If a kaiju really emerged

[Bullgrit]

I took my sons to Pacific Rim yesterday, and this thought came to mind afterward:

What if a kaiju really did emerge from the ocean, today, in this real world, with our real tech and social/political/military situations?

For those of you who haven't seen the movie, just assume Godzilla, or the Cloverfield monster. They're all basically the same concepts.

A giant beast (~300 feet / ~100 meters tall) rises from the depths of the Pacific ocean -- say, the Mariana Trench -- and heads towards land -- say, Japan. How soon would it's presence be known? What would/could we do? How would the world react? How could it be defeated? How far would it get, how much damage would it wreak before being defeated? Its only motivation is destruction, (although we couldn't know that, at least in the beginning).

Assuming it gets defeated, how would our world change/react to the idea that such a threat exists/ed? Using modern tech, or tech that could be reasonably assumed to be quickly developed based on our current scientific knowledge, how could we determine if there are other kaiju in the depths.

And finally: if it were possible for such a creature to even exist, to move its own body weight, etc., would it be impervious to our current military tech? That is, if a creature could grow and live and wreak destruction at that size, (and come from 6+ miles below the ocean surface), would its body be too thick and tough for bunker busters and nuclear explosions?

Bullgrit

 

[Umbran]

It is difficult to answer most of your questions. The reason that we don't see living things that large in our world is because we *can't*. They aren't physically possible, at least not with the materials and biology here. So, if the monster exists, it has some things we don't know about. That makes it difficult to determine its capabilities.

 

[jonesy]

As much as I like the giant monster movie genre and related stuff, I do think that the effects of an airforce and airdropped weapons are grossly understated in them.

Have the aircraft not fly within ten meters of the monsters. Stay at the far edge of the effective firing range (and in modern combat that range is huge). If you really need close range supervision, send in the cheap kind of drones.

Something like a bunker buster super penetrator can go through more than six meters of reinforced concrete. I doubt a Kaiju could take one to its face and live. Accuracy in the new laser guided busters is within 6 meters. If the battlefield gets smoke interference or something like that, hit them with wire-guided munitions.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I think the warnings would only be hours and be from the tsunami warning system. People would be warned based on the level of wave the creature produced, which may not be much. After that, it would be a rampage as options were discussed and the information passed up the chain of command.

Then a physical assault using standard weapons. Now, depending where it came ashore, more aggressive weapons (daisy cutters, bunker busters, chemical, etc.) would have to be request from another country (in most cases) and this would still allow more rampage.

Nukes, well it world happen but only after some major discussion, odds are the UN will have to be informed, other countries and again, the chain of command. It would be faster if it is in the middle of nowhere but major city, don't see it.

After that, well if someone has a death ray or space based weapons, we are just food and headed back to the stone age or very deep bunkers.

I think people running down it's throat with 200 pounds of plastic explosives may be an effect killing tool. It is like a trap I read about for polar bears, spike ball rolled into meat, the bear eats and its stomach acids eats the strings holding the ball and them it punches the gut, causing slow death.

 

[frankthedm]

Well, biggest issue is it is still presunamaly organic material vs E=MC². What kind of resilience would it take for a critter to not be punctured by a bunker buster?

 

[RangerWickett]

I don't know how we'd trace them back to their portal, but if we could, we'd just place a couple nukes there, have sensors and failsafes, and blow them the instant something came through. In the movie, at least, the monsters were fairly widely spaced chronologically, so you'd have plenty of time to replenish your detonators.

 

[Tonguez]

Omg Greenpeace would be sending in ships to oppose you bloodthirsty lot and turning the Marianas Trench into an international sanctuary

 

[Hand of Evil]

Omg Greenpeace would be sending in ships to oppose you bloodthirsty lot and turning the Marianas Trench into an international sanctuary

They die first -

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Well, I never bought the trope that Godzilla couldn't be killed by the armor piercing weapons and high powered high explosive rockets of the 50s, so I'm not buying that modern weapons would be useless. Of course, as Umbran mentioned above, it just ain't possible in the first place. And Jonesy had some pertinent comments as well. But I expect that it would cause a lot of destruction before it got taken down. I think a good fight would be against Godzilla/whatever and a WW II Battleship. Yamato anyone?

 

[tomBitonti]

Wouldn't the portal location be detected within the time it took for ground waves to reach detectors?

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_tomography

It is observed that wave velocity increases with increasing depth from 2–8 km/s in the crust up to 13 km/s in the mantle.

Figuring 4km/s, that would be 14,400 Km/Hr, or about 9,000 Mi/Hr. For a surface wave, that would reach the most distant point in about 1.33 hours, or about 80 minutes. Plus or minus a factor of 2 gives from 160 min to 40 min.

Telling what the disturbance is would be harder (I imagine), especially if it is deep underwater.

A creature of the sizes depicted walking along open ground would be detectable, and the track would be known within the time limits, above.

A creature swimming might not be detectable hardly at all.

I tend to agree that modern ordinance is hugely understated in movies, and would make mincemeat of the Kaiju. However, for such a creature to exist, it has to use exotic materials (or perhaps it carries a field of other-dimensional physics). We could make assumptions based on the required strength of materials and work from there. That's beyond my skills. Anyone able to figure this out?

Thx!

TomB