"WOULD Humans Unite IF Faced Against Alien Threat???" Topic

The Macross series (American version Robotech) actually started out with this premise.

When the alien ship crashed to earth, we were in the middle of a world war. All Nations stopped fighting and banded together out of fear of an alien invasion.

It was a pretty good storyline back in the day.

Well if an alien spacecraft crashed or landed on Earth … we'd stop worrying the financial crisis …

If an alien spacecraft crashed or landed on Earth … we might not know due to extensive media coverage of the financial crisis.

Also recent TMP threads would suggest that Us and the Mother country would not stick together.

<<"The good thing is the media couldn't complain about the Aliens not following the Geneva Conventions !!"

The way most reporters are, they probably would.>>

UK human rights lawyers, led by Cherie Blair, would be queueing up to represent aggrieved aliens claiming UK and US forces had mistreated them.

yes, we would.

The sheer shock and terror of meeting aliens, much less hostile aliens, would overwhelm any tendancy to squabble. Especially if the aliens looked "really scary". I'll let you fill in for yourself what that might mean.

For me, I'd say that "really scary" would be Alien aliens, and "not really scary" would be aliens that bore a strong resemblance to, say, Smurfs, or any Belgians in general.

Of course, really smart aliens are going to infiltrate us and get _elected_ to power, just like hitler and mussolini. Oh, wait, it's already started in the U…<ZAP!>

I love the line . . .

"The world is in such bad shape, who wouldn't welcome a savior right now?"
abc.go.com/shows/v

Man. If Morena asked me to submit, I would gladly accept her as my overlord!

CC
PS. Watch for the start of the series: Nov 3

Well, looks like the new TNT series has 80% of the population disappear.

tnt.tv/series/fallingskies

Dan
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My thought is that if the Aliens have all this really great technology and can travel here from where ever out there, why haven't they taken over already? Either there are no Aliens, or their planet doesn't have the Comedy Channel.

Basileus:

<4) Aliens analists propose a surge to improve security.>

Probably by increasing the number of probes….

Grand Duke Natokina: "My thought is that if the Aliens have all this really great technology and can travel here from where ever out there, why haven't they taken over already? Either there are no Aliens, or their planet doesn't have the Comedy Channel."

They could be just waiting for the right time. Maybe they've already started and some can't get themselves to recognize they are under the influence:

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Dan

'you have met the ENEMY…and them is YOU!'

(after humanity's gone, then the bread yeast will FINALLY have it's chance!!!)

Please.

The aliens will never invade…..where else can they get quality entertainment like 'Jersey Shore' or 'American Idol'?

You KNOW the alien outpost on the dark side of the Moon is addicted to this stuff!

EvilMike: "You KNOW the alien outpost on the dark side of the Moon is addicted to this stuff!"

You mean something like this?

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Dan

The Spanish defeated the Aztecs with quite a bit of help from other tribes that had been dominated by the Aztecs. Without that help I doubt the Spanish would have taken the Aztecs, even with guns, crossbows, horses, and wardogs.

I figure an Alien invader that has limited resources would try the same gambit. They might even guise it as a religion to get some really fanatical humans to fight for them. With a little research, they might figure out how to manipulate a group with an event like having themselves show up as angels or a messiah coming out of a well…
They might even try to foster a self-loathing among humans, with the premise that "Earth would be better off without Humanity", and then get those folks to start sabotaging human civilization in various ways.

Odds are that if they have the technology to make it here and came to invade, it wouldn't matter what we do.

Independence Day, Godzilla and Chuck Norris not withstanding.

Dan,

the only thing we humans like better than fightin' each other, is kicking the living *bleep!* out of some "other" that we can all agree is "not one of us/Just Too Icky to Put Up With!!!"

I say let's GET 'EM!!

Leland R. Erickson

And with the Aliens being at the top of the Gravity well, we could link arms and sing Kum By Yah at them as they dropped rocks to flatten everything anyways.

Unite and have some sort of tech to prevent alien landing? Tech base is not developed in most of the world so the Aliens still would find plenty of places to land, assuming they did not level all human habitations from space.

So figure you need a scenario where they want humans alive, in large numbers so they will not blast everything and set up house here.

"To serve man" … ;)

Then again:
Would all? No, who would bother to meet the demands that a lot of the 3rd world "nations" would likely demand to be part of the alliance. Also remember, "Alien Invasion!!! Women and Minorities Impacted the Most" sort of thing.

We would keep an alien world from uniting against us, if we were the ones invading:

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Dan

I think that humans would behave consistently with past conduct. Nations would certainly ally if they felt it would be advantageous to do so. there woud be friction, and some nations would find themselves unable to put past differences behind them -- at best they'd be "co-belligerents".

How the aliens act is the key -- if they are attempting to indiscriminately exterminate mankind aka Wells' Martians, humans woud have little choice but to cooperate. OTOH, Aliens that were less certain of their military superiority might try to exploit divisions between nations. And even allies would surrender if they felt it was their best move. In Turtledove's "Worldwar" series, the aliens attack during WWII. France and Italy promptly surrender and France collaborates rather willingly with the aliens. Consistent, I'd say, with their actual tendencies at that time,

Of course, Turtledove's aliens were not bent on extermination; just conquest.

"They might even try to foster a self-loathing among humans, with the premise that "Earth would be better off without Humanity", and then get those folks to start sabotaging human civilization in various ways."

The scary thing to me is how plausible this would be, at least among certain groups of self-indulgent westerners. Of course, these folks would also be pretty useless and unreliable, so I don't think that this would be a very decisive tactic. I'd still try it, if I were the aliens. There's also the problem that self-loathing (at least in the West) tends to me a "cheap" ideology. All the folks pushing carbon emission limits while flying private jets and living in multiple mansions come to mind. IOW, "talk is cheap". I have strong doubts as to whether these folks would be so strong in their beliefs if they actually had to pay the price for those beliefs.

Well said. Many will view them as Saviors of Earth (from us destructive humans*). I would call that faction the Gaians.

Dan
* I say that, if humans are so naughty, why not resort to a little spanking (the fun kind, without involving any aliens, of course). :)

And many more of them would not if it came down to trading one even more destructive authoritarian regime/destructive corporate aristocracy for the ones we already have to contend with.

Perhaps you've forgotten FDR's quip about Batista's regime in Cuba:

"He may be a son-of-a*bleep,* but he's *our* *son-of-a-!"

The majority of the people who were under Stalin's "delightful" and "enlightened" regime fought like lions for "Rodina" once the nature of the invading Axis armies was understood. Why? Again, we humans tend to stick to the SOB we know, rather than trade 'em in for one we don't know when dealing with our own species. If the new SOBs minions act out badly enough towards us, we'll definitely stick to our own El Presidente/El Supremo/Generalissimo/Dada, thank you very much.

IMHO the human turncoats would be fewer and further between in proportion to how malevolent the invaders are made to appear in our collective mind's eye. Perception matters.

One also cannot underestimate the impact of the ETs making mistakes all their own, perhaps giving offense when they never intended any, or believed none would be taken. Anger enough people you're trying to win over, get the rumor mills and media spinning enough, and the ETs may have even benevolent intentions, but the blowback that could follow could very well be one they can never recover from.

The variables are more than a few in such a scenario IMHO, but that's all part of the fun.

Leland R. Erickson

The whole John Ringo series on Posleen invasion is pretty typical of what I expect would happen. Plenty of people will not believe the threat is real until they are being eaten and will resist the attempts to unite for a solid defense. Others will think they can profit and somehow save themselves after the invasion and so will do all they can to cheat the system. Still others, being drafted into a world force, will revert to "look out for number one" and take off at the first chance with all the new shiney stuff they can find. Even in the face of disaster there will be those who will knock one person down so they can get away for a bit longer rather than both fighting and surviving. The old rule about outswimming a shark comes to mind. I don't have to swim faster than the shark, I just have to swim faster than you.

There is even a term for Humans who take advantage of the situation to enrich themselves while selling out their race or fellow countrymen, in the hopes that they will somehow still manage to survive and escape with the wealth they get – Tranzis.