I'd pick the person.

I feel like thats not even that many roaches for a real infestation

Also doesnt mention what kind

And there are proffesionals you can call probably once to deal with that problem.

If you find a human living in your attic unbeknownst to you well

Thats a lifetime of therapy or more to deal with after dealing with the immediate problem

Roaches every time

I was going to say exactly this. 1,000 roaches is not that many roaches, can be easily dealt with, and pose no serious immediate threat.

One human could kill you and your entire family and then burn your house down.
- If you see 1 roach, there’s probably 1,000 more hiding. If you see 1,000 roaches…
- Roaches can cause respiratory problems, but I'd take that over potential murder and rape.
  
  Also, I would be very disappointed in my dogs if they didn't notice a person living in the attic. You can find a ball by scent--you'd better notice a person creeping around!
- Why do we assume the human wants to harm you? If they're in your attic, that means they would have already killed you if they wanted.
  
  Chances are if you maintain peace, they will.
Absolutely with you here. Roaches is normal at worst
What if it’s a nice person though?
- They would have asked if they could live in my attic
fr, that person might rape and/or murder me but the roaches won’t lol
to be fairy there are also professionals who will be all too willing to take any unregistered humans off your hands...
A LIFETIME of therapy?

I'd rather the person. A roommate that's so good, I didn't even notice them there until I physically checked the attic? Perfect.

That was my thought, if they've gone unnoticed until then that means they are quiet, that alone puts them in the top 5% of roommates.
Are they tidy? Do they clean up and keep the noise at a dull roar? They can stay.

Does anyone know I've found this person?

I want to hear your answer for both options.
- 1000 roaches?
  
  I'd roll them into a blunt.
What?
- Free person.
  
  Think of the possibilities.
- "Is anyone aware that I have located the individual in my attic?"

You can legally kill roaches.

You can legally kill people too. Cops do it all the time.
- See, the issue with your statement is the "you" part. As a dark skinned person with leftist political stances, I don't believe I can get away with what cops do.
Instructions unclear. Apparently being overrun by a roach army is not a good enough reason to burn your own house down.

From a practical standpoint, the person is theoretically easier to get rid of than the roaches because there's almost certainly only one of them and even if there's two, of opposite sex, it takes considerably more time and effort for them to produce any more of them and even then more than a decade before those offspring can themselves breed. That said a person is as big as at least 1000 cockroaches and has more natural defences.

It's a bit of a conundrum because there's probably more readily available resources for getting rid of roaches than a person, but they're probably less effective than most anti person resources that you can get if you can get them. You could try the anti roach tactics on the person but you'd have to get like a lot of roach spray and a lot of protective equipment because the cornered person is pretty dangerous. You couldn't even really call in a professional either because I reckon they'd likely run away when they discovered they weren't dealing with roaches.

Depending on your area the local police would probably be the best stand in for pest control at this scale and probably pretty effective too so ultimately the person is probably the better option of the 2 but that said it'd be an awful lot more disturbing than the 1000 roaches. There is at least the option of becoming friends with the person though which is not really an option with the roaches.

I'm sure tenting the whole house for a few days will get rid of both easily
I'm leaning roaches just because I won't have as much difficulty explaining why I killed them.
Yeah but I feel like modern insecticides/ pest control methods are pretty good. Probably could have the roaches nipped in the bud with 1-2 visits from a decent exterminator. Involving the police etc sounds like a much bigger ordeal

You can call the police for a person.

You can't fir 1000 roches.

Hell i'd take a person over 10 roaches

You need 1 bullet to deal with a person, and 1000 to deal with 1000 cockroaches.

Math is pretty easy.
- I think using 1000 bullets in your home to kill roaches would be...ya know what, nah, go for it
- And then a shitload of contractors to repair the 1000 bullet holes in your house due to the massive overkill of shooting roaches.
  
  Nice accuracy tho.
You can just call an exterminator for the roaches though. I would definitely rather invite an exterminator into my house that the cops.

Treating the question seriously, I think it is easy to think the one person is the right choice, because it just seems like less of a mess to deal with. However, I also think the end result is that you will never feel safe in your home again. You will always second guess if every squeak you hear is yet another person who somehow have made it into your house. This is the path towards slowly descending into madness.

Even if you got rid of the 1000 roaches. You'll always think there are a ton up there. There could be 10,000 in a couple of months after you get "rid" of the 1000.

You can physically make it impossible for a person to get in your attic. You can't do that with roaches.
I’m just amazed you think person is the obvious choice, because my immediate thought is that roaches are way less likely to murder me and thus the obvious choice.
And also, if you've seen one roach in your attic, you probably already have a thousand of them anyway.

Both problems can in theory be solved with a flamethrower

The right amount of borax also takes care of either problem.
In practice choosing 1000 roaches would make for a legal solution (i don't know how to survive jail)

As a homeowner? Person. While it might be terrifying to discover a hobo living in the attic, at least they won't infest every electronic item I own. And they can't fit into the walls.

I made the mistake of staying with a boyfriend who didn't disclose his roach infestation until I was already there. My god. They were everywhere. They didn't even run when you turned the light, just give me a wave with one leg like, hey, how you doing?

Kinda shows who is the real boss there.
A roach waving at me would make me drop dead on the spot.
- That's some Joe's Apartment shit

I hate bugs, like HATE. But I watched that video of the girl living in the storage space in the ceiling. And she'd come down at night to eat food and piss in the sink... I'll take the bugs

Thanks for making me discover that. Could've lived my whole life without knowing about it.
I guess the toilet would make to much noise.
- It never said where she'd #2 tho... That's what scares me most. If she's peeing in the sink..
Well now I'm debating my answer.

One human sized roach, or 1000 roach sized humans?

A human sized roach is big enough to just shoot. A roach-sized human could be hiding anywhere with like a poisoned needle or whatever.
- Yeah, but a human sized roach has an armoured carapace which is now a few centimetres thick. Do you have a cannon with armour piercing ammunition at home? I'll take my chances in forming an alliance with the small people.
Definitely the 1 human sized roach this one's obvious. It's hard enough getting rid of 1000 roach sized roaches and now you want to give them human ingenuity?
Human sized roach. I mean Gregor just kinda died of his own accord didn't he? You just gotta emotionally reject it as having ever been your son and maybe throw an apple or two at it.

Killing a thousand roaches would be pretty difficult.... I'm just sayin'......

and they multiply

but maybe that can be a good thing... just start feeding them until you gain their loyalty and have them protect your house from anyone trying to live in your attic
- I think there's some sci-fi there somewhere
Yeah but so is hiding the dead body of a person
- Are we making people jerky I love people jerky. --The jungle ape on Johnny bravo
Big Bomb

Leave for the day.

It's a lot easier to kill a single human than 1000 roaches.

True, a cockroach will live pretty near forever it seems.

I don't want to deal with any person that can handle the intense summer heat in my attic without dying.

Yes, its 110+ F here during the day... the attic... well a few years ago we had a guy out to service...

He FELL down the attic ladder due to heat stroke. Its one of those almost straight ladders that fold into the ceiling.

He was thankfully ok, and after some AC and water, was right as rain... I should say, he was a young guy in good health, and not only that a friend of a family member. We wanted to take care of him, first and foremost. If we thought medical attention was needed (and my own ass has had heat stroke, I know it) we would have called emergency services. We didn't want to stick him with an ambulance bill (no insurance, private contractor) if he didn't need it.

But fuck, 1k roaches? You know what, I'll board the animals, use it as an excuse to get a nice hotel room with the wife, see if we can both take PTO for the week off and take an unprompted vacay, while the exterminator does their business.

That being said, 10 years ago, when I was much much poorer, with much more tenuous job stability... I'd take a knife up for the human in the attic, take the body to a family friend with a pig farm. Pigs make the best witnesses. They eat all the evidence, and can't speak.

For once I am glad I live in a location that I would be too hot for anything to live in my attic.

That’s what you think. Roaches can survive extreme heat. Humans, not so much.
- I didn't need to hear this before bed time.

If you have both, you could set them against each other and the problem might solve itself

Thunderdome! 1001 creatures enter, only one leaves!

People that live in attics write best selling books. I bet I could negotiate at least 60% of that profit if it was my fucking attic. Easy Choice.

relevant
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/_K4qDlbyCCg
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
It'll be just like The Sims

A person because you can reason with him. Maybe he’s cool when you get to know him. You can’t get to know 1000 roaches because there are so many of them and they have no brains

"normal" people don't hide/live in someone's attic. The chances that they are disturbed past reason or dangerous is quite high.
I love how you have to explain why you can't get to know and reason with a roach.

“This is truly, on god, the first “would you rather” that I’ve ever had to devote significant thought to.”

They just don’t like punctuation.

Edit, sorry @ [email protected] I meant to reply to you.

Oh ffs. How you managed to decipher that, I don't know. Thank you!!
What does "on god" mean? First I've heard that term.
- They’re swearing to god that what they are saying is true. It’s phrased a bit awkwardly, I think they’ve mixed up “I swear to god” and “hand on heart” or maybe “on my mother’s life”, something like that.
- like, "I swear by god", I'm guessing
- Truthfully
1000 roaches or a human in my attic is not what fucked me up, it was that damn second comment and I scrolled furiously thinking surely it's not just me. Thanks for the explanation.
Thank you!

Absolutely a person. Worst case scenario a human is far easier to remove than a thousand roaches and that's assuming they can't be reasoned with or even befriended

There's a chance they're the love of your life

I could take sterilized roaches. Their power in that their population grows like hell. But 1000 you can kill off and that's settled? Okay, deal. Guess, the first hunt would take a half of them for good.

A person? You obviously can't kill them in most jurisdictions unless you are a LEO. But I'd look forward to reach out and cooperate with them in some way. Idk them and maybe they have cool things to talk about or learn from them. Imagine them blasting an ukulele and being open to teach you. Or just being a good friend material.

I'd probably take both and do bonding with a cellar person over killing bugs.

Hypothetically, if I knew someone, who was absolutely not me, that had 1000 sterilized people in their attic, would that be a crime?
Oh shit, I'm a VIRGO.

Depends on the person TBH

Well let's get specific; what sort of person would you pick over 1000 roaches, and vice versa?
- If the guy was a chill roommate, probably preferable to cockroaches. Creepy or violent would probably push things towards the mostly harmless insects.
- Just someone cool, who also pitches in for rent.

The Roaches. I can simply kill the person. I could claim insurance for the damage caused by the roaches.

Why tf would you kill the person??? You don't know anything about them
- I know they're in my attic.

Roaches don't have squatters rights.

But does anyone else know you have a rando living in your attic?

A person, she/he will be staying there nice and tight 🪢

Person seems solvable

The person. It doesn't even say of it's alive or dead, if it's someone you know or not, if it's someone who also lives in the house or not.

A thousand cockroaches is a lot

It's says "living in your attic"...
- True, I guess I can't read. But the rest still stands
Fine, you get a corpse full of 1000 cockroaches 🪳

Congrats!

Fun one. I grew up in trailers and we had roaches. Id wake up with them crawling all over. Turn on a light and up the walls they go. Now I’m a behavior therapist and I’d take the person who obviously means me no harm over skittering ass bugs. There’s nothing that says they have to stay either or that they can’t be helped :)

As someone who had bedbugs, I'd rather wrestle a person than ever see a bug in my place that isn't a spider again.

My attic is over the detached garage, so I’d choose person hands down.

I probably wouldn’t know for a really long time, because I don’t use that space (the ladder up there is duct-taped where it cracked at some point, and since I don’t use it, I’m not about to replace it) it stays decently warm up there so less concern about finding a frozen corpse, and if someone did croak in the garage, the smell wouldn’t permanently be in the house.

But roaches would find their way into the house.

I mean. With roaches you could always hire an exterminator. Not so with a person.

I guess you could call the cops, they really like killing people.
- Yeah that is one way of doing it.
Roaches don't pay rent.
Depending on the skin color of the person living in your attic, you can.

They prefer to be called cops though.

100% would do the person

you can befriend them easier than roaches

After the summer we have been having if I found a person I my attic they would not be found living.

I hate to tell you that it's cool enough today here that I shut my window.
- damn, make sure to leave a blanket in your attic so your stranger can stay warm.

Richard stallman

Again?

Jk

What do I get when I take both?

You definitely don't get visitors because yikes.
A big man sized cockroach living in your attic. Or maybe it's a cockroach shaped man.

Please be nice to him he's going through a lot
- Obviously! Poor guy...

A person can't hide in my shirts to crawl on me when I put them on

I'd definitely go with a body since the authorities can come and clean up the evidence in a shorter amount of time than it takes for the office at this apartment complex I'm living in to send in someone to take care of the roaches.

living in your attic.
- Even if it was a living person, it'd still take police less time to clear them out than it would for the front office to get pest control to come in.

Id rather find a person. Finding them implies i was looking for them all along right? Haha

Am I the only one here who can't work out what the second person is saying in that reply? Having a "has anyone really been far even as decided..." moment.

Paraphrased, it says: "this made me think hard because I don't like either option"

Nothing else is important information, just sensational fluff to make a regular statement sound more exciting.
lmao I had flashbacks to the same line as well. For old memes sake, Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
As [email protected] translated:

This is truly, on god, the first “would you rather” that I’ve ever had to devote significant thought to.”

They responded to you but accidentally put it into a new root comment. They edited it, but I think they didn't ping you correctly, so here's your ping :)
- I’m messing up left, right and centre today! Thank you for that 😊