Warning! Deep nerdity ahead.
My wife and I watched A Quiet Place Part II this evening. As the title suggests, it is the sequel to A Quiet Place. I’m not usually a horror movie fan, but these were much more suspenseful than horror. And they have more of a science fiction bent than horror. I guess because there isn’t a lot of graphic horror in these movies that I can watch them. Not a fan of graphic horror.
The basic premise, which you can get from the trailer so I don’t feel like I’m giving anything away, is that there are creatures that have invaded the world, that hunt you if you make noise. It seems the creatures have really exceptional hearing and can hear the slightest sound from a great distance. Upon hearing something, like humans scurrying around making noise, they descend on the noisemaker and tear them to shreds. The creatures are swift, resilient, and brutal.
While I was watching the movie a random thought entered my brain. What if these creatures had invaded Middle Earth?
Part of the problem the humans had in A Quiet Place is the use of guns. Guns of course make a lot of noise, which just draws more of the creatures. Suppose though, they were up against an army of dwarves, whose preferred weapon is the battle axe? My first thought was that the dwarves would easily clean up the invading creatures. Axes don’t make noise except for that squishing noise of sinking deep into flesh. No gun noise to further draw more creatures.
But as I thought about it a bit more, dwarves are fond of battle cries, which make quite a lot of noise. I would guess that if the dwarves figured out that noise drew the attention of the creatures, they’d quickly lose the battle cries, and sweep up the rest of the invaders.
I figure the elves would have an easy time of things. They are supernaturally quiet and stealthy, they use bows, so advantage of ranged weapons without the drawback of loud noise when firing, and they could pelt the invaders with so many arrows the creatures would be dead before they knew what hit them.
The orcs? They have the advantage of being as equally brutal as the invaders, if not perhaps more militaristic with strategies and tactics. However they are not quiet. Just from sheer brutality, I’d say the orcs have a better than 50 / 50 shot at winning.
The humans in Middle Earth might take some heavy losses at the beginning of the invasion, but I think they’d swiftly rally and turn the tide. It might be a hard, long, drawn-out battle but ultimately the humans would win.
Finally, we get to the hobbits. Having a dislike of adventure, being natural homebodies, and preferring eating to almost all else, they would likely survive by not ever drawing attention to themselves. They would stay in there hobbit holes until such time as the other races took care of the invaders, or the invaders all starved to death because they couldn’t find any hobbits to eat.
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