Poll: What's More Survivable? Xenomorphs or Yautja

[Not G. Ivingname]

Well, if the Predators were actually INVADING earth, rather than going down to honorably fight us one on one, we be REALLY screwed, since they have space ships and could just drop their trash and sewage on our major cities, and then go down to slaughter the survivors. Guirilla tactics don't work very well when your enemy can hide better than you, see better than you, and can get past traps more easily than you.

Xenomorphs are very deadly, and very smart, but have access to no technology and no weapons. Sure, they are very dangerous, but they still basically wild animals. They would have a hard time invading cross continent and are not very good in areas without places to hide. Deserts will be a problem for them. They also cannot fly, and helicopter crews will have a field day against them.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

So, to beat a Xenomorph, all I have to do is get myself a gun I feel comfortable using, find myself a hardened room with a single entrance, set up a lawn chair on the opposite side of the room from the entrance, sit down in the lawn chair, point my gun at the entrance, and wait for the Xenomorph to attempt to brute-force its objective. Bam. No more Xenomorph.

If their are enough of them, they will kill their own and use the acid blood to get you.

However, you, one squish human, have caused a HUGE massacre against the Xenomorphes. If that tactics is applied on a military level (set up defensive positions in front of their advances, make sure there is no way to get to that position besides your designated kill zone, grab beer and watch slaughter) combined with using out air superiority to bomb infested areas, we would pretty much be FINE.

Predators, however, are both smart and clever, and have much better tech than us, meaning we would be screwed.

 

[Thaluikhain]

The relatively tiny explosive tip used on a 10x24mm round wouldn't be able to pack even close to as much punch as those. As I said, the use of an explosive tip was likely deliberate to bring the 10x24mm round up to par with standard rifle ammunition (most of which is FMJ) in terms of armor penetration. In other words, it was used to make up for a short-coming in the round.

That would make perfect sense in terms of modern munitions, as to what things will have been developed in the next 200 years or so, we can't say.

It was loaded with 12-gauge buckshot according to the film's armorer. Given that the film's writers and armorer wanted to keep the technology of the Colonial Marines relatively grounded in reality, it also would have been the most likely round for Hicks to have loaded given how common it is, how effective it is against unarmored targets at close range, and with how little the basic design has changed over the last hundred or so years it's unlikely to have changed much more by 2179.

I don't really buy that, there's lots of fancy stuff even today that could be fired from one of those, no reason to assume things would be the same in the future.

...

I'm not saying you are necessarily wrong about anything, it's just that until confirmed by the creators, it's going to take some doing to persuade me you're necessarily right.

I mean, they've got lots of FTL ships flying around, fancy ammunition seems much less unlikely than those.

 

[Luca72]

I always got the feeling that even though the later Alien movies established a "concrete life cycle" for the xeno, we were never seeing the full course of the evolution. I mean, it was implied that the original Alien was running off with the crewmates and turning them into eggs for more xenos. Plus, the xeno can apparently survive the vacuum of space!

So unlike the zombie topic, I feel like this is lose-lose. But I feel like the Predator is a technologically advanced, probably smarter variant of a humanoid, otherwise not too different. The xenos are more like insects or bacteria - they'll adapt to whatever environment they're put in, and take it over. I always liked the implication in the film that if even one xeno got lose on earth, EVERYTHING would be fucked.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

That would make perfect sense in terms of modern munitions, as to what things will have been developed in the next 200 years or so, we can't say.

Except it's a round that already exists, more or less. To understand the weaponry in Aliens, all you really need to do is look at the weaponry that was considered "future tech" in the 1980's (the film came out in 1986). 10mm Auto was introduced in 1983 and was new enough at the time that it was relatively unknown to all but avid firearm enthusiasts, and since it was something that actually existed they could actually have solid information on what kind of damage it was capable of causing. Caseless ammunition was another technology that was considered 'future tech' - likely because of the 4.7x33mm caseless rounds fired by the H&K G-11 which entered the final stages of development during the 1980's (and went into a limited production run in 1990). Explosive-tipped ammunition wasn't particularly new, though advances were being made in Semi Armor Piercing High Explosive Incendiary (SAPHEI) rounds for infantry weapons at the time. Explosive-tipped ammunition doesn't function the way people tend to think it does. Each bullet isn't a grenade. The idea is that you use a small amount of explosive to poke a hole in the armor plating for the round's penetrator to enter through. It works great with incendiary rounds, since you can punch a hole in the armor then ignite whatever is on the other side (these are the rounds typically used against light vehicles, as you mentioned before). But the rounds used in the M-41A aren't incendiary. The explosive tip is used for no other purpose than to weaken armor enough for the 10x24mm round to pierce through armor that would have otherwise flattened the round on impact.

EDIT:

To the filmmakers' credit, they actually did a pretty good job at mimicking future tech in a believable capacity. Though everything is based on technology that existed in the 1980's, a lot of it is still in a lot of ways considered either 'future tech' or at the very least rather exotic. 10mm Auto, to this day, still isn't a particularly common round. The H&K VP-70's production ended in the 1980's, so it never really got very well-known - making it both obscure and futuristic-looking. Caseless ammunition still hasn't been perfected, and currently isn't being used by any countries for standard-issue infantry weapons. And Explosive-Tipped ammunition, while used frequently in anti-materiel and ordinance disposal roles, isn't something used yet by any country for standard-issue infantry weapons (since the vast majority of rifle ammunition already fits the same general role as the rounds used in Aliens, which were pistol rounds using an explosive tip to brute-force their AP attributes). So yeah... props to them.

I don't really buy that, there's lots of fancy stuff even today that could be fired from one of those, no reason to assume things would be the same in the future.

...

I'm not saying you are necessarily wrong about anything, it's just that until confirmed by the creators, it's going to take some doing to persuade me you're necessarily right.

I mean, they've got lots of FTL ships flying around, fancy ammunition seems much less unlikely than those.

I'm not assuming anything. I'm going by both in-universe canon and armorer documentation. You're the one making assumptions. In fact, this whole quote of yours is assumption. Hell, for all we know Shotgun technology gets completely scrapped and there's no development past current-day technology. See? Assumption can go both ways like that. I'm working with what the creators of the IP have given us, and what they've given us is a real-life shotgun, firing real-life 12-Gauge 00 Buckshot.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Spoiler: snip

Except it's a round that already exists, more or less. To understand the weaponry in Aliens, all you really need to do is look at the weaponry that was considered "future tech" in the 1980's (the film came out in 1986). 10mm Auto was introduced in 1983 and was new enough at the time that it was relatively unknown to all but avid firearm enthusiasts, and since it was something that actually existed they could actually have solid information on what kind of damage it was capable of causing. Caseless ammunition was another technology that was considered 'future tech' - likely because of the 4.7x33mm caseless rounds fired by the H&K G-11 which entered the final stages of development during the 1980's (and went into a limited production run in 1990). Explosive-tipped ammunition wasn't particularly new, though advances were being made in Semi Armor Piercing High Explosive Incendiary (SAPHEI) rounds for infantry weapons at the time. Explosive-tipped ammunition doesn't function the way people tend to think it does. Each bullet isn't a grenade. The idea is that you use a small amount of explosive to poke a hole in the armor plating for the round's penetrator to enter through. It works great with incendiary rounds, since you can punch a hole in the armor then ignite whatever is on the other side (these are the rounds typically used against light vehicles, as you mentioned before). But the rounds used in the M-41A aren't incendiary. The explosive tip is used for no other purpose than to weaken armor enough for the 10x24mm round to pierce through armor that would have otherwise flattened the round on impact.

Is that ever canonically stated to be what it is, though?

You're the one making assumptions. In fact, this whole quote of yours is assumption. Hell, for all we know Shotgun technology gets completely scrapped and there's no development past current-day technology. See? Assumption can go both ways like that.

Which is exactly why you'll notice that I never actually said things would be different in the future, merely that you can't say for sure they would be.

Now, if it's actually been canonically stated what ammunition was in the shotgun, or how the round fired by the pulse rifle work, fine. Until there is you cannot say one way or the other.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Is that ever canonically stated to be what it is, though?

Ellen Ripley: "Lieutenant, what do those Pulse Rifles fire?"
Lt. Gorman: "10 millimeter explosive tip caseless. Standard light armor piercing round, why?"

Additionally, there are behind-the-scenes documentaries on many of the Aliens DVD/Blu-Ray releases that cover the technology used by the Colonial Marines. One of them in particular focuses on the story behind and making of the Colonial Marines' arsenal.

Which is exactly why you'll notice that I never actually said things would be different in the future, merely that you can't say for sure they would be.

Now, if it's actually been canonically stated what ammunition was in the shotgun, or how the round fired by the pulse rifle work, fine. Until there is you cannot say one way or the other.

Except, as stated, like... a bunch of times now... it has been confirmed what they fire.

I mean, I can understand people not reading design documents and stuff like that... but don't people watch the bonus features on their movies anymore?

EDIT:
If you manage to score a copy of the 2003 re-release of Aliens, it actually comes with a pretty kickass behind-the-scenes "Making Of" segment that's like three hours long. It's longer than the actual movie, even with the deleted scenes added back in.

EDIT 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO:
There's also a pretty good documentary called "The Alien Saga" that came out in 2002. It's a behind-the-scenes video covering the entire series of movies. You can pick it up pretty cheap on Amazon... like $10... but there really aren't very many copies of it left, since it was a made-for-TV thing.

EDIT 3:
Since we need some more humor in this topic, and since someone else already posted the Predator HISHE, BEHOLD!

 

[Asita]

Yautja Hunt would be the one that's easier to survive, of that I have little doubt. Both are formidible foes, make no doubt about that and I'd likely die either way, but to me the phrasing gives away the answer. Our options are a Yautja hunt - which is more likely than not to consist of a small number of the things - and a Xenomorph infestation. To me that doesn't say that we're dealing with one or two xenomorphs, we're dealing with a queen, her facehugger children and their drone spawn. End result is that the choice is between killing a squad of Yautja or an ever growing swarm of Xenomorphs which will accelerate in growth as they turn more and more civilians into incubators.

Let's be completely honest here, the biggest disadvantage the aliens had in the movies wasn't their feral intelligence, it was the limits the scenario (lack of queens and/or lack of hosts) placed upon them. If we assume a full-blown infestation on Earth[footnote]lacking clarification to the contrary, I assume we're talking about keeping us in our native environment for the sake of this thought experiment, as otherwise that's an unaccounted for variable[/footnote], the xenomorphs will likely amass enough forces to zerg-rush everyone else before any real force against them can be mustered up. What's worse, any refugee could potentially be harboring a chestburster, and furthermore, Alien 3 estabished that they don't need humans as hosts. Any dog, cat, horse, etc that escaped the area of operations could be harboring another alien, or even worse, another queen. All in all, an infestation is far too easy to spiral out of control. At least with the hunt you've got a fixed number of foes to deal with. You can work with that.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

Predators obv. I've read Mantrapping: the Art of Trapping Men by Ragnar Benson(OH GOD, im on every NSA/CIA/FBI terrorist watch list now), and the predators would be way more susceptible to traps than Aliens who can freaking climb on the ceiling. Also I played quite a bit of AvP2, and spotting the predator cloak glimmer is quite easy once you get the hang of it.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

I would say Xenomorphs, because I have a gun. All I would need to do is get into an open area, a high vantage point too if possible, and I could probably kill a few of them. But then when I put it in perspective, I am SCREWED against any decent amount of either, and Yautja are more likely to accept a 1v1 challenge, so my actual answer is yautja.

 

[Ix Rebound]

***** please im dead both ways!
but i would definently prefer the Predator, one of my biggest fears was being "face hugged" and being the incubator for an angry demon worm.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

A predator hunts you, you can get away.

If xenomorphs are loose on the planet, they will kill the entire world unless they are stopped. So xenomorphs.

 

[Doclector]

A predator hunt would be easier to survive, without a doubt. The aliens would kill everyone, although, I wonder whether they would keep a few alive for reproduction. I wonder whether they're that smart...

Predators would certainly keep more alive. There will be certain people with disabilities and the like that they won't consider a worthy hunt, not to mention that they savour their kills more than aliens, meaning of course they kill less. I could imagine that they might enslave humanity, and perhaps hold a battle royale-esque situation in which the preds hunt selected humans, likely the ones they consider to be the greatest warriors.

 

[Jeremy Meadows]

Yuuzhan Vong beats them both. lol.

However I'd say the xenomorphs can survive almost anywhere. Even in space. So they win I guess.

 

[Cannibal Johnson]

Don't predators only kill for sport?

If I drop all my weapons, the predators don't view me a target and I can just walk away.

Xenomorphs have no such qualms.

Edit: Should have read OP properly

If I can't avoid conflict, then the predators are more of a threat, simply because they are of equal or greater intelligence than humans, but stronger and with better tech.

Although, since predators have an honour system, I stand more chance of killing a predator 1v1, and earning my freedom.

Xenos don't care for honour.

In a perfect world that would work, but this isn't. The thing is, just because you don't have weapons doesn't mean it won't kill you. Your fists,feet,head,legs, hell your whole body can be used as a weapon. The only reason they wouldn't kill you is if say you were a child,pregnant woman, or you have a already killed another Predator and you're worthy of not being killed yourself. But other than those reasons you can't just drop your weapons, if a Predator has a target on you. Its not gonna stop till either you or it are dead.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

The aliens would kill everyone, although, I wonder whether they would keep a few alive for reproduction. I wonder whether they're that smart...

I'm inclined to say no.

Private Hudson scanned Hadley's Hope on LV-426 looking for the colony's inhabitants, and all of the responding locators were inside the Xenomorph hive. The only exception being Rebecca "Newt" Jordan, who managed to elude the Xenomorphs.

An argument could be made that not everyone was taken to the hive, since Rebecca didn't show up in Hudson's scan even though she was only a few feet away. But it's probably more likely that the personnel locators were only given to company employees (IE: adults). Besides, that would be a pretty convenient coincidence if all of the people the Xenomorphs kept alive shared the single common trait of either not having locators or turning off their locators.

 

[Doclector]

The aliens would kill everyone, although, I wonder whether they would keep a few alive for reproduction. I wonder whether they're that smart...

I'm inclined to say no.

Private Hudson scanned Hadley's Hope on LV-426 looking for the colony's inhabitants, and all of the responding locators were inside the Xenomorph hive. The only exception being Rebecca "Newt" Jordan, who managed to elude the Xenomorphs.

An argument could be made that not everyone was taken to the hive, since Rebecca didn't show up in Hudson's scan even though she was only a few feet away. But it's probably more likely that the personnel locators were only given to company employees (IE: adults). Besides, that would be a pretty convenient coincidence if all of the people the Xenomorphs kept alive shared the single common trait of either not having locators or turning off their locators.

Hmm...yes. I thought of hadleys hope a while after replying, how it seems none of them were kept alive. Not for long, anyway. That, and the aliens, in popular theory, are not an independant race, as such, and they don't look to further advance their species, only to kill all around them, as in popular theory, they are effectively a biological weapon, something to be sent to a hostile planet, and kill everything on it.

 

[phatty500]

if i were armed id try my hand at the xenomorphs but i take from the op that im not so ill go with the Yuatja.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Hmm...yes. I thought of hadleys hope a while after replying, how it seems none of them were kept alive. Not for long, anyway. That, and the aliens, in popular theory, are not an independant race, as such, and they don't look to further advance their species, only to kill all around them, as in popular theory, they are effectively a biological weapon, something to be sent to a hostile planet, and kill everything on it.

Yeah, I dunno if Prometheus is going to shed any light on that, but I've read a whole bunch of fan theories on what, exactly, the Xenomorphs are. Since it seems like they take on traits of whatever their host organism happened to be, it's hard to say what a "pure" Xenomorph would be. I know that the most popular theory seems to be that creature found in the derelict ship on LV-426 ("The Pilot," "The Space Jockey," "The Engineer" - whatever you want to call it) was transporting the eggs as a bioweapon... but there really just hasn't been much evidence to support it either way.

One of the earlier (rejected) scripts for Prometheus had the "pure" Xenomorph being similar in size to large-ish ants, and used by the "Space Jockey" race for agriculture. The script was called "Alien Harvest" and it was pretty terrible (I really don't want to learn about crop rotations in a freakin' Alien movie), but it's still floating around out there if you want to read it. Watch out though, because "Alien Harvest" is also the name of one of the DC comic book series' and a novel by Robert Sheckley - neither of which have anything to do with Prometheus.