We might stand a chance if we use our greatest advantages, knowledge of our world's terrain because we're fighting on our home turf and the human race has survived everything nature has thrown at us in our time.
Our greatest strength is our survival instinct
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
It'd just be easier to grab any ol' comet and process it.
Comets, the rings of Saturn, the entire bleeding surface of Europa...
Water is literally the single most common chemical compound in the universe. The writers of VOY knew less about astrochemistry than I know about the minds of women; the Visitors in the '80s miniseries V claimed to be here for water, but in fact were trying to ease their way into being the herdsmen for the vast flocks of long pig on Earth. (Then again, given the facts of biology and the fact that the aliens would be from a totally different evolutionary chain, there's a fair chance they'd find our flesh toxic.)
Aliens wouldn't bother with us. We pose no threat or challenge to an interstellar species. We're still playing with our technological "advances" like a 5 year old with a new toy.
Aliens wouldn't bother with us. We pose no threat or challenge to an interstellar species. We're still playing with our technological "advances" like a 5 year old with a new toy.
Closer to a newborn fascinated by his rattle, more likely.
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.
Okay, this is where I get very woo woo. I agree that aliens wouldn't come here for minerals, or even water, you can find those elsewhere.
What they would come here for, and what is truly rare, at least from what we can tell, is life.
The Earth is abundant with life.
I happen to believe that they have visited us, that they do visit us from time to time.
I think they are genetic engineers.
I don't think it's an invasion, just an occasional visit here and there.
I think that when we set off the first H bomb, we caught their attention. (Holy smokes the kids found the matches !).
I think they haven't made official contact because, as Michio Kaku put it:, Why would they? It would be almost like us going up to an ant and saying, "'I bring you trinkets. I bring you beads. I give you nuclear energy. Take me to your leader." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRbBa6lxs9w
If they wanted to invade, they would waste us, before we even knew what hit us. see my signature.
Imagine how the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island would fare against an invasion from China, or even North Korea. That's about what would happen if Earth was invaded by aliens.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them." -Thomas Marrone
The outcome of such a conflict would of course depend almost entirely on what the actual goals of the aliens were.
If they are here simply to wipe us out and don't care about the planet, then we are toast. Orbital bombardment with mass drivers would make short work of life on the planet.
If they actually want to use the Earth for something however that becomes a less appealing option. The desire to limit damage to the ecosystem would lead to limits on what type of strategy they would employ. In that case it would be a much longer and time consuming situation. Humanity might not be able to win in the conventional sense, but could potentially turn it into such a meat grinder that they simply give up in frustration.
If they have come to enslave the planet... well the outcome swings a lot more in favor of them eventually getting worn down and leaving. Humans can barely stand listening to one another let alone some outside overlords from beyond the stars. In Star Trek terms it would be a lot like the Bajor-Cardassia scenario, with the Cardassians eventually just giving up and cutting their losses. Of course the risk here is that they might be sore losers and do some real damage when they leave.
As many have pointed out, there really isn't any particularly compelling reason for why any interstellar race would be interested in Earth. Minerals and water are more easily obtained elsewhere closer to their own home system. Slave labor isn't likely either, modern technology has already made human labor largely obsolete. About the only real reason why they would bother would be if they are crazy, stupid, or desperate.
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
And the whales. Don't forget the whales...and the dolphins...and those cute little white mice.
The main reason why any alien race would do us harm is pest control. If we gain FTL, we will spread to every part of the Universe and make a nuisance out of ourselves. Destroying Earth now is the only way to prevent the infestation of humans from spreading.
Comets, the rings of Saturn, the entire bleeding surface of Europa...
Water is literally the single most common chemical compound in the universe.
You bet. Hydrogen and oxygen are the first and fourth most abundant substances in the universe by mass, and within our solar system (and presumably most others as well), nearly all comets and moons that form out beyond the frost line (distance from their sun beyond which ice does not evaporate) contain enough ice to drown their surfaces under an ocean if it were all melted.
The writers of VOY knew less about astrochemistry than I know about the minds of women.
The biggest offender on that one that I can remember is in the episode "Demon", where they have to bargain with the memetic Silver Blood to extract deuterium from it to keep Voyager going. Deuterium, the third-most-common substance in the whole universe, which is available in parts-per-million concentrations anywhere that there is hydrogen or hydrogen-containing compounds like methane, ammonia, or water/water-ice. Also, aren't those red things (Bussard collectors) on the front of the warp nacelles supposed to scoop up deuterium from nebulas and such? If the writers needed Voyager to be after a rare material, then it should be something that is actually rare, such as the old Trek standby, Dilithium.
If aliens wanted to destroy us, then all it takes is a ship travelling at FTL speeds colliding with Earth. They could just harvest the valuable resources from the resulting debris.
If aliens wanted to destroy us, then all it takes is a ship travelling at FTL speeds colliding with Earth. They could just harvest the valuable resources from the resulting debris.
Why risk their lives and ship when they can do that with any object, period?
We would have to build a space battleship and send it to Iscandar to get technology we need to save the planet Earth. And kill a bunch of **** on the way there and back.
Nah, this is what's likely to happen if we get attacked. If our attackers have the technology and capacity to send an attack force through space, they don't even need to touch down onto the ground. What do we have for defenses against space attack?
But even in that scenario - if you can travel through space at superluminal speeds, even if the rest of your technology is bronze age, you could probably start bronze age equivalent of mining operations on uninhabitated planets and the like.
It's really doubtful anyone would come here for resources, unless there is some special magical element that we know nothing about but exists only in signficant quantities here.
The only other hostile reason to come here might be to just exteriminate us all, because we could become a threat, or because their religion tells them to do so. If the rest of the planet is irrelevant to them, then we're screwed. Just bomb the planet from space until it can't support any human life anymore.
If not, and they actually have to go down on the world... 6 Billion people is really a lot of people, even if they have highly advanced technology, we might simply be able to overwhelm them with sheer numbers.
Even genetically engineered diseases could prove insufficient, since usually, a percentage of the population is always resistent, and the disease can't be acting to quickly, otherwise it won't spread, so it leaves people to fight for a while.
I believe in Stargate, one alien species in an alternate timeline came to earth as "friends" and then carefully engineered so that human population would stop growing. Come with gifts and slowly poison us, basically. Maybe that's the best approach.
Ultimately, any attempt to lead war against an entire planet on that planet will be extremely resource intensive, probably costing more resources than you could possibly gain.
Of course, it could be that the alien invasion works quite differently. They invent a practically working Alcuberrie Drive, ignore the warnings of some scientist, fly to our star system, and irradiate it with incredibly powerful radiation, accidentally sterilizing it. Ooops.
They'll probably then get snatched by the Galactic Police for breaking the cosmic speed limit.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Why risk their lives and ship when they can do that with any object, period?
Where did I say that the ship had to be manned? Just install a FTL engine and navigation system to an asteroid the size of Ceres and the aliens would have a ship capable of destroying Earth.
Where did I say that the ship had to be manned? Just install a FTL engine and navigation system to an asteroid the size of Ceres and the aliens would have a ship capable of destroying Earth.
If you are going FTL, than you can't really apply m(v^2)/2, since we have to use some weird metheod(enter Another dimension, warp what ever) to go ftl. Hyperdrive that take the ship into Another dimension woulnt work becasue the the Earth and object isnt even in the same dimension, warp wouln't really work because it is actaully space pulling the ship, the ship is effectivly standing still
Hast thou not gone against sincerity
Hast thou not felt ashamed of thy words and deeds
Hast thou not lacked vigor
Hast thou exerted all possible efforts
Hast thou not become slothful
I got to thinking, if this happened for real, could we fight them off?
It's a nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
I think they would toss sparkly-sparkle in our face so we would be willing to serve them. Fighting a war would cost too much, especially if you just used most of your budget on fuel to fly across the universe to get here!
Just from what I read in Zone chat, it would only take some new fantastic creature that could offer you, your greatest desires to bend you to it's will. Like Xerxes had done. Hell, if they arrived and gave the Vulcan salute, half of the world would get a Moe haircut and begin to worship them as gods! :rolleyes:
But that wouldn't work on me. I would want Florida!
New Lunar Republic
"Where monsters rampage, I'm there to take them down! Where treasure glitters, I'm there to claim it! Where an enemy rises to face me, victory will be mine!" -Lina Inverse
if aliens ever decide to mess with us for whatever reason, we are dead. So dead it wouldn't even be funny.
Shows like Star Trek, Stargate, Independence Day imply we may outwit superior invaders. But these shows just sell infantile fantasies for entertainment purposes.
Let's assume an alien civilization that has mastered high-speed (90% of speed of light) sublight space travel, or even FTL travel. Nothing fancy like instant dimensional jumps or wormholes, just flying in a straight line through space from A to B. Under such speeds, any collision with tiny objects (marble size rocks or even dust particles) would unleash energies far greater than our strongest nuclear weapons. A technology solving the 'dust problem' would render our nuclear missiles ineffective.
The capability to accelerate macro sized bodies with mass close to light speed (or even beyond) would be the basis for WMDs far stronger than our WMDs. A super high speed object impacting Earth would destroy the surface. We'd be dead lol.
Not to speak about alien chemical or biological weapons. To believe we could defend against that is just wishful thinking.
How far advanced would be aliens be? How big would be the technological gap? There is a roughly 2.000 years technological gap between NATO and the Roman Empire. It would be absurd to assume the Roman Empire could overcome the gap and win a military struggle. What happens if an invading alien force is not only thousands of years, but millions of years ahead of us. :P
In our world, predators are usually more intelligent than prey. Because predatory life requires more wits and ahead-planning than a cow just eating grass. If alien evolution followed similar principles, there would be a fairly high chance intelligent aliens evolved from predators. Not really a comforting thought.
We wouldn't know wether aliens think in terms we could comprehend. Why would they come to us? What would be their motivation, their reasoning? Who knows if aliens even submit their thinking to such concepts. But if we presume aliens indeed operate by motivations and reason we can follow, what could it be that draws them to Earth?
Any natural resources we have on Earth are more accessible in far greater quantities elsewhere. If they wanted gold, they could harvest one single asteroid that harbours thousand times the quantity of it than our entire planet, or if its about water they could just catch an asteroid with more water than all our oceans combined. So, it probably wouldn't be natural resources drawing aliens to us.
What is the unique characteristic distinguishing Earth from any place as far as we know? Multicellular life. Proteins, chlorophyll and all that jazz. Stuff that constitutes life. If aliens come, they may come for us. Sounds bad, and it probably would be.
If you are going FTL, than you can't really apply m(v^2)/2, since we have to use some weird metheod(enter Another dimension, warp what ever) to go ftl. Hyperdrive that take the ship into Another dimension woulnt work becasue the the Earth and object isnt even in the same dimension, warp wouln't really work because it is actaully space pulling the ship, the ship is effectivly standing still
FTL means that the ship is going faster than light. If the ship uses wormholes, entering another dimension, or some other method where the ship's velocity does not exceed the speed of light as far as the rest of the universe is concerned, then they are not using FTL travel.
Warp would be considered as FTL since while it is stationary, it is moving at incredible speeds as far as the rest of the universe is concerned. Even if the ship is not damaged in the process of colliding with a planet, the manipulated space around the ship will collide with the planet. So although, m(v^2)/2 would not apply, some other formula will prove that planet is doomed.
Comments
Our greatest strength is our survival instinct
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Water is literally the single most common chemical compound in the universe. The writers of VOY knew less about astrochemistry than I know about the minds of women; the Visitors in the '80s miniseries V claimed to be here for water, but in fact were trying to ease their way into being the herdsmen for the vast flocks of long pig on Earth. (Then again, given the facts of biology and the fact that the aliens would be from a totally different evolutionary chain, there's a fair chance they'd find our flesh toxic.)
"How you make water?"
Is it no wonder that even the Borg wouldn't touch them with a ten-light year long pole?
Let me see...
Earth vs Intergalactic Traversing Aliens.
...
Yeah, we're toast.
RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev
Closer to a newborn fascinated by his rattle, more likely.
Okay, this is where I get very woo woo. I agree that aliens wouldn't come here for minerals, or even water, you can find those elsewhere.
What they would come here for, and what is truly rare, at least from what we can tell, is life.
The Earth is abundant with life.
I happen to believe that they have visited us, that they do visit us from time to time.
I think they are genetic engineers.
I don't think it's an invasion, just an occasional visit here and there.
I think that when we set off the first H bomb, we caught their attention. (Holy smokes the kids found the matches !).
I think they haven't made official contact because, as Michio Kaku put it:, Why would they? It would be almost like us going up to an ant and saying, "'I bring you trinkets. I bring you beads. I give you nuclear energy. Take me to your leader."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRbBa6lxs9w
If they wanted to invade, they would waste us, before we even knew what hit us. see my signature.
You win. This is much closer to the truth than what I said. I guess I was just being a little overly gracious.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
Sorry, what about aliens? I've got aCHOO! *sniff* I've got a cold and I've been kind of out of it.
:P
If they are here simply to wipe us out and don't care about the planet, then we are toast. Orbital bombardment with mass drivers would make short work of life on the planet.
If they actually want to use the Earth for something however that becomes a less appealing option. The desire to limit damage to the ecosystem would lead to limits on what type of strategy they would employ. In that case it would be a much longer and time consuming situation. Humanity might not be able to win in the conventional sense, but could potentially turn it into such a meat grinder that they simply give up in frustration.
If they have come to enslave the planet... well the outcome swings a lot more in favor of them eventually getting worn down and leaving. Humans can barely stand listening to one another let alone some outside overlords from beyond the stars. In Star Trek terms it would be a lot like the Bajor-Cardassia scenario, with the Cardassians eventually just giving up and cutting their losses. Of course the risk here is that they might be sore losers and do some real damage when they leave.
As many have pointed out, there really isn't any particularly compelling reason for why any interstellar race would be interested in Earth. Minerals and water are more easily obtained elsewhere closer to their own home system. Slave labor isn't likely either, modern technology has already made human labor largely obsolete. About the only real reason why they would bother would be if they are crazy, stupid, or desperate.
And the whales. Don't forget the whales...and the dolphins...and those cute little white mice.
You bet. Hydrogen and oxygen are the first and fourth most abundant substances in the universe by mass, and within our solar system (and presumably most others as well), nearly all comets and moons that form out beyond the frost line (distance from their sun beyond which ice does not evaporate) contain enough ice to drown their surfaces under an ocean if it were all melted.
The biggest offender on that one that I can remember is in the episode "Demon", where they have to bargain with the memetic Silver Blood to extract deuterium from it to keep Voyager going. Deuterium, the third-most-common substance in the whole universe, which is available in parts-per-million concentrations anywhere that there is hydrogen or hydrogen-containing compounds like methane, ammonia, or water/water-ice. Also, aren't those red things (Bussard collectors) on the front of the warp nacelles supposed to scoop up deuterium from nebulas and such? If the writers needed Voyager to be after a rare material, then it should be something that is actually rare, such as the old Trek standby, Dilithium.
Why risk their lives and ship when they can do that with any object, period?
We've got Mac Books, Cable Repairmen, Wise cracking fighter pilots and Coca Cola,... of course we're ready. /sarc
"There... are... four... lights!" ~Jean Luc Picard
Nah, this is what's likely to happen if we get attacked. If our attackers have the technology and capacity to send an attack force through space, they don't even need to touch down onto the ground. What do we have for defenses against space attack?
Jack & ****.
And Jack just left town.
It's really doubtful anyone would come here for resources, unless there is some special magical element that we know nothing about but exists only in signficant quantities here.
The only other hostile reason to come here might be to just exteriminate us all, because we could become a threat, or because their religion tells them to do so. If the rest of the planet is irrelevant to them, then we're screwed. Just bomb the planet from space until it can't support any human life anymore.
If not, and they actually have to go down on the world... 6 Billion people is really a lot of people, even if they have highly advanced technology, we might simply be able to overwhelm them with sheer numbers.
Even genetically engineered diseases could prove insufficient, since usually, a percentage of the population is always resistent, and the disease can't be acting to quickly, otherwise it won't spread, so it leaves people to fight for a while.
I believe in Stargate, one alien species in an alternate timeline came to earth as "friends" and then carefully engineered so that human population would stop growing. Come with gifts and slowly poison us, basically. Maybe that's the best approach.
Ultimately, any attempt to lead war against an entire planet on that planet will be extremely resource intensive, probably costing more resources than you could possibly gain.
Of course, it could be that the alien invasion works quite differently. They invent a practically working Alcuberrie Drive, ignore the warnings of some scientist, fly to our star system, and irradiate it with incredibly powerful radiation, accidentally sterilizing it. Ooops.
They'll probably then get snatched by the Galactic Police for breaking the cosmic speed limit.
Where did I say that the ship had to be manned? Just install a FTL engine and navigation system to an asteroid the size of Ceres and the aliens would have a ship capable of destroying Earth.
If you are going FTL, than you can't really apply m(v^2)/2, since we have to use some weird metheod(enter Another dimension, warp what ever) to go ftl. Hyperdrive that take the ship into Another dimension woulnt work becasue the the Earth and object isnt even in the same dimension, warp wouln't really work because it is actaully space pulling the ship, the ship is effectivly standing still
Hast thou not felt ashamed of thy words and deeds
Hast thou not lacked vigor
Hast thou exerted all possible efforts
Hast thou not become slothful
I think they would toss sparkly-sparkle in our face so we would be willing to serve them. Fighting a war would cost too much, especially if you just used most of your budget on fuel to fly across the universe to get here!
Just from what I read in Zone chat, it would only take some new fantastic creature that could offer you, your greatest desires to bend you to it's will. Like Xerxes had done. Hell, if they arrived and gave the Vulcan salute, half of the world would get a Moe haircut and begin to worship them as gods! :rolleyes:
But that wouldn't work on me. I would want Florida!
"Where monsters rampage, I'm there to take them down! Where treasure glitters, I'm there to claim it! Where an enemy rises to face me, victory will be mine!" -Lina Inverse
if aliens ever decide to mess with us for whatever reason, we are dead. So dead it wouldn't even be funny.
Shows like Star Trek, Stargate, Independence Day imply we may outwit superior invaders. But these shows just sell infantile fantasies for entertainment purposes.
Let's assume an alien civilization that has mastered high-speed (90% of speed of light) sublight space travel, or even FTL travel. Nothing fancy like instant dimensional jumps or wormholes, just flying in a straight line through space from A to B. Under such speeds, any collision with tiny objects (marble size rocks or even dust particles) would unleash energies far greater than our strongest nuclear weapons. A technology solving the 'dust problem' would render our nuclear missiles ineffective.
The capability to accelerate macro sized bodies with mass close to light speed (or even beyond) would be the basis for WMDs far stronger than our WMDs. A super high speed object impacting Earth would destroy the surface. We'd be dead lol.
Not to speak about alien chemical or biological weapons. To believe we could defend against that is just wishful thinking.
How far advanced would be aliens be? How big would be the technological gap? There is a roughly 2.000 years technological gap between NATO and the Roman Empire. It would be absurd to assume the Roman Empire could overcome the gap and win a military struggle. What happens if an invading alien force is not only thousands of years, but millions of years ahead of us. :P
In our world, predators are usually more intelligent than prey. Because predatory life requires more wits and ahead-planning than a cow just eating grass. If alien evolution followed similar principles, there would be a fairly high chance intelligent aliens evolved from predators. Not really a comforting thought.
We wouldn't know wether aliens think in terms we could comprehend. Why would they come to us? What would be their motivation, their reasoning? Who knows if aliens even submit their thinking to such concepts. But if we presume aliens indeed operate by motivations and reason we can follow, what could it be that draws them to Earth?
Any natural resources we have on Earth are more accessible in far greater quantities elsewhere. If they wanted gold, they could harvest one single asteroid that harbours thousand times the quantity of it than our entire planet, or if its about water they could just catch an asteroid with more water than all our oceans combined. So, it probably wouldn't be natural resources drawing aliens to us.
What is the unique characteristic distinguishing Earth from any place as far as we know? Multicellular life. Proteins, chlorophyll and all that jazz. Stuff that constitutes life. If aliens come, they may come for us. Sounds bad, and it probably would be.
FTL means that the ship is going faster than light. If the ship uses wormholes, entering another dimension, or some other method where the ship's velocity does not exceed the speed of light as far as the rest of the universe is concerned, then they are not using FTL travel.
Warp would be considered as FTL since while it is stationary, it is moving at incredible speeds as far as the rest of the universe is concerned. Even if the ship is not damaged in the process of colliding with a planet, the manipulated space around the ship will collide with the planet. So although, m(v^2)/2 would not apply, some other formula will prove that planet is doomed.