My Family Would Be the First To Go During an Alien Invasion

According to Hollywood, survival is reserved for the quiet ones

There is a very popular trend amongst movies and shows about alien/zombie/fungus/monster invasions. There are oodles of shows featuring creepy creatures that are singularly focused on destroying mankind. You have probably watched at least one.

I was recently watching Invasion on AppleTV and it occurred to me that all invasive creatures from Hollywood’s latest apocalyptic craze are attracted to noise.

More often than not there is a family at the center of the plot, and somehow the young children in the family remain remarkably quiet, thus upping their odds of surviving the impending armageddon.

One notable exception is the poor lad in A Quiet Place. Can someone please explain why his family was totally cool with him lagging by 1/4 of a mile? He must have been unbearably annoying.

My only takeaway from this genre, is the understanding that if my family was ever facing potential annihilation by an alien, fungus, or zombie creature that was attracted to noise— well — we’d be fucked. Our demise would come very early in the movie.

My kids are not quiet creatures. When they’re not yelling, screaming, chanting, or roaring — they can be heard farting, burping, verping, hiccuping, coughing, sneezing, snorting, snoring, and snarting.

Many other unidentifiable sounds come from their small, but unfathomably noisy bodies.

These dystopian dramas leave me scratching my head, wondering how in the hell the parents keep their young children so damn quiet. Never mind that they’re works of outlandish science fiction that will never come to fruition. That is not the point.

An alien just ate the neighbor, yet an eight-year-old child can lock eyes with her mother, do a weird finger countdown and remain perfectly still and calm.

If it happened on my block, the alien would turn to my family in a flash. Not because we’d be screaming, though we definitely would be, but chances are one of my children would belch or break wind at the most inopportune time.

It’s time the Hollywood masterminds come up with something a bit more original in terms of how the fungi or zombies select their prey.

What if the next blockbuster series featured a creature who was attracted to smell? Perhaps the blood-sucking, brain-eating monster gravitates to humans who smell like vanilla or lilac? Maybe the creature has a nose for patchouli, or prefers the woodsy aroma of cedar?

If the creature is partial to the smell of feet after a soccer game, yesterday’s food stuck on today’s pajamas, or the smell of petrified cheese — my family would also be toast within the opening sequence.

Here’s hoping we’re safe from zombie-like fungi attacks for a little while. At least until my kids can get some of their bodily functions under control.