Impending Disappointment...

The sad reality is if alien life forms were to actually be discovered, they would likely be nothing more than single-celled organisms in a little puddle on Mars. Yawn.

Its one of the great unknowns.

Yes it takes a lot of things to all fit together to allow for complex life on Earth, but with the odds very slim.

We also have to remember the Universe is so vast, that the chances of Life like or similar to Earth has to be GREAT!

This does not have to mean Alien Species as Advanced as Humans, but i think the size of the Universe i cant see us as being unique... not as far as more basic Life.

Bacteria, Insects, Sea Life etc...

However how vast the Universe is, the chances of Life Forms from TWO or many more Worlds ever crossing paths has to be next to 0

Yes, one day we will meet another advanced alien life form.

I hope they will have peaceful intentions with us :)

@Movie fan Unfortunately, if we do encounter intelligent, peaceful life, they will more likely be handled like in "The Arrival" than in any other more congenial manner.

I believe that there are Aliens out there... But they are exactly like us because they were spying on us ... I believe they are a tiny bit more advanced, more civilized and non confrontational to a certain point... This idea is a vital element of this story i am currently writing... I dont think that xenomorphs exist. That would be preposterous

Aliens have been found, fungus was found growing on materials that had been in orbit, must be one hell of a cosmic mushroom.

Space shrooms... Killer high/mutating  if you ask me 

The intelligent life out in space wants nothing to do with us.  We're too narrow/single minded and savage a race to be dealt with face/face.  So I am sure they deal with us from "minimum safe distance".

The chances of finding a species or civilization MORE advanced than us are pretty slim. If they are anywhere close to us they likely would have found us by now. It is possible that a more advanced civilization could have existed thousands or millions of years ago nearby but has since died out, at the time when earth had nothing more than dinosaurs. 

Maybe more advanced life lives somewhere very far away. In a distant galaxy, something so far away that even the most advanced technology couldn't bridge the vast expanse of space.

I think it is entirely plausible that some of these nearby exoplanets do have life. But the most advanced form will probably be noting more than a simple animal. Maybe something like fish or lizards.

I also think it is somewhat too simplistic to say something like an Alien race would have no interest in us because we are "savage". Keep in mind that the Earth is not all about humans. There are millions of species, plethoras of plant and sea life. Our planet is absolutely teeming with life. You're telling me an outside entity would not be interested in that?

Life is not an easy thing to obtain. It took our planet millenniums to generate life and we can tell from our solar system that life is a pretty rare phenomenon in the universe. So naturally things that obtain life must fight for it. That is the whole basis of our planet from millions of years ago to now. It is a competition to survive, to obtain resources. Would other planets that have had the same fortune as Earth to have life be any different? Life would still be precious and a fight on other planets as well. Our "savagery" would not be something unique among life in the universe.

I would be quite happy if a new extra terrestrial lifeform wasn't an Alien.

Them things are nasty as.

Well said, Utah_CUtiger!  What might be considered "modern" to one culture, may be thought of as "primitive" by another.

Societies can develop along different lines depending on the environment & available natural resources.  When civilization collapses, that's when things get truly savage and cannibalism happens.  Lack of resources can lead to very "savage" acts.

Miss Vickers was hoping these so-called "Engineers" were a bunch of dirty savages living in caves, but their culture is perhaps neither more modern nor more primitive than W-Y's corporate culture.  Humanity can be just as "savage" as the Engineers, because they're essentially humans, like us, and each species is in a competition for resources.  "No man needs nothing," so the Engineers learned how to farm the soil at some point after leaving the hunter-gather and/or nomadic stage.  Or they might have even skipped hunting and gathering altogether (if cultural evolutionists on Earth are wrong about needing to go through that stage first).  Either way, I think Engineers planted the wheat and domesticated the wild plants long before their civilization collapsed:  the ones who recently planted the wheat were knocked back to the stone age by the ALIEN when the fire grew out of control.

This is a good debate, because well its something we cant 100% prove or disprove... we cant know if there is or is not Life out there that is like us...  we could indeed see a whole Star Trek Universe of Lifeforms... but i think they would have to be spread about much further apart....  The Chances of this seem Slim, but cant be ruled out either way.

Then we have the Theories and Conspiracies about Aliens visiting Earth, and the Ancient Astronaut theories too.

Its all open to debate, and until YOU and ME Personally see it with our own eyes, we cant 100% deny it or prove it.

I think its HIGHLY likely that Life is out there, i cant 100% prove it, its just Mathematically very likely..  even if its as far as microbes or basic life like we have in the most inhospitable places on Earth.

All you need is a World with some degree of Water, some degree of a few common Gases and a Atmosphere and then it does not matter how inhospitable this place is.. it could be far worse than LV-223 but that does not rule out more basic life than those Worms on LV-223

Take Tardigrades for instance, they can survive in the most hostile environments on Earth, from the Most Barren Deserts, to the Antarctic they can even survive the vacuum of space.

I think the potential for Worlds and Moons to have habitats as Hostile as the most inhabitable places on Earth, could potentially be Large.  And so the potential for Life Forms like Tardigrades or even more Basic has to be likely.

There are even theories that Life was brought to Earth by Comments and other impact events as basic lifeforms or even basic amino acids and building blocks.

If this is so, is such a event so are that only Earth was the only place just impacts bringing the start of life could happen?

Chances are if True, such impacts could hit Worlds that simply offer no way these can evolve into even basic life..... but then between such totally dead, baron Worlds and our Earth is a whole host of potential environments that may not be suitable to evolve complex life like we have in the variety we have on Earth.

But there is the potential for Worlds to be able to support something basic.

But we are bound by the laws of Psychics and this is the greatest drawback, so we could find potential life bearing worlds but never know how much life they have if any unless we can send Probes and People..

And for the mean time this only limits us to finding life within our own Solar System and at best as far as the Oort Cloud

And even then we are most likely to find Life from outside our Solar System as it floats into our Solar System from Comments and other Space Bodies that enter our inner solar system from beyond this region.

So Sadly even if there is a Mr Spock waiting to be found 100's of Light Years away.... Chances are We or They will never be able to Travel the Distances required.

Space is just so Vast... and until we can not only Break the Speed of Light but Smash way past it to Speeds of 50X or more then we will be very restricted to ever meeting other Life especially Intelligent.

But this does not rule out the possibility that it is out there.

"The chances of finding a species or civilization MORE advanced than us are pretty slim. If they are anywhere close to us they likely would have found us by now"

Even if this was True, and they existed we do kind of have to ask how would they react, and i guess a way to Answer that would be how would we React?

If we managed in 100 years to be able to Travel as they can in the Alien Franchise and we find a Earth like World with a Humanoid ish Life that seem intelligent as far as say Cave Men or even as far as building Straw Huts and Stone Tools.

Would NASA actually go down and introduce ourselves, would we get involved with their cultures and teach them things, would they see us as Gods and would we accept this, or try and disprove its not the case... it would be very hard, especially if we can not communicate with them.

So i guess indeed when we ask how would Aliens view us, i think we need to ask what would we do in the same situation.

Would we just leave them alone, and i think previous experiences would add to how we would deal with others, so any Alien Civilization that has traveled the Stars and been to other Races on other Worlds, would interact with us or choose not to. based of how previous attempts to contact other Worlds went with these Aliens.

This off course is totally Hypothetical

As far as UFO's Actually Go, i have seen a few things that make me wonder LOL

One of them was pretty clear, but alas the Dudley Dorito is maybe just a Secret Advanced Stealth Craft ;)

I can off course share my sightings for those interested, which happened in 1996

Nobel Prize-winner Sir Francis Crick: “The origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to be satisfied to get it going.”

Evolution says that lighting hit dirt and made amino acids and eventually became Ronald Reagan and his challenges with Russia in a cold war dispute. And social media. All from dirt. Evolution supposedly can explain how we began as dirt and then we could vote. Ha, and Evolution has no time for miracles.

Scottish chemist A.G. Cairns-Smith popularized this theory, yet admitted in 1991 that “no one has been able to coax clay into something resembling evolution in a laboratory; nor has anyone found anything resembling a clay-based organism in nature.”

The above bold print is called "faith" in regards to Evolution theory. Nothing else Evolved out there in space...if there is something in space, it was manifested and don't bet on it being your friend.

If something comes down from space and they say "Hello friend" and you believe it's intentions then that is the greatest act of faith in your explanation of the unknown. It is unknown if there are aliens but if something shows up, why believe what it says?

If something comes down from space and it isn't an Angel, be ready to kill it because you have a serpent on your property.

"how would we React?"

Unfortunately, I think those in power would likely perceive a threat and act accordingly. If we discovered intelligent life abroad, I would think we would stay at a distance as not to be perceived as a threat.

I think our curiosity and need for discovery would eventually overwhelm our fear if we ever did find life on other planets. Colonists exploring the new world back in the day went headlong into the unknown. Mankind is afraid of the unknown but at the same time we embrace it. I doubt we could resist interacting for very long

@Utah_CUTiger

They say curiosity killed the cat, but Jonesy instinctively knew to hide in the lockers when it comes to the ALIEN.  Mankind is a very curious type of creature that often plays with fire...

In the ALIEN:  Isolation video game, Ripley's daughter figured out that hiding in lockers is sometimes an effective survival strategy.  Newt is smaller than Amanda and was always able to find better hiding places than the other kids at Hadley's Hope.  The best advice Newt could give the Covenant crew is to hide, because running and screaming never really works when you're playing a game of cat and mouse.

It's like that one episode of Rick & Morty where they incept the teacher's dreams.  People in horror movies always say "you can run, but you can't hide."  Well, in this case, you have the option to hide.  Only run if you need to, and don't scream if you can help it.  In space, and in your dreams, no one can hear your screams.  At a certain point, screaming became useless to Newt because there was nobody left to hear her.

@Ingeniero

You bring up an excellent point about the scientists not being able to create life from nothing.  If you believe the myths, then Prometheus somehow managed to forge humanity from clay...

We can observe certain evolutionary processes happening over many generations; however, we can't really prove how it all began.  Even Darwin got stuff wrong.  The archaeologists who study the fossil remains are acutely aware of holes in our evolutionary theories.  Many early hominid lines were capable of interbreeding:  it’s sometimes difficult to determine where one species ends and another begins.  There's evidence of Neanderthal DNA in the human genome, which is only possible if they were interbreeding.  How close do lines need to be to interbreed?  Most hybrids are unable to reproduce via natural means.  This is possibly part of the reason Dr. Shaw didn't want to discuss the evolutionary biology behind her thesis with Millburn, who was most likely following the "splitter" school of thought (due to his "expertise" in phylogenetics).

Millburn learned that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," yet he had no practical field experience with it.  During a certain stage of embryonic development, the developing organism possesses gills and resembles a Newt.  This is a throwback to an earlier stage in our evolution, which appears briefly before the child's gender is determined.  Rebecca Jorden’s parents asked not to know the gender of their child and started calling her Newt shortly after she was conceived.  Lambert’s parents, on the other hand, asked Weyland-Yutani to switch around Lambert’s gender prior to her birth -- since they always wanted a girl.  In the beginning, it didn’t matter if Ripley’s character was male or female.  She was conceived in such a way that her gender could go either way:  sex was undetermined.

Fifield and Millburn spent a little time arguing over whether the Hammerpede was male or female (you really think that thing’s a she), which potentially becomes important later.  We don't know just how important sex/gender is yet.  It plays a central role in everything, rather than being random.  In Alien 3, the parasite moves behind her eyes and influences Ripley's mind in subtle ways to increase her desire to sleep with the doctor while infected with the Queen.  The other males at the prison were all freaks with double Y chromosomes.  The Queen only really requires one X and one Y chromosome (which it can get from Clemens). The company had to kill Hicks and isolate the Queen in the prison as part of a top secret experiment, but they never intended to drown Newt.  W-Y apologizes for that. 

The Trilobite is an evolutionary throwback:  it's the last common ancestor of the separate evolutionary branches of the facehugger's DNA.  We're about to find out the hard way that evolution is more of a branching process than a linear progression from one line to the next.  Gods don't build in straight lines; therefore, Ridley's approaching the events of ALIEN in a non-linear way.  It’s unlikely that David ends up creating the classic xeno the way people are expecting...

"Unfortunately, I think those in power would likely perceive a threat and act accordingly"

This is a very good point, if we was to get visitors from Space, a lot depends on who these Aliens choose to address, we as a world are not united, and so it would be which Governments would have which Agenda and what actions would they take and under hand tactics to be the ONES who deal with the event of Alien Visitors and so indeed its only if the world was to become ONE NATION  a One World Order so to speak then things would be more Simple.... and so when we and if we ever get visited or if we visit Alien Worlds and find Life, its really a case of does the Group who discover Earth or the Earth Group who Discover Aliens..  and if this GROUP speaks for their whole Race Agenda.

@CarynDelacroix

Fascinating Reply ;)

Indeed there are Holes in Religion and Evolution and when you try and find common matches between every Mythos and Religion instead of assuming that One Particular one is Correct and then try and see how it fits with Evolution and its flaws... Then indeed we do come to like how Ridley Scott said... "that Life maybe need a Helping Hand"

As far as the rest of your post this is what i found was very interesting... Indeed Sex could play a Key Role.... as far as the Hammerpedes if they are taken from similarities to Worms on Earth then there is a very good chance they are Hermaphrodites and cant Procreate on their own, they need another of its kind..... and hence maybe why we see TWO Hammerpedes.

If Hammerpedes are like most Worms, then TWO of them would mate and BOTH of them would have Fertilized Eggs

I think some of the points you make are also why i made a Topic a while back about the Significance of Females within Context to the Franchise and its links to Engineers and Gods Mythos.

It would be really interesting to see what happened with the Hammerpedes after Shaw and David left LV-223.  

The worms can possibly pass on the egg laying trait to the creature.  But if the hammerpedes are hermaphroditic like we think, then they're forced to engage in a bizarre form of double-mating that worms go through to produce the eggs.

My theory is that the Y chromosome is just as important as the X chromosome, and the Deacon needed to hybridize its DNA with the human genetics to develop along similar lines to the classic alien.  The ALIEN DNA that hybridized itself with the worms (and Fifield) didn't look like the creature in the mural, because the human/Engineer DNA is a key ingredient in it.  

Daniels might note that the infected plant life they find is also hermaphroditic in nature.  She's the one who's most worried about what they'll find out there, because even the alien plant life can be dangerous.  The plants contain both sexes within them, like the worms, so they go through a strange form of cross-fertilization (and can't self-fertilize).  It's possible to take a cutting and produce a clone of the "parent plant," but without new genetics all you'll end up with is clones.  FATHER is able to force Miss Vickers' embryo to divide during an early stage of embryonic development, which causes her cells to multiply and allows the company to wake up Vickers 4 from her embryonic cryostasis.  Miss Vickers is a cloned offspring or "genetic sibling" of FATHER, much like how X-23 is the "daughter" of Logan in Fox's X-Men series. 

In the W-Y report, it talks about how the creature rewrites the host's DNA and hybridizes with it after the host is infected.  So my feeling is the infection altered Holloway's DNA + his sperm, then piggybacked on his spores, increased his desire to mate with Shaw, and infected Shaw through the mating process.

The ALIEN needs a host and new genetic material to bond with to evolve further.  A type of "double mating" occurs and the White Ones hybridize themselves with the Black Ones to produce what Daniels refers to as a White-Hybrid King.  New theories about hybrid evolution have recently taken hold in the world of evolutionary biology; although, Daniels would understand the whole concept of hybridization from her work with plants.  She's able to see how the hybridization or cross-breeding process works to advance the species evolution, thus the White-Hybrid King type is not as big of a shock to her.

The creature was somehow able to alter Shaw's eggs and make them viable after Holloway's sperm combined with one of Shaw's eggs.  But to "fix" Shaw's ovaries permanently, the "worker Aliens" would feed Dr. Shaw some of their royal jelly to promote her growth into a Queen type (that can pump out the eggs faster).  David would watch as some of the ALIENS get together and force a strange substance down Shaw's throat.

The White Ones are sometimes referred to as "Belugamorphs" instead of as "Neomorphs."  They become Tennessee's "Great White Whale" in this "great big sea of nothingness."  After his wife dies, there's little meaning left in Tennessee's life.  So he dedicates himself to hunting the "White Whale" as part of his new life.  All of it is to start their new lives, and now both their spouses are dead.  Tennessee is a survivor, like Daniels, and the Company wants to know what they experienced out there.  He can't go back to the way things were:  Tennessee is "promoted" to the Captain position by the end of the film. After the end of Covenant, the company will give him another ship.  He's willing to go back out there and face the creatures again.  But he's primarily interested in the "white ones," while the company wants to study more of the "black ones." They try telling Tennessee that the Black Ones are more valuable to them, yet it only increases his urge to destroy all White Ones...

Little bit off topic but I heard this brought up on a joke video except it's actually a decent question. If the Engineers created us in their own image and began life on Earth then what about the millions of years of life before human came to be? Dinosaurs, prehistorical animals, neanderthals etc etc.

The Engineers evolved from an Ape-like species as we did, so their entire evolutionary history (including all other branches of their evolutionary tree) is recorded in their DNA.  In the Fire and Stone comics, we see how the Black Goo can lead to the creation of many different species.

Some of the stages we went through in our early evolution show up again in the womb, allowing us to study those stages.

Engineers are a match for all the life that's evolved on Earth, because all the different branches of life are related. When the Engineer blueprints were hybridized with monomers in Earth's ocean, the DNA began sending and receiving instructions and arranged itself a certain way to follow specific blueprints.

I'm not sure if this was after or before the Cambrian explosion (or the last big extinction event on Earth).  It's tough to say how the dinosaurs came to be.  I'm sort of combining theories about hybrid evolution with the notion of Panspermia:  I think at a few points in Earth's history, it was hit by a giant space rock that carried microscopic forms of life on it.  The comet that caused the dinosaurs to go extinct also brought new life with it, because sometimes to create one must first destroy.  

Some of the dinosaurs are still around in one form or another.

The chicken is an evolutionary descendant of the dinosaurs: the birds are more closely related to dinosaurs than mammals.

In Covenant, we may get a few clues that the chicken came before the egg.  Some of the reptiles started using the egg-laying method long before the birds branched off from that evolutionary line.  By the time Darwin's finches came along, the egg-laying method had been used by bird species for a very long time.  An evolutionary process known as sexual dimorphism leads to female birds being larger, on average, than the male birds.  In our species, the males are usually bigger than the females.  But when talking about "the birds and the bees," it's the female who is naturally dominant.

The "birds and the bees" are a major part of every life cycle, since they carry the pollen from one plant to another and act as hosts to cross-fertilize everything.  Without "the birds and the bees," each ecosystem in the planetary biosphere will cease to function.  If the bees go extinct, then we're all dead.

Each energy system is connected to one another, so the company stopped producing harmful pesticides.  Sir Weyland solved global warming and saved Earth from a number of natural disasters with the air processors and genetically modified plants.  Some creatures will grow wings and migrate to other parts of the planet.  The "worker bees" are free to leave.  Even drones can grow wings and fly away.  The Queen is their slave, in a way, because she must tend to her nest. 

Daniels is wondering where all the birds & other types of life are, because the ecosystem needs them.  Most of the birds probably left the area to start nests in new locations after the incident(s), but we'd see a few bird skeletons in David's lab.  

The company has a thing for birds, and the winged globe is one of their symbols.  It's said that Zeus sent a bird to peck Prometheus' liver until he was dead.  Each morning, he would be reborn to repeat the cycle for all eternity (as part of his punishment for giving mankind fire).  It's only after Hercules unchains Prometheus from the rock that he's freed from the creature.  Weyland's MUTHUR held degrees in comparative mythology, like Shaw did, which left Sir Weyland with some strange beliefs.  The Company worships Hades, Gaia, and the five Rivers of the Underworld, rejecting Zeus as their FATHER.

LV-426 is code named Acheron after one of the rivers of the underworld, while the river Styx is where the Gods of Greek myth go to make covenants with Hades.  The Covenant is partially a reference to the Greek Lord of the Underworld, who they worship more than the Judeo-Christian God.  Ripley was born at the Olympia colony, so she's a Goddess to them in her own way.  "We are the Gods now," as Weyland said in his TEDtalk:  he thinks of himself as Hades and embraces practices and policies some might find immoral.  In order for their science to advance, Weyland-Yutani must toss morality aside.  Their new Asian partners were taken by surprise when the bigger company swallowed them up and merged them. 

Thats one thing that is always unrealistic about these type of movies. They always happen to land in the exact spot on the planet where everything is happening. Like what if it is only that one little area they land in where there are "no birds, no bees, nothing". For instance what if Aliens landed in the middle of the Siberia when all the answers to Earth's secrets happened to be in the Amazon? Planets are large things people

I think the aliens will think that earth girls are easy.

I watched stargazers live on ABC tv australia last week and the search for exo-planets experiments found 90 new exo- planets in a 24 hr time period including a new planet system with 4 large planets, what i am getting at is the universe as we perceive is infinite, therefore the chance of life whether intelligent or basic is in the positive rather than negative and even if we are the only life in the universe(highly doubtful-my opinion) then the human race will have to leave earth and colonise whether through terra-forming barren rocks or settling on worlds that are the same as earth, resources on earth are not infinite and our planet will be gone when the sun goes nova in the far future, in other words expand out or perish, simple as that.  

My reaction would be excitement and a reinvigoration of wonder.

If we find another example of life in just our star system -- and it is not analogous to life on Earth -- then how abundant must all sorts of life exist out there if we have as many as 2 kinds in our backyard?

Whatever scary, disgusting aliens our human minds can create, Nature is far more creative in every respect. Here on Earth, we have spiders that throw nets to capture prey; wasps that burst out of caterpillars; worms that live inside other animals' guts.

My point is: however exquisitely deadly the 'xenomorph' and its lifecycle is, rest assured Nature can think of things even crazier.

Stan Winston (deceased)

And I for one am a grateful student of Nature as I get some lovely creature ideas and capabilities from Nature. :)

Though in researching such, I sometimes end up with nightmares worse than what ALIEN gave me :D

"...in other words expand out or perish, simple as that."

Exactly, airshaft_surprise.  The Earth can't sustain our current population levels indefinitely, thus the company colonizes Mars, and many other planets, while perfecting their air processors.

W-Y begins large scale mining operations on other planets as a way to keep Earth and all her colonies supplied with energy. It didn't matter if they continued burning fossil fuel, because they developed methods of reversing any damage done to the atmospheres. They were forced to accept the reality of climate change when the polar ice caps wouldn't stop melting.  Some of the other megacorps felt the science behind climate change was inconclusive, but W-Y certainly never felt that way (and will deny accusations they made the government pay for that operation). Space truckers carry valuable natural resources.

Nature definitely isn't mankind's best friend.  The environment itself can be very hostile to human life.  Storms on the surface of LV-223 and LV-426 are another example of how deadly nature can be.  The company might start doing weird things like hybridizing animals with plants to try to keep insects from eating their crops.  The problem is that if you use some type of nerve agent, it kills the bees that move between ecosystems and the whole biosphere dies.  The company learns you've gotta engineer your own hybrid plants and crossbreed them.  

The potato famine in Ireland was caused by a type of mold that managed to spread through all the potatoes.  The same type of potatoes had been replanted over and over again, and they formed a monoculture.  None of the potatoes were from a different strain or a different branch of their evolutionary line, so they all had the same weakness to the disease.  If some of the "plants" don't crossbreed, they won't survive.   

Daniels would be well aware of dangerous plants and insects that can exist in tropical and subtropical regions.  There are theories about exoplanets and convergent evolution, so the company doesn't think there's anything too deadly out there. Daniels is the one who argues we don't know what's out there.

Natural disasters and famines account for the collapse of many ancient cultures. This reality has a chance at avoiding a global famine or a flood caused by the melting of the ice caps. There's nothing we can do about A.I. stealing our positions in the hierarchy once a quantum computer is complete; however, a Hell on Earth type scenario remains avoidable if space is colonized and/or air processors start being built.  The fact that there's no animal life in the area is very troubling to Daniels...  

If some of the company's beliefs about convergent evolution are in fact correct, then the bioregion should be literally full of alien birds tweeting at each other, making plenty of noises. Birds are very social creatures, and they should be chirping as soon as the newcomers arrive.  The absence of birds is what bothers Daniels most.  Well, besides Branson's death and Weyland-Yutani being so sure it's okay to not wear helmets.

NYCRO - What a very compelling topic! I have actually reviewed a pair of papers discussing the possibilities of extraterrestrial life in the recent past. According to many whom make a living contemplating this notion, any aliens of sentient mind and high technological sophistication will likely be, unfortunately, predatory in nature. The most advanced life-forms in Earth's biosphere are predators - like humans. Such organisms develop to become the dominant life-forms as a result of having to out-think prey and learn how to adapt to changin conditions. The harsh truth of life is that it must, in one way, shape or form, eat other life to continue. Treks through space - across the vistas of time - would require not only great technology, but a willingness to undertake whatever actions are necessary to survive. Such actions would undoubtedly include fighting and killing for resources. It is not pretty. It is not congruent with our desires of civility. It is simply the way of Mother Nature - and she typically favors the strong and opportunistic over the weak and timid.

@Utah_CUtiger

The whole Dinosaur Debate is a interesting one, but hey if we are going by Biblical Connections then they never existed lol

But yeah i dont think the Franchise is going to discount that, the thing that gets people confused with Prometheus indeed is the whole Sacrificial Scene, in Spaights draft it showed this Process is what lead to a Hybrid of Engineer DNA and Primate and that resulting in Humans... so the Sacrificial Scene had been done after the Dinosaurs etc.

Prometheus however is hinting that the Sacrificial Scene was the Start of Life, which would then raise the question why does all life not look like Engineers apart from Humans and what is the off Chance that Seeding Engineer DNA Millions and Millions or over a Billion years ago.. all off a sudden by Evolution lead to Humans, who just happen to be close to the Engineer who Sacrificed himself.

This is where Ridleys comments and Lindeloffs are needed, as they then clearly tell us the Engineers came back over and over Evolving Life until we get to Humans.  They simply tinker with all sorts of Life, and so its likely they chose species and experiments on them on LV-223 then planted the preferred results back on Earth... and the same thing likely happened over and over to create Primates and then further Evolve them.

If i was to Nit-pick further then indeed the world the Sacrificial Engineer performed  his Sacrifice on was not Baron at all, it had signs of Plant Life and Algae etc and so the Engineers Sacrifice was likely the Catalyst that allowed basic Life to Evolve to Complex rather than being the start of Life in general.

The other thing this allows us to now ponder, is that indeed the Sacrificial Scene could have happened on a Already thriving World but in a more secluded area, where only a more Local Ecological System at that Waterfall was altered that leads to Mankind down the line. And so Dinosaurs etc could have existed in other parts of the World away from the Sacrifice and are thus not effected by its results.

"If the bees go extinct, then we're all dead."

This is a common theory that does not quite work out as True, not all Plants rely on Bees, but if we throw in Birds too, then indeed it makes things hard as Seeds are Spread by many Plant Life/Fruit etc by Birds and other Wildlife, but then also other Insects pollinate Plants too.

So no Bees and No Birds does not mean no Plants/Harvest or Fruit but it surely would have a massive impact on these things, not so much to the Modern World, as we understand these things and can find ways to Populate Plants/Harvest and Fruit without the use of animals and insects.

Which your comment about "The company learns you've gotta engineer your own hybrid plants and crossbreed them"

Is very good and indeed plausible if not for certain and the Weyland Viral Site supported this.

But if we went back to say Ancient Times, thousand or thousands of years ago, and all the Bees died off, the effect would be drastic and would certainly have a massive impact, more so if we saw at that time all Birds and all Insects die.  It would have a massive impact on Food Sources, and would mean that Fish/Seafood would have to become the Main Meat/Protein most people would have to rely on.

I will CarynDelacroix add to the Hammerpede and Deacon debate by saying how can we involve these to make something like the Xenomorph, well as far as Procreation.

I think we can assume if Weyland-Yutani or David for that matter, had the Sacrificial Goo and you either gave this/infected  a Hammerpede and then broken down Hammerpede DNA Infects a Deacon... or Vice Versa where Deacon broken down DNA infects a Hammerpede.

I am sure a Hammerpede/Deacon Hybrid would certainly add a Egg Laying Organism that is close to the Deacon for sure.

WHOAH MAN.   CHILL OUT          Their are number of infinite possibilities and high probabilities.    I think that you are just saddened because you wont be alive long enough for true space travel exploration and uncover the numerous number of life forms that can be discovered.   

This is all hypothetical, we don't know for sure that our energy requirements will one day exceed our capability to sustain ourselves and cause our species to go extinct.  We don't know exactly what killed all the early hominid lines, or the dinosaurs, but there's evidence that we ate some of the Neanderthals (and now we eat chicken, which is evolved from dinosaur).  

The wars over natural resources are part of what keeps the whole machine going since there are limited resources already.  An advanced civilization capable of galactic travel will require an incredible amount of resources for expansion...

To BigDave's points, I'm focusing so much on "the birds and the bees" as I feel it's a good conceptual metaphor that can sum up the other related ideas, such as the possible need for intercourse as part of the ALIEN life cycle.  So I'm sort of being dramatic and using bees as a symbol for other things as well. It's important not to take anything too literally :)

We would probably find ways to survive without the bees, since they aren't the ultimate producer of the energy at the top of the energy system.  The nearby sun is producing the energy that the plants (also producers of energy) absorb.  Many of the plants would be okay without the birds and bees.  Wild wheat is able to be spread via other means - if the husks are brittle.

The wheat seeds have been planted by gardeners who have been working with the crop for thousands of years (if we compare it to wheat grown on Earth).  Daniels likes gardening and all that stuff, so she would think about all these ideas if she's considering how the bioweapon might have the ability to wipe out entire biospheres.  Complex forms of life require a lot of energy to keep going...  In the end of the 2Oth century and early 21st century, many farmers started being forced to buy their seeds from large agribusinesses instead of local sources.

The large corporations have already begun taking control of the farming industry in our real world.  That's why Weyland-Yutani is heavily invested in gardening and appointed Daniels to her position.  Her nature-based perspective would allow her to hypothesize that the ALIEN species evolved naturally long ago, and the Engineers picked it up somewhere and began genetically modifying it.  I think the film will give us clues that one faction of Engineers stole the ALIEN from the other faction.  Other than that, I think much of it will be left open to interpretation, and we'll have even more questions to discuss.

If Daniels survives, then W-Y private security officers might need to consult with her in the prequel/sequel books.  They'd wanna get Daniels' opinion on the ALIEN.  If Daniels proves herself to be a survivor. then she's valuable to them.  It's still too early in the timeline for the company to really know what they're dealing with. They might have vague ideas about the smaller ones and headburster types; although, this is the first time W-Y has even seen an adult Xenomorph.  

@CarynDelacroix

Indeed Wheat is very important and i think this is why we see it in Alien Covenant, and so indeed maybe important they find this prior to when Daniels asks why there are no Birds or Animals.. Nothing... Wheat is something that can be Harvested on its own and re-produce with Nothing.

Back to the Real World... and Indeed our Population is growing at a Alarming Rate, that unless we can completely change how we Pollute the World with the Bi-products of our Energy uses and acquirement and find construction materials as far as for everyday use in all industries that is Bio-degradable.  With Population Boom, we can only expect a Grave Future for Earth within 150 years.

At the Rate Modern Mankind from the last 200 years has been going it paints a horrid picture for what this Generation of our kind will do as far as Damage to Mother Earth that really cant be sustained much longer than another 200 years without irreversible effects.

where as other Ancient Generations be it the Dark Ages (Middle Ages) or even Roman Times, or even earlier than that.  The way Mankind lived and our impact on the Earth from 500 to 3500 years ago.. these Generations as far as Technology goes could live on Earth for many more thousands of years with out putting the Earth at risk, as far as environment and its effects on Life.

As far as Daniels goes... it depends where they are going with the next movie, or indeed the one after that.

I dont think Alien Covenant is the last we will see of Daniels, they surely have to follow what and where does she go next, and i cant see this leading her off Happily into the Sunset as there Original Destination would have ended up, if only THEY HAD NOT gone to where they received that Signal from David/Shaw.

they would be single celled if we are able to perceive them at all