21 KiB
The quiet place movie discussion
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Author: u/neonparadise *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/8bbzz7/the_quiet_place_movie_discussion/
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Score: 19
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Created: 2018-04-10T22:19:31
Post:
So The Quiet Place is a pretty good rational horror film in that you get to see a family try their hardest to problem solve and work around a major problem in order to survive. However there are still a lot of plot holes and it would be fun if you guys could brainstorm other survival methods in the world of The Quiet Place. Just as a reminder, the premise is, if you make a sound louder or significantly different from environmental background sound, a monster will hear you and kill you within 2-5 minutes. The monster is blind and has no other senses aside from hearing but it is essentially unstoppable in that once it locates you you will die and can’t fight it off. As a rationalist trying to survive,
- where would you live? 2) how would you get food? 3) how would you get energy/ power? 4) how will you communicate with your family? 5) how will you move around? 6) how would you navigate a city to get supplies? 7) what new features does your shelter have? 8) how will you defend yourself? 9) how will you ensure the survival of a very small very loud baby? 10) generally what other modifications to your life must you make to minimize sound ?
Comments:
u/Noumero [+20] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (3 hours later)
Interesting movie. I don't think it's very rational, though.
As a rationalist trying to survive the monsters...
Well, the first thing to do is to kill them all, obviously. Put a powerful loudspeaker near an explosive, broadcast human screams through it, detonate the explosive when they come near. Repeat until they're all dead. Not sure why they weren't gunned down by the military, back at the very start.
That's boring though. Let's assume they are invincible and implacable. Can't be killed by anything short of a nuke, can tunnel their way through kilometers of rock. Ultrasound tricks don't work either: their ears are sensitive, but not vulnerable.
They're blind, though, and not very intelligent. No tools, no tactics smarter than "unfamiliar sound → ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK". Animals to be tamed, not true opponents.
Strong source of ambient noise was shown to successfully mask human activity. Live only near waterfalls and the like.
Better yet: Set up several aerostats with powerful megaphones around your habitat, constantly broadcasting a loud noise of your choosing. The enemy can't fly, so it can't do anything about them. They'll be livid for some time, then will have to learn to ignore them — and you will have a safe haven.
(And if they don't learn, you now have a way of drawing them to a location of your choosing for an indefinite time, which is even better.)
Better yet: Teach them to ignore human sounds. Scatter loudspeakers broadcasting human noises (conversations, screams, falling objects) around a territory, then wait. Assuming that they care about attacking human-noises only because they want to kill humans, they will soon learn to ignore them.
Additionally, it may be possible to sic them on each other. Attach a small loudspeaker with a recording of human noises to one of them, activate it, watch the rest attack it.
Still too easy.
Increased difficulty: Monsters are now invincible, implacable, and have a magical ability to distinguish human-made sounds from recordings of human-made sounds. How do you do?
I think flying settlements would be our best shot at rebuilding civilization, in that case.
u/None [+11] (4 hours later)
[removed]
u/Noumero [+5] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (9 hours later)
I don't mind. Please, feel free to. Although...
Bind 'em in chains
implacable: can tunnel their way through kilometers of rock
Where would you find chains strong enough to hold them? ...Ah, wait, I also said they could be killed by a nuke. Attract several hundreds to one location, nuke them, make chains from their corpses, use chains to bind living specimens, use them to build (corpses) and power (living ones) a space elevator? Yep, that does sound like something r/rational would come up with.
u/Ardvarkeating101 [+5] Father of Learning (3 days later)
Gods, this is everything I love about this fucking subreddit. It's everything I think when watching a movie, and a lot of the time awesome stuff I otherwise would have missed
u/I_Probably_Think [+4] (20 hours later)
What kinda glue or chains would hold your space elevator together though? :(
u/None [+4] (20 hours later)
[removed]
u/I_Probably_Think [+4] (a day later)
Still sounds problematic but also I wanna applaud you for the very entertaining idea in the first place :D
u/neonparadise [+2] (7 hours later)
I really like your thorough write up! I like to think that the are literally invincible and can’t be killed by guns or human weapons , just to make it more interesting. So the best bet is to distract monster. Some follow up questions. Since eventually with the development of your sound grid monster distractor, the monsters become a threat but not an extinction event. Here are some specific problems that would be fun to solve. 1) what if despite all other protections, a monster heard and noticed you right now and is heading in your direction and you have < 1 min to complete an action? 2) what if you saw monster from a distance notice and heading towards your loud kid. What is best course of action to save kid? 3) where and how will you get the energy and supplies to construct sound devices? As in how will you ensure existing human made generators and subsequent ones etc. don’t get immediately or quickly destroyed by monster and how not to die during construction of one.
u/Noumero [+4] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (10 hours later)
In reverse order...
where and how will you get the energy and supplies to construct sound devices?
Well, I was partially assuming that realistic!civilization wouldn't collapse quite as steeply as was implied by the movie. Research and development of countermeasures would begin as soon as the first attack happened, and if I came up with that list in the first ~forty minutes of the movie, there are good odds that someone out there would give orders to start mass-producing/kludging up similar defenses by first day's end. Depending on exact distribution of these smart people, numbers of monsters and their invasion vectors, and efficiency of defense prototypes, we could expect results anywhere from "some cities continue to function, sustaining minor damage" to "there's a few ruined factories with half-workable defenses scattered around".
If it's the worst-case scenario and we're not near one of these convenient factories... I don't know, just raid electronic stores and work on building your tools in sound-proof rooms. Would take time, though.
Regarding generators, same: put them in sound-proof rooms. If you don't have one, make it. Depends on how noisy your generators are, how good your sound-proofing is, and how good monsters' hearing is, but there should be plenty of workable combinations. And, of course, what could be done by a ragtag post-apocalyptic bunch, could be done better by a mid-apocalyptic factory's workers, if they're quick on the uptake.
(Ohh, also, water-power plants! They're perfect counters for this entire scenario. Source of electricity + natural source of noise.)
- what if you saw monster from a distance notice and heading towards your loud kid. What is best course of action to save kid
- what if despite all other protections, a monster heard and noticed you right now and is heading in your direction and you have < 1 min to complete an action?
I'm assuming that monsters react differently to different human-activity sounds: if they heard a heavy object falling nearby, then immediately someone screaming in a different direction, they would go after the scream, not the fallen object.
As such, research which types of noises they like the best. Then throw sound-grenades (i. e., portable durable loudspeakers) with recordings of these noises in their direction, whenever you realize they're coming after you or yours, then run away. Carry a few of them with you at all times, obviously.
In case they're attacking your base, have an outer perimeter of powerful loudspeakers with these noises, to be activated remotely.
u/neonparadise [+1] (10 hours later)
Hmm do you think the monster would be significantly confused by your sound grid that it won’t notice a city full of people and go rampaging through it? I figured that living out in the countryside would be better since you wouldn’t have other people giving away your location and would be easier to distract. But you wouldn’t have as much infrastructure.
u/WilyCoyotee [+3] (22 hours later)
Speaking of infrastructure, many cities already have tornado/air raid sirens across the city, ready to be activated for the appropriate emergency...
u/Noumero [+1] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (3 days later)
If the city entire is covered by the grid, yes, why not? You just need a sufficiently powerful noise generator. And hundreds of thousands of earplugs to prevent hearing loss in the population, I suppose.
That brings to mind an improvement on the idea: imagine a 180-km-wide circle of land covered by the sound grid, with a 18-km-wide "quiet" circle at the centre containing the city. Would monsters, roaming the noise-saturated wilderness, be able to detect the city? I don't think so. The only danger would be one of them wandering into the city by accident, and it could be led away with sound-grenades as proposed above; the city could also be flooded with noise for the duration as a precaution. In the meantime, we would have a safe and comfortable living space.
Living in the countryside may be better if you're a group of post-apocalyptic survivors, who accepted that the civilization has lost the first battle and needs to be rebuilt from scratch. If you're a government or a corporation attempting to stop or reverse a collapse-in-progress, reaching for some kind of city-wide defence is your best bet.
That seems to be interesting idea for a story, by the way.
u/eroticas [+10] (6 hours later)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Quiet_Place_(film)#Plot
When the creature returns to invade the basement, Regan realizes the power of the boosted cochlear implant. She places it on a nearby microphone, magnifying the feedback to ward off the creature. Painfully disoriented, the creature exposes the flesh beneath its armored head, rendering itself vulnerable to a shotgun blast from Evelyn. The security monitors show two other creatures approaching. With their newly acquired knowledge of the creatures' weakness, Evelyn and the children prepare to fight back.
These things are entirely protected by plot armor and would hardly have lasted 24 hours against real humans.
u/neonparadise [+2] (7 hours later)
It’s not rationalist for sure but I love a premise built movie that involves problem solving. To make it less plot holy, let’s assume that the monsters aren’t vulnerable to sound, but just sensitive. As in, if the monster has its hands on you, no human weapons can kill it. And noise doesn’t harm it, just distracts it. What are some things you would do to survive?
u/eroticas [+2] (17 hours later)
So it's indestructible, but why is it indestructible? Is it big or small? Can it walk through walls or dig through large amounts of ground? Can it fly or jump very high? Can it, say, climb a tree?How strong can a cage which contains it be? Can you destroy it if it doesn't have its hands on you? Can it starve to death? Can it be poisoned? Can it burst through heavy walls? How many humans do we have and how much technology do we have?
Or are we rounding the problem up to "minimize noise" or "evade" them? What's the reaction time between "it hears you" and "it kills you"? Does it stupidly follow any noise or is it targeted? Is it clever enough to see through most obvious forms of misleading? How good is the hearing really? Echolocation level, or just human good? Why doesn't it echolocate? How many of them are there, what's the population spread, density? Does it sleep? What else does it eat? How fast does it reproduce?
Any one of these questions could completely change the survival strategy. There's a lot of "false constraints" that might get introduced when the enemy is totally ambiguous. (e.g. You can find a lot of uses for a hammer if you know something other than "it pounds down nails")
u/neonparadise [+1] (18 hours later)
Let’s constrain it to “literally can not be killed whatsoever by any human means”. Population density high enough and spread out that if you make a noise. monster will get to you and kill you within 1-5 min. Navigates with alien senses unknown to human. Biology is unknown. Only observable affect is if a noise louder and/or different from background noise is made, monster comes a kills you. Suspend your disbelief and construe a world in which if you make noise you will definitely die.
u/eroticas [+2] (18 hours later)
So, for instance, no sound proof box? Because it will know that you're inside the box somehow, because you made a sound inside the box, and will magically appear inside the box?
At that point I think you basically have to drown the whole world in extremely loud background noise and take care not to sound sufficiently "different" to set off the detector. The new question becomes, how "different" is sufficiently different?
There's now a lot of math involved in when a noise is sufficiently "different" to be detectable e.g. Can they distinguish human speech from ai babble, etc which will determine the quality of life. There exists some threshold of accuracy at which the problem becomes impossible (e.g. If they can distinguish a human heart from the best imitation of human hearts money can buy, we're all insta-killed)
If the ambient noise of a babbling brook is sufficient to blend in we're pretty much fine. We even have time to solve the problem because a cityscape is louder than a brook. Drowning the world in white noise basically solves the problem. A nice microphone + earplugs + headphones combination could even get us comfortably speaking to each other in sufficiently loud areas.
You still didn't say if they are smart (simple sound seeking missile? Cat level? Toddler level?) . If they're not smart and high enough latency with hearing, but still good at accuracy that white noise won't work, you can use a mic and speakers to echo all sounds any human makes to be louder and in a different location and they'll all go there instead.
u/SkyTroupe [+3] (15 hours later)
I really felt like that ruined the whole movie in the sense that it made it no longer believable that the monsters managed to wipe out most of civilization. From what I understand of cochlear implants they work using radio waves. So what was really hurting the monsters wasnt even sound but radio waves, which is ridiculous.
You can work under two assumptions, they came from space or from Earth. In space they should have died in transit to Earth because space is where youre bombarded with more radio waves than on Earth. And if they came from Earth you mean to say with all the radio waves we broadcast we didnt manage to find, or already be broadcasting, the frequency that harms them?
Especially since the cochlear implant hurt them, which means most people with hearing aids or cochlear implants would have been safe.
u/Noumero [+1] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (4 days later)
they came from space or from Earth
I assumed they were (inefficient/experimental) alien bioweapons. Because they're too stupid to have crossed the interstellar abyss, but were called aliens at one point.
u/None [+7] (3 hours later)
[deleted]
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u/keeper52 [+4] (a day later)
Some defensive tech:
A. Soundproofing. Live in soundproofed rooms. Look up instructions on how to use egg cartons and such to create a makeshift recording studio. Etc.
B. Noise mines / decoys. Set up a bunch of devices near your house that can make a noise at the push of a button, in order to divert the monsters when they're nearby. Could be as simple as a doorbell or walkie talkie, or you can set up something with fancier tech.
C. Masking background sounds. Live near a waterfall, or set up something to create lots of background noise nearby which the monsters will ignore and which drowns out your noises.
D. Distant permanent diversions. Keep the monsters away from you by setting up noisemakers farther away. For example, there are those prank devices that you can hide in a person's room which occasionally make a loud chirping sound - scatter dozens of them throughout the forest a ways away from anywhere that you regularly go to perpetually draw the monsters away from you. Try to prevent them from being destroyed by using devices that only make an occasional sound, and putting them up in trees or buried.
E. Habituation testing. There are some sounds (e.g., waterfalls) that the monsters will habituate to (i.e., learn to ignore), and other sounds that they do not habituate to and perpetually chase after. Run a bunch of tests far away from where you live) to find out which are which. Then use the ones that they don't habituate to as distant permanent diversions and the ones that they do habituate to as masking background sounds near your house (or near yourself as you walk around). If possible, teach them to habituate to the sounds that you naturally make.
F. Soundproof booths. If you often need to be out and about in other places (near your house, on certain paths, etc.), then see if you can also scatter some soundproof booths in those areas where you can hide when the monsters are nearby.
G. Sound grenades. Create devices where you can "pull the pin" and throw it, and it will start making noises a few seconds later. Carry a couple with you when you go out, to use as decoys if the monsters are nearby. Lots of children's toys are like this, except they don't come with a delay.
H. Drone airplanes. When the monsters get nearby, lure them away with a noisy unreachable airborne device for them to follow. This seems less practical than the other options because the drone is likely to get destroyed when you use it, though maybe you can grab a whole bunch of remote control drones from a store and use this trick for awhile.
u/Gin4NY [+3] (12 days later)
Did anyone else catch that the family delivered a death sentence to all the other families in the area when they set off the fireworks to save mom?
u/None [+0] (5 months later)
How so?
u/blazinghand [+2] Chaos Undivided (an hour later)
It's a good watch, even according to my friend who isn't much into horror. Watch out-- most movie reviews for it spoil it badly, if you care about that sort of thing. A review that spoils only the basic premise that you learn early on is here: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/04/quiet-place-spoiler-basic-premise.html
Yes this is a horror movie but no you don’t have to like horror movies to want to see it, you only have to like original movies. Mild basic spoiler It is one of the most implicitly Christian movies I have seen, though no reviewer seems to have noticed. Think monasticism, devils, baby Moses, the unwillingness to consider abortion as an option, silos of grain, and Shyamalan’s (underrated) Signs. It’s also one of the most insightful films on disability issues, although further explanation there would indeed give you too many spoilers. Here are various reviews, mostly full of spoilers.