn't have the resources to do much.

Assumingt the RDA can't either secure properly, or operate the ship, then eventually, Christopher-Johnson alikes will get it fixed and go home, though. And possibly send a ship to go deal with the RDA, supposedly the notion is that the prawns' government is generally pretty benevolent.

[Solauren]

Here's how I see things working out, regardless of time period before the start of the movie/arrival of humanity

The Prawn leadership survivors (a handful it's specified in the OP), would probably realise this is an interesting planet as they were scouting for fallen parts and resources.

Eventually, they'd run into the Na'vi, and make a deal with them, or at least explain the situtation.

Worse case scenario; The Na'vi and Prawn's skirmish, and this inhibits Prawn rebuilding efforts. The Na'vi might eventually try to drive the Prawns off.
Humanity could, upon arrival, ally with one of the other, and have an easier time.

Base Case Scenario: The Na'vi and Prawns become friendly, and the Na'vi help the Prawn find fallen Technology.
When humanity arrives, they are facing the native ecosystem, backed by the occasional armed Prawn group.

[Rye]

I wouldn't put it past the Na'vi to actually try and help the disoriented Prawns (if the event takes place before Avatar, the Na'vi were willing to meet the humans at first too), and seeing how there wouldn't be the influence of corporate interests or rampant crime, it might actually work out, since both the Na'vi and the Prawns are somewhat feral.

Prawns are presented as scavengers, much like vultures, and in such a rich ecosystem as Pandora I'd bet they'd find their niche without causing too much trouble.

I don't think so. The prawns are rapacious, with very little forward-thinking beyond "get as much catfood as possible". They breed in large numbers, consume and then live in their own shit. This is not going to impress the Na'vi.

As for weapon usage, regular prawns were able to drive the power armour (they brought it to the nigerians themselves) so they'd be hardly defenseless.

Yeah. RDA would be in a great position to use the prawns; there's a good chance they have some canned human food that approaches catfood in addictiveness, they would be able to team up to some extent as a cheap exploitable labour force that doesn't care in the slightest about conservation.

[Oskuro]

I don't think so. The prawns are rapacious, with very little forward-thinking beyond "get as much catfood as possible". They breed in large numbers, consume and then live in their own shit. This is not going to impress the Na'vi.

Isn't it established that part of that behaviour was due to catfood addiction? There were plenty of tame prawns about despite the addiction, and furthermore, I doubt they have the population density to pose an immediate ecological threat to a planet with such a dense flora and fauna, it has taken centuries of consistent deforestation and pollution, aided by natural desertification, for us to threathen our own biosphere. So there'd be time for the Na'vi and prawns to get to know each other, as well as for the prawn's leadership to re-emerge. (My points are all assuming no human intervention, by the way).

I also suspect the Na'vi would feel a greater kinship to prawns that are acting on self-preservation instincts, just as they feel it for other beasts native to Pandora.


I wonder what would happen if a Na'vi got hit by the prawn fluid. Would it mutate? Could prawn scientists engineer a prawn-Na'vi hybrid of sorts? Or maybe alter their physiology to interface with Pandora? I mean, of all the prawn tech, the most impressive was, by far, the magic mutating liquid of power.

[NecronLord]

I don't think so. The prawns are rapacious, with very little forward-thinking beyond "get as much catfood as possible". They breed in large numbers, consume and then live in their own shit. This is not going to impress the Na'vi.

You realise you're sort of falling for the movie's trick there? A lot of that stuff used to be (still is, probably) said about Blacks in South Africa too.

I wonder what would happen if a Na'vi got hit by the prawn fluid. Would it mutate? Could prawn scientists engineer a prawn-Na'vi hybrid of sorts? Or maybe alter their physiology to interface with Pandora? I mean, of all the prawn tech, the most impressive was, by far, the magic mutating liquid of power.

Actually, I'd say the most impressive by far was the intergalactic-in-one-point-five-years FTL. The prawn fluid was impressive enough, but it was just a biological change, not tearing the laws of physics and causality a new one.

[Rye]

You realise you're sort of falling for the movie's trick there? A lot of that stuff used to be (still is, probably) said about Blacks in South Africa too.

I do. The vast majority of the prawn were not Christophers. Also, the truth is that subsaharan Africa is actually a good case study for Malthus' theories; bush meat, deforestation, having too many babies and general environment destruction from needing to feed that many people. Put the prawn on Pandora and they'll do what we do here in order to survive; because they didn't have any social engineering, it'll end poorly. Same as with humans.

[NecronLord]

That doesn't mean they'll inherently 'live in their own shit' (hello, they were variously in a busted ship, and in a getto, humans do that when stuck in containers and ghettos, therefore humans will contetedly live in their own filth) or breed endlessly (If indeed, they can; they required technical parts, where are they going to find pumps and things on Pandora? Only in the RDA base) any more than humans in the same situation would. They'll die in the shitloads, and over-hunt the environment, but they're not going to live in their own waste if they've any other option.