"WHAT IF - Cold War Era Alien Contact on Our Own MOON?" Topic

So, imagine this …

The US and the other world powers discover a signal suddenly coming from our own Moon, and they begin the Space Race earlier than in our history. The US is the first to send a manned mission to investigate. Contact is made.

What would make a better game?

1) The "prequel" conflicts here on Earth, as each side looks to impair the other, and the Soviets and others try to prevent the US from making that first contact?

2) Soviet (Warsaw Pact) cosmonauts fighting on the Moon vs Western (NATO) astronauts over control of the Alien tech?

3) After making the first Human-Alien pact, the US brings back the aliens and their tech, and a conventional war ensues here on Earth, with the US/West gradually incorporating more and more of that Alien tech into their weapons?

Thoughts?

Dan
PS. For a more modern (21st century) option, see here:
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Here's another Johnny Bruck painting:

#2. Interesting environment, interesting figures to invest/convert. Not so sure the Soviets would start rolling tanks through Central Europe over this to prevent the West from making contact, though maybe a post-contact military solution would happen (alien tech couldn't be integrated immediately after all…) and would undoubtedly go nuclear from the get-go IMHO. Then you have new gaming scenarios to do: Post apoc America, where the remnants of the government fight the rad mutants using alien tech over the remains of national resources!

Damon.

If Alien tech got to our moon, I suspect it would be so far in advance of ours, (them having got all the way to our planetary system and all) – and it being…alien…I doubt any side would find it useful, if they recognised it at all!

Garand

An excellent option #4!!!

Dan
PS. I'm not sure if the other flag in this other (Johnny Bruck?) picture is the Alien one. Or, based on the colors, perhaps the extraterrestrials from Chicago merged with the ones from DC: :)

That may have already happened … but it is not for general dissemination. I'd think … I don't know …

Legion 4

Please blink three times in close succession if you are being told to say that. :)

Dan
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sounds like the old German pulp Perry Rhodan

I would keep the actual time line (until the story diverges from it). The Soviet Luna 3 probe was the first craft to send back pictures from the far side of the moon, in 1959.

In my story, Luna 3 starts its orbit of the moon, but does not re-emerge on the other side. There is no debris field or any indication that Luna 3 continued on past the moon, so it most likely crashed.

Everyone gets very tense. Accusations are made. Suspected spies are interrogated and sent to the gulag.

The Americans have been racing to get the Ranger probe ready, and they send it, ahead of schedule and not quite ready for prime time, to orbit the moon as closely as possible to try to find the crash site of Luna 3.

The Soviets send their own probe, Luna 4, right behind the American mission.

Contrary to their own inclinations, but seeing great propaganda value, both sides agree to work together on the mission and share all telemetry, imaging, and other data in real time.

As Ranger 1 goes around the curve of the moon, Luna 4 sends back the terrifying image of an alien vessel destroying the Ranger 1. Luna 4 itself is then destroyed.

Pandemonium erupts.

"Comrade, we would not be having this worldwide panic if you had not agreed to share our data with the Americans, who broadcast it like a television program!"

"Comrade, you are quite correct. If we had kept it secure, only the Politburo, the KGB, and our organization would be panicking!"

Oberlindes

I love it. I can't wait to hear more! :)

Dan

Jim Selzer: "sounds like the old German pulp Perry Rhodan"

Is that picture really from a Perry Rhodan issue? Did that series ever get translated into English?

Dan

EDIT -
Jim, you are exactly right:
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The Soviet launch site, Baikonur Cosmodrome, is the middle of nowhere in the Soviet Union. It's inaccessible.
But the American launch site, Cape Canaveral, is on the Atlantic Coast. (1.) A submarine could land a Spetsnaz team to sabotage the rocket to blow up on launch. They must do so undetected to blame the failure on the inferior western technology. (2.) If the rocket is merely damaged then it becomes a battle for survival which takes priority above alien contact mission. Either way the delay gives more time for Soviet Union to make first contact.
(3.) The heroic American crew lands their damaged ship on the moon, (rescues the maiden,) and begs, borrows, or steals the alien ship to return to Area 51.
There you go, three plot lines, you write the dialogue.

After making the first Human-Alien pact, the US brings back the aliens

As J. Posadas argued, Marxist thinking proves that any alien society sufficiently advanced to have interstellar travel would inevitably have progressed to a socialist, if not communist, level of social organisation.

Any human-alien pact would therefore inevitably be made with progressive socialist forces, not with the degenerate lackeys of bourgeois capitalist imperialism.

Seriously, Posadism exists:
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GurKhan: "not with the degenerate lackeys of bourgeois capitalist imperialism"

Hmm. You might be right. They might be part of a eusocial collective. If they are insectoids or like the naked mole rat, they would probably gravitate more toward similar hive-minded societies on Earth. The Soviets, Communist China, North Korea, etc. :)

Dan
PS. LOL. Of course the Marxists would see themselves as the ideal for all future advanced societies. What a shocker! :)

These guys in jumpsuits and goggles might work as an "evolved" naked mole rat collective:

They are now sold by Ral Partha Europe:

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Dan

Since Marxism has been proven to bring poverty to humans, who knows it may well work with the bugs. The "what color is the sky on your planet?".

Here the state started the space race as part of the arms race and is now moving towards privately funded exploration. If we go back to actual history, the state funded initial exploration of the new world and eventually it was private companies who expanded the colonization.

Since Marxism has been proven to bring poverty to humans

Posadas was a Trotskyist, so would no doubt respond that _real_ Marxism hasn't yet been tried :-)

Please blink three times in close succession if you are being told to say that.

Marxism like flapping your arms to fly has yet to be successful. But please keep flapping and it may work someday.

At least from the picture with the strange flag and the green alien hand, we now know that they are left handed!

Lol. Good catch, Mumbasa!

Dan

Some very cool ideas in this thread.

Love the idea of a Spetsnaz team in the Everglades!!

A small US long range direct action team could plausibly walk in through some of the vast uninhabited swathes of the USSR though I think.

I never liked Star Trek, partly because it modelled a Socialist utopian society, also the outfits..

I really like the idea that the cold war and all the small actions around the world were based on the race for alien tech.

Ironwolf

There ya go! That could become the common thread for a long list of scenarios taking place in numerous terrain situations.

Dan

Love the idea of a Spetsnaz team in the Everglades!!

That was one of our primary missions in the Canal Zone in Panama, in the '80s. Stop any landings/infiltrations in the area that could threaten the Canal, etc. Of any number of Russian/WP forces, Cuban, and/or South and Central America forces. That sided with the USSR.

I never liked Star Trek, partly because it modelled a Socialist utopian society, also the outfits..

All versions of ST uniforms, save for the MACOs link in the series "Enterprise", could not have been more useless and less functional.

From Muv-Luv, although the aliens are a lot less friendly in that universe:
Mechanized infantry fighting on the moon:

Mechas (it's Japanese what do you expect) jumping over tanks to engage alien hordes:

Neat pic ! An Alien from the Alien movies wearing some sort of PA or E-suit ? Or ?

And if the Soviets ever set up a city on the Moon …

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Dan

That is just more Soviet propaganda …

Neat pic ! An Alien from the Alien movies wearing some sort of PA or E-suit ? Or ?
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No aliens in the big pic (I'm not sure about the smaller thing because all I get is a "no hot-linking" message).

Muv-Luv is a very nasty setting. There's a side story anime series set in it that starts out with the first episode building up the bonds between the members of what appears to be a stereotypical happy mecha academy cast (all female)… and then *brutally* kills all but one of the students in the second episode. This is a setting that started out as a three part Japanese eroge visual novel. Yeah, it's weird like that.

Anyway, in the "aliens invade alternate reality Earth" setting, the US is sort of in good shape… mostly because it nuked the alien landing point in the northern hemisphere as the aliens landed (iirc, what's left of Canada didn't really appreciate that). Pretty much everywhere else, humanity is slowly being pushed back by the aliens, which are somewhat similar to Tyranids in concept (rapidly evolving organisms that "harvest" all available resources from the areas they control – including human "resources"). The USSR is *gone*, with the remnants of the Soviet government now in Alaska (with US permission, and unaware that the US has secretly mined the state with nukes just in case the aliens manage to make it across the Bering Strait). Humanity's slowly being pushed back in Europe. China's falling. I don't recall what's going on in Africa and the Middle East, but I doubt they're doing very well either. About the only bright spot is Japan, where some recent successes have seen humanity manage to push the aliens back out of some of the areas that they'd overrun.

The US in the setting is both pragmatic (see the references to nukes above), and helpful. The only reason why the other nations (including the USSR) can have anything remotely resembling a functional military is because US industrial might builds most of their equipment (and it's equipment designed by their own militaries, and not US Lend-Lease style stuff). That doesn't mean that the old conflicts have completely disappeared. But at least officially, all of humanity is working to defeat the aliens.

The initial contact with the aliens was on the Moon (the space race was a cover to get the initial military forces in place). But by the time the story starts, it's been decades since humans last set foot there.

Neat ! Thanks !

I love the ski-jump here in the background. :)

Dan
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More Soviets on the Moon.

Dan

More Rooskie propaganda !!!!!!! I tell ya !!!!

I'm curious what this story was really about:

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Dan

Stalin might have been … An "Alien" !!!!!!!!

Or was in league with them!

Dan

I guess the "Fallout Game" posters and covers are meant to be a parody of those Cold War Era Pulp Sci-Fi magazines then?

Dan
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Commies & Aliens … sounds like a good name for a movie !

It sure would be! :)

Dan
PS. Man, we really need to get back on the horse. It's true what they say, you snooze, you lose.

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YEAH !!!!