Are there alien lifeforms out there? I would say conclusively maybe. A lot of science people say that there likely are, in fact there’s methods for determining how many alien cultures exists at any time so clearly some people are pretty sure there’s aliens out there. I find a lot of the assumptions they make questionable but I’m not a scientist so I can’t really argue one way or the other.
What I can say is that I feel like people, science people and normals both, wildly underestimate how alien aliens might be if they exist. The general assumption seems to be that they’ll be something like humans or at least something like life on earth. I see no reason to believe that’s true. We don’t even understand a lot of the life on this planet, how can we think we have any idea what life would be like on another planet that’s totally different? A creature that “breathes’ liquid mercury and consumes gamma radiation could be a lifeform that we wouldn’t even recognize as being alive. Not to mention even setting aside biology how could you communicate with a being that has no frame of reference for anything you’ve experienced and vice versa? If there are aliens I don’t think there’s any reason to expect we’d realize what they were or even be aware of them.
But that’s beside the point, we’re talking about alien abductions. I don’t think aliens have or do visit earth. Partially because space travel would take forever. And if you’re going to explore space you wouldn’t do it by flying around in a Jetsons space car. We don’t even do that and we barely have any space power. An alien probe visiting earth? I could see that. And alien being? Nah. I find the ancient astronaut theories especially annoying because their main goal seems to be diminishing human accomplishment. Humans could have never built the pyramids – clearly it was aliens. I’m going to be mean and assume the root cause of these beliefs is that by taking away what is possible for humans to achieve you make yourself feel better about not having done anything with your life. Of course your screenplay was never purchased because no aliens helped you.
I’m on the fence about aliens existing. I’m firm in them not coming to earth if they do exist. However, when I saw Fire in the Sky that movie scared me more than any horror movie. Why? Zombies and ghosts and nightmare demons and were-mummies don’t exist. And more important they cannot exist. No Babadooks will ever slice your face off because they can’t happen. But aliens? There could be aliens. I don’t think there are, but it’s something that’s possible in the world of thing that can happen. Ergo aliens are more frightening then all the Jason Vorheeses in the world.
What’s scary about the possibility of alien abductions to me is not whatever sticks they shove up your butt, but two other things. One, you can’t ever tell anyone what happened because they’ll think you’re crazy. And two, maybe you are crazy. The guy was Fire in the Sky was probably just lying to cover up cheating on his wife and he just did what a good liar does and stuck with his story. “Oh yeah Linda, well they’re making a movie about it so it did TOO happen, I was not over at Jillian’s! Why would they make a movie about it if I was just at Jillian’s?!” But if that’s not what he did he’s probably just insane. And I don’t want to be insane. And the worst part is if you think you’re being abducted by aliens you’re probably insane – but maybe you really were abducted. Seems like a tough one to untangle.
There was a show on FX for a while called People of Earth about an alien abduction support group. It was pretty good but they cancelled the shit out of it.
Even if aliens do come to earth I don’t think they abduct people. The abduction stories follow certain societal patterns that seem indisputable to me. No one talked about being abducted by aliens until after sci-fi movies came around. And no one talked about alien anal intrusion until after colonoscopies became a thing. There’s lot of little examples like that – some new thing happens in the real world and it gets added to alien abduction stories, it seems pretty clear to me that’s it’s made up. What I find particularly damming is that alien abductions are only reported in countries where people have access to media about aliens.
Anyway the question “Why would aliens return abductees?” was presented in the tone of “alien abductions are bullshit right?” and it’s a really good point that I had never thought about. If aliens wanted to snatch people, molest their butts, and keep it a secret (as is the molester’s way) – trying to wipe their memories and then putting them back in bed is an insane method. A) they have to know at this point that their brain wiping rays don’t work, and B) if you just don’t put them back at all everything is cool.
I’m no scientist (as I hope I’ve made clear) but I don’t think after you rub cosmetics in a bunny’s eyes to test if they get cancer you don’t set the bunny free after that. Either you keep doing tests on it until it dies or you just kill it. Even if you were going to let it go you certainly wouldn’t go through the trouble of going back to the exact spot you found it. Also you didn’t find it, you bought it. And the people you bought it from probably didn’t find it either – they bred it. If aliens needed humans to tinker around with they’d just breed them. Why schlep all the way to earth? If they’ve been coming here for thousands of years, they could totally have a viable human population going on their human breeding moon colony.
One of my many “novels” I wrote that I have now realized is really just an idea with no story, was an “alien” invasion where we recognized after a while that the aliens invading were humans. The real aliens abducted humans hundreds of years ago and then raised a captive population to be fighting machines to invade earth. Why? For amusement and the purposes of gambling. It was like a sporting event to them. All the invading humans had cameras on them so you could live stream the battles with your alien friends. And their technology was limited to make the war more “fun” and cinematic for the home viewer aliens. The invading humans were given “challenges” like blowing up ten national monuments with grenades to keep things spicy. And I wrote this in 1997 people. What I’m saying is that I invented reality TV. Sorry.
Anyway, but the question is why WOULD aliens return abductees? I can only assume that there’s some governing body that dictates the treatment of humans – like we have for chickens. You can pull people out of their beds and shove stuff up their butts to learn about them but it has to be done humanely (pun!) of you get a hefty fine. And who has the space bucks for that? Not to mention the bad publicity. People don’t want humans in their house but they don’t want them to be treated poorly either.
Remember V? That show was awesome at the time. I bet it’s aged horribly. The deal there was that the Visitors wanted humans as food. This doesn’t seem like good economics at first given the resource cost of space travel, but the Visitors were reptiles and reptiles need a lot less food than mammals. One human could probably feed one Visitor for an entire year. So if their home planet was out of food maybe it makes sense. But there was a throw-away line in V about how most humans would be turned into food and sold in grocery stores – but that some of them would be used as soldiers in a war against THE ENEMY. As far as I know nothing was ever done with that but it sounds interesting. How would humans even be useful in such a war?
In conclusion I believe that aliens would return abductees because of space laws on the treatment of animals.
Rocket Cat 