"WHAT IF We Discovered A Multinational Alien Planet?" Topic

Either by remote communication or actual travel to the planet . . .

What if we discovered that there was a planet with sentient life, but they were fragmented into numerous nations, sects and alliances?

Would we proceed any different than if we found that they were a fully unified alien world?

CC

I don't know but i'm sure you'd be first to volunteer for any social meetings ;-)

It would all be the same, CC. The human race would try to find a way to exploit them, not to mention corporate wanting a piece of the action as well.

Why? Is there something you'd like to disclose to your friends here on TMP, CC?

;-)

What if the planet had multiple sentient species and one of them were… cuter than the others?

Ambassador Londo Mollari: Do you know what the last Xon said just before he died?
[Clutches heart]
Ambassador Londo Mollari: AAAAAAAAAAAARGHHH!

We probally would spend time trying to get them to turn against each other, just to make it easier to exploit them. Of course they may also have weapons that make nukes look like firecrackers!

We'd blow their guts out anyway, as they may have hidden space-rays of mass-destruction.
After that, our bold Earthling entrepreneurs would swarm in to 'rebuild' the poor bugeyes' countries as they'd otherwise blow themselves up with their silly civil wars.
And as a well meant, loving 'thank you' the bugeyes will give us Earthlings a wonderful discount to all the planets natural resources.

Sorry about the above – was trying to be humourous and realized I delved into CA territory…

All of the above assumes that we are going to find anyone, that we will actually bother to go there, that we will go there in enough force to actually matter, and that the explorers will be in contact with the Mother Planet in instantaneous communication.

All of which I think 100% impossible.

All right, all right.
98.5% impossible.

Based on the physics we know now, yes, I'd agree.

"the physics we know now"

Exactly. "Now" being the operative word. :)

CC

Mardaddy, I just deleted comments about the ME and the US…

They might be a lot like humanity right now, just as humanity might be, well, a lot like humanity right now. As any actual projection would need to take these facts into account and thus include political topics, I refuse to file an elaborate comment unless the topic is moved to the politics board.

But chances are their bureaucrats and our bureaucrats would have a gettogether, trying to bore various other factions to death ;)

We would flood their culture with game shows, borderline talent contests, vacuous entertainment reporting, and insipid television dramas, all heavily laced with commercials for Terran products. If they self-destructed their planet after that, who could blame them…? ;)

Try reading Jack Vance's "Planet of Adventure"…among others….or the 'Via Viagens'/Planet Krishna? series by Sprague DeCamp??/

about more 'evolved' and less evolved, multi-species/national contacts…and what 'happened'…

I think not only were the good stories…with good RPG suppliments that followed them for GURPS, but probably more than 'realistic' in how it would 'play out'…

FTL wasn't really an 'issue'…as humanity had ships that could do 99% lightspeed..(with obvious 'time-contraction' side-effects on crews)…so trips to nearest stars still took 7-11 years each way…but to those 'on board'…only weeks/months appeared to have passed…

Good stuff!

Carpe' Tentacle'um!
Sgt DWW-bartentacle on temp 'ambassadorial duty'…in the Lounge…

I guess it would depend on what state of civilization they had reached. Equal to ours, tough to say. Hopefully we would be able to make contact with their weakest faction and lever them up to be on top and form an alliance with them for mutual trade benefit.

If much lower we might just shove them out of the way and take their raw materials.

If more advanced we would probably be vaporized as we unite all the factions on the planet against the alien invaders. Stuff is probably the same all over.

I remember a book from 20-30 years ago in which we find such a planet. Turns out they are several centuries ahead of us, and decide we're an "infestation." They launch a bomb at us that blows earth into several billion itty bitty pieces. A small space station escapes the blast…

Knowing the Human race we would find life on a new planet and proceed to kill it off. :-(

Nuke 'em from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Actually I think the religious people would head over to the new world and door knock the aliens to death.

A weapon is a weapon, rat of tobruk. You use what you have at hand…

Gracias,

Glenn

LOL!

Zephyr1,

They probably already have a world dominated by game shows, reality shows, insipid dramas, etc.

They would probably invade OUR TVs with their programming.

Both sides would probably LOVE it as a diversion from our already boring TV…

We would establish normal relations with the various alien factions and share our technology and foster open trade. They would be treated as equals with dignity and respect. We would not war on them because the bible tells us 'thou shalt not kill….'

I shouldn't have to mention that I was being facetious.

Wouldn't that suck… you get to 'the future' and there are aliens… but they're just the same marketing schleps we are and their biggest contribution is some intergalactic version of 'Survivor'…

BLECH!

(That is how you spell 'BLECH' isn't it?)

Impossible !!! We all know aliens have but one single culture per planet. They hardly have ever more than one climate anyway …

Interesting ideas . . . Harry Turtledove once tackled this in his alternative to Mars novel "A World Of Difference" in which Russian and American expeditions to Minerva ( The alternate version of Mars, more life-friendly) are confronted with who they should support in a growing crisis between two opposed local cultures. It does not help that the Minervans are physiologically incapable of having gender equality for either side . . .

I have toyed with this idea myself with one of my homebrewed alien species, who have three genders and a political schims based on who gets to be socially dominant; The result colours their delaings with humanity and other races quite radically so confusion sets in as to which of these particular aliens are foes and which allies. Shades of "They all look alike to me" writ large.

"Impossible !!! We all know aliens have but one single culture per planet. They hardly have ever more than one climate anyway …"

Weren't the Narn in B5 divided in sects/ethnicities?
link

CC
PS. Though they all did seem to speak English. :)

"I don't know but i'm sure you'd be first to volunteer for any social meetings ;-)"

I don't know Eric. I may end up supporting the exploitation faction, if it puts bread on the table. :)

CC

"Seriously", though . . .

I think we would side with the least hostile, most oppressed (and most gullible) group and try to use them to overpower the others. I'm sure they would be more than willing to accept such assistance from us. They would be an invaluable source of intelligence and would provide us with lots of cultural info to exploit in the process.

Following their wonderful example of treatment to their fellow aliens, all we would have to do then is take over our allies. Our allies in the conquest of the Aztecs, Incas and many African and Asian tribes gave us an excellent role model to follow. In those cases, the allies were extreme ruthless and vengeful with their neighbors.

Its the only logical course of action. :)

CC

This is what some call <<exopolitics>>
link
link

"Exopolitics"

LOL. Is there any money in that, I wonder?

Would we leave it to politicians to interact with them, or would we leave it to a corporate contractor with the exploration technology necessary and the exploitation interest necessary in their resouces?

CC
PS. I guess that many TMP members could be considered exopolitical experts!

"Try reading Jack Vance's "Planet of Adventure"…"

Time to re-read those, though the species encountered were not natives, just long-term colonists. Same idea as Majipoor, Tekumel, and a few others.

"I think we would side with the least hostile, most oppressed (and most gullible) group and try to use them to overpower the others. I'm sure they would be more than willing to accept such assistance from us. They would be an invaluable source of intelligence and would provide us with lots of cultural info to exploit in the process."
-There's a chance our help wouldn't mean much to the underdog unless we are very technologically superior.
-The "Most oppressed" equals the weakest.
-The "Least hostile" equals the poorest fighters (most of the time).
-The culture could be way out of sync with ours.
-Assuming that they've been around the political block a few times, this wouldn't ever work. The stronger nations would just ally to get rid of the trouble maker and redress the "Balance of power".
-We'd have a supply line of light years.

No. You either establish a normal trade relationship, or you blast them all from space.

In that case, let's do what The Gonk suggested above: "Nuke 'em from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

CC

In case we want to prepare now for multiple hives on Mars or other alien planet:

TMP link

CC

Who's "we" in this scenario? There's no one authority that speaks for Earth that I'm aware of (the UN would be laughed off of the podium).

There is an international association of scientists that has rules about how to make contact with an alien civilisation. Since it would most likely be scientists who did it, their rules would apply. Probably not all scientists would follow the rules.

It's about aliens contacting Earth but would work the other way round too.

"There is an international association of scientists that has rules about how to make contact with an alien civilisation. Since it would most likely be scientists who did it, their rules would apply."

They'll be the first to get eaten…. ;)

We'd try to register them to vote and have to print ballots in multiple languages.

Then we will become enraged when their votes out number any of our own and they take all elected offices.

What if there were two major factions, like this?

link

CC

Check this out:

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CC

All of this assumes we would influence them.

Why is it that nobody ever looks at the possiblity that encounters with aliens would influence humanity.

Would they spread their beliefs to us? Would we be tricked by aliens who are even more manipulative than we? Perhaps we would find ourselves on the raw end of a deal due to our ignorance of space or the alien world.

Zufass History Lesson – Legend had it that the Earthlings weere sold the second moon of Kobus for the price equal to 100 years of Zuffiasian planetary production.

Authors like to focus on human greed, trickery, etc, but what about our tendancy to intigrate new things into our culture, compassion, understanding and such. Face it at the same time industry has been exploding so too has the human passtime of bleeding heartism.

-Eli

Eli,

Would the multinational aspect (vs a unified alien planet)influence that exchange, or the way we could be manipulated?

Dan

It might lead us to some folly at least. Depending on how we met them, we might make a subconscious rookie mistake based on our popular cultural views of aliens.

We might assume that all aliens on the world are like the ones we meet, just as they might assume that we humans are all alike.

We might make various misteps by using things learned with encounters in one alien nation when interacting in another.

As for how we might be manipulated. Aliens might play off of our preconceptions and masquerade as other factions on their world.

-Eli

Does no one remember The Prime Directive??

Tim

Sure, that's the one that says "Nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure", right?

LOL!!!

Dan

The Prime Directive was all part of Roddenberry's whole pie in the sky vision of the future.

It was a nice dramatic element to give Star Trek some sort of moral compass and to provide interesting plot obstacles, but not very realistic.

-Eli