Nat Geo "When Aliens Attack"

I'm sure some of you may have seen this recent show. Its a scenario where aliens attck earth, almost wipe us out, and we eventually drive them back. Same old alien story ad nauseum with some survival stuff mixed in and commentary about how most people would die due to lack of planning/preparation for emergencies. The only thing I thought they got right was how quickly we would be totally defeated, like within hours. And how we would be more likely to die from their virus/bacteria, similar to the europeans and native peoples in the americas. Other than that I thought it was a bit cheesy. If they're that advanced, couldn't they just wipe us out silently with a neurotoxin, or send out ant sized robots to chew us up for biomass? The most silly of all was that the military supposedly has a plan to fight alien invaders. Yeah right, someone's been watching too many movies. IMO, if they make it here, we won't have much say in the matter. Anyone else see it?

I've not bothered.

Greg Bear's novel, "Forge of God" is one relatively realistic take on the scenario. The aliens are so far advanced that the human characters are pretty much irrelevant to the outcome.

It does attempt to deal with the alien motivation, which is surely a necessary element of any scenario. They probably aren't here to take our gold or our women.

If there were aliens advanced enough to span the interstellar vasts and reach us, we'd be pretty much hosed if they were unfriendly.

I think that there was a plan. It dated back to the mid 80s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK-XATA-5gs&NR=1

Thats why the FEMA concentration camps have been built. Just in case the aliens don't like beef, chicken or pork!!!

I'm going off to the Extraterrestrial Highway (Nevada) next week. If I see anything ... I'll be sure to let you know. Ha! Ha!! Ha!!!

Pete #2

If these aliens arrive, then they posses a form of faster-than-light drive system. To travel faster than the speed of light, they will need artificial gravity. Otherwise, every crew member would have their face planted on the back wall. Is this beginning to sound like science fiction to you? Any race capable of this would not have shields that could be taken out with an EMP.

Jeanette Isabelle

If memory serves me right you only get about a theoretical 6 kilotonnes of yield per kg weight of a 2 stage conventional hydrogen bomb mostly due to weight of the plutonium tamper. With the newer 4 th gen tritium boosted anti-hydrogen weapons you get about 60-100 kilotonnes per kg. So even small warheads that weigh 6000 kg i.e. payload for a old Soviet SS18 etc will get you a approx 1/2 Gigatonne explosion. Enough to take out a 5 km wide asteroid or comet. Off course if the aliens arrive on planet Niburu next year then all bets are off.

I guess it depends on who attacks us. If the Wraith, assuming they do not come in large numbers, we are fine as their ships do not have much shielding to speak of. If they are Asurans, we are dead.

Jeanette Isabelle

Do I detect a challenge?

Jeanette Isabelle

Even if we were to integrate Angus MacGyver and Jack O'Neill, the battle still belongs to the Asurans. We would need an Ascended or Lain Iwakura.

Jeanette Isabelle

So you think the battle would belong Lain Iwakura. . . .

Wow! You truly are a glasses-wearing nerd of the highest order.

Jeanette Isabelle

Fortunately, Ascension is my weekend job. I un-ascend in time for work.

(trying to hide my glasses)

I doubt earth has anything that anyone might want. Water, organic chemical, hydrocarbons are all pretty common in the universe. Certainly any civilization that has Faster-Than-Light (FTL) travel could gather these without messing with our tiny blue dot.

I would have to assume that any FTL aliens that show up are coming to be entertained. We can only hope they would be interested in our exotic cultures, quixotic behaviors. Perhaps our ability to do stupid human tricks, or act as pets. It could become a fashion statement where no alien household could be considered complete without a few humans as pets.

That's how it goes if we are lucky. If not, they like a good hunt and blood sports.

Either way there isn't much we can do about it. We can't fight them and we have pretty much forfeited any moral high ground so our ability to persuade them is likely to be limited. Given how we treat our fellow humans and our long tradition of exploitation of 'lesser animals' any argument based on morality might not be taken seriously.

Humans have maintained other humans as slaves for most of our history and slavery isn't gone entirely. We kill and make war over the slightest provocation, real or imagined. Hunting for fun, bull and cock fighting, and bear baiting have been the norm for most of human history.

The one thing most heartening about the subject is that the universe is huge. Even at FTL speeds of ten time light it would take thousands of years to cross a single galaxy. Seems a very long way to go to get resources you can find pretty much anywhere and to meet, or beat on, a species still so primitive it can't control its own breeding and get serious about resource use.

Stop panicing. We've got The Doctor.....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arAjbSkKF-Q&feature=related

One of the nice things about the Greg Bear story I mentioned (and its sequel, "Anvil of Stars", that I actually prefer), is that the aliens don't have faster-than-light drives. So far as we know, those are impossible. Instead the aliens just spent a long, long time travelling. Relativistic affects mean the time is shorter for them, and we shouldn't assume they have human psychology, physiology or lifetimes. For example, they might be machines that can shut themselves down for the journey.

(I agree about the EMP, though. If they can get here, they are probably massively superior to us. Niven et al's "Footfall" is a novel where this isn't true. Fun but unlikely.)

I figure the two most likely scenarios are religious advocacy, or pre-emptive strike.

Within human society at any rate, first-contacts have historically often be done by religious missionaries who want to convert the heathen natives to whatever god or philosophy the missionaries favour. If aliens want to convert us, hopefully they don't want to kill us. Of course, they might also be motivated by a form of racial (or inter-species) hatred and see us as vermin and an offence to their god. With religion, almost any belief system is possible. I wouldn't assume that a species capable of space travel would be rational in other ways.

In Forge of God, the motive is self-defence. In the book it's possible to build robots that can travel to a star system, take apart any inhabited planets and use the parts to build more robots. Rinse and repeat, forever. Given that other species can do this, each civilisation ought to build their own killer robot fleet to wipe out everyone else first. It's a race.

One would think any civilization capable of interstellar travel would have outgrown religion.

May I recommend Star Wars or Stargate: Atlantis? Both of these depict religious people who travel from planet to planet.

Jeanette Isabelle

I think it would be pretty much impossible for us humans to work out alien's motivations - thats what alien means, right?

I certainly don't see them needing our resources, we are at the bottom of a gravity well after all. Easier places to get 'stuff' from and there are loads of places and stuff in the galaxy!

I read somewhere (maybe New Scientist, can't find it now) that because of the likely lack of FTL travel with aliens and the subsequent timescales of getting from A to B, they would send a nano swarm first to check us out. So physical laws for soft flesh needn't apply and huge accelerations could be attained, without the need for complicated spaceships, reducing cost and timescales. First Contact is likely to be WAY different from the hollywood view.

I also read somewhere an interesting thought that if you want to meet an alien the most likely place is during a solar eclipse. The thought was that the chances of a moon being exactly the right distance and size to provide a total solar eclipse where you can still see the sun's corona is so slight, that it would be a likely sightseeing destination for aliens galaxy wide. I really like the idea of space tourists. Maybe instead of fearing destruction we should look on it as a tourism opportunity.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you are capable of interstellar travel, particularly if you have mastered FTL travel, you don't need fancy weapons. Forget about ray guns, phasers, nano robots and all that. Your simplest and most devastating weapon is as simple as throwing a rock. Head to the asteroid belt and you have huge amounts of rocks to throw.

What if the aliens are nano sized? Don't the laws of science behave somewhat differently at that size? Now that would be interesting.

I have often surmised that if aliens come to visit us, it is to watch our strange behavior during morning and evening rush hour traffic - kind of the way we gather to watch the evening bat flights at Carlsbad Caverns.....

If we are unlucky, they just let us continue to breed indiscriminately, returning every so often to snatch some of us up as food to serve to their pets.

[shivers thinking about it ... and adds futuristic laser or plasma rifle to his survival supply wish list]

i'm ready for the aliens.



and i have a bow tie.

No towel?!

Why a towel? I would think he could use a long scarf. I assume the brown bag has Jelly Babies, if not, he needs those too.

Jeanette Isabelle

Reference for all the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" geeks out there.

That is one I have not seen.

Jeanette Isabelle

For all the uninitiated out there.

"... a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with. "

Thank you Douglas Adams for the above and for "DON'T PANIC".

-Eric

Wow, its a long time since I watched the original TV series on the BBC after getting back home from school. We only had 3 TV channels back then. This would have been around the same time the Sinclair ZX-81 was new and Blakes 7 was on the TV as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnautWFuEnQ




The Babelfish non existance of God argument probably wouldn't go down to well on the TV in Florida.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcncPpQ8loA

Jeesh I JUST watched the Movie again and now I Am DYING to get the book!

So that's why Dr. Brent Blue included a towel in the medical kit he designed. And he said it was because "Several pilot friends recommended towels."

http://www.aeromedix.com/aeromedix_articles/medkit/index.html

Jeanette Isabelle

Actually, PBS had a rather nice TV adaptation of Douglas Adam's work. This was years before the movie. And yes, it had the proof of the non-existence of God and many of the other excepts from the Hitchhiker's Guide that were in the book.

there -is- a towel there; you just can't see it because it's one second out of sync with our time zone.
besides, i can use the screwdriver to atomize any water around me(within, say...three inches of my stratum corneum) that doesn't contain traces of my DNA, thus rendering myself dry, but not dehydrated. very neat trick, very popular at poolside dinner parties(your hair will probably still be a bit damp, but you'll be wanting to run a comb through it anyway, so that's fine).





very cool. i've tried a few cool hats as well, but they keep getting hit by stray gunfire.

I just got around to seeing "District 9" recently and really enjoyed it. In some ways it reminded me of the old "Alien Nation" movie / series.

Both are interesting takes on the alien genre where the aliens aren't superior invaders.

Ok, I read of lot of sci-fi. I'm pretty sure that unless we get invaded by yellow blooded cannabalistic omnivorous alligators (ty John Ringo) we have little to worry about.

Our food will more than likely not be compatible with their food. Our atmosphere may kill them. Our germs either will zap their butts dead, or not effect them - 50/50 chance. Unless they are way advanced our weapons will hurt about anything.

"Scuse me Mr. Alien, stand here while my buddy shoots your green self with his Barret" "Wow, that's some hole. Does it hurt?"

Just load up on ammor. Maybe the pets can eat them.

Failing that, use the towel trick from Hitchhikers. If you can't see them...

Somehow I think South Park has it right: the rampant greed, violence, cruelty, and all manners of wickedness on earth will so repel the aliens that they might just cordon us off and declare earth a toxic dump, off limits to the more evolved civilizations in the galaxy.

Since this forum is called Equipped to Survive - what should we add to our EDC or bug-out kit or bug-in stash to prepare for an alien invasion? A vial of your snot from when you had the flu? Silver-tipped ammo for the army from the planet Lupus X? A babel fish?

Da Bing

A cork.

I think you underestimate just how far behind the technological, and energy, curves humans would be against any species capable of leaving their solar system in any meaningful way, doing it routinely and with considerable numbers. Having FTL capability would seem necessary but even without that they would be far, far more advanced then we are.

What can you do about it ... not much. Advising people to do more than the usual instinctual response, dig a hole and hide, would be like advising ants to stock up on seeds and double the guard when humans start building houses next door.

If it was to come to pass you could dig a hole and stock up on beans and bullets, if that sort of activity makes you feel better, but really ... if they are who they must be to have gotten here ... and they are anything but friendly and/or entertained by us ... we are screwed.

The energies and technologies needed for extra-solar exploration/exploitation make planetary bombardment with asteroids trivial. They can drop an asteroid the size of a building anywhere on earth and get the explosive force of a nuclear weapon, with none of the nasty nucleotides.

It is okay to dream of mounting a bold and determined resistance and hunkering down for them to die off from endemic diseases but the bottom line is that if they want us gone ... we are gone. No amount of grim determination, or waving our ineffectual fists, will change that.

The good news is that he more we learn about other solar systems the more we understand exactly how unremarkable our little system is. So far, every assumption about what makes our solar system and planet special has been shown to be a regular feature of other systems and planets. So far, last I checked, suitable stars, water, presence in a habitable zone, and presence of organic molecules were all shown to be present elsewhere. Given the feebleness of our technology and limited reach if we can detect those there are most certainly a whole lot more out there. All that is good. If there is nothing particularly special about our planet there would be little reason to invade. Why would anyone cross a good part of a galaxy to get to what is on their doorstep?

There's some advice here. Not that I take it seriously, but I would quite like to get a teeshirt that illustrates Pythagoras nicely.

I guess it would all depend on motive.

I'm just guessing here, but it would seem like the amount of bombardment needed to eliminate mankind would also render the earth uninhabitable in its existing form. Therefore, the alien race's motive would either have to be purely emotional or there would have to be something very unique about the earth that would still be very valuable following the destruction of the ecosystem.

The issue with the latter is that it flies in the face of the mediocrity principle which is the philosophical underpinning that leads to the conclusion that alien life probable to start with. According to the mediocrity principle there shouldn't be anything unique about the earth and therefore there would be nothing special enough here worth killing all life for (as you, Art, stated as well).

That said, if an alien race were motivated to invade the earth, the likelihood is they would still need boots on the ground at some-point, even if only to mop up the minority that survived the broader assaults. Although, maybe something like V would be more likely, feigning friendship while conspiring towards their own ends.

That was an interesting read, but its logic seems a bit contradictory.

On the one hand it figures the aliens would be so technologically advanced that any resistance would be futile (and, as a side note, of course we couldn't fight Matrix-style; that would be a battle against self-aware machines we created, not an alien species ).

Yet it posits we'd be the ones that would have to establish the means to communicate.

Realistically, all of the underlying assumptions around intelligent alien life would mean that the likelihood of our civilization being the first they've encountered extremely low. And even if it was, the idea that such a race wouldn't have a protocol (or come up with one prior to first contact) for establishing communications with an alien (to them) race, that they'd just show up and look at each other saying "shoot, now what do we do" seems incredibly unlikely, assuming they have an actual desire to communicate with us.

And if they don't want to talk to start with, us making little models of triangles likely won't change their mind .

I don't know about that. the movie coming out a few years ago must have spiked interest in some folks.

I read it about the same age you did. Though I'm more a fan of Wells and his contemporaries.

Aren't we overlooking the obvious? Most existing data indicate that aliens aren't as interested in doing high school geometry as in, um, you know. All I can say is that I'm packing some KY in my alien kit.

As for the T shirt illustration, I think you want something like this on your chest, perhaps without the words or algebraic symbols:

Even on earth modern warfare is becoming automated, and precise disabling weapons using sound, heat, etc. are being used, not to mention our extensive stockpiles of chemical/biological stuff. If we can develop such precise ways of killing eachother I'm sure ET's would be capable of the same. I imagine they'd use drones or create a very specific pathogen to wipe us all out. Or maybe they'd engineer super mosquitoes that can breed outside of water and survive in freezing temperatures. Now that would be a nightmare.

Any mosquito with a beak long enough to nail me through my many layers of winter clothing would be aerodynamically challenged, and an economical replacement for clay pigeons. I'm going to stock up on #9 field loads just in case.