Person, definitely. I can call the cops on a person, and keep my distance until they respond. 1000 roaches means.... fuck I don't even KNOW what it takes to tackle a roach infestation that big, but it's probably thousands of dollars and dozens of hours of labor.
I'll take the person. I lived with roaches in the past. Were impossible to get rid of and would keep destroying stuff including electronics. Not to mention the SOUND at night. Those 1000 roaches will also rapidly multiply to be way more.
I'm glad to be out of that place. In the person case I am sure I could either reason with them (If they're living in my attic out if necessity) or have the authorities involved (If they're a danger to me).
An easier (but more time consuming way) to get rid of roaches is with bait, not spray. Use spray only in areas you absolutely don't want them to touch, because they know it's bad and just avoid it. Use little amounts of bait everywhere else. Then you wait, and wait, and slowly they die and don't come back.
Even though I'm in an apartment and there's no attic, a human. Dead or alive, it'd be about 3,000,000 times quicker to get rid of a single person than pests.
My ex-partner and I lived in their grandfather's house for a little while after he passed away. There were places we were not allowed like one storage room and the attic. We would often hear a radio come on in the attic and go off at various times and the occasional loud thump, and most weird was almost like sobbing, but we assumed it must be the old radio plugged in up there. Also every now and then his dad would "need to get into the attic" for no reason. The only access was on the outside of the roof through a trap door that was padlocked. My ex's birth certificate had an discrepancy on it that he had 3 siblings even though he only had 2. His mom said they just made a mistake, but he was 90% sure that his hidden sibling was living in that attic. I used to think it was a running joke, but looking back I think he was at least a little serious and I don't put it past his parents. They were completely insane and I'm glad he hasn't had contact with them in years (we're still friends). So roaches, def, roaches. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
Understandable because this is the Internet, but I do not drink enough to be a successful fiction author. I've just had a very interesting life. I would certainly do that if the house was still standing. They tore it down about ten years ago. This was 19 years ago and like I said I thought it was just an old clock radio with the alarm that would wake you up to radio the old man may have plugged in up there. He was pretty senile before he went. He kept his mail in the freezer. He had a tendency to purchase repeat items he didn't need like three of the same retro stereo or 20 cans of coffee each week. My ex and I had spent a couple weeks homeless so I wasn't super tuned in and I thought he was messing with me. We never really had enough evidence to prove anybody actually lived up there. I mean the place was infested with rats and mice so that could have accounted for the noises and I figured they were just slowly taking the valuables out of the place. We didn't stick around for more than a couple of weeks before his crazy mom ran us off. I just wrote it off as the overactive imagination of two people who were struggling and under a lot of pressure.
You're under the guise that somebody's going to actually get picked up for trespassing in your house and is going to end up seeing some possible jail time so that you won't have to worry about them but if they're actually having a mental health issue the local police departments will usually just cut them loose pretty quickly so they'll be back out on the street and probably back in your attic befor the end of the day....
My first choice was find a person living there...but what kind of person would I find? People come in many varieties, whereas roaches are predictable. The kind of person that would break in to live in your attic might not be the best kind...eh I'll still take my chances.
The kind of person to break into your attic is honestly likely just someone looking for shelter. Statistically there's more drifters and squatters than dangerous people