Author Topic: If You Were Visser Three...  (Read 3510 times)

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Offline .: Asmo

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Re: If You Were Visser Three...
« Reply #15 on: February 12, 2010, 01:36:31 PM »
One issue with that, and going into the 3rd world countries first. What's going to happen with those who have been infested? Keep them doing their third-world stuff? It's not like most of them can waltz right into places because they don't have the paperwork nor the background to get anywhere.

It would be better to infest places like that later on, when you already have some infested in the high political workings because then you can bring them in as support.
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Offline Azguard

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Re: If You Were Visser Three...
« Reply #16 on: February 12, 2010, 02:03:19 PM »
 yeah. that was the one setback I came to too. except i didn't word it as well. XD
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Offline Aluminator (Kit)

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Re: If You Were Visser Three...
« Reply #17 on: February 12, 2010, 02:41:47 PM »
With the third-world thing, you've also got to consider what a drain that would be on Yeerk resources, since they have to feed every three days. They'd either need Yeerk pools all over the place or a near-endless supply of portable Kandronas. They kept it to one area because they only had one full size pool.

I think I might try approaching the invasion quite differently. At first, I'd go with the silent invasion- take 10-50 thousand people, and concentrate on those who have good public images (sort of like the Yeerks actually did). Obviously you'd want multiple pools- maybe a dozen or more mid-sized Yeerk pools around the globe, on all continents.

This is where my solution sounds nuts, though. Once you had a decently respectable base- you come into the open about the invasion. You let all the people of Earth know that there are these slugs, that can crawl into your head, and basically solve all your problems (you might want to play down the whole "alien" aspect... maybe even the "slug" aspect. Just call it a new medical procedure or something. Heck, with Yeerk medical technology, you could even prove that the people become much healthier afterward) You'd have glowing endorsements from all the Controllers involved. "At first, I was nervous, but it's the greatest thing ever! I've never felt so good in my life!" How are the people of Earth supposed to know that the real person is crying in the back of their mind? They're not, that's how. What they see is people who are supposedly extremely satisfied with the way it's gone, and every Controller begins recommending a Yeerk to everyone they know. You'd have too many voluntary Controllers to know what to do with- they'd need to breed Yeerks faster than ever before just to keep up with demand. You could almost definitely infest most of the planet just through peer pressure. Once you get down to just the hesitant holdouts, you have all their Controller friends and family force them into it.

Viola. 6 billion hosts, and almost without a shot fired. Quick and painless, without relying on the Sharing's new-age "be part of something bigger" crap targeted only at people who are dissatisfied with themselves. Even the happiest person will volunteer for a free medical treatment if they believe they're helping wipe out disease. It'd be fast- if you had enough Yeerks standing by, you could probably take the entire planet inside of two years doing it this way. You don't sacrifice your rare Hork-Bajir, you don't waste resources fighting a war, and if the Animorphs decide to do something about it, you just take them as soon as you know who they are- or let them keep performing their little raids and vilify them in the eyes of the people as terrorists or whatever.

The trick, of course, is getting started, but the Animorphs can't be on every continent.

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Offline KitsuneMarie

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Re: If You Were Visser Three...
« Reply #18 on: February 12, 2010, 02:57:44 PM »
Aluminator, have you seen V on ABC? What you're talking about here has some similarities to the basic premise of that show.

Quote from: Wikipedia
Giant spaceships appear over 29 major cities throughout the world, and Anna, the beautiful and charismatic leader of the extra-terrestrial "Visitors," claims to come in peace. As a small number of humans begin to doubt the sincerity of the seemingly benevolent Visitors, FBI counter-terrorism agent Erica Evans discovers that the aliens have spent decades infiltrating human governments, businesses, and religious institutions and are now in the final stages of their plan to take over the world.... The Visitors have won favor among the people of Earth by curing a variety of diseases.

Ok, now I know this is just using another instance of fiction and can't really be used as any kind of evidence that your plan wouldn't work, but a strong resistance crops up among the main characters of the show. Even if there was no kind of Animorphs-esque fighting force, however, humans tend to be suspicious of offers that seem too good to be true. I think humans' caution and suspicion would stall your iteration of the Yeerks' plan, even if it would not ultimately cause them to fail.
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Re: If You Were Visser Three...
« Reply #19 on: February 12, 2010, 03:06:52 PM »
I have not seen V. That sounds... very interesting. I might have to look into it. Haha... trust me to be plagiarizing without realizing it >.<

You're right, though, people tend to have a problem accepting things that seem overly good... so maybe 2 years was a bit fast as an estimate. If everyone personally recommends it to their friends, though, and it's also being endorsed by governments and pop culture alike, I still see it gaining significant momentum, even amongst skeptics. "Okay, I'll give it a shot, but I'm not convinced it'll work like you say." Doesn't matter- after one shot you're a Controller.

I wonder why taking over the world is always seen as such a bad thing. I mean, really, couldn't you argue that the world be better off today if we'd all been united under the rule of, say, the Roman Empire way back when?

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Re: If You Were Visser Three...
« Reply #20 on: February 12, 2010, 04:57:54 PM »
Well, you mean like the vaccines against the flu the governments of many countries bought and wanted to give us? The vaccines that actually make people have the flu?! lol Yeah, well, maybe some people would accept, and you almost convinced me ;) But many people didn't want the vaccine in France. That's why our government has so many useless vaccines now ^^'
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Offline KitsuneMarie

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Re: If You Were Visser Three...
« Reply #21 on: February 12, 2010, 05:46:39 PM »
I'm not sure if Hulu is accessible outside of the US, but here's the best link to V that I know of: http://www.hulu.com/v.

I wonder why taking over the world is always seen as such a bad thing. I mean, really, couldn't you argue that the world be better off today if we'd all been united under the rule of, say, the Roman Empire way back when?

Ok, I'm gonna use another fictional source in rebuttal. Ever watched Serenity, the Firefly movie? If not... watch it now! (Actually watch the show first, and then the movie. I know so few people who dislike it that I can almost guarantee you'll love it!).

Back on topic, I don't want to spoil anything, but I'll just say that I agree with Joss Whedon's take on external attempts to find a quick-fix for humanity: they seldom a working long-term solution.
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Offline Chad32

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Re: If You Were Visser Three...
« Reply #22 on: February 12, 2010, 06:38:22 PM »
It's obvious that Visser three went through serious badass decay. It would have been more realistic for the andalites to come in and save the day, rather than six kids taking on Visser three's forces with minimal help from Chee and such. but when I started a thread and posed that question, I think everyone said they wouldn't have wanted the Andalites to come in. Of course KA showed the andalites aren't all good, but she didn't really need to do that.

I think she tried to make it as realistic as possible, but some things went out the window due to the Rule of Cool or whatever.


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Re: If You Were Visser Three...
« Reply #23 on: February 12, 2010, 06:54:13 PM »
Aaah.. If I was Visser Three... I would probably act like Visser Three  ;D

I've always considered the Sharing like a huge waste of time.
Infesting kids? What for?

I would have taken some time before starting the invasion.
My first step would have been to make some of my yirks experts of the human behavior, culture and history in different countries.
I would have targeted the US of course, but also every military powerful country.

Then once this would have been done. I would have aimed at the army and police of each country. Going from the less important people to the most important ones and slowly going up to the important politicians (ministers/president/...) and big company leaders (especially in weapon industry...)

At that moment I would get the power (weapons+decision making).

Then, I'm not sure of what I would have done.

I would either have started an open invasion, gathering the civil defenseless population to make massive infestations or either waiting for a little while...
Once I would have been sure the civil population could not really defend itself because their army would have been mine, I could have tried to use all the important figures at hand to make government propaganda or something in the same kind of idea to make the infestation less violent and more insidious.
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Offline Azguard

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Re: If You Were Visser Three...
« Reply #24 on: February 12, 2010, 10:10:17 PM »
alluminator, your miracle cure thing sounds pretty good. im not sure what healthy people would want it for, but it seems good enough.

 and i think silent invasion is also good....except for the fact that if you go too fast you have no Yeerks to infest anymore people.
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Offline Gafrash

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Re: If You Were Visser Three...
« Reply #25 on: February 13, 2010, 01:18:38 AM »
The infiltration idea was sound, and though it was time-costing, it would give them 6 billion hosts without a shot fired. It would be counter-productive to kill a Class 5 specimens. I think the Yeerks were still in the 'Take over the most powerful nation in the World'-phase, early stages of their infiltration. Hence why we didn't get multiple Yeerkpools, even throughout America.


ok guys. I don't want you to take me the wrong way...

... but I thought about this. What if we infested and infiltrated volunteer organizations? The one example I will use is.... the Red Cross. Infest the Red Cross, then as they travel the world, and care after the sick and poor, and devastated... infest those people at their weakest moment. Weak resistance and shock would be enough for submission. The only problem would be what you would do with so many people who have just been devastated and hold no real economic or political power. but hey, its a place to start right? And no one suspects the Red Cross.
Yeah, the Yeerks may well have done this, too.

...This is where my solution sounds nuts, though. Once you had a decently respectable base- you come into the open about the invasion. You let all the people of Earth know that there are these slugs, that can crawl into your head, and basically solve all your problems (you might want to play down the whole "alien" aspect... maybe even the "slug" aspect. Just call it a new medical procedure or something. Heck, with Yeerk medical technology, you could even prove that the people become much healthier afterward) You'd have glowing endorsements from all the Controllers involved. "At first, I was nervous, but it's the greatest thing ever! I've never felt so good in my life!" How are the people of Earth supposed to know that the real person is crying in the back of their mind? They're not, that's how. What they see is people who are supposedly extremely satisfied with the way it's gone, and every Controller begins recommending a Yeerk to everyone they know. You'd have too many voluntary Controllers to know what to do with- they'd need to breed Yeerks faster than ever before just to keep up with demand. You could almost definitely infest most of the planet just through peer pressure. Once you get down to just the hesitant holdouts, you have all their Controller friends and family force them into it...
Dude, this 'medical treatment' idea sounds very plausible. It plays right into the Yeerks methods. Kinda scary when you think about it.
The concept is, really, the outline of The Sharing, isn't it? Though The Sharing were not THAT open about it. They had more of a super-secret-club thing going on and it may have been why it wasn't quite as effective as this would have been.


Well the ending was contrived in general. I don't know why they would only have one pool at that point in the invasion.
It's not hard to imagine the Yeerks underestimating humans.
It's obvious that Visser three went through serious badass decay. It would have been more realistic for the andalites to come in and save the day, rather than six kids taking on Visser three's forces with minimal help from Chee and such. but when I started a thread and posed that question, I think everyone said they wouldn't have wanted the Andalites to come in. Of course KA showed the andalites aren't all good, but she didn't really need to do that.

I think she tried to make it as realistic as possible, but some things went out the window due to the Rule of Cool or whatever.
The ending did leave much to be desired, didn't it?!
Dunno, though SHE DID sum up elements of the Animorphs series in that last book, I was expecting something more complex and grandiose for an ending. Something Megamorphs-like quality, if you get what I mean.
It wouldn't have been good enough to have the Andalites come in and save the day. But certainly more play from the Animorphs could have been exercised. Marco, Cassie, Tobias, one could almost forget they were there at that final battle...


...Esplin was the first Yeerk to meet a human. Way back in the Andalite Chronicles, and he knew their weaknesses and strengths right off the bat. How else do you think he was able to do what he did as a Yeerk to obtain his status? He was no fool. Later in the book series K.A. turned him into a plundering Nimrod, but how else was five stupid teenagers going to beat the power of the Empire, and Visser Three who at the time controlled some of the most fearsome morphs in the Cosmos? K.A. had to make him arrogant, ****y, and stupid in the later books.

Esplin 9466 was a thinker, he organized battle plans, reshaped DNA, created reverse morphing technology, was able to keep an Andalite in check for at least two decades. He owned two of some fearsome pets. He could always get the information he wanted to out of his victims. (Except the Animorphs who were those 'lucky' heros always able to get out of his clutches.) There was no underestimating the Animorphs, there was K.A. taking five teenagers and having them overcome nearly impossible obstacles time-and-time again...  
Good points, here, dude. I had forgotten that Esplin was the first Yeerk to have made human contact.
We are not certain on a few of those points, but safe to say that Esplin was a determined bloodthirsty leader who got results through his ruthless methods.


Offline .: Asmo

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Re: If You Were Visser Three...
« Reply #26 on: February 13, 2010, 12:54:00 PM »
Gaf - Which points are you not certain on? I'll give you page numbers and quotes.

Post Merged: February 13, 2010, 01:02:02 PM
Also, I was thinking about the 'open' invasion of having some new miracle drug. One major issue with that is think about it. How many people on Earth would believe it? Especially in today's age where most Americans think someone is out to get them.

I wouldn't start this one up until some large political officials have been taken, that way they can ease this new 'drug' into the market.

Besides, would this be free? If it is, ohhh boy ... too many skeptics and it would all turn badly. This world is too money hungry to be just giving themselves into a program like that.

It sounds all well and good, but in my honestly, I think the plan would take way to long for any actual results.   
« Last Edit: February 13, 2010, 01:02:02 PM by Asmodeus »
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Offline Azguard

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Re: If You Were Visser Three...
« Reply #27 on: February 13, 2010, 04:04:04 PM »
 so...i've watched out all 4 episodes of V now. haha
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Re: If You Were Visser Three...
« Reply #28 on: February 14, 2010, 08:13:10 AM »
I'm not sure if Hulu is accessible outside of the US, but here's the best link to V that I know of: http://www.hulu.com/v.
(Sorry for the off-topic)
No, it doesn't work outside of the US.
But don't worry, I found a way to have them (in French, but better than nothing). I also found the first episode of the new TVshow (kind of remake).
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Offline Gotchaye

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Re: If You Were Visser Three...
« Reply #29 on: February 15, 2010, 02:58:38 AM »
I don't think an open invasion is necessary, but the Yeerks could have been more aggressive, I figure.  While you might be able to get people to get comfortable with brain slugs, why bother trying?  It seems to me that first world countries are pretty ripe for infiltration on multiple fronts.  The Sharing was a pretty silly front organization, and cults are small potatoes anyway.  But look at homeopathy, acupuncture, and other "alternative medicine" practices.  You can get lots and lots of people to subject themselves to rather weird procedures that involve them being alone with a stranger with just a bunch of hand-waving about quantum mechanics and chi.  

Make the central pillar of your cure-all be some kind of "sensory deprivation" helmet, which also happens to have a compartment for a yeerk to hide in, and you've got a pretty effective front organization.  The alternative medicine folks all tend to stick together, so you've got pretty easy access to a large and gullible group of people right from the start.  Then you issue public challenges to skeptics in the medical community to try out your method for their migraines, cancer, etc.  Of course, they emerge claiming that it's nothing (thus cementing your credibility in the alt-med community), but afterwards you've got a Controller doctor who can introduce yeerks to any patients that they put under anesthesia (or who just spends the night in a hospital, after a point).  It's just a matter of time from that point on.

But, for my part, I wouldn't bother trying to take over the US or most of Europe.  I think you could do it rather easily, perhaps using something like the approach outlined above, but you're still looking at years before you can openly operate on the planet, and procuring new, useful hosts is at least somewhat urgent.  Fortunately, the yeerks don't care about human society or technical know-how, and a Controller from a third-world country is just as good as one from a first-world country.  So, on the first day of your assault, you take down every satellite around the Earth and glass much of the US and Western Europe (and some of Russia, India, and China), along with the seats of government of other major powers, with particular attention paid to communication infrastructure and power plants.  That's at least 99% of the Earth's ability to fight back taken out along with, if you're careful, about 10% of the population.

Quickly moving in with ground forces, you secure Chinese engineers, doctors (since many of your new hosts will be from poor regions, they're going to have debilitating but treatable diseases, and you're going to want to have access to good information on human medicine), and industrial infrastructure (this is likely the most costly part, but hopefully you were able to cripple the Chinese military and leadership in the initial attack).  With China secure and the (largely unarmed and disproportionately adult) rural population being infested, you start building Kandrona pools.  Unlike in the US in the books, you can do this openly - no one else has the technical ability to see what you're doing or the military ability to do anything about it - so you can probably get more built faster.  After that, all you need to do is temporarily establish control of isolated regions of the world so that you can infest the people living there.  This isn't difficult.  Consider that the US military was able to (temporarily) pacify Iraq almost overnight and with virtually zero losses.  The yeerks have better technology and very few remaining countries would still have the wherewithal to mount any sort of organized defense.  You're looking at a year, at most, before the majority of the pre-assault population of Earth is Controlled (remember that without satellites and the like, most people in the world won't even be aware of what's going on until the yeerk invasion is on top of them, though they will know that they've completely lost contact with the US and other countries).  And, of course, most people who do know roughly what's going on will think that the world is under attack by Hork-Bajir and Taxxons, so any place that still resembles civilization might well be willing to take in some "refugees".

In short, the best bet seems to me to strike very hard at the very small percentage of people who can hurt you, except for one country which you take over intact after just a few surgical strikes and which you use as a base of operations in taking over the essentially third-world remainder of the planet.  Various sneaky maneuvers with Controllers can be tried later, since even knowledge of an alien invasion isn't going to cause people to take precautions against brain slugs (in fact humans might be generally more trusting of other humans than they otherwise would be).  This nets you lots of Controllers really quickly, which seems to be what's required.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2010, 03:09:42 AM by Gotchaye »