If aliens invaded us, are we ready to fight them off?

hawkwing43

Ok after watching this trailer:

Alien outpost

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1mPNV0LcBU

I got to thinking, if this happened for real, could we fight them off?

It's a nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

thay8472

Think it'll be a case of..

*Aliens arrive.
*Starts to rain
*Humanity wins the first contact war.

I might check out that movie.

gulberat

If they have the kind of technology for interstellar travel, I think we have to hope that a) their generals are complete morons and make basic tactical errors, b) a freak of nature happens and/or they are so incompatible with the Earth environment that we can imperil them easily, and that while one of those two is true, that c) we do not manage to TRIBBLE up our response in the critical window due to wrangling over red tape, or infighting, either of which human nature shows we are prone to even in the most critical of times.

quintaris

The Shepard will save us.

jonsills

If they have FTL technology and are invading Earth, they're already making strategic errors - the only thing on this planet you can't get more easily in space is us - so hoping for tactical errors as well isn't that far-fetched, one would think.

cmdrscarlet

If they are watching our transmissions, then by the looks of it ... yes.

adamkafei

If there is one thing Humanity is good at, it's making weapons, usually of mass destruction. Worst case scenario, we wipe ourselves out and render the Earth uninhabitable for centuries.

While it's possible that they will have weapons capable of wiping us out in one go but I think if they do they will likely try to subjugate us. The only way I can envision to stop them is to take positions that render orbital strikes either ineffective or impossible there-in removing their greatest tactical advantage, then we just have to make the price of Earth too high, win the war through attrition or of course, watch as they get bored and wipe us out in one go.

quintaris

jonsills wrote: »

If they have FTL technology and are invading Earth, they're already making strategic errors - the only thing on this planet you can't get more easily in space is us - so hoping for tactical errors as well isn't that far-fetched, one would think.

Soylent Green is people. The aliens want us as cattle. Moo.

taliew

Depends if they're F2P or P2W

artan42

Worse case, we take 'em with us.

Best case, we scare 'em off and nick their stuff, go off and invade their planet.

k20vtec

Assuming the aliens can FTL, which is only theortically possible for us:
If they are indeed very incompatible with Earth biosphere, then they wouln't come here at all because there are much more Resources in the asteroids and they can't colonize Earth, so why bother come down?

If they want to kill us then we would be gone from orbital bombing, order 24, glassing, Base delta Zero etc, no need for landing, just sit in orbit and shoot. Before anyone correct me, of course we humans can also strike orbital targets, it is just that the said target iis a satellite that has been going around in a fix orbit for a long time, plus the satelite it self isnt very manuverble. Against Alien battleship however..

If they indeed try to subjugate us for whatever fetish weird alien reason(I doubt we humans are more efficient than advanced idustrial Machines so we wont be slaves anyway), then they dont have to use force, remember they are super-advanced, they can offer some basic( for them, but not for us) Technology and similar to say, coporations or governments to Control us. Alternatly play god with their uber tech, like in Stargate.

antonine3258

Depends what their objectives are - if they'd eventually like a garden world and are willing to take time, than it's a brief orbital bombardment to remove the natives.

Hopefully most situations would be more pleasant.

badvaio

All we need to do is to hack into their computers and turn their defences off, then an alcoholic ex pilot can blow their ships up. Again......

carpfisher

There was a Roddenberry-produced series about this very concept.

Apparently, the only reasons that aliens would invade us is because their race is dying and they are genetically coded to use Earth resources to turn themselves into vampires.

galatt

thay8472 wrote: »

Think it'll be a case of..

*Aliens arrive.
*Starts to rain
*Humanity wins the first contact war.

I might check out that movie.

To paraphrase what Cinemasins said about the movie "Signs" "What intelligent species would invade a planet that has oceans made of acid, where it rains acid, and the lifeforms there are mostly made up of acid?"

Unknown

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crappyturbo

If the only resource in abundance on planet is humanity and everything else is more abundant in space then the reason for invading is us. IMHO a race that has FTL travel and is invading earth might need expendable, or not so expendable, troops.

rossclansforce1

If it is a take over we will be fine. Our leaders are nuke trigger happy and will make the planet unlivable for them. Because of this they will likely avoid the planet completely and the issue will resolve itself.

k20vtec

crappyturbo wrote: »

If the only resource in abundance on planet is humanity and everything else is more abundant in space then the reason for invading is us. IMHO a race that has FTL travel and is invading earth might need expendable, or not so expendable, troops.

If they can build FTL-ships, why not just build combat droids instead, humans got to the top of the Earth's food chain because of our technology, not that we are very strong, or resilient, or fast...

capnmanx

Any race capable of launching an invasion of another world would likely be so far beyond us that we would have little chance.

To put this in its proper context, consider our current space capabilities; it takes us lots of time, planning, and money, just to send a half dozen people into orbit. An invasion force would require millions of people put into space; plus massive amounts of equipment, vehicles, supplies, etc.

Now consider the amount of work we had to put into making the ISS; and how limited its capabilities really are. An invasion force would require interstellar space craft capable of carrying those millions of people, plus vehicles, equipment, supplies, etc.

Even setting aside the whole 'they must be super advanced because they have FTL' thing, the capabilities of any race that could launch an invasion of Earth would have to be staggering.

ryan218

I don't think it would be an invasion. They'd probably just pass our planet, take one look at our society, write "No signs of intelligent life" and move on. :P

jonsills

westmetals wrote: »

Oh, I can think of at least one other reason. Working on a Foundry mission on it (it's the "bad guys" part of my upcoming "Relocation"), actually. It's a sort of... how shall I say this... the Jews reclaiming Palestine situation.

Of course, there's only two alien races that it makes sense for (in any sci-fi I am familiar with). And of those, one of them is in no position to actually carry it out (due to lack of population/lack of forces), would be stupid to do it anyway as humans are the only species who can bypass their technology's built-in user-security measures, and is basically friendly (Stargate's Ancients).

The other, however... is in Trek.

Well, there's the Covenant in the Halo games, who want Earth mostly because a) they think humans are a bunch of heretics whose very existence offends their gods (the Forerunners), because we adapt Forerunner technology instead of using it in its existing "perfect" form, and b) there's a gateway to the Ark, a sort of central control node for all the Halos, buried underneath what became the city of New Mombasa, in Kenya. On the other hand, they never heard of us or Earth until after we developed FTL ourselves, so...

rattler2

*Looks at Battle: Los Angeles, Battleship, and other alien invasions*
We'd probably get our asses kicked. Problem is we know this planet better than they do. So unless they wipe us out, they'd have a long drawn out fight on their hands.

And jonsills is right. Who said anything about them wanting to enslave?

kojirohellfire

No.

All they would have to do is shoot us from space. The end.

cptjhunter

Sneeze on them. They will all be dead in a week.

wotertool

I'd usually say, that there is not even a chance to win, because I think that:

A) We are probably not the first species to be attacked which means that they have enough experience and strategical and tactical knowledge.

Their technology must be more than just superior to what we dream off

C) We do not own planetary defenses to fend of a fleet of invaders. They just do Dresden '45 all over Earth. Or if they do not care about radiation then Nagasaki.

I guess that Radiation will not be a problem because they probably have the technology or biological resistence to clean it up.

If they do want to save their weapons, then they just need to hack into our computers and use the nuclear warheads and use them for their main purpose: Destroy our own cities and kill us all.


If they don't use a fleet but a single ship (or maybe two) with a bunch of soldiers like in most movies, then I bet my money that mother nature finds something to kill them over a longer period of time.

Space is hostile because of low temperatures, low pressure, radiation and no atmosphere, but Earth has all kind of atmospherical pressures, all kind of temperatures, million variations of poison, an unlimited amount of different bacteria and virues, hostile flora and fauna and worst of all, us.

If they are stupid, then we might win.

If they are at least as intelligent as we are (and we aren't), then they win easily.

ryan218

If the assumption is that they want to capture our world for some reason (resources, colonisation, imperialism), then there are a few things to consider:

Firstly, assume they possess FTL capabilities. Best-Case scenario, it's an Alcubierre-style warp drive, which we already know the basic theory behind. That puts them maybe 50-100 years ahead of us. The Zulu beat the British with worse odds.

Even so, technological advancement usually occurs parallel to social advancement. They wouldn't wantonly exterminate us because we could be useful, so they'll (forcibly) make us a colonial protectorate similar to Roman colonisation of the Celtic lands (again, best case, since they'll leave us alone for the most part). Either that, or they'll make us a protectorate colony in the same way as during the Scramble for Africa.

They'd need to adapt their equipment to operate in Earth's atmosphere if this is the case. Until they do, we win any time they send scouts or shuttles into our airspace thanks to aerodynamics and generous delivery of air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles.

Then we have nuclear warheads.

The question is what would our planet have resource-wise that they'd be interested in? Uranium is more plentiful on the Moon, though they could choose to invade us since we're nearby.

gulberat

Agriculture and animal husbandry, perhaps? If our tech and mineral resources are best found elsewhere, that is literally the only thing I can think of (arable land) and it's a bit thin as an excuse.

Whether animal husbandry would include us as the livestock, that is up for discussion. (I actually consider this to be the Devidians' end goal in Time's Arrow, though their vanguard was stopped.)

daveyny

W A T E R ...

Hydrogen and Oxygen bound together in a liquid state...

We've got gobs of it and it's extremely stable and the easiest form of fuel to work with.

They'll probably ignore us like ants under ones foot.

I'm jut going to curl up in bed now.

:eek:

allyoftheforce

daveyny wrote: »

W A T E R ...

Hydrogen and Oxygen bound together in a liquid state...

We've got gobs of it and it's extremely stable and the easiest form of fuel to work with.

They'll probably ignore us like ants under ones foot.

I'm jut going to curl up in bed now.

:eek:

Ice is far more abundant in space than here on earth. I'm sure they have the ability to clean and process it much faster than us.

kojirohellfire

daveyny wrote: »

W A T E R ...

Hydrogen and Oxygen bound together in a liquid state...

We've got gobs of it and it's extremely stable and the easiest form of fuel to work with.

No.

It'd just be easier to grab any ol' comet and process it.