Not directly relevant, but: I think M. Night Shyamalan’s movie Signs would have been better if it had turned out that wearing aluminum foil caps really did hide your thoughts from those aliens. I mean, it wouldn’t have been any stupider than aliens invading a planet full of a substance that killed them (water) and not being able to figure out how doorknobs work.
My favourite foil cap trope reference is Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series. It has several characters with supernatural abilities that can affect other people’s emotions, and aluminum happens to block all kinds of magic powers in Sanderson’s larger book universe. So a lot of rich and important people wear hats that are lined with aluminum foil on the inside to protect them from emotional influence.
Invading a place that wants to kill you is not that unheard of. Some of us explore flanks of erupting volcanoes, abysses, or want to go to space/the Moon/Mars.
Going there naked, and with absolutely no idea what you’re exposing yourself to, is bonkers though. Especially absurd for the crew of a spaceship with interstellar capability. How the hell did they reach Earth without killing themselves a thousand times on their travel?
Not directly relevant, but: I think M. Night Shyamalan’s movie Signs would have been better if it had turned out that wearing aluminum foil caps really did hide your thoughts from those aliens. I mean, it wouldn’t have been any stupider than aliens invading a planet full of a substance that killed them (water) and not being able to figure out how doorknobs work.
My favourite foil cap trope reference is Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series. It has several characters with supernatural abilities that can affect other people’s emotions, and aluminum happens to block all kinds of magic powers in Sanderson’s larger book universe. So a lot of rich and important people wear hats that are lined with aluminum foil on the inside to protect them from emotional influence.
We all got our limitations, man.
Invading a place that wants to kill you is not that unheard of. Some of us explore flanks of erupting volcanoes, abysses, or want to go to space/the Moon/Mars.
Going there naked, and with absolutely no idea what you’re exposing yourself to, is bonkers though. Especially absurd for the crew of a spaceship with interstellar capability. How the hell did they reach Earth without killing themselves a thousand times on their travel?