If the world is invaded by aliens...seriously..

Part 2 of the cookbook for taking over another world already inhabited by other intelligent beings.

As unlikely as any space faring race would be to want or need to attack other intelligent beings lets go through them to see why its unlikely. Even humans would not attack an invade another planet full of sentients on a whim like a pack of teenagers hopped up on intoxicating beverages, each others pheromones and sexual displays. I will assume that the aliens gave an attack on earth more begining to end planing then the Bush Administration gave to Iraq. If a star-faring race decides to "whack" enslave or decapitate humanity from something dangerous its doing it will give it a lot of thought I am guessing.

5-- Earth would have to have a unique biological resource that a dead planet could not give them or Humanity's actions would have to pose a unique threat to areas far far outside its solar system.

Let say humanity was monkeying with a technology such a Nano tech or bridging our universe to alternate ones or something considered so dangerous that the humans would have to be dissuaded. Since we established that any multiple star star system culture would have destroyed itself BEFORE becoming so advanced if they were violent enough to consider taking other peoples things then we are left with the possibility which is similar to an adult taking a loaded gun away from a child (or america preventing Iraq or Iran from having Nuclear weapons)

A malevolent hive race might harvest a few humans for our DNA to fight a plague or bolster their race with our genes against some other challenge but that would not require full scale war. If the stories and shadey underbelly of the psycological profression is to be belived aliens have been plucking red necks and Nevada residents off the face of the planet for experiments since the 1950's without any through desire to invade.

6-- Great Hot-roded space ships that can travel between stars in very short time periods. (or very very long life spans)

No matter what the aliens first have to adapt them selfs to our environment because wiping out our biosphere and replacing it with their own is not very cost effective.... unless the engines of their warships were so advanced as to make the trip from earth to a distant star much much much faster then the speed of light. In that case it would be worth it to destroy earths bio sphere as enough pre grown bio material from the homeworld (or nearest planet in their sphere of influence) be could be brought to earth after its bio sphere was cleared completely to "start terra-forming from scratch"

Worse Slow engines would entail a problem that was discussed in Harry Turtledove's World War, and Colonization series. In it the aliens started for earth when humans were riding horses with lances and arrived to a world fighting WWII and as a result "better" prepared for them. If you want to conquer another already habited planet even if you are hostile but sane enough to save your superweapons for the humans only.... you have to have starship hot-rods.

I was about to start a new thread about the recent box office hit Cloverfield but thought better of it as people online are claiming that it is an alien ( for those who've seen the movie, notice in the very last scene theres something falling out of the sky and striking the water when rob & beth are at coney island). I have 2 questions.

1) judging by the ineffectiveness of conventional weapons against the monster, if earth was invaded by an army of these things, what are our options short of full scale nuclear strikes?

and

2) the monster attacked new york in the film but what would happen if it attacked a more densely populated area such as Shanghai? what would be the response of the chinese government as opposed to tha US's that we see in the movie.

Part 3 of Raptoreyes guide to inter stellar conquest.

7-- Excellent small unit warfare units. (if you decide not to destroy the bio sphere and start over)

Lets say you conquered the problems of resisting the earths germs without making those in the space landing dead green men the moment they took a breath of air or drank some earth water. Ok now you need to be able to take the planet without the humans nukes totally sterilizing the surface of the earth you tried very hard to avoid destroying yourself.

If you introduced your own engineered germs to kill off the humans you have the problem of the humans developing medical techniques to fight it and even germs to kill you. That is long slow warfare for the likely alien intervention of stopping some human science project that you feel will likely go wrong or harvesting something unique from the earths biosphere to solve some problem too big for your race to solve on its own. That means ground troops that could passify the humans quickly since humanity already has genome tech to fight a slower bio war and you are not likely to want to give them the time Cyborgs, zergling hordes, or other types of disposable purpose built beings would fill in nicely here.

8-- Inability to communicate with the humans.

Almost all possible alien aims could be done via negotiations even for a race that things humans bodies are tasty snacks. Its just easier to talk to humans then to destroy us from orbit and start over. Lets look at the possiblites that are solved by talk.

8A-- Humans are doing a science project that threatens the whole universe and don't know it.

If you can talk to the humans you just tell them "you clumsey bastards your going to kill everybody and here is the mathematics that explain why your science fair project will not work as you expect". Most humans in most parts of the world are pretty crazy but the parts of the Earth where all the high level research is done are much more sane judging from the low number of explosions in urban centers in these high tech regions. The aliens will likely know this after some short observation period. They would choose to talk.

8B-- If they came for some resource they could simply strong arm it from us by saying "stay out of our way while we harvest resource X" while firing some horrible death ray at some passing asteroids to impress these humans about how serious you are. Most world governments would probably be cowed by promises of being left alone so long as whatever exotic resource the aliens wanted was left to them.

RavenWing278 said:

I was about to start a new thread about the recent box office hit Cloverfield but thought better of it as people online are claiming that it is an alien ( for those who've seen the movie, notice in the very last scene theres something falling out of the sky and striking the water when rob & beth are at coney island). I have 2 questions.

1) judging by the ineffectiveness of conventional weapons against the monster, if earth was invaded by an army of these things, what are our options short of full scale nuclear strikes?

and

2) the monster attacked new york in the film but what would happen if it attacked a more densely populated area such as Shanghai? what would be the response of the chinese government as opposed to tha US's that we see in the movie.

Click to expand...

I have not seen the movie yet. Tell me more about the monster.

1-- Does it breath (you can kill it by liquefaction of a particular area of ground since I assume it cant fly after touching down from what I little I know so far.) Try to lure it near a body of water that it can suffocate in.

2-- Does it have joints on the legs as joints would be easier to break with shaped charges then attacking the main body mass of any creature. If it can be kept immobile its only a matter of time before you find a way to defeat its armor.

3-- Does it eat people or larger sized objects regularly. (feed it a big explosive and see if the inside structure is as resilient as that outside)

4-- Directing Lazers and other directed energy weapons at the creatures sensory organs might confuse it and make it blind in one way or another. If it tries to take out the lazer blinding it you simply make the lazer mobile and you can lead the creature out of a populated area and toward an environmental feature possibly harmful to it. (I am assuming anything big and indestructible is not particularly fast on its feet)

5-- If it does not eat things then their might be other holes on the creature that you put an explosive into such as auditory sensors or other such things.

6-- bombard the creature with high levels of every single type of energy we can introduce into its environment. You can do this without using nukes but you might have to evacuate first since some energy released cannot be done so in a directed fasion (in sufficient quantity) with our technology at this time.

Without having seen the creature

RavenWing278 said:

OMG! it'll totally be like the goa'uld in stargate but but!...just no..-_-.

Far more believable is that we come into contact with a seemingly benevolent alien race which helps us to further develope and integrate our society only to have a dark agenda. E.G. gives us a vaccine to cancer with the slight side affect of making us sterile..BOOM! instant world take over and not a shot was fired. This idea i also got from stargate... but when one actually thinks about it, its far more credible then alexander the great coming to our rescue.

Click to expand...

I just do not think that would happen the way it happened in Stargate. Humanity may be greedy and often dumb... but not all of us at the same time. If the aliens offered a health drug sterility mixed in secretively it would likely be detected in early trials. What?? You don't think we would test the drug first upon volunteers and would have limited it to a small sliver of the population for many years to ensure it was safe? In that Stargate episode I guess the Food and Drug Administration was out to lunch.

However other subtitle stratagems might be more likely.

Star Treks plan by the Borg Queen to explode a weapon full of Nano probes in the upper of atmosphere of earth that subverts or destroys the humans is more likely. Aliens might also make some horrible super plague look like some earth borne virus direct out of the tropics coming to a city near you. Aliens however would not have the sort of advantages in a bio war they would have in say a "soviet invaders from space 1950s movie model" we are all so familiar with.

The nature if interstellar travel means you will destroy yourself long before you destroy other planetary spicies if an avowed goal of your race is the conquest of others. WMD is necessary to move from one star to another and a conquest based spices has little chance of keeping its weapons only for other spices and not itself.

I guess the aliens could simply get all of our manufacturing to move to their economy via economic competition and then conquer when the process is complete.... but they will have to play some serious catch up because China already has a big start over any extra- terrestrials on that score.

utelore said:

I had actually talked to this "guy" and that will be the some of this information. But, here was the "guy" thought processes which is shared in this guys circle of knowing.

IF a Alien species has the ability to get from point A to Point B (earth) based on the the technology just to travel such a vast distance and IF these Aliens had intention of taking the earth for their own. Well, in all likelihood we would not even know we had been hit. That's how fast we would all be dead through means we can only wonder.

think about the best extermination company in the world taking out a small ant mound. thats the tech gap we are talking about.

Click to expand...

my points exactly.

Raptoreyes said:

I have not seen the movie yet. Tell me more about the monster.

1-- Does it breath (you can kill it by liquefaction of a particular area of ground since I assume it cant fly after touching down from what I little I know so far.) Try to lure it near a body of water that it can suffocate in.

2-- Does it have joints on the legs as joints would be easier to break with shaped charges then attacking the main body mass of any creature. If it can be kept immobile its only a matter of time before you find a way to defeat its armor.

3-- Does it eat people or larger sized objects regularly. (feed it a big explosive and see if the inside structure is as resilient as that outside)

4-- Directing Lazers and other directed energy weapons at the creatures sensory organs might confuse it and make it blind in one way or another. If it tries to take out the lazer blinding it you simply make the lazer mobile and you can lead the creature out of a populated area and toward an environmental feature possibly harmful to it. (I am assuming anything big and indestructible is not particularly fast on its feet)

5-- If it does not eat things then their might be other holes on the creature that you put an explosive into such as auditory sensors or other such things.

6-- bombard the creature with high levels of every single type of energy we can introduce into its environment. You can do this without using nukes but you might have to evacuate first since some energy released cannot be done so in a directed fasion (in sufficient quantity) with our technology at this time.

Without having seen the creature

Click to expand...

I'm assuming the creature breathes as it is seen to puff up its cheeks. It eats people. It has parasite growing off it that if a person gets bit, he/she will bleed from the eyes, swell up and then explode in a storm of gore and guts..
From last count it has 6 limbs, all of them have joints.

The US military employed MLRS, MBT's and artillery to little avail. LGB's are used from B-2 bombers and still the creature lives after taking 3 direct hits.

utelore said:

I had actually talked to this "guy" and that will be the some of this information. But, here was the "guy" thought processes which is shared in this guys circle of knowing.

IF a Alien species has the ability to get from point A to Point B (earth) based on the the technology just to travel such a vast distance and IF these Aliens had intention of taking the earth for their own. Well, in all likelihood we would not even know we had been hit. That's how fast we would all be dead through means we can only wonder.

think about the best extermination company in the world taking out a small ant mound. thats the tech gap we are talking about.

Click to expand...

Your right on that one... its unlikely they would have the desire to attack us even though they would likely have the ability to wipe us out in an instant. Anything truly intelligent is likely to be peaceful unless very strenuously provoked over a long period of time. Humans likely would not have the tech to even make the aliens worry a tiny bit much less be a threat.

I am more worried about stray pieces of alien technology that are still following old programs and have gotten out of control. One could end up in our solar system ready to fulfill its program without direction from its masters and we would probably try to stop it in vain.

RavenWing278 said:

I'm assuming the creature breathes as it is seen to puff up its cheeks. It eats people. It has parasite growing off it that if a person gets bit, he/she will bleed from the eyes, swell up and then explode in a storm of gore and guts..
From last count it has 6 limbs, all of them have joints.

The US military employed MLRS, MBT's and artillery to little avail. LGB's are used from B-2 bombers and still the creature lives after taking 3 direct hits.

Click to expand...

Hmmm I would coat the thing progressively in every chemical or biological agent I could think of one at a time. The openings used to introduce the paraistie to its human host could be used by anything we spray on the creature to poison or infect it. Its immune system might be impressive but the right combination of agents might interfere with its body functions.

That many legs would require a great deal of shape charges to try to break apart. I assume the missiles fired went for the things center mass and on the upper portion of its body. I would place one hell of a mine field and try to lure the creature into it to try to break off the tips of its legs touching the ground.

Fireing pieces of adhesive at the creature to glue various raideo active materials to it might poison it with ionizing radiation.

First thing first.

1. You people got to watch CLOVERFIELD. This is really one of the best SF movies I have watched for a long time, if not all time.

2. We always conceive of aliens based on Science Fiction and Hollywood. One thing I believe, that in real life, there is no escaping the Laws of Physics and Nature. Not even with ETs. Technology advancement or not, if something kills it kills. The spear of a Roman soldier can still pierce the heart of today's GI. To a more advanced civilization, we may be the bugs, and they may be exterminators out to kill bugs, but the bugs can bite back. And we know, bugs can kill, especially if they are organized enough. Kind of like this horror movie, when indeed, the giant bugs and spiders turn against the exterminators.

Thus I am not a believer of force fields that are impenetrable to kinetic weapons, massive death ray weapons that retain their energy even after a great distance, and viruses that will turn humans instantly to brain eating zombies. No phasers here that will vaporize humans in a second, and no light sabers either. If ETs managed to reach this solar system, it would have to be done with a great effort, and destroying the prize---Earth---may not be their intention. That would limit the use of their own WMD--- humankind's own use of WMD might end up being more threatening to itself than the ETs. Their purpose may not be the annihilation of the human species either. Humans might actually be the resource the ETs want, the crown jewel in the prize.

Because of the universality of the physical laws, form will also dictate function. Despite the vast distances, a lot of our universe remains the same point to point. The result is parallel evolution. Life that will evolve in a water planet will result in hydrodynamic fish like forms. Life that will evolve in a planet with an atmosphere will have wings, and develop similar aerodynamic forms.

For intelligent life to evolve, you need the following.

1. A metabolism that will guarantee enough energy supply to a large energy demanding brain. That rules out cold blooded creatures and insects. That will certainly means a warm blooded creature, one that generates enough heat on its own metabolism, with a diet to match.

2. A symmetrical layout. Binocular eyes to give that depth of vision. No cyclopian creatures here, that's frigging nonsense. Bipedal movement to give speed and agility. The requirements of complex muscle movement requires brain power, much like robots require processors. Fly By Wire in aircraft is actually one of the most biological systems ever designed by Man, because it mimics what living creatures always have and take for granted.

3. The ability to manipulate tools. That is what differentiates Man from another potentially intelligent species, the Dolphin. Expect ET to have hands and fingers, although tentacles can do it too.

4. In order to cool/heat this biological engine, the ET must have the proper mass/skin ratio. Humans are just about right, with adjustments, for cooler climates you need to be heavier, which means more mass to the skin, which means better heat generation and retention. A greater skin ratio to the mass (flesh) means better cooling, and this is typical advantageous for smaller people, as this results in much greater endurance. Hence why people in cooler climates tend to be big, and people in warmer climates tend to be small. The lean small guy is much better in fighting in tropical climates than an overweight Rambo.

In a sense, ET won't be very unhuman like in structure and size.

The other potential form ET may grow would be like an octopus, which is considered actually, the most intelligent of the non vertebrates, perhaps right there with the mammals. Note the octopus has a very advanced binocular vision, probably one of the few creatures in the world that can process color.

As for weapons and platforms I may think that instead of Star Wars, Star Trek or even the Transformers, our ET uses weapons that are much like future extrapolations of our smart weapons today, much more smarter, self autonomous, self guiding with their own network intelligence. Again form fits function. Instead of Walkers and Mechs, we still have tanks. Why? Because the tank offers a superior surface to weight ratio, the less surface you have for the weight, the more concentrated is the armor, allowing greater thickness for less weight.

Why projectile or kinetic weapons? Because projectiles or kinetic weapons, store potential energy far better than a direct energy weapon, which is much less energy efficient. How much energy would it take for a laser to blast a bullet hole, while a gun can do the same so simply and conveniently. I may think they may not use chemical powders for propellants too, but rather, the principle of an electromagnetic rail gun.

I may think that rather invading directly, they will sit up there completely away from the battlefield, and let an army of robotic smart weapons do the job. Perhaps they would also genetically engineer invasive species to infiltrate our biosphere and severe our ecology. We would end up fighting both robots and monsters at the same time. Invasive creatures living in the sea may eat up our fish supply, and our ships and subs will be hunting down schools and colonies of these creatures and blasting them with torpedoes and depth charges.