I'm enjoying this conversation, but siphra, you didn't "show" anything. You explained your POV. I'm extrapolating a meaning out of this sentence. My guess is: it would be worth it. Human existence was at stake and the only reason we won was because of the deus ex machina that was poorly written into the story. OOOH! What luck that the Aliens were too stupid to put a gazillion drones and squiddies in the sewers in the highly unlikely event that the race that they are doing such a piss poor job of wiping out MIGHT--on the off chance--send some soldiers to fight back. In any realistic scenario, the drones they had would be programmed like ours are now: to think on their own if the main CnC is destroyed. Really? You do realize that our most powerful nukes can cause a terrain concussion powerful enough to collapse buried structures almost a mile down. That thing was located IN THE SEWER SYSTEM. That's like--what?--no more than 50 feet below the surface. No chance. Plus it's little wiener poking up out of the ground would have been lobbed off. Apparently these Aliens don't allow for such events and would have just whimpered off into the sunset. Standard targeting would happen like this: Nukes explode a few klicks up in the atmosphere. Then another barrage about 100 to 500 meters up. Then the remaining nuclear attacks center on key areas of the ground. The crater made by our most powerful nukes would go deeper than the sewer system. Problem solved. And only MARGINALLY effective against Tomahawks. One made it all the way through their crappy defenses (which, again, was a gaping hole in the plot). There is 100% guarantee that enough would have made it through a cascading attack to render their defenses neutral long enough for the most powerful to annihilate their CnC. Now you're speculating. Which is good, 'cause so am I. But based on the story, these aliens weren't even smart enough to nuke our main cities and strategic bases from orbit (hell, they wouldn't need nukes, surely being as advanced as they are, they'd have long tapped into a power that we're on the cusp of creating: antimatter; benefit: no nuclear radiation). I get them through dedicated Cold War military reading. The fail rate for Nukes is too high and the importance of destroying Beijing, Moscow and Leningrad too important to leave to just a few nukes. Atmospheric nukes is the first strike, followed by smaller tactical nukes followed by the larger nukes to destroy any hardened underground fortresses. Nothing would survive. And, again, consider an ET invasion of the Earth. The US has about a 1000 nukes ready to deploy. Given the stakes of human existence, it's completely logical that no chance would have been spared and an exaggerated tactic of the Cold War attack would have been deployed. With a full barrage against the invaded cities, it's not inconceivable that within a decade, half of humanity would be dead. But that's not the point: Humanity would survive. Look. . . I get it. We won. But that's not my point. At the beginning of this invasion, the US would be counting the odds: "Aliens with the power to traverse the stars versus Humanity who can barely break free of the planet's gravity." The rule in the military in engagements like these is to ensure the destruction of the enemy first, worry about our survival later. Calculating the fact that the estimates of human survivability are never shared openly in the press (and usually exaggerated to make things look worse), the military and a few other countries would have opted for a first nuclear strike before anything else. Only because that enemy's abilities were purposely retarded by the shitty producers of the movie to make a conventional battle "winnable" for cinematic effect (the movie was inspired by the concept of a Japanese invasion during WWII; so a nuclear victory wouldn't have fit that model very well). In any realistic invasion scenario, no such evenness would have existed, or been presumed to exist by the military or the POTUS, ergo my point: since the assumption would be exponentially asymmetrical warfare, the US would have deployed it's only equalizer on the outset to destroy any beachhead and prevent a successful invasion. Are you assuming that Hu Jintao, Dmitry Medvedev, Dr. Manmohan Singh, Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and Benjamin Netanyahu would NOT have!!!? Really? You don't think ANY of these nations would have stumbled on the novel idea of nuking the ships with "everything they had" and then saying to the USA: "Hey idiots, you're getting your asses kicked by Klingons, but we've already started rebuilding." But your question smacks more of politics. But my answer is, ultimately, yes, the OFFICE of the POTUS would have nuked within fives seconds. Why? Remember: We didn't know the Aliens were retards who couldn't program their drones to auto-pilot without mommy. We didn't know that Aliens couldn't think clear enough to nuke our planet from orbit first. We didn't know that these Aliens didn't think hard enough to just harness Element Number 1 (from basically everywhere!!!) and Element Number Three (from basically EVERWHERE!!!!) and burn them to make the shit they need. Nope. At the outset, we assumed them to be unstoppable juggernauts with the ability to traverse the stars. We "believed" our only weapon of comparable power was our nukes and would have deployed them at the outset to stop what we believed was going to be a massive alien invasion and ultimate extermination of our species. Now, had we known for sure that they only had Red Rider BB guns and dirty language, sure..... sure. We would have stuck with the British night sticks and gay whistles as demonstrated in the movie. DUH!!! In fact, their IQ's seemed to be a hell of a lot LOWER. What was with that clunky floaty-gun they had? What? No smaller drones to seek out and kill (we sorta have those now!). Their weapons were pretty shitty. YEAH, I get it. It was a "conventional warfare" movie. But that's utter bullshit. As I said, we had no way of knowing that they only brought mom's wooden spoons and fly swatters to battle. We would have--rightly--assumed that these ETs were incorrigible badasses and deployed our biggest guns on the outset. And it wasn't even that much of a surprise. Our deployment times are down TO THE MINUTE now. They gave us HOURS and HOURS of time to get the nukes spooled up and ready to launch. It's like they wanted to loose. BINGO! Which is my issue numero dos: dumb aliens. At least in "Skyline" the aliens made effective use of nano-engineering technology. Something that, BTW, I refuse to believe these aliens would NOT have access to. Which supports my theory that these aliens were the cosmic equivalent of Italy. I'm just worried about when their buddies--the cosmic equivalent of the Third Reich--send their "Rommel" and "Panzer divisions" to clean up their mess. Then we're REALLY fucked. ~String
They could have been a probing force to gauge resistance, if we take plot-hole intelligence and plot-hole nuke (as you see it together) you could arrive at the possibility that the governments of the world knew this was just a 'recon' team and didn't deploy the big guns as a means of surprise for when the main force arrives.
Where did they suddenly get the laser designator from? Also, who made 155mm Copperhead rounds into missiles with rather more potent warheads?
