The invasion in War of the Worlds seems better thought out, initially. Their shields are impervious to bombs and bullets, and the human defense strategy is apparently to ignore this and keep shooting until the aliens fall down out of pity. So with the human race on its knees, what do the aliens do to celebrate? Run around naked, drink dirty puddle-water and put everything they can find in their mouths like a bunch of unsupervised toddlers. Days later, every single one of them is dead from the common cold.

The same fate almost befell E.T., who fell gravely ill after days of running around in his birthday suit and putting shit in his mouth.

This is not goddamned rocket science here. Inferior as we are, humans know that drinking water is a bad idea even if it's just in another country, and that's if we've had all our shots. How did any alien species even survive long enough to evolve without learning that you need to make sure shit isn't poison before putting it inside your body?

"Hey guys! There's a rancid old futon in here -- wanna lick it?"

In fact, before you even reach the stage where you're landing your flying saucer and looking through your closet for appropriate Earthwear, you really need to back the hell up and ...

What were they doing for a million years? Why does it take so long to develop a strategy essentially no more complex than "shoot everyone, grind up their corpses for fertilizer"? Hell, after a million years of preparation, you should be more suited to walking around on Earth than humans are.

And it's not as if the aliens died from some obscure pathogen that just flew beneath their radar -- Morgan Freeman's disembodied voice very clearly specifies that the bugs that did them in can be found in every drop of water. We're not trying to suggest that the great H.G. Wells is guilty of some kind of lazy hack-work here; we realize that he was making a point. We're just saying that the point is idiotic.

Feel free to continue turning New Yorkers into dust, though.

Likewise, it's easy to suggest that the creatures from Signs just didn't realize that the planet they were attacking was predominantly composed of the one substance most toxic to them until they actually got here. But they have absolutely no excuse for that ignorance when you consider that humans, far less advanced than any race of intergalactic colonists, know that the planet GJ 1214 b might have water on it, and it's 40 light years away from us.

Maybe they developed a mind-crippling, species-wide addiction to crack before they invented the telescope but immediately after they invented interstellar travel.

These cosmic amateurs have a lot to learn from the alien race in Independence Day. In this film, we learn that the aliens have been studying Earth for quite some time, having sent ships here to examine our planet, abduct our people and turn our cows inside out for decades. And these savvy extraterrestrials didn't walk around in the nude, either. No, these guys fell victim to their very own series of strategic gaffes. For example ...

Every alien-invasion movie we've ever heard of takes place in the United States (and before you race to the comment section, District 9 is not an alien-invasion movie). With the upcoming Battle: Los Angeles, we expect this trend to continue, unless it has the most inaccurate movie title since Naked Lunch. But your invasion doesn't need to start with the USA, and you certainly don't need to blow up a series of famous buildings, allowing for the enraged and united people to then counterattack with full force.

Giant, skyscraper-size spaceships capable of vaporizing the White House are no defense to hubris. Or a MacBook.

Yes, we get why you might think it makes perfect sense to attack the powerful developed world first, just to get it out of the way, knowing that whoever's left won't put up much of a fight. That is, it makes sense if you are a Hollywood scriptwriter who has never had to plan a war. In reality, going straight for the United States is like trying to take down a mugger by punching him in the knife. No, the goal should be to disarm the enemy. Then your work is much easier.

In this case, that fierce military you're going up against is based on an extremely complex and fragile system that is extremely easy to disrupt. All of those jet fighters flying around in Independence Day? They require fuel. That fuel requires imported petroleum. Also imported are things like cobalt, manganese, chromium and platinum, without which we can't have jet engines, missiles or computers, or the means to repair them. That stuff comes from Africa.

Along with many other wonderful things.

So you just need to take out all of the largest oil refineries (and it takes only a few to completely choke off worldwide supply), some pipelines for good measure and a few fairly defenseless nations who dig up the raw materials that make the U.S. military go. Then you fly away and wait a few months (the U.S. has only a month's worth of emergency oil on hand at any given time).

Then you can come back at your leisure, at which point you'll find that the planes are grounded for lack of fuel and replacement parts and military personnel are either busy controlling riots in the streets because of the collapse of the economy or are off fighting one of countless raging wars over whatever remaining drops of oil are left in the supply lines. Hell, you may find that the Statue of Liberty has already been destroyed, taking one item right off your checklist.

Next target: The World's Largest Axe.

It's almost like the aliens want a gentlemanly toe-to-toe battle, as if they're fighting according to some regimented, civilized rules of warfare. Which might be why they fail to follow this next one.

Here on Earth, outside of video games, turn-based combat has been out of vogue since the days of pistol duels. While it may occasionally be worthwhile to hang back and see what your opponent is capable of, if you've taken our advice so far and done your research, you'll note that our experience in space combat is limited to our conquest of Earth's moon about 40 years ago, and that wasn't much of a battle. When you have humanity by the short hairs already, there's no reason to wait for Jeff Goldblum to reverse-engineer your spacecraft and come after you unless you're in it for the thrill more than the victory.

Or you're a huge, huge fan of Randy Quaid.

The term is named after Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who "won" a couple of battles against the Romans around 280 B.C., but his army was so decimated that he quipped, "Another such victory and I come back to Epirus alone." In other words, tiny Epirus had lost so much of its military that there was nothing stopping the Roman Empire from walking in and taking power, which it of course did.

But hey, Pyrrhus got a whole phrase. And gorgeous bangs.

Likewise, human civilization is in a sorry state after an alien invasion, and not just because it's in deep mourning for the loss of its landmarks. Millions, maybe billions, are already dead, in many cases the U.S. government is gone, and with the cities and huge chunks of infrastructure destroyed, there's going to be a huge problem with the food supply. And that's before the disease sets in from all those dead people and aliens rotting in the sun. In short, after our victory against the alien hordes, we're looking at a worldwide Mad Max situation.

But what have the aliens lost? An investment? The attack took place on our world, not theirs. Their home is still perfectly intact. They get to retire to their comfortable, presumably nondystopian home world and muse about our bad luck. We don't know anything about the economic impact of financing an intergalactic attack campaign, but if you wanted it bad enough the first time, there's no reason not to go for Round 2, especially since you're now aware of the bullshit weakness that thwarted you the first time. Consider throwing on a hazmat suit the next time.

Maybe splurge on some antivirus software.

Of course, before you even begin thinking about how to best organize a strike against Earth, you need to ask yourself whether it's worth going to that kind of trouble.

We don't always know why the aliens want to kill us. In some cases, the question remains open. Sometimes they just enjoy it, like in The Day the Earth Stood Still, where the aliens are left-wing extremists out to stop global warming. In Skyline, they needed our brains for some reason. But in most cases, they just seem to want our resources. In Independence Day and the upcoming Battle: Los Angeles, the stated goal of alien invasion is resource acquisition -- they want our shit.

Our shit?

Thing is, if you have the technology for space travel, space mining and space ExxonMobil, there's really no reason to attack Earth for the same resources that you'll find on Mars. In fact, this solar system alone has eigh- seven planets (sorry, Pluto) that won't shoot at you, and they're all made of the same stuff. In fact, you can even mine the moon, and there isn't a whole lot that the landlocked denizens of Earth can do to stop you.

Come on, ISS. Bring it.

But just say that nothing short of Earth's unique ecological profile will meet your needs. Maybe you want water (unless you're from Signs), and we admit that's pretty rare in the universe. But maybe you should take a look at one of the universe's many "Goldilocks planets" (so named because they're not too hot and not too cold). Statistically speaking, this galaxy alone should be littered with planets just the right size and distance from their suns to develop liquid water, an Earth-like atmosphere and all the raw minerals you need. And either all of them or most of them are devoid of the kind of life that can shoot missiles at you and hack into your mother ship.

These movies are usually trying to parallel the reasons we fight wars here on Earth, and while we do fight for resources, we have the good sense to secure uncontested minerals before we consider waging an expensive and violent war. You can bet mankind will be mining Mars before we consider sending warships to Zeta Reticuli.

THERE ARE BETTER WAYS TO MINE.

Really, guys, this stuff is just common sense.

You aliens should really pick up our new book. It'll serve you right when you're attempting to demolish humanity.

For more messages to our would-be rulers, check out 9 Simple Requests For Our Robot Overlords. Or find out why Skynet will never win, in 4 Reasons Terminators Suck At Their Jobs.