Reclaiming Earth from a Xenomorph infestation (RAR)

[Crazedwraith]

What would The Culture do about the Xenomorphs in this scenario ?

They can easily wipe out the Xenomoprhs if they want to. But would they want to ?

Interesting question. On the one hand, sorting it for them would easy. Flock of drones to intervene and protect humans, or simply zap every xenomorph into the sun with displacers and they are generally pro-human do gooders and rescuing humans from alien swarms are exactly the kind of feel good act contact is there for if you believe Consider Phleabas. One GCU would have the resources to deal with it quickly.

On the other, who can fathom the way a Mind works? They might want to keep and study the scenario as a control for alien swarm scenarios. They might not consider directly intervene worth the resources or be efficient enough. They like fiddling with societies behind the scenes to get them painlessly go the way the Culture wants. Flocks of Gun-Drones doing direct intervention is not really their MO.

[Tribble]

A Dalek xenomorph hybrid? Good God.

Well, I'm torn between Star Wars for the effectiveness of its ground troops and Star Trek for the transporters, sensors, and medical tech.

Well, if you are using Star Trek you could just fire the Genesis device at Earth, seeing as it would be habitable afterwards (the OP mentioned we could use any tech we wanted). And it would probably remain stable too, if the Genesis Planet's instability was caused by the Genesis device being used in a nebula instead of on a planet like it was designed for.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm fairly sure that's not the reason for the instability given in the films.

[Elheru Aran]

IIRC, the Genesis planet was unstable because of the protomatter used in the reaction; all the nebula did was provide mass for the planet-creation.

[Tribble]

IIRC, the Genesis planet was unstable because of the protomatter used in the reaction; all the nebula did was provide mass for the planet-creation.

Except that the Genesis device was never intended to create a planet from scratch. IIRC, it was designed to modify the atmosphere, the surface and perhaps the upper layer of a planet's crust and turn it into a Class M environment. That's quite a bit different set of criteria than "use Nebula's mass to create planet". Stage 2 had worked without any instabilities, and they were fully prepared to go to Stage 3. The proto-matter was not designed for planet-creation, and Marcus may have just been pointing that out. Using the Genesis device on a target completely different from what they were preparing for would have fucked up their calculations beyond all recognition.

[Borgholio]

I was operating under the assumption that any forces we recruit are going to actually be obedient to us. Also that there would not be any humans left by the time the planet was overrun by aliens.

Yes, all forces you recruit will be fully loyal to you and will not revert to their base instincts (Terminate, Kill the Jedi, EXTERMINATE!!!, and so forth).

There are survivors. Assuming a planetary population of 10 billion people in that time frame, over half are killed by the Xenos one way or another. So you're looking at (rough estimate) about 5 - 6 billion Xenos and 3 - 4 billion human survivors. If you delay too long, the ratio will become even more skewed. If anybody has ever read the Earth Hive book series, it's described as having the Xenos take over the Earth entirely in less than two years.

I didn't create the thread. Its not my job to spell out the terms of the scenario. If they weren't clear, that's either the OP's fault or your's.

Sorry...I'm not as good with RARs as Zor is.

Well, if you are using Star Trek you could just fire the Genesis device at Earth, seeing as it would be habitable afterwards

Technically yes, but it would actually be a whole new Earth. To quote ST 2:

McCoy - "What if this thing were used where life already exists?"

Spock - "It would destroy such life in favor of it's new matrix."

So the Genesis device...had it worked...would constitute a failure of this RAR.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Dragon Ball features sci-fi tech, so I pick that universe. Bring Dende, the Dragon Balls, Z Warriors, watch the carnage. Once the xenos are all gone, wish back everyone killed by them within the past year.


Really, xenomorphs aren't that heinously hard to put down from what I've seen. If you can take away their ambush tactics and don't need to worry about their blood getting on stuff then they're no more dangerous than big game. Any sci-fi military that has weapons worth a damn would be able to butcher the things. Modern weapons should be perfectly capable of bringing the bastards down. I doubt an M2 would be inadequate for killing a giant cockroach with acid blood.

[Vendetta]

A couple of Asgard ships using their transporters to ping the Xenos into the sun.

Minimum disruption of infrastructure, maximum cleaning.

[Borgholio]

Thing about using tech with transporters is the sheer amount of transporting that needs to be done. We're talking several billion bugs, not to mention any chestbursters, facehuggers, eggs, or infected humans that need to be dealt with. I doubt ST transporters would be up to that task. The Asgard teleporters are powerful sure, but could they do it?

[Zixinus]

I don't know one from the top of my head, but I'd pick a military that has a robot army and a strong enough biotech division to engineer a world-wide inoculation against getting facehugged. That is the most important thing to address, not the tooth and claw thing but the pandemic nature of xenomorphs. The problem with Space Marines or a group of Jedi or Imperial forces is that they have the right firepower and probably can take down lots of xenomoprhs, but they don't solve that aspect.

The weakness of the xenomorphs is that they need humans (and other animals, see xenomorph-dog) to reproduce. If you can manage to disable that ability (by, say, killing the host once a facehugger is detected or kill the injected xenomorph embryo or something) and be able to distribute that world-wide (and not just to humans but large-bodied animals as well), the infestation is effectively halted. They may still kill off the rest of the population but strategically more dangerous pandemic aspect is addressed.

Then it becomes an issue of mopping up the xenomorphs. With some changes to loadouts (switch to everything that has more firepower) and tactics, the marines in the Aliens could be able to do it. Especially if you can get cheap battle-robots made in-universe.

So, really, the question is who has that kind of biotech? Remember, they don't need to just figure out an inoculation but produce it and distribute it world-wide. This is assuming that they don't have time to study the xenomorphs themselves.

[Borgholio]

Well we know from Alien 3 that Xenos won't attack humans who have been infected...and people in the hive only ever get implanted once...they don't get loving from more than one. So obviously there's some kind of marker that prevents these sorts of things, like a pheromone. So if that's the case, they could just mass-produce this stuff in the form of a body spray or...heh...*bug* repellent.

[Tribble]

Technically yes, but it would actually be a whole new Earth. To quote ST 2:

McCoy - "What if this thing were used where life already exists?"

Spock - "It would destroy such life in favor of it's new matrix."

So the Genesis device...had it worked...would constitute a failure of this RAR.

Finnnnneeee, I just enjoy quibbling with semantics

Well we know from Alien 3 that Xenos won't attack humans who have been infected...and people in the hive only ever get implanted once...they don't get loving from more than one. So obviously there's some kind of marker that prevents these sorts of things, like a pheromone. So if that's the case, they could just mass-produce this stuff in the form of a body spray or...heh...*bug* repellent.

Well, the Xenomorph in Alien 3 didn't attack Ripley because she was carrying a Queen embryo, not so sure if it would refuse to attack humans with regular xenos, thought it would probably be reluctant.

Dragon Ball features sci-fi tech, so I pick that universe. Bring Dende, the Dragon Balls, Z Warriors, watch the carnage. Once the xenos are all gone, wish back everyone killed by them within the past year.

By the end of DBZ, the Dragon could grant two wishes, so you could just wish all the xenos into the corn field, then wish all the humans back to life. Damn, why didn't I think of that?

I'm not so sure if I'd send the Z Warriors down there though. I suppose they're strong enough to just rip a face-hugger off if it somehow gets attached, though the acid might pose a problem. Plus, if one of them somehow does became infected, could Dende actually get rid of the embryo? We know that he can heal injuries, but a parasite is not an injury per-see. The last thing we'd want to see is a Super-Saiyan-Xenomorph hybrid, and Goku in particular is stupid enough that he may actually get infested.

Though I suppose you could just send Majin Buu as he'd be completely immune to them. Hey, he could also turn all the Xenomorphs into candy!

[bilateralrope]

What would The Culture do about the Xenomorphs in this scenario ?

They can easily wipe out the Xenomoprhs if they want to. But would they want to ?

Interesting question. On the one hand, sorting it for them would easy. Flock of drones to intervene and protect humans, or simply zap every xenomorph into the sun with displacers and they are generally pro-human do gooders and rescuing humans from alien swarms are exactly the kind of feel good act contact is there for if you believe Consider Phleabas. One GCU would have the resources to deal with it quickly.

On the other, who can fathom the way a Mind works? They might want to keep and study the scenario as a control for alien swarm scenarios. They might not consider directly intervene worth the resources or be efficient enough. They like fiddling with societies behind the scenes to get them painlessly go the way the Culture wants. Flocks of Gun-Drones doing direct intervention is not really their MO.

I was more thinking that the Xenomorphs are sentient enough that The Culture's ethics mean that exterminating them is not an option.

[Vendetta]

Thing about using tech with transporters is the sheer amount of transporting that needs to be done. We're talking several billion bugs, not to mention any chestbursters, facehuggers, eggs, or infected humans that need to be dealt with. I doubt ST transporters would be up to that task. The Asgard teleporters are powerful sure, but could they do it?

We see them transport a few thousand Jaffa and several mothership landing pads away in a few seconds the first time we actually see an Asgard ship.

So yes. They almost certainly can. It might take them a couple of days, but it's within their capabilities.

[Zixinus]

I was more thinking that the Xenomorphs are sentient enough that The Culture's ethics mean that exterminating them is not an option.

Then it would be a question of whether they can separate them and the humans fast enough to do an ethical decision. I never read the Culture novels, but aren't they absurdly powerful enough to do it? Then the problem of feeding the xenomorphs.

But I don't think that would be the case. Xenomorphs are end-product of a parasitoid originally meant to be a bioweapon. They may be intelligent, even sentient but not rational. Their only aim is to eat, build safe hives and capture humans for facehuggers. They do not do anything else. If humanity is anything like what regular sentient beings are like, you would have to go out of your way to prove that xenomorphs are sentient.

[Adam Reynolds]

If we are looking at such a massive rescue operation, I would likely pick Star Wars. With absurdly large quantities of Bacta on standby. Transporters just wouldn't work for billions of rescues unless we took literally every potential Federation ship and even then the time it would take would be problematic. Tens of Millions of clone troopers backed up by hundreds of millions battle droids would be possible, especially since we don't need to occupy the entire planet, we only need to rescue any potential survivors before destroying and terraforming it.

Have we seen any examples of clone or stormtrooper armor being effective against acids? They were described as being resistant to corrosive weapons, so it is better than nothing at worst. While it might interfere with their abilities, I would also require that Jedi wear armored spacesuits given this threat.

I'm not sure if they exist in the new canon, but I also would institute containment protocols for refugees based on bioscanners that were manned by high quality battle droids to prevent any potential for the infection to spread.

Given that it would be difficult for Xenomorphs to overcome a prepared Earth, it almost makes me wonder if it was some sort of inside job that allowed Earth to be caught entirely off guard and in fact sabotaged their efforts. Though it begs the question as to who would do such a thing.

[Borgholio]

Given that it would be difficult for Xenomorphs to overcome a prepared Earth, it almost makes me wonder if it was some sort of inside job that allowed Earth to be caught entirely off guard and in fact sabotaged their efforts. Though it begs the question as to who would do such a thing.

In the novels, it was basically a terrorist attack that broke into the lab where the Xenos were stored and allowed them to escape.

[biostem]

I think I'd go the Star Wars route as well. Specifically, I'd use an army of battledroids as the main force - send in B1's with flamethrowers, and have them "sanitize" the walls and ceilings as they progress, and have destroyers and heavy battledroids just behind them. If the Xenomorphs attack the B1s, (which are deemed expendable), the heavier back units open fire. The droids also can't be used to incubate more Xenos, so our losses are not their gains.

If there's a structure that we can't properly clear, we'd order an evacuation of it, including a clearly stated deadline, after which said structure will be utterly destroyed via orbital bombardment.

I wonder is a small droid could be developed which, basically, resided in someone's stomach, and in the event that the host gets infested, it'll simply destroy the embryo, (bonus points if it can also neutralize the acid, so as to save the host). This would be mandatory for people working on the ground, until such time that we've successfully retaken the planet.

Droid and speeder patrols would be maintained around the clock, with orbital backup. Organic personnel will only operate on the ground when absolutely necessary, and will be equipped with the aforementioned anti-embryo droid. An emergency force of evacuation speeders/shuttles will also be on constant standby.

If they're available, a force of Jedi will be utilized to locate survivors, and to help root-out hives.

[Joun_Lord]

In the novels, it was basically a terrorist attack that broke into the lab where the Xenos were stored and allowed them to escape.

Isn't that basically how the zombie apocalypse started in 28 Days Later?

Anyway, I'd probably do Star Wars. Primarily it would be CIS assets with Stormtroopers providing any organic work that needs done. Droids can't be implanted and it would be hard for fully armored Stormtroopers though deployment of organics would only be after an area is confirmed mostly pacified. Organic troops would be deployed to help survivors.

The droids would pretty much do human wave tactics but with robits. March along checking everyfuckingthing backed by heavier units and armored vehicles. Probably would take millions of droids but luckily the B-1s are cheap anyway and should be pretty much bargain bin prices by the Imperial era.

Survivors are quarantined, scanned and if infected with a chestburster put in some form of stasis until a droid medical team can help them. I'm sure Star Wars med tech can remove a chestburster without killing the host no problem. I'm honestly not sure why it would be all that complicated to remove anyway. Maybe for a crew of space truckers or some space grunts and a space robot but actual medical personnel in a well equipped medical facility, should be relatively easy.

I'd probably have the deployment of specialized units to deal with hives. Stuff like Imperial battledroids like the Darktroopers 1 and 2s, power armored troops like the Darktrooper 3, Hazardtrooper, or the Inquisitorium Dark Trooper. Anything that can't be facehugged and will tear through xenos like tissue paper.

[Adam Reynolds]

Given that it would be difficult for Xenomorphs to overcome a prepared Earth, it almost makes me wonder if it was some sort of inside job that allowed Earth to be caught entirely off guard and in fact sabotaged their efforts. Though it begs the question as to who would do such a thing.

In the novels, it was basically a terrorist attack that broke into the lab where the Xenos were stored and allowed them to escape.

That wouldn't be remotely enough, look at the kill ratios we see in Aliens. Xenomorphs have the same problem as zombies, they cannot spread as easily as they can be killed. Against any sort of remotely prepared resistance they should have no chance of actually spreading. It would require someone actively undercutting the defense for such an attack to succeed.

[Raw Shark]

Most high-power sci fi settings can do this without breaking a sweat. To keep it interesting, I propose a change to the game: What sci fi setting with technology closest to modern Earth can you utilize to "win" this scenario?

In that vein, I choose Transhuman Space (a setting custom-written for the GURPS RPG), and assume that the invasion takes place at its current state of the art, 2100.

Step 1: Quaratine as many fertile humans off-planet as possible, using screening measures so stringent and possibly invasive that they wouldn't be allowed without a temporary state of martial law, but attempt to get refugees to volunteer consensually before resorting to that. Multiple redundancy in the orbital, Lunar, and Martian facilities used to house them, in case an infected human slips through to one somehow and wipes out one station.

Step 2: By this point, Weiland-Yutani will be waging an all-out infowar of survival, throwing every memetic resource they have into passing the buck for this epic fuckup onto somebody, anybody else if possible, and just muddying the waters with a shitstorm of misinformation if not. Every single SAI they have at their disposal will probably be xoxed until they take up all available processing power, and tasked with spreading, "WY Didn't Do It!" Through all available forms of media, from Facebook to posting hand bills on street corners. Sure, xoxing is hugely illegal, and deleting the copies after the operation even more so in most jurisdictions, but these guys released the xenomorphs - they have worse problems than war crimes if they get held responsible. This operation is low priority for me at this stage, but I task some memetic operatives to tracking its progress and trying to identify the servers it is spreading from.

Step 3: THS has the biotech to sort out the epidemic, but probably more in a "kill the infected" way than an "inoculate the healthy" way. Some eggs are going to get broken to make this omelette, but we save as many as possible.

Step 4: 90% of the military ground forces are already robotic. Send them in to mop up without getting any more people infected.

Step 5: Set about trying to hold WY accountable. This may or may not succeed, as they have the high ground in the memetic war due to differing priorities. Nevertheless, it must be attempted. The infowar may be the nastiest part of this, in the end, but Earth will still be inhabited by humans.

[General Zod]

Xenomorphs are essentially neutered Tyranids. Nothing a company of Blood Ravens and a battalion of Imperial Guard couldn't handle.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah actually it is because the hell is one battalion going to deal with an entire planetary surface? They could fan out into invincible one man teams and the mission would still be physically impossible because while they spend months searching clearing out an area the size of Belgium the Xenomorphs on the whole rest of the planet will be spreading back into the already 'cleared' areas. Finding the Xenomorph and covering the ground of an entire planet are the problems here, not wankery ground forces. Modern arms would work fine for whomever had to do the actual killing.

I'm starting to really favor Star Trek because they have the required sensor technology, they have transporters, shields, and while they have poor ground weapons they'll suffice for this and cause little collateral damage.

[Terralthra]

One Culture GCU would easily be able to cope with the problem. It's low enough level danger that the Mind of the ship would probably let the panhuman crew aboard help out on the ground, though the Mind and drones would probably handle the majority of the work.

[bilateralrope]

Yeah actually it is because the hell is one battalion going to deal with an entire planetary surface?

How big is a battalion of guardsmen ?

If one battalion isn't enough, I can easily see the Imperium throwing enough guardsmen at the planet to kill off the Xenomorphs.