Hi, Loyal Readers. Sorry it’s been so long. It’s a boring story: COVID = teaching from home + homeschooling x kitchen remodel, and all of it adds up to almost no writing, and definitely no blogging. Here’s hoping for a rebound.

Oh, Battle: Los Angeles. I was in the mood for a really cheesy, bad Alien Invasion movie, and boy did you deliver. But why did you deliver such awful, awful cliches?

The sad part was that this movie was surprisingly good: I mean, disclaimer, first: I’m a civilian, but the filmmakers consulted Marines when they made the film, and it reminded me of some of the better war movies out there, the ones that have drawn high praise from veterans I know. As a war movie, it wasn’t half bad, except for one thing (later).

But as a science-fiction movie, it commits one of the tiredest, awful cliches out there.

The aliens are invading the Earth for its water. No, really, you read that right. For its WATER. And not that they are using to DRINK. No, they are using the water for FUEL. AND they are using it in such quantities that they are, within one DAY, causing a detectable alteration in the Earth’s coastlines.

Folks, that may have been a pardonable casus belli back when H.G. Wells was invading the Earth. No one knew what any of the planets were made of. But today? Saturn’s rings are dirty snowballs. The Oort cloud is full of MORE snowballs. No one will shoot back at you for mining them. What the hell?

I suspect the film KNEW it was being stupid, because the Scientist On The News tried to cover it by saying, “Nowhere else in the universe do we know of LIQUID water.”

Oh, I see. LIQUID water. Let’s break this down for a moment while I wake up my inner math-and-science nerd and interview him:

Q: Hey, there. How much water is in the Earth’s oceans?

A: 352 quintillion gallons.

Q: Cool. Could you use that water for fuel?

A: There are actually three ways you could theoretically do that, but two are stupid.

Q: Really? What are they?

A: Well, you could break the water down into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis and then burn them again in hydrogen fuel cells. But that’s stupid.

Q: Why? Sounds cool to me.

A: Well, for one thing, it takes more energy to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen than you get from burning them. That’s because of the Law Of Conservation Of Energy, pretty much THE fundamental law of physics, almost. And for another, when you do? The ash is water. So, the aliens would be a) losing energy, and b) putting the water right back where they got it.

Q: What’s the other stupid way?

A: Well, you can eleectrolyze the water, toss out the oxygen, and then fuse the hydrogen into helium for a SHIT-ton more energy than it took to electrolyze it.

Q: And why is that stupid?

A: Because to do that you ALREADY need the kind of energy found in the heart of a star. If you’ve got that kind of energy, you really don’t need more. And you’ve got badass enough technology that you can probably wipe out present-day humanity with plasma torches from miles away. No need to engage them with slightly-superior technology unless you’re doing it for sport.

Q: And there’s a third way? That’s smart?

A: Well, kind of: that way involves filtering the seawater for heavy water: water made from oxygen and deuterium. Deuterium is hydrogen with an extra neutron. You can electrolyze THAT and fuse it into helium for a SHIT-ton of energy. And you can do it with technology that’s slightly superior to our own. 

Q: So, technology like the aliens demonstrably have?

A: Yep.

Q: So then, the movie makes sense?

A: Not by a long shot. Heavy water makes up only about 0.0156% of all water. Therefore, of that 352 quintillion gallons mentioned earlier, you have to sort through it to find the mere 54.912 quadrillion gallons you want. Not to mention, of course, all the salt, nickel and horrible organic goop floating around in there. Now, to lower the oceans a mere INCH would necessitate the removal of some 2.4291 quadrillion gallons of water.

Q: Which means that if they took literally all the heavy water on the planet, the oceans would be lowered by approximately less than..?

A: Two feet.

Q: That’s dumb.

A: Oh, it’s dumber than that.

Q: How does it GET dumber than that?

A: The World Nuclear Association has estimated that that’s enough to fuel the entire world, at ten times its current population, and at 100 times the AMERICAN rate of energy consumption, for 1 million years. 

Q: So, waitaminute, you’re saying the aliens can suck the oceans of the planet dry of the amazing energy-water in about a day or two, and they’ve come to invade Earth for water because…?

A: They don’t want to be bothered melting ice.

Q: But they’re okay with lifting it out of Earth’s gravity well?

A: Apparently?

Q: How much energy does it take to melt ice?

A: I dunno, but I and anyone I know can melt a pound of it in a standard oven in far less than an hour for negligible cost.

Q: And to put that pound of water in orbit costs…?

A: $10,000.

Sigh. You know, it would have made more sense for the aliens to have invaded us because they wanted to take all our refined metals, or samples of Earth life, or JUST ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE THAN WATER! Seriously, it was dumb when Star Trek: Voyager pretended water was rare twenty years ago. It was dumb when V: The Final Battle did it in the 1980s. And you have to work at it to get dumber science-fiction than THAT!

Stop it. No one else is allowed to invade the Earth for water. Ever.

Oh, I almost forgot, there’s one other thing you’re not allowed to do, and I promised to come back to this later: you’re not allowed to pretend that there’s just this ONE vulnerable spot on your slightly-larger-than-man-sized aliens and that you’re going to snipe that regularly now. Because pretty much, from everyone I’ve EVER heard talk about real combat, you aim for the center of mass and shoot.

Seriously, stop that.