Poor Handling of Dire Situations

In film, the army is notorious for this. In more movies than I can count, some soldier either accidentlly shoots something or out of fear shoots something. Chances are, that something is very important, and it shouldn't have been shot at. Such is the case in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Harmless Khatu emerges from his spacecraft, holding  a strange object. As he moves forward, an uneasy soldier shoots Khatu. That strange item Khatu held? A gift for the U.S. president. I don't know why people always shoot something just because they don't know what it is. Our mentality of "Gah, F***! Thats ugly! Lets kill it!" is going to be the death of us. Imagine what would have happened if, after shooting Klatu, the Robot Guard destroyed the planet, sensing the danger and lack of thought our race displays. If we cannot welcome an extraterrestrial visitor, how can we hope to handle nuclear weapons? It may just be a movie motiff, but it's certainly a concerning one. We may not want to associate ourselves with things that are different from us, but trying to destroy everything that we don't recognize is not a good idea. The strange things may be valueable, they may be friendly, or they may destroy us if we carelessly provoke them. We seriously need to consider all of our options before we go and shoot at the flying saucer. We seem to think we're invincible, but, unlike the movies, we wont be able to heroicly defeat the alien menace and save the day. We will die because unlike in the movies, the good guy doesn't always live.