Alien Invasion
It’s a fairly common theme in science fiction, usually with
it being somewhere along the lines of them being after our resources or in the
even cheesier iterations our women.
Usually you see, at least looking back at the 1930s, tentacled aliens
going after big breasted blonde women. Most of the time the argument after now would typically say
its all absurd, or say advanced civilizations don’t make war, or don’t invade,
or logically there are to many resources to fight over. All of the rationalizations
tend to forget a few things, one the history of our civilization as it goes
from more primitive to more advanced hasn’t exactly gone from less peaceful to
more peaceful. Two wars are typically
fought over actual resources vs. potential resources (remember the talk about
space resources, well it’s the same thing, why develop your own if you can more
cheaply take it from somebody else). Three,
wars also often times do not involve rational reasons, you have only to
look at human history to see this, if we are capable to prosecuting wars for
irrational reasons, it’s the height of absurdity to think a alien species
couldn’t. Four wars are very often fought for rational reasons, for resources,
for power, and the most basic of all reasons survival.
You see the problem I have with people who think of alien
life, is that they tend to incorporate very little of reality into their
diagnoses, in their own way they are as absurd as those old 1930s ideas of
aliens, but with one difference at least the old 1930s alien conceptions
weren’t intended to be serious. Now a rational person would try and incorporate
what we know of the only intelligent species we know of (us, and yes I’ve hear
the joke no intelligent life here, lets presume for the moment we are intelligent), and use that knowledge to extrapolate some
information about what intelligent life out there would be like. Instead they
say well it’s impossible to know what they will be like, and so ignore the
entirety of human history because none of the E.T.s could possibly be even
slightly like us. When you try and use human
history to offer predictive models, it’s
usually well we are the anomaly, and our history couldn’t possibly predict what is out there. Yes the
aliens could be so alien we don’t know
anything, yes they could have a entirely
different history; but it is still
reasonable to at least start with our own
history to serve as if nothing else a baseline for comparison, and a
starting point to make useful predictions. It is reasonable to start with the
one intelligent species we can confirm to have existed, us.
So nonsensical rant done with, to the nitty gritty, a alien
invasion. Since I want to have fun writing this, I won’t delve into every
historical example imaginable, but will pick and choose the ones I like. To start with every example of a advanced
civilization meeting a more primitive civilization usually results with the
advanced civilization winning. This is a indisputable fact, primitives usually
get screwed. But what the history books typically get wrong is the why of how
they were screwed. Most of the time the reasons follow along the lines of our
superior technology allowed us to defeat them, blah blah, nothing else
mattered, but our superior nature. And
most of the time people accept those reasons, because it suits their egos,
because we are the ancestors of that civilization that won.
However looking at the facts, we see it wasn’t the superior
technology which allowed the more advanced civilization to defeat the
primitive. Therein lies the hope for our own civilization when faced with a
more advanced alien civilization invading. One the very first colonists were
typically rather pathetic and depended on native help to survive. The case of
Jamestown, the Puritans, and even Cortez’s conquistadors all required native
help to survive, to establish their particular branch of civilization. We see
in those cases that it is when the colonists first arrive that they are at
their most vulnerable, and it is then when they are most vulnerable. This makes
sense from a human history viewpoint but also from a payload capacity
viewpoint. Put simply using normal conventional ways to crossing interstellar
space, you need large amounts of energy to get up to a certain fraction of the
speed of light. The more mass you push, and the faster you go the more
prohibitive the energy cost. So there is basically a payload limitation the
faster you go, there is less of a energy cost to push less mass. You can get more payload, but you get less speed and
slow down your transit speed. So alien ship traveling at high fractions of the
speed of light is likely to get here with comparatively little in terms of
mass, and also whatever capacity they have for maintaining their own
civilization. To push this analogy into human history it is like Puritans
arriving, having few guns, few numbers, and only their pathetic survival skills
to get them through the winter. They might technically be more advanced, but it
doesn’t buy them food, or the industrial capacity to replenish their supplies.
In the hypothetical alien ship example, them coming to
conquer, means they might have a few advanced weapons, but once they have
exhausted their stocks, they have only the high ground of space, and no advanced
technical infrastructure to rebuild those stocks. The high ground of space is a
significant asset, but it is useless without the capability to exploit it. The
aliens in this scenario must be prevented from building their infrastructure so
that they don’t build more of those advanced weapons. So two strategies,
continual attacks to reduce their advanced weapons, and attacks on their
attempts to create a high technology
infrastructure. The worst part from the viewpoint of the Indians surviving with
regard to the Puritans was letting them survive and grow, as it was partly the
cause of their near extinction.
Two is a bit worse from a viewpoint of defending against
advanced civilizations. In that advanced civilizations often time come with a
set of negative side effects born of living in their own world. In the case of
the Westerner civilization against the Native Americans it was diseases nasty
enough to wipe out the majority of the population. Now this is possible but
relatively unlikely when it comes to alien species invading, as whatever
diseases they have would not infect us most diseases we know of tend to
be species specific, and using
history that means both sides would be
unaffected by the other’s diseases. Does
this mean no lessons may be learned from human history, in regard to the
negative carrier problem? No, it
doesn’t, because as we know disease denied Western civilization a large scale
foothold in Africa even up to today. Even though their diseases would not a affect us and ours theirs, it is
not inconceivable to develop a bioweapon capable of only infecting the invading
species, this would require some
significant knowledge of the species,
but in principle it could be used to deny
a alien species our world much as disease did to the white man in
Africa. Of course there are two downsides to the strategy, one they are as
capable of slowly designing a bioweapon as we are, and two creating a perfect
area denial weapon also prevents the aliens from using our world which might
mean they upgrade the response to say pushing a asteroid into impact with the
Earth. Best advice for creating a bioweapon would be to use existing pseudo
life that already lives in the aliens, much as life such as bacteria lives in
us, and modify that life to be hostile.
It’s a bit harder to envision other negative carrier
problems, I can think of a few but they primarily involve Von Neumann
terraforming fleets going ahead of the aliens, or nano tech. Nano tech is one
of the few areas of their advanced that might give us some hope; as it like any
form of technology would have the problems of having to adapt to our current
environment. This ‘adaptation’ might take the form of the aliens designing in
modifications with regard to our current environment, but would still take time
for it to be implemented. Nano on the alien side also runs the problems of any
replicating system, in that it could mutate or even be affected by our own
native life, in a interesting parallel to the War of the world’s scenario. But
as to active resistance to said life, would depend on what design the alien
invaders use. But our options would consist of three options, one active
destruction of nano matter through say nukes, or directed energy weapons (experimental
at this point but still possible), or very high yield conventional explosives;
two would be what I call the disruption strategy and it consists of two
possibilities, one the use of electromagnetic pulse or perhaps information
attacks such as hacks of software governing the nanos, and two a indirect
strategy, or poisoning the nano basically. Nano technology like all forms of
technology would require specific combinations of materials in order to
replicate, it should be possible to disrupt the replication ability by allowing
the nano to ingest a combination of materials of various minerals, rather like
it is possible to disrupt any life form’s ability to replicate by doing the
same.
Strategies for contesting the alien’s space superiority are
problematic, as currently our offensive space capability consists of a few
antisatellite weapons, and nuclear weapons which can hit only hit LEO at best.
This could be changed if we repurpose a few of the current boosters which
already have a high earth to solar system launch capability, however this is
likely to take some time and preparation. But other than that, most resistance
is likely to take place on the ground. One advantage the people on earth have
is in the alien invasion scenario for the invaders need to preserve the
infrastructure. Without that need, aliens could use more destructive weaponry
without which we could not defend against. It is important in any alien
invasion scenario to strike a balance between resistance and pushing the
invaders too far. A alien invasion consists of buying time until we can learn
enough to be a true threat, it also consists in destroying just enough but not
too much. In a way it is best if we accept the alien invaders, as the
alternative is our annihilation, even if our decision is resistance, if we
cannot push them off world, then it is best to draw them
in where our advantages are best, and not where they have the advantage
which is in orbit.
The third of the lessons from history in resistance applies
to unity, later when the Native Americans had some technological parity, the
Western powers were able to play the divided Indians up against each other,
when the Western powers were just as divided as the Native Americans in some
ways. In a alien invasion scenario, this lesson applies when the invaders have already
established themselves, without a coordinated capacity for responding to the
aliens, they can use our divisions against us. Ideally this strategy can work,
but works best when the aliens themselves are as divided as we are, if they are
unified it works only well enough to
ensure they do not use our divisions against us.
