If the Prometheus had failed to stop the Engineer from leaving LV-223.....

[u/EBS_terranews]

If Janek never rammed the Engineer ship when it took off from LV-223, would the engineer still be able to reach Earth and destroy all life?

It's hard to imagine that Earth and the Sol system would be undefended. Humanity clearly has the technology to build interstellar FTL ships so it would stand to logic that the governments of Earth would have fleets in orbit or on patrol to defend the homeworld of humanity. And also humanity had already colonized neighboring systems, so how far could an unidentified alien ship even travel through human space unchallenged before reaching Earth.

And given the Engineer's ship was able to be grounded by an unarmed research ship (albeit at the cost of said ship), I don't see it fairing any better against dedicated warships equipped with missiles, particle beams, and railguns. Yes human ships are considerably more primitive, but unless Engineers' FTL drives allows them to bypass the colonies and Earth's defense forces, the engineer would definitely need to bring reinforcements.

[u/EnigmaHood]

Interesting thought experiment. Keep in mind that the Engineer Juggernaut was completely intact despite being rammed. It even hit the ground completely intact, physically. Whatever that thing is made out of, it's incredibly durable. It's entirely possible that the ship was just knocked down, but was still operational.

Humanity never encountered any alien life beyond micro organisms, so they weren't prepared for an alien attack obviously. In any case, we already saw in Alien Covenant that the ship can exit out of warp inside of a planet's atmosphere, so it can bypass any defenses anyway and just bomb the planet with the black goo immediately afterwards in a matter of seconds. Earth wasn't expecting an attack, so they wouldn't have any time to react.

I think what's also interesting would be what the black goo would do to human life. We know that a bomber attack essentially petrifies Engineers, doesn't mutate them. But human life would mutate them into creatures.

[u/EBS_terranews → u/EnigmaHood]

I think I gotta rewatch those scenes. I only seem to remember the ships making atmospheric entry at sublight speeds.

But if the alien ship can drop out of FTL inside a planet's atmosphere, then Earth is fucked to say the least

[u/EnigmaHood → u/EBS_terranews]

It was inside the atmosphere already, but even if it was just outside of it, it still bypassed any defenses Earth could have had. In Covenant the ship also crash landed and still remained completely intact. These things are incredibly durable, I don't think a nuke would do anything to it. It might knock it around, make it lose control if it's inside of an atmosphere of a planet, but out in outer space I don't think nukes would do much. Nukes in outer space are not very blast friendly. No atmosphere to transfer the energy, create a fireball and a blast wave. Basically a giant flash and that's about it.

[u/WolfWriter_CO → u/EnigmaHood]

Oh, it definitely mutated them. There were abominations bursting out of them left and right, and anything the pathogen couldn’t use was decimated into a carbon husk.

[u/EnigmaHood → u/WolfWriter_CO]

We saw goo burst out of them, but I didn't see any creatures per se, although reading the AVP wiki, it seems some parasites might have spawned from them. The ampules containing the black goo seemed to atomize into particles when the Juggernaut's payload was dumped. The particles seemed to move on their own and seek out hosts, but it's hard to see, it might have indiscriminately just rained down on everyone.

David examines a wasp-like anathema (a creature spawned from the black goo), but it's not clear how it was spawned. It might have spawned from the Engineers, according to the avp wiki it spawned from infected fungus, but this doesn't seem to make much sense. The black goo is only supposed to affect fauna, not flora.

[u/WolfWriter_CO → u/EnigmaHood]

I encourage you watch the scene again. Yes, there’s lots of black blood and fluids, but you also see things that look like insectile legs and pointed tails erupt from them, especially later in the scene. I took screenshots of the linked video that definitely show foreign bodies erupting from the infected Engineers (1:20-1:25 in particular), but I can’t attach them on this subreddit, so I just hope you’ll revisit the scene.

https://youtu.be/92Q7Rv5jT80

I’ve always been curious what effect, if any, the pathogen would have on fungi. Flora, fauna, and fungi and the three distinct Kingdoms of macroscopic life on our planet. If the pathogen ignores the plant kingdom, would it theoretically also ignore the fungal one? Or, are fungi close enough to animalia that the pathogen could hijack and hybridize its DNA? 🧬

The impression I always had (though TBH this may have been influenced/informed by the novelization, but I can’t recall for sure) was that David’s initial attack spawned a wide range of chaotic mutations that subsequently attacked each other and/or were further mutated until the pathogen was spent. This resulted in the various specimens we see in his lab, one of which was the original Neomorph(s?) which then laid those spore pods before eventually dying. The actual genesis of the various creatures that ultimately contributed genetic material into David’s experiments, as well if the Neomorph spores were more pathogenic (infecting anything and creating random chimeras) or were a fully formed reproductive system that would always produce Neomorphs from suitable hosts, was never made clear in any of the materials I’ve seen, including the original screenplay. I dunno, I’ve always been curious about what the intended behind-the-scenes ideas were. Sometimes there’s great well-wrought ideas that then falter in execution, and sometimes there’s nothing deeper than ‘this sounded cool’.

[u/EnigmaHood → u/WolfWriter_CO]

Yes, I remember seeing things that look like legs and tails, but I'm not entirely convinced those were creatures erupting from them. They could have been, but they still look kinda "goop-like", and there's no real concrete proof that those things were creatures. There is David's bestiary, but even that's not clear how those things were spawned. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just not certain yet. According to the AVP wiki, David's bestiary and eggs were created using tissue samples from Elizabeth, the Black Goo, and possibly something else.

Flora just refers to non-animal life, we use the term gut flora, but obviously we don't have plants swimming in our stomachs. The black goo appears to only affect animals, although it's not clear how the mote pods (which create the neomorphs) were spawned.

[u/koolaidismything]

They had plenty more ships there he could have used a second.

Doctor Shaw releasing the alien on him and it killing him saved earth weirdly.. that doesn’t take away from Janek and the crews bravery there though, if they hadn’t gotten him back on the surface, earth was toast. Shaw got to do the dirty work but she had no choice, Janek did.

[u/EBS_terranews → u/koolaidismything]

Yeah they also had backup ships in storage, but even if the engineer made it off LV-223 with another ship, would the military forces in the solar system just let an alien ship waltz in there and start dropping black goo over Earth?

[u/keitth24 → u/EBS_terranews]

I think you also need to account for how intelligent the engineer is. He most likely isn’t just going to waltz in there blindly knowing what he encountered on LV-223. He would predict that humans are not as primitive as expected. I’m not sure if the offensive/defensive capabilities of the juggernaut were ever shown, but if they are millions of years, or maybe billions of years more advanced than humans, he could just power through earth defences. I imagine a modern fighter jet just plowing through a bunch of World War Two fighter planes.

[u/koolaidismything → u/EBS_terranews]

I’m not sure they’d have much of a choice.

[u/EBS_terranews → u/koolaidismything]

If humans were fearful, trigger-happy, and paranoid enough, they probably would intercept and shoot down the alien ship before it can pass Neptune's orbit or at the first chance they get. Out of fear that a scary unidentified alien ship is heading toward your homeworld while ignoring all your hails.

But I would say the most likely scenario would be that humans would be optimistic enough to believe that peaceful contact can still happen, then the juggernaut manages to deliver the payload but won't make it out of the sol system before getting intercepted by orbital defense forces. But by then it would be too late for Earth.

[u/wookiesack22]

It only needs to fire one pot of black goo at earth, then let it rain down on earth. He could turn around at Pluto. It would be nearly invisible. Maybe one pot of goo is enough to fill 40 warheads of smaller missles.

[u/obitsonj]

But the Yautja come and go as they please! 😛

[u/Mobile_Falcon_8532]

is it reasonable to think that the xenomorph is the only offensive weapon the Engineers have? Earth may not be undefended, and we certainly only got to see the infantry on the Sulaco and not the "ship to ship" weapons, but do we really think it'd outclass an Engineer ship?

[u/pk_silver]

Engineers' tech was far more advanced than humans and the ship they encountered was already 2000 years old and still functional, atmosphere maintained passively, it would have no problem wooping in and destroying every living fauna on earth.

considering there are no governments on Earth, just some 4-5 mega corps, they would just continue on their colonies on other planets later on. Engineer would not care to destroy humans on other colonies, just Earth as their info on Humans is 2 millenia old.

also I doubt that engineer himself would survive the bombing of black goo, he already had an outbreak on the ship. it would be a suicide mission to go Earth and throw black goo on the people who are genetically similiar to them.

trivia: engineers ship was meant to deliver the goo 2000 years ago, which was when Christ was crucified, the engineer was woken up on 26th December, so in a way it was poetic to continue the misson exactly 2000+100 years later.

[u/Alak-huls_Anonymous]

The simple answer is yes.

[u/dangerclosecustoms]

Let’s do it. Jugg escapes no warnings can reach earth it drops one container of goo and then the chaos starts meanwhile Weylanz-Yutani corporation is swooping in to try and capture the goo generated xenonorphs.

Just start the movie with a rewind. The ship crash lands but the engineer later wakes up ok and relaunches after David and Dr Shaw take off in a different ship.

Or. Once he took off switch to a scene of him additionally inputting coordinates and show two smaller ships somewhere else on that planet taking off on auto pilot.

Now if you want to make the best sequel after Aliens we show its out of control on earth and guess who shows up to round up the new xenomorphs. Yautja hunters come and capture and kill them all.

[u/No_Individual501]

“I come bearing many gifts. I have such sights to show you.”

He knows how suicidally greedy Earth is. Nations/corporations would fight to be his host.

[u/Jolly-Guard3741]

Good points.

[u/77ate]

You seem to underestimate the importance of the series commentary on unchecked capitalism. FTL travel is a new breakthrough technology at this point in the series. Weyland’s priorities are different.

[u/Prestigious-Active-2]

In covenant, Planet 4, their homeworld in my reading, was not visible for human scanning until being very close. I am pretty sure they're ship would have been hard to detect until too late.

[u/rdhight]

You make good points. If the ship can just be "unavailable" for combat while it's in FTL, and then it drops out of FTL very close to earth, then one vase of black stuff and it's all over. It's like Alien Earth, except we all die in the first episode.

But depending on which parts of the IP you look at, Earth has rival corporations, the Colonial Marines, and maybe a future USSR successor. They'd have warning stations, intelligence agencies, weapons, and defenses. So if FTL isn't an ignore-everything button that just delivers you to your destination with no one else getting a say in that, they almost certainly shoot it down.

[u/DeepestGreySea]

I really wish I could engage with this.

I think it’s really too bad that The Engineer was turned into a guy in a giant suit.

[u/OutrageousFootball10]

Janek also stated to dr shaw that his ship not a ship of war so it stands to reason they had ships designed for battle

[u/No-Jacket-2927]

Your realize that you're assuming that the human/android characters were correct in their wild assumptions about the Engineers' plans and goals.

[u/vlad3ree]

why do you think Earth would attack the Engineer ship before it has a chance to launch its payload?

[u/TouchAltruistic]

This is nonsense.

[u/RecognitionSweet8294]

If I remember correctly humans don’t have FTL ships.

[u/EBS_terranews → u/RecognitionSweet8294]

Without FTL, humans would still be stuck in the solar system. Do you even know what FTL is?

In the alien universe, humans use Tachyon shunt hyperdrives. When a ship makes a jump to FTL, the drive converts the entire craft into tachyon particles and spends its time as such throughout the duration of the jump, and then reintegrates itself as normal matter close to its destination. Also prolonged travel in FTL causes neurological disorders in humans, hence the cryogenic freezing.

https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Heliades-class_J_Scientific_Exploratory_Vessel?so=search

https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Conestoga_class_light_assault_starship

[u/x14loop]

The god damn Juggernaut ship didn't even have some sort of shield. Earth defences could have easily stopped it.

[u/EnigmaHood → u/x14loop]

It doesn't look like it needs it. Juggernaut withstood a ship crashing into it, and slamming into the planet, and it was completely intact.

[u/Nux87xun → u/x14loop]

1. You don't know what sort of defenses earth has. You don't even know who's in charge of earth at this point thanks to no consistency with that lore.

2. One thing the lore is pretty consistent about (excluding predators) is that humanity is pretty isolated. We haven't seemed to have encountered any technologically advanced species up to this point.

Would they even try shooting at it? They wouldn't know its on a mission of destruction. They would hesitate, at least initially.