Technical Aspects of Alien Abduction?

[Knobbyboy88]

I just saw the Fourth Kind this evening. While it made for passable and largely brainless entertainment on the whole, I couldn't help but ponder over some of the overused cliches of the whole "alien abduction" movie genre while watching. In these movies, the aliens always seem to be able to move supernaturally fast, human victims are almost always paralyzed by some kind of overwhelming fear/force, no one else in the same neighborhood, house, or sometime even room seems to notice, and most victims have their memories erased after the abduction.

Ignoring the most plausible solution to these dilemmas (namely that these supposed "victims" are simply suffering from semi-conscious nightmares and sleep paralysis), does anyone here with knowledge of human anatomy, brain function, psychology, or modern "non-lethal" weapons think that it might be theoretically possible for an advanced alien species to recreate such effects technologically? Could you possibly construct a non-lethal device which could simply scramble the human nervous system so badly that it would leave an individual in a paralyzed state of panic and give them the impression that beings moving at normal speed were "flying" across the room? Could you possibly create a device which rendered any near-by individual who you didn't wish to abduct effectively catatonic? Is it possible to truly "erase" memories?

If aliens really look like the adorable little 3 foot nothing pushovers UFO nuts like to depict them as, I can see how possessing such technology might be desirable.

P.S. If this subject is too "soft" for SLAM or if it has been covered before, feel free to move the thread or delete it.

[Darth Wong]

I haven't seen the movie, but obviously if you make that much noise and disturbance, someone should notice. However, it does beg the question of why such theatrical methods are required in order to abduct someone in typical alien abduction movies. If the aliens are capable of teleportation, why can't they just pop in, shoot you with a tranquilizer dart or some analogous device, and then carry you away? Why some glowing portal which levitates you and sucks you in while you are either paralyzed with fear or clawing desperately for traction while no one hears your screams?

[Knobbyboy88]

why can't they just pop in, shoot you with a tranquilizer dart or some analogous device, and then carry you away

I was kind of wondering if the paralyzing fear and extreme disorientation you always seem to see in these movies might be the effect of some kind of device along these lines. I know that the military is testing some rather nasty non-lethal weapons that have some, but not all, of the same effects right now.

[Shroom Man 777]

I like the notion of Grey Aliens sneaking into people's bedrooms, armed with blowdarts tipped with poison frog poison.

As for psychological effects and brain-stuff, there are drugs that can replicate those effects such as the various general anesthetics used in major surgeries. Hallucinations, delusions, etc. It probably won't resemble a sci-fi devise and would probably, yeah, as Wong says resemble a tranq dart, or some kind of gas inhalant or something. But the effects would be similar.

It reminds me of the Simpsons, where Kang and Kodos just doused Homer with booze so that nobody will believe his alien abduction story. Perhaps the aliens like to perpetuate the whole Flying Saucer Bright Blue Beam of Light thing to discredit abductees, while the aliens themselves are working fairly incognito with the Men in Black right here on Earth, hiding and conducting their operations in hospitals and abortion clinics all over the country...

[Covenant]

why can't they just pop in, shoot you with a tranquilizer dart or some analogous device, and then carry you away

I was kind of wondering if the paralyzing fear and extreme disorientation you always seem to see in these movies might be the effect of some kind of device along these lines. I know that the military is testing some rather nasty non-lethal weapons that have some, but not all, of the same effects right now.

If they can hoist you away through the air on beams of force they probably don't really care if you're terrified or not. Trying to ascribe actual motives to complete delusions is a quick path to frustration, especially if you try to say you'd need to be hit by an alien less-than-lethal weapon to be terrified at being lifted off through the air and into a glowing spacecraft.

If you go further and give them the "lost time" area-of-effect magic that makes it impossible for anyone else to notice the abduction, the need for a 'terror beam' becomes even less relevent. If you can freeze everyone around, why not freeze that person too, eh? And if you're really interested in experimenting with human biology, why not abduct a person, clone 'em, and play with the clones?

[Surlethe]

Axiomatic: I Bobbed your post. Try again with more detail, please.

[RedImperator]

I would bet the reason disorientation and paralysis are cliches in alien abduction stories is because a majority of the cases of "alien abduction" are probably sleep paralysis, which produces the exact same effects (paralysis, confusion, anxiety, a sense that some malevolent "presence" is nearby, and frequently hallucinations of someone or something hovering over the bed). There's no reason why aliens would need some kind of paralysis ray to kidnap people. I mean, do human kidnappers need magic paralysis rays? Do animal control officers need paralysis beams to capture bears?

[Knobbyboy88]

Trying to ascribe actual motives to complete delusions is a quick path to frustration

I agree. The whole concept is stupid in the extreme. However, that's not really what I was going for.

I was simply playing devil's advocate and asking if anyone thought that there was a scientifically plausible method by which these...

a majority of the cases of "alien abduction" are probably sleep paralysis, which produces the exact same effects (paralysis, confusion, anxiety, a sense that some malevolent "presence" is nearby, and frequently hallucinations of someone or something hovering over the bed).

...effects could be replicated technologically using some kind of non-lethal device. Does anyone think that this would be possible in the slightest given advanced enough technology, or would it basically equate to magic?

Do animal control officers need paralysis beams to capture bears?

No, but they do need nets and traquilizer guns. There's no reason why what I described above couldn't basically serve as a high tech version of this. For that matter, not all alien abduction stories involve the a glowing "tractor beam" pulling people into the sky either. A lot of times, the aliens come into the house and simply drag people off while they watch helplessly.

As far as the aliens' motivites go, I suppose that the "true believers" would simply argue that they are "catch, tag, and release" missions meant to gather research. Well...Either that or aliens are simply the prickish intergalactic equivalents of bored teenagers going out for a drunken night of "cow tipping."

[Shroom Man 777]

Like I said, drugs can do it and the shit that is used in the operating room to anesthetize people before the procedure have similar side effects - delusions, hallucinations, sleep paralysis, etc. These and other substances could be very well used to induce experiences similar to alien abduction. Just dose the guy with the shit.

[Zixinus]

Bare in mind how movie writers think: they primary think visually, not technically. For them, its mostly unimportant how the aliens in theory have their technology, its only important how they fake the effect and how visually impressive it is. The explanations is surreal or abstract even in a non-surreal or non-abstract concept.

In these movies, the aliens always seem to be able to move supernaturally fast, human victims are almost always paralyzed by some kind of overwhelming fear/force, no one else in the same neighborhood, house, or sometime even room seems to notice, and most victims have their memories erased after the abduction.

Simple: aliens have superior technology (or telepathy) that allows them to paralyse humans just so that they do not resist abductions and no one notices a lights caused by this usual affair.

Or that humans are too cowardly to notice that their neighbors are whisked away and that little green grey man walking around, except for the courageous, plucky, smart and accidentally very sexy UFO researchers who will not be discouraged by common sense government lies to reveal their insecurities and their self-delusions hide the truth!

Really, that is how some people think, there is a trope around this and people will give you a bunch of reasons why that is so (Dresden Files almost always has a rant about this from Harry at some point). Some of them are fairly tame, a few even believable, but most pretty silly.

As for realistic knocking-out: what about using a laser to make a channel of ionized air to tazer someone? I believe that a real-world weapon is made on a similar princible.

[Knobbyboy88]

As for realistic knocking-out: what about using a laser to make a channel of ionized air to tazer someone? I believe that a real-world weapon is made on a similar princible.

Yea, this is more along the lines of what I was talking about in the OP. Is it scientifically possible for some kind of directed external stimuli to cause the kinds of effects that we see in these movies? Could you possibly stimulate the part of the brain that creates crippling fear through such a method, or scramble the nervous system so badly that a person would be rendered effectively helpless and easy to capture without alerting everyone else within a four block radius?

I figured that this would be a decent place to ask as a lot of people on these boards seem to be knowledgable about such subjects.

As far as "blocking out memories" goes, I suppose that this could be done with drugs like Shroomman suggested or through some kind of microchip implanted into the brain if we wanted to momentarily suspend disbelief and play along with the whole "aliens want to run experiements on us" theme. Such a chip could also explain the almost primal fear and dread all of the "abductees" in the movie seem to display under hypnosis. If the chip had some kind of failsafe built into it that stimulated certain parts of the brain whenever someone started digging too deeply into the repressed memories in question, I'm sure that it probably would look a bit like what the trailers and movie show.

[Zixinus]

Is it scientifically possible for some kind of directed external stimuli to cause the kinds of effects that we see in these movies? Could you possibly stimulate the part of the brain that creates crippling fear through such a method, or scramble the nervous system so badly that a person would be rendered effectively helpless and easy to capture without alerting everyone else within a four block radius?

Since I'm thinking of pretty much just sending a strong jolt that will make the target unable to move, no, I don't think so. And even if you could do it with a laser somehow, I don't think you'll be able to do it without drilling trough someone's skull.

Actually, that raises a question: can you administer sedatives that Shrommy mentions by means other than a needle or gas but without leaving any traceable evidence? For the moment, we'll be doubtful that aliens poison our food.

I also think that you might be able to take someone out if you somehow deliver nanomachines and then later trigger them when favourite probing subject is needed again, but at that point, experimentation and analysis would prove even more weird than before: they clearly have deep knowledge about us if they can use nanomachines to disable us without harming us.

[Knobbyboy88]

I also think that you might be able to take someone out if you somehow deliver nanomachines and then later trigger them when favourite probing subject is needed again

Conceivably, they could simply pump a small amount of gas filled with airbourne nanites into the house, wait for them to get situated within their human hosts, and merely remote paralyze/disorient whoever they wanted to abduct before taking them away. This could also explain why other members of the family wouldn't notice if they were being kept sedated by the same nanites, and its even possible that these nanites could serve double duty as the memory erasing mechanism and failsafe I mentioned earlier.

However, this kind of begs the question of why they would need to take people away at all. If they had nanotechnology that advanced, surely the machines would be able to simply transmit back whatever information the aliens required. lol

[Axiomatic]

Axiomatic: I Bobbed your post. Try again with more detail, please.

Basically, I was replying to the statement that you could just take a tissue sample from a human, clone the human from that and do your tests on the clone, thereby removing the need to abduct anyone.

But it doesn't actually work that way. What you want to play with is the phenotype, not the genotype. Phenotype is basically what you get when a creature with a certain genotype is raised in a certain environment. It's a mix of genes and what happens to you as you grow up and develop.

And clones in a vat, raised in an alien, non-terrestrial environment will therefore yield no useful data to the aliens who cloned them, because they weren't raised in the environment they would have been raised had they been regular humans crawling across the surface of Planet Earth.

Thus, the need for live specimens who lived in their native environment. Tissue-samples just don't cut it.

Is this enough detail?

[Surlethe]

Much better. Thank you.

[TheLostVikings]

Actually, that raises a question: can you administer sedatives that Shrommy mentions by means other than a needle or gas but without leaving any traceable evidence? For the moment, we'll be doubtful that aliens poison our food.

Yup. One of my friends who has diabetes own a needle less injector that uses a combination of ultrasound and high pressure to literally "shoot" the insulin trough his skin without leaving any marks. So if you combined that with some kind of biodegradable tranquilizer, that dissolved quickly enough to be undetectable by the time you let people go, you could go all Dexter on people without leaving any traces behind.

Afaik the injector works by having a "donut" shaped contact plate that transfer the ultrasonic vibrations to your skin, and since that makes the skin more permeable the rest of the device (which is for all intents and purposes a high tech water gun*) can push fluids trough the skin simply by using high enough pressure.

*Filled with water it can shoot nearly 2 and a half meters lol

[Knobbyboy88]

Afaik the injector works by having a "donut" shaped contact plate that transfer the ultrasonic vibrations to your skin, and since that makes the skin more permeable the rest of the device (which is for all intents and purposes a high tech water gun*) can push fluids trough the skin simply by using high enough pressure.

I wonder if it might be possible to build something like this that works at extreme range. If it were, it could provide a fairly reasonable device for sedating possible abductees before carrying them away.

[Bilbo]

If an alien race knows enough about human physiology to create devices that paralyze physically, create overwelming terror in targets, or drugs that completely incapacitate humans then why are they bothering to abduct for experiments? Sounds like the aliens already know enough about human physiology to make more abductions.

Also why return poeple? It would be very easily to grab people from all over the world and have them just be "missing" forever. People disapear everyday. So unless the aliens are doing the tag and release bit why bother to let test subjects go?

Hell, if an alien species is advanced enough to travel between solar systems easily then why bother being cladestine at all? Consider the US Military decided it wanted to experiment on members from some Amazon tribe that has not scientifically advanced. We could tell them and there would be nothing the tribe could do to stop it. Helecopters, night-vision, tranq darts, all would allow the military to take who it wants when it wants. Aliens could do the same thing. Hell if they can levitate objects and teleport then they could take Obama out of the White House in the middle of the night just for shits and giggles.

[Knobbyboy88]

Hell if they can levitate objects and teleport then they could take Obama out of the White House in the middle of the night just for shits and giggles

Well, I'm sure that the fact that the aliens in question here almost certainly don't exist would present a bit of a problem in that case.

Besides, if they do exist, who's to say that their motives would have to be readily understandable to us anyway? They could be abducting people for any number of abstract or estoteric reasons that would seem totally incomprehensible to the uninformed outside observer. Maybe jamming things up people's anuses in the dead of night is the only way to cure alien space cancer, and they're simply so full of themselves that they don't feel the need to bother asking the permission of a bunch of "primitives" on a dirty little ball of rock.

In the movie, they basically came right out and more or less said... Spoiler

(In ancient Sumerian) We are "God" and we'll do whatever the Hell we damn well please with you bunch of monkeys. You are ours to "ruin or destroy."

why return poeple?

Who says that they always do?


GHETTO EDIT: P.S. Could one of the mods possibly fix the typo in the thread title? It's driving me crazy. lol

Ask and ye shall receive. I also fixed your typo right above.

[NecronLord]

They could just be using some tranqs that cause sleep paralysis and other effects in gaseous form. They could look completely non human, and the little greys be hallucinatory.

[Junghalli]

Another possibility that occurs to me is that the alien craft could be made largely of utility fog. Abduction might consist of the craft extending a psuedopod through an open window or air conditioning duct, grabbing the victim, and dragging them out through the window. The utility fog might be transparent and largely air (if condensation forms on the foglets it might even look like fog), hence the "levitating" effect, and in order to prevent victims from escaping or harming themselves or smashing things and so leaving evidence in their futile struggles it might "paralyze" them by the simple means of physically holding them in a constant position. It might also prevent them from crying out by squeezing their mouth shut and possibly also restricting the movements of their chests and necks so they can't make loud sounds. From the perspective of a human abductee it would appear that you were being lifted off your bed by an invisible force and were unable to move and unable to cry out (except maybe for strangled HNNN HNNN sounds) no matter how hard you tried. That sounds quite terrifying and reasonably close to a stereotypical alien abduction. All you need to complete the generic picture now is them shining flashlights at you (which actually is kind of odd - as advanced as they are and wanting to avoid detection you'd think they'd use night vision).

Surpressing people's memories should be feasible if you have a good understanding of how the brain works and the capacity to perform surgery to alter the synapse connections or otherwise change whatever structures hold memories. I'm not sure about the "surpress conscious memory but leave unconscious memories that can be recovered through hypnosis" thing, but I imagine surpressing memories might well be easier than eliminating them entirely.

[Glass Pearl Player]

If an alien race knows enough about human physiology to create devices that paralyze physically, create overwelming terror in targets, or drugs that completely incapacitate humans then why are they bothering to abduct for experiments? Sounds like the aliens already know enough about human physiology to make more abductions.

Because they need a video protocol of the abduction in order to get a passing grade in Exobiologic exercises II. In other words, they are new on the job and need some practice. How much does human biology know about the anatomy of frogs? And yet bio students regulary cut them apart.

Also why return poeple? It would be very easily to grab people from all over the world and have them just be "missing" forever. People disapear everyday. So unless the aliens are doing the tag and release bit why bother to let test subjects go?

Several possibilites: They want to study the reaction to the abduction, hence they catch, release and use only low grade amnesiacs. Or they want to exercise their catch-and-release skills (see above). "Funny" speculation: As long as you are content with only passing Exo Excercises I, not II, the test subject does not need to be in a returnable condition .

In other words: No need to ascribe mysterious motivations to the little gray men. We are doing the very same things to species having the embarrasing misfortune to share a planet with us without anyone batting an eye, therefore I ask: Why so serious?

[Solauren]

The only reasonable explaination I can think of for alien abduction is some form of xeno-anthropology

They use some kinda of agent that knocks out the subject, and removes them. Quietly and unnoticed.

i.e Transporter technology.

They then proceed to read the subjects mind (letting them see our civilization from a members point of view). However, in order to do this, the subject must be awake. And possibly drugged in some way. (Some alien abduction stories sound like bad 'Trips' to me.) This is were the memories of the experience come in. Problem is, due to the mind-reading, things are a little distorted (or this could be intentional). Memory distoration + drugs would explain alot about inconsistences in abduction stories, as well as consitencies: They're all drugged up, and are having different reactions to the drugs/proceedure.

Then the subject is returned. They have what they need, and off they go to the next subject.

The few cases of multiple-abductions are explainable by; Random choice to keep tracking the subject, nogoing experiment, or the first experience was so tramuatic, the subjects mind keeps 'reliving it' at random.

[phred]

All you need to complete the generic picture now is them shining flashlights at you (which actually is kind of odd - as advanced as they are and wanting to avoid detection you'd think they'd use night vision).

Perhaps they are using nightvision? Just that their 'eyes' see in a different spectrum from ours, and by the time they realized that their version of an IR camera is a 1.21 gigawatt halogen to us they figured they would keep going with it.

Which leads to the question, How far up or down the scale can you go to use radiation the same way we use light?

[Junghalli]

Which leads to the question, How far up or down the scale can you go to use radiation the same way we use light?

Well, I think the high UV is the point where astronomers start using grazing incidence lenses instead of regular lenses...