Xenomorph/Headcrab Defence!

[Pandaman1911]

Okay, so I was playing through Aliens vs. Predator (the new one), and while playing as the Alien, I went through a mission where I had to kill and infest a predator. In order to do so, I had to light attack/heavy attack/block until his health was low enough, and then he'd eat a space sandwich to restore health, and I'd beat the fuck out of him while he was munching away. So in the cutscene where I put the facehugger on him, I (the Xenomorph) had to remove his mask first. This made me think the following: "WHY THE HELL DOES NOBODY ELSE WEAR MASKS?!" All the humans who now had holes in their chests were devoid of masks. And then I thought about the Half-Life universe- surely somebody must have thought of wearing a combat helmet made of something reinforced that the headcrabs couldn't bite through, or at least would have considerable difficulty getting through. Obviously just a wool cap or a Kevlar gas mask isn't enough, as the rebels and Combine have trouble with headcrabs. But... what about a metal helmet? Or an American Football helmet? Or hell, even a steel pot? Something to put between tasty noggin and hungry headcrab. Maybe even one of those old German Kaiser helmets... Pickelhaube, I think? The ones with the spike? That would save you the trouble of having to kill the headcrab afterward. You could just let them pile on top of your spike in a testament to your inability to dodge things.
I want to hear the opinion of you clever cogs. What's stopping people from covering their face/head with something armored, besides sheer willful stupidity? And can you think of a flaw in my plan to foil a jilted Lamarr by wearing a cooking pot?

-STUPIDITY EDIT-
It appears I've opened my mouth without knowing as much as possible about the subject matter... apologies! Ignore this, por favor. Your time is better spent on non-ignorance.

 

[Pandaman1911]

Facehuggers can spit acid/blood onto thier victems, it wouldnt matter.

Only if the skin is broken. If you just let it jump at your face, and you don't attack it, you can laugh as it bounces its alien willy off your steel faceplate.

 

[teknoarcanist]

I think the default assumption with the soldiers is that they were killed by the other, larger, non-face-crab entities in whatever given sci-fi.

 

[WorldCritic]

In Half-Life, the Combine do wear masks and helmets and they still get taken over by headcrabs.

 

[Astoria]

Well in the Alien and Predator world the marines don't know that there's a creature out there that will face rape them so they just go in with the usual helmets and think that's good enough. I don't know anything about Half Life so can't help you there.

 

[HellspawnCandy]

Facehuggers can spit acid/blood onto thier victems, it wouldnt matter.

Only if the skin is broken. If you just let it jump at your face, and you don't attack it, you can laugh as it bounces its alien willy off your steel faceplate.

On the first legitimate Alien movie the Facehugger does burn through the guy's mask to attack his face. I tried googling a picture but could not find it

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Combine wear metal helmets in Half Life 2 and still get infected.

In Alien, John Hurt's character is wearing a space suit, but the facehugger cracks through the helmet and manages to infect him there too.

 

[Bravo 21]

I think of it as a matter of expense, the combine is a massive intergalactic empire, which therefore needs a massive intergalactic bureaucracy, somewhere in this beurocracy, a person in a suit decided that the people on the ground had enough body armor and not enough threats to justify adding more, therefore deciding to increase there departments profit margin by skimping on helmets. This then put them in line for a promotion, inspiring them to repeat this profit throughout the world. Same thing goes for the space marines in AVP, and starship troopers, and the reason that stormtroopers have such crappy armor
TL;DR: People are cheap, everywhere

 

[Ashtovo]

yeah nevermind ninja'd

 

[Ordinaryundone]

Its actually theorized that this is why Gordon Freeman doesn't get headcrab'd when he gets attacked. The HEV suit is portrayed as having some sort of pull-over hood when its on the rack (and the dead bodies on Xen), so its thought he has one too.

As for the facehuggers, they can just use acid to burn through any mask. It won't stop them, at least, not for long. And as shown in Alien 2, if a facehugger can't get to its target's face for whatever reason, it has no problem latching on with its tail and choking the target to death.

 

[Astoria]

Well in the Alien and Predator world the marines don't know that there's a creature out there that will face rape them so they just go in with the usual helmets and think that's good enough. I don't know anything about Half Life so can't help you there.

yes they do, or at least SOMEONE does, but fails to inform them.

In the Aliens movie they don't listen to Ripley. In the AvP movie they have no clue whats's down there. In the game from what I can gather Mr Weyland is in charge of everything, including the marines and he doesn't care for them so why would he invest in protection for them? Besides, we're talking about a fictional world anyway. The threat of face rape makes it more threatening.

 

[PerfectDeath]

did you not watch the first Alien movie? The guy had a space suit with a sealed glass helmet on. Yet it burned and broke a hole right through the glass. Lots of strength there; however, for Half-Life I would think the head crabs would be able to figure out how to tear off a helmet.

 

[Astoria]

Well in the Alien and Predator world the marines don't know that there's a creature out there that will face rape them so they just go in with the usual helmets and think that's good enough. I don't know anything about Half Life so can't help you there.

yes they do, or at least SOMEONE does, but fails to inform them.

In the Aliens movie they don't listen to Ripley. In the AvP movie they have no clue whats's down there. In the game from what I can gather Mr Weyland is in charge of everything, including the marines and he doesn't care for them so why would he invest in protection for them? Besides, we're talking about a fictional world anyway. The threat of face rape makes it more threatening.

The AvP movies arent canon and should not be treated as such. They're fan fiction.

Well he was talking about the AvP game so that should be included. And as for the original point?

 

[jaoblia]

USE YOUR ZAPPY GUN!1!!

But seriously for face huggers a helmet, with a strong face mask made out of a material they can't latch on to .

For Headcrabs, I haven't played Half Life yet but.. WEAR A HELMET WITH A BUCKET OF ACID FROM THE FACEHUGGER YOU JUST KILLED ON YOUR HEAD!!!!!11!!1!!!

 

[Canid117]

I have to admit, combine soldiers would look ten different kinds of hilarious with a random spike on the top of their head.

 

[Angus565]

I can just picture a rebel walking around Ravenholm with a big spike on his head, smiling about how everyone who laughed at his helmet design is now a zombie.

Spoiler

I bet this was the early design.

 

[Anarchemitis]

Holy Gob he wasn't crazy after all.

 

[Dimensional Vortex]

Facehuggers can spit acid/blood onto thier victems, it wouldnt matter.

There is a such a thing called "acid resistant metals" you know. It may not block it 100%, but its better than nothing.

In the first few alien films I don't think humans had any kind of usable material that was resistant to the xeno acid. If I remember rightly anyway.

The Yautja had a few weapons that didn't seem to be effected by the acid in the first avp film though. So I never got why they didn't make their masks out of that stuff.

Maybe they were made of plastic or a composite. They tend to have high acid resistance.

But this is space acid were talking about, it is highly corrosive and could be way worse than anything on Earth, so having an acid resistant metal to the acids on Earth may prove terrible against the Xeno acid.

I guess developing an entire new helmet to combat a special new force in a few days with no tools to do so is pretty hard. I mean they could wear proper masks but that would probably still be burned through by the Xeno acid.

 

[Dimensional Vortex]

Facehuggers can spit acid/blood onto thier victems, it wouldnt matter.

There is a such a thing called "acid resistant metals" you know. It may not block it 100%, but its better than nothing.

In the first few alien films I don't think humans had any kind of usable material that was resistant to the xeno acid. If I remember rightly anyway.

The Yautja had a few weapons that didn't seem to be effected by the acid in the first avp film though. So I never got why they didn't make their masks out of that stuff.

Maybe they were made of plastic or a composite. They tend to have high acid resistance.

But this is space acid were talking about, it is highly corrosive and could be way worse than anything on Earth, so having an acid resistant metal to the acids on Earth may prove terrible against the Xeno acid.

I guess developing an entire new helmet to combat a special new force in a few days with no tools to do so is pretty hard. I mean they could wear proper masks but that would probably still be burned through by the Xeno acid.

space acid =/= magical acid that burns through everything.

It still follows the same rules as other acids, and can be countered.

It can follow the same rules as acid on Earth, but still it is a strange, untested, unknown acid that probably has a lot higher lethality to it than acids on Earth. Remember in the first Alien movie when the acid from the face hugger nearly burns every single layer of the steel platforms on the sheet really quickly, I don't think any Acid on Earth can do that, except maybe Nitric Acid, but I doubt it could do it as fast and in such small amounts.

 

[Ralen-Sharr]

an anti-facehugger mask does not have to protect you forever, just buy you enough time (and neck protection to prevent choking) to get the damn thing off of you and prevent infection/death.

Also, Xeno exoskeleton is immune, so cut up one of their skulls to make your helm/mask and the facehuggers are gonna have a hell of a time getting through.

I don't think the space suit from the first Alien movie was meant for combat. I'm sure if a research group (other than Weyland-Yutani) was to experiment and try to make combat armor for fighting Xenomorphs, they could certainly add to the longevity of a colonial marine against them.