"What If Faced With An Alien Extraterrestrial Threat Today?" Topic

What would humanity do? What would YOU do?

MOST importantly, HOW would you game it???

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

tnt.tv/series/fallingskies

Dan
TMP link
TMP link

Probably wait and see what the others come up with.

looks interesting…

Yeah, I'd sit tight and wait for the authorities to come rescue me. That *always* works.

LOL

Yeah. Let the Feds do it all. No personal accountability these days.

Dan

What type of threat? If it's a bunch of genocidal xenophobes lobbing planet-killer rocks at us from a few AU's out, I expect we'll just die. If it's some morons travelling light years to harvest our organs instead of just investing in some biotech research, the government bigshots will sell our "excess" population to them for technology to help secure their positions once their self-serving behavior comes out.

It hardly matters. The world will end on Saturday, so let them have it.

Business as usual.
90% of humanity would band together.
10% would collaborate.

Wait…obviously any alien race that is advanced enough to have inter-planetary (inter-solar system) travel would be more advanced than us and would be peace loving aliens only interested in sharing their technology and peace loving philosophy with us.

LOL

Ed, wouldn't that be more like 10-10-80?

10% resist
10% collaborate
80% sit and wait

Hey. Maybe that's the 80% that disappears in the show!

Dan
link
link

What do you mean – "if"?

What do we do?
YouTube link

Well I never said the 90% would do anything, just be on the same side. :)

LOL

Dan

Well, if the movie Aliens is anywhere close, "Game over man!!! Game Over!!!".

Of course, it helps if you can hop into an escape pod, for a long, cold sleep back to your home planet, where you will then be blamed for everything that went wrong, and be assigned to menial labor jobs for the rest of your life, if you're lucky.

If not, you'll get selected to help lead a "rescue/research mission", so you can repeat the whole nightmare over again.

Since they're already here, and we don't have an escape pod (the Space Shuttle is being retired, and doesn't have the range or facilities to help much anyway), "Game over Man!!! Game Over!!!".

I, for one, welcome our alien overlords.

iceaxe:

What do you mean – "if"?

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run –
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And – which is more – you'll be a Man my son!

So mankind unites against the threat . . . No, it doesn't. Earth's nations continue to struggle against each other, even as the aliens grow, and spread, and multiply, and eat.

I'll only join the aliens if they look like number 6

link

Depends on whether they are good smothered in garlic.

For now, it would be in 28mm with homegrown rules.

I'd be dead and so would everyone else. To think we have a chance against aliens that can traverse intersteller distances is laughable at best.

I'd want to know what scale they played in. I'd bet it's 28mm heroic scale.

Leigh

I'll only join the aliens if they look like number 6

Number 6? Well, I guess – Patrick McGoohan isn't really my type, though.

To think we have a chance against aliens that can traverse intersteller distances is laughable at best.

Depends on how they travel. Scifi is full of star travellers who couldn't walk all over us, at least not if we coordinated our resistance. There are the ecological infiltrator types (War Against the Chtorr, Species) that can be stopped easily if caught early enough. There are the "wrong tech tree" aliens who discover (or evolve) easy FTL but miss out on innovations like gunpowder and radio communications. And there are the ones who are stuck with realistic tech – one or even a hundred STL generation ships or sleeper arks could maybe scour the planet from orbit, but if they need our biosphere, they've got an uphill struggle to conquer and colonize – there are billions of us, we're armed to the teeth, and we're better adapted to live here than any invader will be.

That's not even allowing for really silly memes like "alien starships turn out to be the size of gnats and get eaten by spiders/caught in flystrip/etc" or "invincible alien armada unable to withstand pop singer's crooning" or the hoary old "wait, what's a cold virus?" thing from War of the Worlds.

No Retreat No Surrender!

Trouble is on this little old island of the UK the general populous has nothing to fight with!

They took our guns away after some nut whacked lots of people. Which indeed was tragic but personally I think the wrong solution.

Seems like if they can get here, they're pretty darn likely to be overwhelmingly more powerful than us, and they win.

Depending upon the specific, I either fight them futilely, or not.
-Kle.

"I'll only join the aliens if they look like number 6"

Find a Brunette equivalent of her and I might be recruited by the invaders. Unless the resistence leader was a red-headed Vegan (no man-eaters, please,) Goth Chick.

Decisions, decisions, decisions…

Garcias,

Glenn

'What if faced with an alien extraterrestrial threat today'?

Well, to be honest I'd tell them to come back tomorrow and not early, as tonight is my beer and gaming night, tomorrow – once the hangover has cleared, then I can deal with an alien invasion.

> one or even a hundred STL generation ships or sleeper arks could maybe scour the planet from orbit, but if they need our biosphere, they've got an uphill struggle to conquer and colonize

If they have the technology and mathmatics to cross intersteller distances and accurately arrive safely at another star – then they know enough to drop just the right size asteroids onto the major population centers, enough to wipe out the cities and military bases but not wreck the planet.

I for one would welcome our new robotic alien overlords.
The ones who suck up don't die until the last reel of the movies…

> The ones who suck up don't die until the last reel of the movies…

True – but they usually get it in the worst way…

No problem tell the Zombies, that everyone thinks are all around us, that the aliens taste like chicken and let them go at each other

I don't worry it. I am covered in germs.

If they're intelligent, that means they can be reasoned with. I'd put on my best suit, go find an alien honcho, and tell him how, for a price, I can turn his human slaves into an efficient work force. I'd then declare allegiance to their bulbous-headed big cheese, or whatever it is they owe their allegiance to. As a gesture of good will, I'd tell them what basement my family's been hiding in for the past six months. Then I'd point out on a map where the major resistance concentrations are, what their codes are, how they communicate, etc. Why let those dead-enders threaten my deal? I might even let them use some of my slave force as bait to lure free-roaming humans into a series of ambushes. In the end, I'd retire to my private island with my contractually-stipulated harem of supermodels, run all the work projects for the bosses, and get to work breeding a race of genetically subservient yet strong work drones out of the remaining humans.

It's all part of building a better world.

"Wolverines!"-or any suitable substitute.

As a city dweller, I would probably be in the 80% that isn't around after Minute 5.

Simple. Glass the whole surface of the planet with the world's nuclear arsenal when they're about to beat us. Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

Another frightening scenario to consider:
picture

Good eatin on that much rabbit, but he can outrun some bullets…

I will grab my machettes and cross bows and kill them all.

Tony

I'm sure they would just be coming here to want To Serve Man.

Wolfprophet: "Simple. Glass the whole surface of the planet with the world's nuclear arsenal when they're about to beat us. Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees."

I like how you think. But I would first try to find out what WMD we have that would work best. Maybe they can survive radiation, but would succumb to something like Smallpox or Ebola.

Dan

Bieber Fever might be all she wrote for our would be overlords.

- Shawn.

Lampyridae, do you like Kipling?

"I like how you think. But I would first try to find out what WMD we have that would work best. Maybe they can survive radiation, but would succumb to something like Smallpox or Ebola."

Even if they can survive radiation, nothing else on the planet can. Even those tough little roaches succumb eventually. Using Biological and chemical weapons as well would be an excellent idea. Few things can survive fire, so perhaps if we can change the ratio of gases in the atmosphere we could turn every layer up to the lower reaches of the Mesosphere into a raging firestorm that lasts for a few days.

Though, we could also take the approach that those of us who play the Browser MMO "Astro Empires" do. When one of our planets is occupied, we make it unprofitable to keep the occupation. By that logic, to make the earth worthless, we need to strip mine all our natural resources, make it to space and rely on asteroid mining. Probably thousands of years worth of ores hidden in Kuipur belt.

"Even if they can survive radiation, nothing else on the planet can. Even those tough little roaches succumb eventually. Using Biological and chemical weapons as well would be an excellent idea. Few things can survive fire, so perhaps if we can change the ratio of gases in the atmosphere we could turn every layer up to the lower reaches of the Mesosphere into a raging firestorm that lasts for a few days."

Well then …

"May the Blessings of the Bomb Almighty, and the Fellowship of the Holy Fallout, descend upon us all. This day and forever more . . . Glory be to the Bomb, and to the Holy Fallout. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. World without end. Amen."
--Mendez XXVI
link

Dan

If they're intelligent, that means they can be reasoned with.

Funniest thing I've read in months.

You've met Humans, right?
-Kle.

What makes you think they haven't tried already?

Although the possibility of an alien invasion only became appearant in 1948, researchers have uncovered no less then 8 possible ( and I have to emphasize the term possible because there is very little certainty on this topic ) attempts by an extraterrestrial threat against this world since 1942.

They seem to be hobbled by their lack of numbers. If in fact they do exist, they are passengers aboard a fleet of perhaps 144 craft. That isn't a very strong force against a planet sized population. Logarithmic estimates of the current world population is 7.1 to the ninth power. link

Clearly, an alien presence will need a substantial human force, much like the colonial European powers depended on native sepoys. But the only feasible portion of the earths population available for a ninth incursion are uniquely susceptible to garlic, crucifixes, and wooden stakes driven into their hearts. This is a major drawback.

Given our demonstrated warfighting capabilities and the lack of demonstrated, weapons specific alien technology this planet stands a definite chance of defeating currently surmised alien threat capability.

If they were aggresive … we'd fight … If they have the tech to get here, they probably have superior weapons … So the survivors of humanity would have to go into the deep forests, jungles and mountains. To try to survive and keep as low a profile as possible … Of couse if they look like 6 or 7 of 9 … they probably still are very evil …

We would probably just demand that they go back to their pre-1967 location.

Pre 1948* would be the most logical.

Dan
* Pre Roswell