Big Monsters Are Not Scary
Just finished watching the terrible Monsters film and I have to rant about movies like it and Cloverfield. Big monsters may make striking visuals, but they are no threat to humans. Humans are very, very good at killing big things.
If you look at very early human history you will see a very common pattern: as humans migrated to new areas big animals went extinct. Animals like the dodo, bison, and the Woolly Mammoth. North America had an indigenous species of horse that went extinct with the arrival of humans. South Pacific island archaeological evidence is rich with stories of birds that throughout time evolved, due to the absence of predators, into large beasts that disappear once humans arrive (like the dodo). Before humans arrived on Madagascar there was a huge species of lemur that went extinct once we alighted. Bears, whales, and other large animals populate the endangered species list.
What are we not good at? Killing small things. Like mosquitos that carry malaria, bacteria and viruses. The total biomass of cockroaches and mites that survive solely due to human activities probably more than equals that of the large animals we’ve made disappear throughout our history.
So if we are invaded by alien monsters I hope they are very, very big, not small. They will meet their end with us. They’re not scary, they’re big targets.
