It’s caffeine Friday! See, in order to get to work on Friday morning, I have to get up at 5:30, which means so much coffee. And then I do things that are silly. Like ask a question of the day!

It’s based on a random question I got asked over the internet yesterday. The question of the day is:

TELL ME

IN THE VACUUM OF SPACE

HOW WOULD YOU DEFEAT BILLIONS OF ENEMIES

I’m personally fascinated by this question because it could practically have any answer. The only parameters are 1) you are in space, 2) there are billions of enemies, and 3) you must defeat them. Everything comes from you; hell, “defeat them with trillions of allies” is even a valid answer. Here are some responses I got today from asking friends and coworkers:

• lure them to a planet, where you fire like twenty giant laser cannons at them
  • someone else said lasers too
• surrender to the enemies and betray humanity, then betray the enemies
• use an implosion bomb
• use the Terrible Shotgun
• fire a flamethrower at them and constantly be carried backwards by the recoil
• use your death star
  • someone else answered death star, specifically hoping there was no luke skywalker
• “We’re all just hanging out in the cold vacuum of space? Well then we all have like 30 seconds to live. I guess I’d just wait.”
  • two people suggested that you would sit there in a space suit waiting as they all suffocated
• lure them into a wormhole that opens into a sun
• using a device, expose them all to gamma and other types of radiation (which your suit would protect you against)
• technically, earth is already in the cold vacuum of space, and there are billions of people who could be enemies. Just make friends with them!
• make them believe you have lost, and then attack with the element of surprise
• catch them with a tractor beam and drag them into the sun
• “Shoot yer mofuggin blackhole-gun, yo”
• “Trick Q into defeating them for you, which is always more painful than necessary, but makes for a good story line.”
• “I’d try to overwhelm their kill limits.”
• assuming they are going to come into the solar system to get us they probably need earth’s energy or something. So trap them in the solar system, move earth to a solar system with cooler planets than mars and the moon, and let the aliens waste away without earth energy
• billions could be like, microbes, right? disenfectant spray.
• Infect the enemies with nanobots that colonize their bodies and make them reliant on nanobots, then hit the enemies with an electromagnetic pulse, disabling all of the nanobots.
• Call the Russians for help.
• Shoot water at them, which would turn into freezing icicles first.
• Put a billion razor-sharp dicksphalluses into the orbit of a planet and put them between you and the enemy.
• “I’d try to overload their kill limits.”  (sup futurama)

I find it kind of interesting to see what people responded because it’s so open. Most people constructed defeat as needing an actual physical attack; most people defined the “enemies” as aliens, and about two-thirds of the responses depended on some sort of hand-to-hand combat or at least just assumed one person in an exo suit. Only two people called for help, one person thought that the “enemies” might be the bad guys, and two people resorted to subterfuge. There were only a few people who tried to defy the premise altogether (the dying in space guy, the microbe girl). Of the people who turned me down, most (although some just did out of hand) did so because there wasn’t enough context for them to construct their response. One guy turned me down because although he could see himself defeating hundreds or thousands of enemies, billions were too much.

What’s your answer to the question? Try asking your cool friends–what do they say?