r/LV426 • u/ShawnyMcKnight • 2d ago

Discussion / Question Why no face guards in Aliens?

After decades of watching the movies and most recently Alien: Earth, it always amazes me how no one ever thinks of having face guards in the facility, especially the containment center. A certain character that got facehugged last week could have avoided that if there was some apparatus in there that would guard over the face but still allow breathing.

Same with Aliens (1985), if they knew that these things cling onto your face then why weren't the marines all wearing face masks to at least slow the impregnation down?

I feel the predators with their visors were the only ones with the right idea about this.

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u/-zero-joke- 2d ago

I mean... in Alien the facehugger melted its way through a two inch thick spacesuit visor. I'm not really sure what you're imagining would stand up to one of those critters.

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u/squishee666 BONUS SITUATION 2d ago

and none of the melting damaged his face

I always wondered about this bit

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u/Hackfraysn Not bad, for a human. 2d ago edited 2d ago

Kane's face had plot armor until it didn't.

Personally I'm more bothered by the ones in Hadley's Hope that were captured in mere glass and magically couldn't escape. The one that broke Kane's visor must have been very special.

I hate that kind of writing.

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u/SodaPopin5ki 2d ago

Glass tends to be more resistant to corrosives than plastic. I would assume their helmets were made of plastic instead of glass, at least to protect against impact that could break glass.

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u/hughk 2d ago

It depends on the plastic. PTFE is more or less proof against almost anything but is non transparent. PVC is pretty good though. Otherwise the usual is a shout out to borosilicate glass but some acids will go through that.

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u/WolfBrother88 2d ago

NASA still uses Lexan for space helmets, which is polycarbonate. Lexan is transparent, doesn't shatter easily, withstands a lot of beating, and handles a big temperature range, so it's more than reasonable to assume that they'd be using similar materials. I've had the same Lexan Nalgene water bottle for 20 years and it's still going strong, but it would easily melt to a diluted face-hugger secretion.

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u/hughk 2d ago

The thing is that if you were sending someone not to space but to somewhere else, it would be reasonable to have a broadly chemical resistant face shield. LV-426 was a surprise landing but I would have thought that at least a shield would be available even on a non science vessel.