Defending against an alien invasion

VonNeumanns War. Good one. Even had a shoutout to Justice League.

Good Book.

Based off of this concept

edited 23rd Aug '11 3:35:09 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I think you exaggerate how hyperagressive we are. We lasted the past 66 years (and counting!) without a total war, and even before that, most stable civilizations had times of relative peace, that are considered golden ages. (The ones starting with "Pax" and ending in "-ana"). Peace was always universally recognised as a value to strive for, even if we often fail at it. Even when public warmongering took over, it usually happened in the name of hoping for a quick victory, followed by a long, secured peace.

It's improbable that aliens could have formed a functioning civilization as Always Chaotic Evil monsters, or even a Proud Warrior Race. In a world where the majority of the population admires constant warring as good, and dismisses peace as weak, you just couldn't invent spaceships, with bombs constantly going off over your head, and everyone enjoying it.

The desire for peace is not enough for peace, either: If everyone accepts that it sucks to be bombed, but still believes that everyone else on the planet deserves to be bombed, that's still a crazy orgy of violence, without any prospect of civilization. So they would also need to have someform of The Golden Rule, that would make a moral taboo against senseless violence.

Of course, it is possible to overcome this taboo, as it was proved by several psychopats who managed to get into power, and disregard morality, and there were entire populations who conviniently convince themselves that A Million Is a Statistic as long as they are out of sight.

But at least, it is fairly certain that the aliens would have certain ingrained objections against mass murder, so they would either try to limit a war to political dominance, or even if some jerk warmonger would manage to push the red button to exterminate us, they would later make sad movies and fancy monuments in our memory.

Except even during these eras of Pax there were numerous and violent conflicts especially around the borders of the nations that had them.

Just because we are not cranking out global wars does not mean it fully peaceful. There have been a large number of cold wars throughout history.

It is also smarter to assume any possible alien contact is from hostile aliens. Behave cautiously but be ready for a fight a moments notice.

And, if I remember my ancient history correctly, genocide (or at least something like it) was SOP, rather than a something reserved.

Exactly. Conflicts could easily happen. My intention with the previous post was not to argue that this thread is meaningless because aliens wouldn't attack us, just that even if they would attack us, we have good reasons to expect that they would at least attempt to minimalize the number of atrocities.

Massacres were often ordered as a part of warfare, but they were rarely genocidal in the sense of "empty the entire land of the indigenous peoples, and take home all their resources, or make room for our settlers". They were supposed to break military, and cultural resistance, not to make a people disappear. Their equivalent in an alien invasion of Earth, would mean blowing up the 12 biggest cities, executing all the politicians, and then installing an alien government.

Conversely, the cases when ethnic groups did disappear, were not ordered, systematic programs, but series of unfortunate incidents (as it happened in North America), or chaotic acts of primitive hordes (that doesn't really reflect how a technologically advanced, stable civilization would react). The 20th century was the first time when combining the systematic use of military with the chaotic senselessness of the hordes, created genocide as we know it. And those weren't exactly stable systems either.

Most likely, the aliens would simply want to demonstrate their dominance over us, just to have us as their colony/vassal state/"ally"/trading partner with a disadvantageous contract/etc. Depending on how tolerant they are, we could even win such a war, simply by making it last long enough that it would get uncomfortable to their leaders, or even if we would lose, a series of rebellions would get us progressively more rights in that system. Even if we would lose them as well, most countries would first reteliate on the rebellion's leaders, but then make sure to shut the population up with some priviledges, because rebellions are still awkward for the government.

I doubt they would attempt to minimize attrocities. Battle fields are still a very horrid thing and very ugly things are done. And that is to our fellow humans. If a highly competitive alien species decides we need to be dealt with via force, I doubt they will care about atrocities unless they are incredibly high minded.

^ And how do we know they aren't high minded as opposed to a barbaric horde running the Darwinian cause as their Hat?

edited 26th Aug '11 4:32:32 PM by MajorTom

We don't which is why I said if we were smart we assume they are hostile and if we wanted to approach them for communication be ready for a fight. But if they do want to blast us into oblivion there is little we could do. I was also pointing out there is not as great of a chance of them considering an entirely different species with the same weight as members of their species unless they had some form of incredibly high standards.

But since the thread is about alien invasion I would assume they are already hostile in some form with goals ranging from making a us a piece of tough real estate in an empire or outright annihilation of humanity.

If they happen to be Starfish Aliens then their motivations will be completely incomprehensible to us. They may not act consistently, at least from our point of view. It may not even be possible to ascertain what it is they want in attacking us. The whole thing may even be a misunderstanding. But none of that changes the tactics available to us.

I've been meaning to YKTTW Bizarre Alien Psychology as a supertrope/index for the various ways alien minds were radically different from humans.