How do you pick aliens of the ground?

[Haijo]

Hey, first post! Woo-hoo!

So, I was curious. I remember in X-Com that you could pick up bodies from the floor and put them in your inventory. How does that work in UFO? I can't find bodies to pick and after a succefull mission I seem to be unable to research any supposedly bodies?

Thanks!

[blondandy]

I think it is not possible to pick up bodies.

[Haijo]

So how do I research aliens themselves? By capturing live ones or is there another way?

[Aarontu]

you should be able to research the body as long as you have an alien containment building.  The alien "autopsy" should be available as a research topic.  I haven't tried to get a live alien, yet.

[TroubleMaker]

just a thought...

Researching of dead aliens' bodies must be possible WITHOUT alien containment facility: I don't believe that the sci-lab is not equipped with refrigerators or a kind of cooled morgue.

[Haijo]

@above: if you have an unknown species you can't even be sure it's dead so it makes sense to me to use containment.

Regarding my question: never mind, I have it figured out, I had to wait for my men returned from my mission.

[TroubleMaker]

if you have an unknown species you can't even be sure it's dead so it makes sense to me to use containment.

Almost agree. But no any earth-air-breathing thing can be active in cryogenic facility. Also, deep freeze makes removal of different organs undamaged much easier  Especially if we have a bunch of similar bodies and can sacrifice some of them just to take only one organ from the dead (?) body, and send other parts of that body to crematoria.

[BTAxis]

Note that the aliens do not breathe our atmosphere.

[Haijo]

Almost agree. But no any earth-air-breathing thing can be active in cryogenic facility. Also, deep freeze makes removal of different organs undamaged much easier  Especially if we have a bunch of similar bodies and can sacrifice some of them just to take only one organ from the dead (?) body, and send other parts of that body to crematoria.

Yeah but containment doesn't mean cryogenic, it means containment, in other locked up.

[Aarontu]

It makes more sense to me to keep corpses in a containment facility rather than in the general stores with the weapons and supplies, if only for sanitation reasons.  Plus, the corpses would decay if they weren't somehow preserved.

[shevegen]

Also, deep freeze makes removal of different organs undamaged much easier

I dont want to be nitpicking so feel free to completely disregard it, but it also depends on the time. If you freeze shortly, then water crystals will manage to build up within the cell. Some animals like certain frogs use glycerol and similar compounds to not have adverse effects of slow freezup causing damaging, and cryo-electron microscopy works similar in that the cells are shock-frozen and then broken up (to reveal structures down to 0.3 nanometers in size, this gives really great images by the way, my favourite is one of the inner side of the cell nucleus where you can see the tiny little pores where messenger RNA and other cargo molecules can pass through it)

I guess for autopsy slow-freezing could still be ok, maybe aliens are even tougher than humans etc...

[TroubleMaker]

it also depends on the time. If you freeze shortly, then water crystals will manage to build up within the cell.
...
I guess for autopsy slow-freezing could still be ok, maybe aliens are even tougher than humans etc...

Similar matters were discussed in one of Heinlein's novels. I don't know the English name of the novell, but you may have read it also. There's guy, almost student, son of "brilliant scientist and his best female-student" won a lottery (inventing an ad slogan for "Sky Way soap") and got the space suit as second price.

As to slow and fast/shocking freezing, let me concretize.
I would prefer to store dead alien's bodies in fast-frozen state (with freezing speed approx 100degrees/second), not in slow-frozen: they would not be used as mashed beef, instead, they must retain their structures for my examinations.

Note that the aliens do not breathe our atmosphere.

Well, my fault. Any way, they wear no hermetic helmets or something like, so air pressure and temperature are suitable for them - you will not colonize Jupiter because of its high gravity.

It makes more sense to me to keep corpses in a containment facility rather than in the general stores ... Plus, the corpses would decay if they weren't somehow preserved.

Deep and fast freezing is the good enough way to preserve dead bodies, isn't it?

Yeah but containment doesn't mean cryogenic, it means containment, in other locked up.

I talked the same: before we can create suitable conditions to contain live aliens, we must have a storage for the bodies of dead aliens. And I know no method better than cryo.