How successful could rapidly spreading new predator be in world with today's type of development

Question

I was rewatching Secret war from Love, Death & Robots and started wondering, would the monsters from that episode pose any actual threat in today's world? Let's assume the monsters have similar characteristic as the ones in LDR.

• No special magical abilities
• Faster and stronger than humans
• Live and breed underground, but hunt on the surface
• Live in hive like structures. When a hive reaches a certain size it sends out colonizing workers which try to establish a new hive 10 to 100 km away from its original location. The new hive operates as individual entity independent from original hive.
• Mostly nocturnal, but can operate in daylight if forced
• There are several variants of the monsters, where smaller ones develop and mature faster than bigger ones.
• Hunt and kill any animal including humans that comes their way
• Posses enough intelligence to successfully hunt in packs.

For this scenario it is irrelevant if monsters came to Earth through a failed magical ritual or are part of a failed cloning experiment. They exist and until they reach high numbers almost nobody is aware they exist. People become aware of the monsters when they start appearing and hunting in big cities. Lets put first big hives in the Amazon rainforest in Brasil. First sightings and mass killings happen in Brasils state Para and Mato grosso. How would government and military react to this threat. How fast should monster be able to multiply and expand in order to avoid extermination.

Edit: Added some more specific information.

Answer 1

We're humans. We're a walking, talking, ecological disaster

The equivalent of the dinosaur killer comet on legs. Responsible for the death of 70% of land mammals in the last 50 years. We used to hunt the closest thing we have to a multi tonne, ship crushing, kracken eating sea monster for its oil, which burned nicely, and we only stopped because there were virtually none left.

The point I'm trying to make is, that if there's one thing our civilization has figured out, it's how to wipe out a species.

First up, I'd argue these won't go unnoticed until they get to cities. Even if they only hunt sheep and not humans, we have this nasty habit of carrying cameras everywhere, and farmers tend to notice sheep vanishing. We're talking 1000 of these things, tops, before someone spots one and starts to take notice.

If they hunt everything, we'd set up decoys, or poisoned or booby trapped baits. Animal traps. A few sheep in a field, and a bunch of hunters.

If they sleep underground, we'd fill their lair with gas. Do they need to breathe? If not, that's fine. We've got nerve gases that are absorbed on skin contact.

A major surge in these would result in a local city lockdown. Snipers would be deployed, we could track the creatures with thermal cameras on helicopters or drones, meaning very little chance of them ambushing us. When they retreat, because pack animals are smart enough to do so, we'd trace them back to their lair, and set it on fire. Or, y'know, gas again, because we're in a city and want to skip out on property damage.

If it turns out they breed too fast, we'll switch to biological warfare - a non earth creature is likely to be pretty safe to target with some home brewed viruses - the odds of us infecting our own population would be small. In the meantime, we'd keep their numbers down by poisoning, trapping, and shooting them.

I predict we'd be absolutely fine. Unless they're an emu

Answer 2

If these monsters were to exist in the real world, the government and military would likely take a multi-faceted approach to dealing with the threat. Initially, they would probably focus on containment, setting up quarantine zones and using military forces to secure the perimeter and prevent the monsters from spreading to other areas. They may also use air and ground forces to try and locate and destroy the hives.

As the situation evolves and more is learned about the monsters, the government may decide to launch a full-scale military operation to eradicate the threat. This would likely involve the use of heavy weapons, such as bombs and missiles, to destroy the hives and kill the monsters.

The speed at which the monsters can multiply and expand would be a critical factor in determining the success of the government's response. If they are able to reproduce and spread quickly, it may become very difficult to eradicate them, and they could pose a significant threat to the population. On the other hand, if the monsters are slow to reproduce and spread, the government may be able to contain and eradicate the threat before it becomes a major problem.

I think that the only way for them to survive is to reproduce so quickly that it would look like mitosis, where 1 becomes 2 and 2 becomes 4 and so on ... we would reach massive numbers in months and wouldn't be able to contain them...

But if the reproduction rate is like us (humans), then they wouldn't be able to reproduce quickly enough to not be noticed, since humans may have only 1 child per year ( or in twin cases a little bit more ).