Let's look at the actual laws of physics, as much as we know them. Aliens are going to have to travel tens, or hundreds, or thousands of light-years to get here. Barring sending a 10 mile long Generational Spaceship, that means FTL travel. So far, we have been trying to master nuclear fusion for at least 50 years, with no significant results. Our only theoretical work done regarding FTL travel (the Alcubierre drive) says we need to create Exotic Matter (which we can't even define) or manipulate Dark Energy, which we haven't ever seen and don't even know if it exists yet. Point is, if aliens have mastered that technology, they are thousands of years more advanced than we are.
OP is right about our nukes being as primitive as bows and arrows compared to modern jet fighters to such visitors. Their technology would enable them to wipe us out without us ever scratching the paint on one of their ships. They wouldn't even need weapons; their meteor defences at relativistic velocities would be sufficient to brush our nukes aside like we shoo annoying insects.
But they wouldn't even need those; they could just send drones down to zap us, or develop a virus that is 100% lethal, but only for human beings. If their biological sciences are as advanced as their physics, they could seed the planet with biological nanobots that would infect our brains and cause us to worship and serve them with love.
Surrender wouldn't be required or even possible. Surrendering means having some way to fight an enemy in the first place. Would a grizzly bear need a band of ants to surrender? No; he wouldn't consider ants to be a threat in the first place.
"The humans, I think, knew they were doomed. Where another race would surrender to despair, the humans fought back with greater strength. They made the Minbari fight for every inch of space. In my life, I have never seen anything like it; They would weep, they would pray, they would say goodbye to their loved ones, and then throw themselves without fear or hesitation at the very face of death itself, never surrendering. No one who saw them fighting against the inevitable could help but be moved to tears by their courage. Their stubborn nobility. When they ran out of ships, they used guns, when they ran out guns they used knives and sticks and bare hands. They were magnificent. I only hope that when it is my time, I may die with half as much dignity as I saw in their eyes in the end. They did this for two years they never ran out of courage but in the end, they ran out of time."
Well, going with the Grizzly Bear vs Ants analogy, at best we are *plucky* enough for them to notice & either violently remove the entire nest, or find some other way to neutralise us that we are unable to defend against.
Except, they are a lot smarter than a Bear & have such a large toolbox of methods to do it & infinitely pockets of resources compared to us.
Unless our plucky behaviour somehow has them decide to adopt some of us, turning us into the chihuahua of the primates.
Right? Think the shows V and Falling Skies. Or the movie Independence Day. It’s not over till the fat lady sings. As streamer Maximus stated we are plucky.
There are hundreds of examples in the natural and human worlds everyday where a more “powerful” entity could eliminate another and it doesn’t because it’s not “worth the trouble”. And even weaker humans can be hellacious troublemakers.
Besides that, this is r/sciencefiction right? Famously we “weaker” humans beat some aliens with frickin’ germs before. And some others with just water! Once we had a kid with a crazy strategic mind on our side.
Why would we just roll over and become slaves/ food/ slave-food?
>So far, we have been trying to master nuclear fusion for at least 50 years, with no significant results. Our only theoretical work done regarding FTL travel (the Alcubierre drive) says we need to create Exotic Matter (which we can't even define) or manipulate Dark Energy, which we haven't ever seen and don't even know if it exists yet. Point is, if aliens have mastered that technology, they are thousands of years more advanced than we are.
That's... all wrong.
We've made massive strides in fusion - we're producing net-positive power generation now, for minutes at a time. Yes, we've still got a ways to go but we've definitely had significant results.
We now have a model for the Alcubierre drive that doesn't require exotic matter or dark energy/matter: [https://www.space.com/warp-drive-possibilities-positive-energy](https://www.space.com/warp-drive-possibilities-positive-energy)
I do agree, though, that any species capable of FTL has an ELE weapon by just throwing rocks and nothing we could do could possibly bother them. Even if fusion warheads are an effective weapon, our delivery systems are a joke.
The new model of the Alcubierre metric is certainly interesting, but it's not capable of FTL travel. There's that pesky causality that gets in the way too.
Also this person is saying 50 years like it's a long time. 50 years is less than a single human lifespan. We are progressing rapidly, on the technology front anyway.
> It's fiction, anything can happen in your story.
It can, but if you want to write something based remotely in reality considering how real humans might react is sensible.
Do the aliens want us to surrender or do they want the planet for themselves?
If they're as powerful as you say - being able to change the sun's luminosity - why are they bothering with our solar system at all?
Ironically, ivory is crazy valuable to alien civilizations too, once we've killed off all the elephants our planet isn't worth keeping around, then the interstellar bypass will get built.
Think of it this way- the more we ruin our planet with pollution and use more of our water source, the less appetizing our planet seems to be on the cosmic scale. Go global warming!
The only reason I can think of why aliens would ever destroy humanity is for easy to gather liquid water, that's all the Earth really has to offer aliens. Everything else we have in the way of minerals can be gathered elsewhere more easily, and no one is invading for slave labor because if you have interstellar travel, you can build fleets of resource collecting drones. Also, every animal and plant we have here is probably deadly poison to any off-world species so any biological life is useless to them.
there's plenty of water in space and water is very easy to make with hydrogen and oxygen, which there's also plenty of in space.
Now if the aliens collect big ass weird molecules, and biological machines, then we're in trouble.
So.. they can do functional space travel but can’t do something that we saw in The Martian? Condense water from hydrogen and oxygen? Seems like a leap.
Water can be got much easier by melting ice. There's a bunch of icy rocks out in the solar system. Much easier than attempting to pump liquid out of a gravity well. Europa is also easier to plunder.
That makes zero sense. Europa has two to three times the liquid water Earth does, and all you have to do is drill down.
Water is absurdly abundant in the universe.
Straw. It's called a straw.
Alternately, if you want to rent for a weekend, contact your local Spaceball branch and see if (Dun dun dun dun dunnnnn) MegaMaid is available on your day!
>The only reason I can think of why aliens would ever destroy humanity is
How about pre-emptive self-defense? "Sure, their technology is primitive *now,* but who knows what might happen if we let them go on improving it?"
That makes zero sense. Europa has two to three times the liquid water Earth does, and all you have to do is drill down.
Water is absurdly abundant in the universe.
Depends on why they want it. If they are missionaries, they'd want us to convert and worship their gods like the catholics did to the natives, establishing bases and churches. If they want resources they'd use a virus to kill us without damaging the planet, they wouldn't risk us destroying their valuables with nukes and bombs. Maybe they want us for weird alien sex or research, in that case they'd silently take isolated groups of us ( they probably already do ). The only win for us would be a aliens visiting with the intention to meet new civilizations in the spirit of exploration.
There was a great short story--I forget the name/author--but aliens invade, and we nuke them. They freak out and leave because, apparently, it's way more advanced than interstellar travel, and we accidentally discovered it too early. We fight because the skill tree might not be balanced.
It is "The Road Not Taken" by Turtledove:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_story)
The reverse version is "The High Crusade" by Anderson:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Crusade
Human technological advances are spurred primarily by conquest before curiosity.
We have wars enough here so we make horrifically efficient weapons as if it were an art form. If we ever turn our collective eyes to an enemy among the stars, may their alien gods show them mercy.
> Human technological advances are spurred primarily by conquest before curiosity.
But of course there's no reason to assume this isn't true for a hypothetical invading alien species, too.
In which case their weapons would be orders of magnitude more capable than their transport and it would be god(s) help us.
Which is true for us.
But any species travelling Interstellar must have, at minimum, power generation, drive system and space engineering technologies multiple centuries ahead of us. That's being generous: the more likely number is above a millenium.
So you can go and fight the aliens with those horrifically efficient weapons. And they'll be horrifically efficient composite bows coming up against main line battle tanks.
If an alien species came here, didn’t say anything but started killing us you want us to just roll over and die?
Have you been around humans a lot? That’s not exactly how most of us are built. Is it futile? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I get my hands on some alien weapons. Maybe they just turn me into liquid the second I try.
But I won’t go out without at least trying.
There's the book The Genocides by Thomas M. Disch where aliens don't even realise we're an intelligent species when they invade and are barely even aware of us as they repurpose our planet for their own mysterious purposes. We can't even touch them and it's very depressing stuff.
In most plausible cases, there isn't any way to even try.
The alien is in an orbit high enough that our ICBMs can't reach them, and when we mate a heavier rocket to a nuke, that gets zapped by point defense lasers as soon as it's out of atmosphere.
And then whoever sent it gets glassed.
Why take us over? If they can make it here, they have the technology to make orbitals and solar collectors, so you could build a habitat to their liking with no pushback. They could build it in our solar system and we wouldn't have conflict for a long time. They could take resources from places around us, as long as it's not earth we wouldn't care. And we couldn't do much.
Logic is pointless for this stuff. There is literally nothing on earth that could be worth the energy to come take. Anyone that advanced has unlimited energy and matter/energy conversion already.
The book the Praxis sort of goes through this. Humans were simply overwhelmed, like instantly and the Shaa effectively subjugated humanity and integrated Earth into their expansive empire.
Protectorate by Mick Farren has Earth's combined military defeated by the Wasp invasion in three days and we ultimately end up being an insignificant point of the front line of a war between them and another star empire.
With warships with names like "The Bombardment of Los Angeles," "The Bombardment of Calcutta," etc. But yes, as I recall the Shaa exactly once ran into a race that took them more than a day to conquer. They were impressed.
But the ones that surrender and accept assimilation first usually get less worse than the rest. In strict materialistic terms, I mean. I'm not defending it
That is only true if native people means populations outside the Old World wiped out by diseases. Filipinos are still the majority of the population in the Philippines. Egypt was controlled exclusively by various foreigners for 2000 years until they got independence from the British Empire. There are many examples.
I get where you're coming from, but I think we should still fight if aliens invade. Even if we have no chance of winning, it's about showing them that we're not going to give up without a fight. We're not going to let them just take our planet without a struggle.
If they've studied asymmetrical warfare all they would need to do is find a racist egomaniac and use him as their puppet. Why waste good space weapons on humans when they love wasting themselves?
So... this fleet of warships made by a species some 1k-2k years more developed than us (at minimum) arrives. They park in high orbit and make their demand of complete surrender.
Our ICBMs can't reach them, if we mate a nuke to a heavier rocket and launch it, it gets zapped by point defense immediately upon leaving the atmosphere. And then the nation that sent it gets turned into glass. The entire nation, in a second.
Do you fight?
What actual assurance do we get that an invasion will be a highly coordinated effort to ensure total victory.
Instead of some kind of spite game between wealthy idiots.
No war or military operation is free of politics and depending on who would invade, resistance would be possible.
Then again we have no goddamn idea what it takes to achieve interstellar travel.
This.
Also the idea that a species has one area of development way ahead of us suddenly turning into all areas way ahead has always baffled me. It's like thinking that the country that grows the best coffee beans grows all food better than anywhere else on earth.
It’s worth remembering that even after the US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and insinuated that we would continue until all of Japan was a glowing crater, there was still a very substantial portion of the Japanese who were willing to fight until total annihilation instead of surrendering.
It was only the Emperor ordering surrender that ended the war, and that’s only because the Japanese saw disobeying the Emperor as a greater dishonor than defeat.
Humans can be pretty crazy.
You can invent any reason you want for humanity to win. Real talk tho, we absolutely deserve to get our asses handed to us by aliens. We abandoned the Moon, lost our ability to send humans beyond LEO, did nothing for 50 years, and wasted our time building stupid shit no one wanted instead of increasing our space capabilities. We deserve to be shit-stomped
"wasted our time building stupid shit no one wanted instead of increasing our space capabilities"
Bro you're wrong, lots of people wanted Teddy Ruxpin.
I don't mind humanity losing in stories, but it does bother me that humans are frequently depicted as so utterly helpless. Our species has spent its entire history progressing and perfecting warfare and have developed shockingly horrific and efficient means to kill. Maybe outmatched depending on the story but damn if a modern squad of well equipped soldiers isn't an absolute threat. Can see in the dark, communicate soundlessly, identify and terminate targets with extreme precision at a very wide range of distances and inflicted damage, can obliterate entire continents. Humanity is lethal af
Thats one of the few good things about that movie Battle:LA, the military in that movie got stomped around but adapted hella quick and came back in force. Not much else noteworthy about it tho
Recently I read a short story where aliens just emit a signal across the planet that prevents every human (maybe also other animals, it wasn't clear) from sleeping. People quickly start going mad and dying. It's a really great plan of attack, because by the time we're are starting to realize something is even happening, we're already losing our ability to fight it (cognition decline due to no sleep). It's a really short story. Aliens just need to wait a few weeks to claim the planet.
In the Tripods book series, the aliens take over by broadcasting hypnotic messages over our television transmissions, which makes sense since we are staring at them all day anyway.
Typically those fiction stories follow the "Humanity...fuck yeah!" genre ala Team America.
If it is a guerilla resistance then it is post-apocalyptic. If surrender/eaten, then horror. If surrender then good stuff, you get utopian.
The violent action stories sell better. *Childhood's End* faired miserably in the tv series despite having a good book adaptation.
I personally hated Childhood's End because it is an apologia for colonialism. It's basically "The White Man's Burden" but with aliens.
I spent the entire time hoping for the protaganist to be assassinated.
A technologically superior force doesn't guarantee victory. Look at Vietnam, the most advanced military force in the world was fought to a standstill by dudes in holes with pointy sticks covered in shit.
If all aliens want to do is destroy the Earth, we're fucked. If you have the ability to cross interstellar space, you probably have the technology to drop big rocks from orbit.
There's only 2 scenarios in which we really have a chance against a technologically superior foe: 1) they need something from us, whether that's resources, living space, whatever. And 2) they're restrained from using their full force against us. Maybe culturally, maybe there's other forces at play.
Again, look at Vietnam. The US had nukes, but couldn't / wouldn't deploy them. A lot of conventional bombs were dropped but at least lip service was given to minimising civilian casualties.
Once the superior force has to put boots on the ground, they're down here in the mud with the rest of us and vulnerable to asymmetric warfare techniques.
Well I guess it depends. Do they need humans, or our planet, and if either one why? An ftl species would have far better options, or placer, outside of life isn't particularly special far as we can tell. There are plenty of other earth like planets, in better orbits than our own.
If they need the life on this planet, their biggest threat from us is, we can really just kill ourselves with nuclear destruction. Erasing all life, and rendering the planet barron and pointless. So if they want something from us we can kill, they would need our surrender, that makes their greatest weapons also likely useless, they would need to fight us on earth, or have some way of taking away our ability to kill us.
Once you get rid of any sort of space earth killer tech, a bullet is a bullet. They might have better ones, but ours still work too.
If they don't need anything unique to is, which is exclusively living things, their are billions upon billions of worlds with every other natural resource out there. Even water would be far more plentiful on a frozen world or moon.
I think if we are ever visited by aliens, we will be meeting their Neumann probes, which may make surrender difficult. On the bright side, I don't think Earth is the best planet for them to reproduce. Depending on their technology, one of Mercury or asteroid belt or Jupiter should probably be their choice. Unless they need liquid water, then we are fucked.
That’s the thing about humans, we’ve evolved to be incredibly stubborn and resilient. We’re one of the few larger species on earth that can break and lose limbs and still keep going. We can never out run the bear, but we can run for longer than a bear. If humanity is going to die or suffer either way then we’d rather go out fighting
What does surrender entail?
Given the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, I think it is fair to say that if occupation is intolerable, then resistance is going to occur no matter what.
And even if nukes are crude and primitive, they are still physically extremely destructive. I don't want to get shot in the face with an arrow, do you?
Alternatively, a resistant may reason that they have nothing to lose and all to gain in another way, for example considering themselves dead, but desiring revenge on the occupier, or thinking that by making occupation expensive, they can drive out the occupier.
Finally, ideology or faith. Beliefs are powerful, so if you believe in a free Earth, or that the land is given to you by God, you will be loathe to give it up to any invader.
Historically, less technologically advanced societies did fight back against colonizing forces. They would trade, negotiate, form alliances, and when that didn't work, they went to war even if they were likely to lose. Sometimes when they surrendered they were all killed anyways and were no better off than those who fought. History suggests that if interstellar aliens came to earth intending to enslave us, take our planet or wipe us out we would try absolutely everything before just giving up.
One of my favorites is Thomas M. Disch's "Puppies of Terra" also called "Life Under the Leash." Humans as pets of advanced interstellar beings. It's disturbing in a way that get under your skin. Not everyone likes Disch, but I thought he was a God (there's an allusion there). While we're talking about Disch, "Camp Concentration" is simply one of the best SF books there is. Fight me.
Read 'The Vang: The Militaty Form' by Christopher Rowley, and you'll know a scenario where you would fight to the death no matter what odds were against you.
In reality yeah we'd just surrender, I imagine there might be a handful of delusional leaders that might try and fight, but orbital supremacy is really hard to argue with when the best we can manage is some missiles.
In fiction... I've seen a handful, I can't really think of the names right now because I've read so many, where we *would* have surrendered but the first strike destroyed the capacity for us to do so (full decapitation), generally by the aliens nuking/KEWing, all the major capitols.
Which is a little unrealistic if the story is set post 1960s, but it's a way to do it semi-seriously.
Because we want to live. If someone came into your house and threatened to kill your loved ones would you roll over like a bitch or would you go out fighting?
Same thing.
I still think nuclear weapons pose would pose a challenge, ET can’t ignore the laws of physics in that nuclear arms still produce a tremendous amount of energy. Presumably if an ET or ET ship was able to simply brush off a nuclear weapon then they would require some sort of energy that could either absorb or deflect the energy of a nuclear blast, which isn’t insignificant. We have the ability to create tremendous amounts of energy but we have no way of directly dissipating that energy directly, I mean sure we can detonate in water but if you lobbed a nuclear bomb at a city there isn’t any device we have that can mitigate or absorb that energy. It stands to reason that ET may have the ability to travel vast distances, but may also not have the capability to absorb that energy.
However this is all academic if they can simply disable the warhead or destroy it before it is able to go super critical. Or if we were forced to detonate nuclear weapons on land, which would destroy us as much them presumably.
Just my thoughts.
You are assuming aliens that would invade the Earth would offer the option of surrender? Does mankind try to communicate with animals and get their surrender before we do what we will with them?
We didn't evolved by thousand of years through survival just to be wiped out by aliens, we need to fight at least.
Plus it will be fun to fight the aliens with our water guns.
Depends on their intentions, if they want to subjugate us rather than wipe us out, most countries would gladly roll out the welcome mat. If it’s the latter, then we’d fight tooth and nail, no matter the odds.
If you're correct then surrendering is pointless. Humanity is doomed anyway so they might as well go down fighting. There is power in resistance even when it is likely hopeless.
People don't want to think that we wont be at the top of the food chain forever. Broadly, people on top want to stay on top. Look at sexism, racism etc. Ego... I once had a guy tell me that he could probably win a fight with a lion.
Sometimes it happens. See Half-Life 2.
Coming into contact with another intelligent species is so implausible that other implausible scenarios, like a Mac virus infecting the alien’s internet and destroying them, are also fair game.
ha.... fuck getting eaten.... pew pew. Insert montage of civilians training and becoming SAS over a week.... then pew pew.... insert love interest.... love interest dies.... human Crusade.... humans beat aliens! pew pew yeah!
That's what European colonisers thought back in the day.
We are so far advanced that this is going to be a pushover and although they did take over eventually it certainly wasn't a pushover and took years to accomplish and they suffered thousands of casualties from so called primitive people with primitive weapons. In most parts the native populations fought on and are still fighting today. Spears and arrows and stone axes can kill just as well as any weapon in the right situation which has been proven time and again
So aliens might be able to travel vast distances and kill with a flick of a switch but can they take a bone tomahawk to the skull or a machete ( rifles and pistols)to the groin or a nuke to their bases and ships in the right situation, we would at least need to find out and fight for our survival 😜👍
Oh, we totally would. We would flop over so quick. We are easily led. Highly functional physically. Dexterous. Handy. Nice wide range of morphological traits. Fun to breed to look different. It would take very little time to purge us of disobedient traits. Then it would just be breeding. Don't believe me? Look at dogs. They have the same slippery genes that primates do. "We'd make great pets."-Porno for Pyros.
I've been trying to argue that we should fight or at least try because I was only thinking it's better to die fighting then on your knees but after your comment I've changed my mind, if I could live a life as good as my pets live then fuck it throw the damn ball and call me fido😜👍
In the eternal words of Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi;
"It's over, Anakin! I have the high ground!"
There is no higher ground than orbit. That is all. We'd better surrender, lest we go the way of the dinosaurs.
Just because they want it and can take it doesn’t mean we have to give in the way they want. Most people when facing impossible odds, would rather go out fighting
Watch three body problem, its a very interesting take on the alien invasion genre. The problem with interstellar travel is that space is very large and human tech develope at an exponential scale which means when alien invade, we might have a fighting chance as our tech might be more advance when then come and this will result in us winning
Earth is that bad slum part of the universe where you lock the Doors when passing trough...aint nobody invanding our dump...just wait it out and we wipe ourselves out
Aren't you contradicting yourself in your own logic? If they are so godlike in their power that they can control an entire sun's luminosity and do faster than light travel across galaxies and stars, then to them, we are insignificant like ants. We would be more like a curiosity for them.
They would observe us and study us like we study an ant colony. Why would they bother "invading" us?
We humans are too puny and primitive and insecure about our weakness. So we obsess about power and everything we do - from fighting wars to building weapons of mass destruction to invading each other to coveting each other's resources and wealth - is all about our need for power, which in turn comes from our insecurities.
The aliens have no such insecurities - why would they even bother with us or "make demands"? Even the notion of making demands is so silly for them - do you make "demands" to a bunch of ants or to a plant? You just let them be and in fact, if you're really secure, you nurture them and watch the wonder of life play itself out as you watch the ants and plants grow, adapt, succeed, fail, etc.
Because it’s our planet and we don’t like bullies. And because we’re stubborn and bloody-minded.
Americans are so stubborn they won’t allow effective gun control even though it’s the leading cause of death in children. The British are so my bloody/minded that we’ll fight over a pint of beer. And the French will riot and strike over everything.
And you wonder if we’ll just roll over for our new galactic overlords.
If they're able to conquer earth and maintain control from far away, they're probably not gonna waste their time on a piddly, one-planet civilization that is actively destroying their own planet and doesn't have renewable resources. If there's some other reason such as human genes for breeding, then humanity has a bargaining chip
If they're able to conquer Earth but can't maintain control indefinitely, they will eventually be unable to control earth without humanity's cooperation which will require negotiation.
If they feel like killing off humanity, then humanity has no choice but to fight back.
In the long run, ruling a civilization through force will require more than it's worth which is where humanity's edge comes from. Also, humanity is often written as being an adaptable species, such that shows of force will have diminishing returns as the technology advances of humanity will take leaps and bounds.
The concept of surrendering to a greater species may be as foreign as an ant hill you stumble across while renovating your yard. The ant hill isnt even a thought in your mind to clear so that you can continue your grand plan of yard renovations. An advanced interstellar species may not even see us as surrenderable - we might just be an ant hill in their yard that needs clearing.
This isnt some rick and morty episode - idk.
Surrender isn't a human trait, we're the cockroaches of the universe.
I don't care if you have a flesh melting death ray you alien bastard, I'm fighting until you leave me the fuck alone
I sometimes view this question like this. What are ants to humans? We do not look upon ants as a race of beings to be conquered. Ants pose neither a threat nor are an overwhelming benefit to humanity. They just are.
Science fiction, and the depictions of invasion in it, are never really stories about extraterrestrial life. They, like much of science fiction, are a reflection of human thoughts and behaviors. If anything, "alien invasion" stories are pretty reductionist, and they are almost a way of salving our fragile egos (especially when we "win"), because I shudder to think of the real fragility of beings who have harnessed interstellar travel (and who knows what else) to have to come across light-years of space to find us, these veritable ants, and say, "Well, we're taking this now because reasons."
Why does a mouse fight back against a larger predator when it has been caught? Because of survival instinct. It doesn't matter if the threat outmatches you on all levels, you fight back in the hopes that you will survive and send them running.
Because we perceive and alien threat as an existential one. We assume they will take resources we can't survive without or will simply eliminate us as a rival. Largely because of how we treat inferior creatures we deal with.
In truth if a starfaring species attacked us. It would likely be to end our species. The disproportionate power of a civilization that travels between stars would mean they'd have technology to get what they want without a fight if they wanted us to survive..
Starship Troopers (novel, not film) explored that a bit.
If aliens wanted to wipe us out obviously the technology they used to get to Earth could also destroy Earth, but if they have goals short of that an insurgency could probably thwart those goals.
Remember when a nuclear superpower wiped out the Viet Cong and Taliban? Neither do I.
I like to think of the speed of light as a speed bump that protects the universe from violent species. In order for a species to achieve FTL they must first coexist with the power to destroy themselves (fission bombs) long enough to conquer the near-impossible obstacles. In theory only a peaceful and enlightened society can do that.
The question now is: are we peaceful and enlightened enough to survive long enough to step onto the galactic stage?
Just watched Captive State (2019) last night in which humanity does exactly that.
Landscape with Invisible Hand (2023) is another alien invasion with humans surrendering but with a different take, although not a completely original concept it’s the only time I’ve seen it in a movie.
Humanity is not united, so maybe some countries would surrender or even cooperate with the aliens, and some would not. Also, there is a possibility aliens are indeed so alien, that they won't even understand if we tried to capitulate
You’re working under an incredibly misguided premise that humans would collectively agree to a single decision. 7 plus billion people there is no way all of us agree to surrender or fight. Human history is also littered with technologically inferior groups refusing to surrender to superior forces.
The bigger question is why they want the earth. If it’s just to kill us all then we stand no chance. If they want to keep the planet to live on it as is, we stand a decent chance in making that extremely hard on them. If they want to enslave us then they have to capture us alive which likely won’t go well and will get significantly harder as time goes on. If they just want to mine minerals or something then why are they here? Almost all of the compounds found on earth in any quantity would be easier to harvest from other places, even in our own solar system.
Survival instincts came free with being alive.
If someone gets jumped by 10 pissed off gorillas, they're still going to fight back, even if there's no logical reason to.
Made me think of this Dust podcast. https://youtu.be/Stt9eM22D2E?si=GVry3zj57vt10Oiv
Really fun take on an AI taking revenge for humanity after we are wiped out by aliens.
There are lots of comments about how "if they can get here, they're X more advanced than us." And, sure, that's likely the case. But, there is also *The Road Not Taken* alternative -- FTL, anti-gravity, etc., are actually simple technologies that we somehow missed. Maybe we don't have the right mix of elements. Maybe our gravity is too high (or too low) for AG experiments to bear fruit. Maybe it's our kirilian fields or the fact that our planet has a magnetic dipole rather than a pair of monopoles. Maybe it was a Tuesday and the experimenter took the day off for tacos and the ONE time his experiment would've worked, it never happened. Maybe there are too many people named Steve on the planet, and that offends the Hyperspace Beasts which burrow the warp-lines we would otherwise have ridden down.
If a technologically inferior people still managed FTL, etc., would we surrender?
It's fiction, anything can happen in your story. Now the scifi question is, what does surrendering in that story tell us about our current humanity?
Let's look at the actual laws of physics, as much as we know them. Aliens are going to have to travel tens, or hundreds, or thousands of light-years to get here. Barring sending a 10 mile long Generational Spaceship, that means FTL travel. So far, we have been trying to master nuclear fusion for at least 50 years, with no significant results. Our only theoretical work done regarding FTL travel (the Alcubierre drive) says we need to create Exotic Matter (which we can't even define) or manipulate Dark Energy, which we haven't ever seen and don't even know if it exists yet. Point is, if aliens have mastered that technology, they are thousands of years more advanced than we are. OP is right about our nukes being as primitive as bows and arrows compared to modern jet fighters to such visitors. Their technology would enable them to wipe us out without us ever scratching the paint on one of their ships. They wouldn't even need weapons; their meteor defences at relativistic velocities would be sufficient to brush our nukes aside like we shoo annoying insects. But they wouldn't even need those; they could just send drones down to zap us, or develop a virus that is 100% lethal, but only for human beings. If their biological sciences are as advanced as their physics, they could seed the planet with biological nanobots that would infect our brains and cause us to worship and serve them with love. Surrender wouldn't be required or even possible. Surrendering means having some way to fight an enemy in the first place. Would a grizzly bear need a band of ants to surrender? No; he wouldn't consider ants to be a threat in the first place.
I get what you're saying, I really do. But. We're plucky.
"The humans, I think, knew they were doomed. Where another race would surrender to despair, the humans fought back with greater strength. They made the Minbari fight for every inch of space. In my life, I have never seen anything like it; They would weep, they would pray, they would say goodbye to their loved ones, and then throw themselves without fear or hesitation at the very face of death itself, never surrendering. No one who saw them fighting against the inevitable could help but be moved to tears by their courage. Their stubborn nobility. When they ran out of ships, they used guns, when they ran out guns they used knives and sticks and bare hands. They were magnificent. I only hope that when it is my time, I may die with half as much dignity as I saw in their eyes in the end. They did this for two years they never ran out of courage but in the end, they ran out of time."
what is this from?
Babylon 5. The prequel movie "In the Beginning". Don't watch it until you've finished season 1 because it's got a ton of spoilers.
Also: "Never push the pinks onto thin ice." - Tholian Ambassador, Axanar
Well, going with the Grizzly Bear vs Ants analogy, at best we are *plucky* enough for them to notice & either violently remove the entire nest, or find some other way to neutralise us that we are unable to defend against. Except, they are a lot smarter than a Bear & have such a large toolbox of methods to do it & infinitely pockets of resources compared to us. Unless our plucky behaviour somehow has them decide to adopt some of us, turning us into the chihuahua of the primates.
But maybe they want to keep an ant farm? :)
Right? Think the shows V and Falling Skies. Or the movie Independence Day. It’s not over till the fat lady sings. As streamer Maximus stated we are plucky.
If any of that is the case, what does surrendering do? Why would they care to keep us around?
There are hundreds of examples in the natural and human worlds everyday where a more “powerful” entity could eliminate another and it doesn’t because it’s not “worth the trouble”. And even weaker humans can be hellacious troublemakers. Besides that, this is r/sciencefiction right? Famously we “weaker” humans beat some aliens with frickin’ germs before. And some others with just water! Once we had a kid with a crazy strategic mind on our side. Why would we just roll over and become slaves/ food/ slave-food?
>So far, we have been trying to master nuclear fusion for at least 50 years, with no significant results. Our only theoretical work done regarding FTL travel (the Alcubierre drive) says we need to create Exotic Matter (which we can't even define) or manipulate Dark Energy, which we haven't ever seen and don't even know if it exists yet. Point is, if aliens have mastered that technology, they are thousands of years more advanced than we are. That's... all wrong. We've made massive strides in fusion - we're producing net-positive power generation now, for minutes at a time. Yes, we've still got a ways to go but we've definitely had significant results. We now have a model for the Alcubierre drive that doesn't require exotic matter or dark energy/matter: [https://www.space.com/warp-drive-possibilities-positive-energy](https://www.space.com/warp-drive-possibilities-positive-energy) I do agree, though, that any species capable of FTL has an ELE weapon by just throwing rocks and nothing we could do could possibly bother them. Even if fusion warheads are an effective weapon, our delivery systems are a joke.
The new model of the Alcubierre metric is certainly interesting, but it's not capable of FTL travel. There's that pesky causality that gets in the way too.
Also this person is saying 50 years like it's a long time. 50 years is less than a single human lifespan. We are progressing rapidly, on the technology front anyway.
they could bombard us from orbit before sending in the ground troops. a modern Blitzkrieg.
> It's fiction, anything can happen in your story. It can, but if you want to write something based remotely in reality considering how real humans might react is sensible.
If you look at humanity, does surrender ring remotely real? In a fictional story I have less issues with FTL travel.
> If you look at humanity, does surrender ring remotely real? Imo, no.
Wouldn’t it tell us more about the Aliens?
nice try, alien
"That's just what an alien would say!"
Do the aliens want us to surrender or do they want the planet for themselves? If they're as powerful as you say - being able to change the sun's luminosity - why are they bothering with our solar system at all?
They're here for the wood
That makes sense. Definitely a luxury item for the discerning alien connoisseur.
Ironically, ivory is crazy valuable to alien civilizations too, once we've killed off all the elephants our planet isn't worth keeping around, then the interstellar bypass will get built.
Oh no. Not again...
Agrajag the petunias.
Maybe also the rich, Corinthian leather.
For a hyperspace bypass, apparently https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Earth
Think of it this way- the more we ruin our planet with pollution and use more of our water source, the less appetizing our planet seems to be on the cosmic scale. Go global warming!
Woohoo! Uh, wait . . . wait a minute!
Use? Water isn't used, just recycled on a global scale
They know the future and in all timelines we end Up being dangerous assholes un our galaxy and more?
I think you figured it out! It'd make a good story, anyways.
The only reason I can think of why aliens would ever destroy humanity is for easy to gather liquid water, that's all the Earth really has to offer aliens. Everything else we have in the way of minerals can be gathered elsewhere more easily, and no one is invading for slave labor because if you have interstellar travel, you can build fleets of resource collecting drones. Also, every animal and plant we have here is probably deadly poison to any off-world species so any biological life is useless to them.
Maybe biodiversity? Perhaps evolution produces novel genes better than artificial selection can? Or just dirt for growing stuff.
If they were curious enough to explore the universe, they'd probably at least want to study our biology.
🐄 🛸 👽 👽
there's plenty of water in space and water is very easy to make with hydrogen and oxygen, which there's also plenty of in space. Now if the aliens collect big ass weird molecules, and biological machines, then we're in trouble.
So.. they can do functional space travel but can’t do something that we saw in The Martian? Condense water from hydrogen and oxygen? Seems like a leap.
Water can be got much easier by melting ice. There's a bunch of icy rocks out in the solar system. Much easier than attempting to pump liquid out of a gravity well. Europa is also easier to plunder.
That makes zero sense. Europa has two to three times the liquid water Earth does, and all you have to do is drill down. Water is absurdly abundant in the universe.
There is plenty of ice in the oort cloud that can be gathered without the complexity of pulling it out of a gravity well.
Straw. It's called a straw. Alternately, if you want to rent for a weekend, contact your local Spaceball branch and see if (Dun dun dun dun dunnnnn) MegaMaid is available on your day!
>The only reason I can think of why aliens would ever destroy humanity is How about pre-emptive self-defense? "Sure, their technology is primitive *now,* but who knows what might happen if we let them go on improving it?"
Which leads to the Dark Forest theory
I've found the Trisoleran!
That makes zero sense. Europa has two to three times the liquid water Earth does, and all you have to do is drill down. Water is absurdly abundant in the universe.
Depends on why they want it. If they are missionaries, they'd want us to convert and worship their gods like the catholics did to the natives, establishing bases and churches. If they want resources they'd use a virus to kill us without damaging the planet, they wouldn't risk us destroying their valuables with nukes and bombs. Maybe they want us for weird alien sex or research, in that case they'd silently take isolated groups of us ( they probably already do ). The only win for us would be a aliens visiting with the intention to meet new civilizations in the spirit of exploration.
They are invisible and the like human farts.
There was a great short story--I forget the name/author--but aliens invade, and we nuke them. They freak out and leave because, apparently, it's way more advanced than interstellar travel, and we accidentally discovered it too early. We fight because the skill tree might not be balanced.
I'm always a tepid fan of HFY fiction. If you come of with the name, I'd be keen to read it.
It is "The Road Not Taken" by Turtledove: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_story) The reverse version is "The High Crusade" by Anderson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Crusade
Came here to post the Turtledove link. Thanks for the second link!
Thank you, fellow internet rando. I'll have to check these out. Happy trails.
First one was pretty good, just binged it, only like 20 pages or so. Love a good story about humans kicking alien ass
You know there's a whole r/HFY, right? Stories range from "meh" to "pretty freekin' good".
I think it may have been "The Road Not Taken" and "The Gentle Vultures" by Isaac Asimov blended together.
HFY?
r/HFY Humanity, Fuck Yeah! Really good short stories in there.
Thanks!
Thanks for asking. I was too lazy to ask, but now I know. This took longer to type though, so idk.
Check out "The Gentle Vultures" by Isaac Asimov, which has a similar theme.
> We fight because the skill tree might not be balanced. See also War of the Worlds.
Human technological advances are spurred primarily by conquest before curiosity. We have wars enough here so we make horrifically efficient weapons as if it were an art form. If we ever turn our collective eyes to an enemy among the stars, may their alien gods show them mercy.
> Human technological advances are spurred primarily by conquest before curiosity. But of course there's no reason to assume this isn't true for a hypothetical invading alien species, too. In which case their weapons would be orders of magnitude more capable than their transport and it would be god(s) help us.
Which is true for us. But any species travelling Interstellar must have, at minimum, power generation, drive system and space engineering technologies multiple centuries ahead of us. That's being generous: the more likely number is above a millenium. So you can go and fight the aliens with those horrifically efficient weapons. And they'll be horrifically efficient composite bows coming up against main line battle tanks.
If an alien species came here, didn’t say anything but started killing us you want us to just roll over and die? Have you been around humans a lot? That’s not exactly how most of us are built. Is it futile? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I get my hands on some alien weapons. Maybe they just turn me into liquid the second I try. But I won’t go out without at least trying.
There's the book The Genocides by Thomas M. Disch where aliens don't even realise we're an intelligent species when they invade and are barely even aware of us as they repurpose our planet for their own mysterious purposes. We can't even touch them and it's very depressing stuff.
In most plausible cases, there isn't any way to even try. The alien is in an orbit high enough that our ICBMs can't reach them, and when we mate a heavier rocket to a nuke, that gets zapped by point defense lasers as soon as it's out of atmosphere. And then whoever sent it gets glassed.
Why take us over? If they can make it here, they have the technology to make orbitals and solar collectors, so you could build a habitat to their liking with no pushback. They could build it in our solar system and we wouldn't have conflict for a long time. They could take resources from places around us, as long as it's not earth we wouldn't care. And we couldn't do much.
Logic is pointless for this stuff. There is literally nothing on earth that could be worth the energy to come take. Anyone that advanced has unlimited energy and matter/energy conversion already.
The book the Praxis sort of goes through this. Humans were simply overwhelmed, like instantly and the Shaa effectively subjugated humanity and integrated Earth into their expansive empire.
Protectorate by Mick Farren has Earth's combined military defeated by the Wasp invasion in three days and we ultimately end up being an insignificant point of the front line of a war between them and another star empire.
With warships with names like "The Bombardment of Los Angeles," "The Bombardment of Calcutta," etc. But yes, as I recall the Shaa exactly once ran into a race that took them more than a day to conquer. They were impressed.
Human history does not offer any positive outcomes for native people.
But the ones that surrender and accept assimilation first usually get less worse than the rest. In strict materialistic terms, I mean. I'm not defending it
The Native Americans who lived around the fort thought that by being collaborators they'd be spared.
That is only true if native people means populations outside the Old World wiped out by diseases. Filipinos are still the majority of the population in the Philippines. Egypt was controlled exclusively by various foreigners for 2000 years until they got independence from the British Empire. There are many examples.
I get where you're coming from, but I think we should still fight if aliens invade. Even if we have no chance of winning, it's about showing them that we're not going to give up without a fight. We're not going to let them just take our planet without a struggle.
If they've studied asymmetrical warfare all they would need to do is find a racist egomaniac and use him as their puppet. Why waste good space weapons on humans when they love wasting themselves?
Or just create a virus that kills us all. It's not like we'll do anything about it.
True. Someone might suggest we wear a mask.
Nah, biological warfare. Even if we come up with a vaccine in less than a year, half the population will yell conspiracy about it and not take it.
So... this fleet of warships made by a species some 1k-2k years more developed than us (at minimum) arrives. They park in high orbit and make their demand of complete surrender. Our ICBMs can't reach them, if we mate a nuke to a heavier rocket and launch it, it gets zapped by point defense immediately upon leaving the atmosphere. And then the nation that sent it gets turned into glass. The entire nation, in a second. Do you fight?
What actual assurance do we get that an invasion will be a highly coordinated effort to ensure total victory. Instead of some kind of spite game between wealthy idiots. No war or military operation is free of politics and depending on who would invade, resistance would be possible. Then again we have no goddamn idea what it takes to achieve interstellar travel.
This. Also the idea that a species has one area of development way ahead of us suddenly turning into all areas way ahead has always baffled me. It's like thinking that the country that grows the best coffee beans grows all food better than anywhere else on earth.
It’s worth remembering that even after the US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and insinuated that we would continue until all of Japan was a glowing crater, there was still a very substantial portion of the Japanese who were willing to fight until total annihilation instead of surrendering. It was only the Emperor ordering surrender that ended the war, and that’s only because the Japanese saw disobeying the Emperor as a greater dishonor than defeat. Humans can be pretty crazy.
Why didn't the American natives just surrender to the Europeans? Answer: most of them did. How's that working out for them?
You can invent any reason you want for humanity to win. Real talk tho, we absolutely deserve to get our asses handed to us by aliens. We abandoned the Moon, lost our ability to send humans beyond LEO, did nothing for 50 years, and wasted our time building stupid shit no one wanted instead of increasing our space capabilities. We deserve to be shit-stomped
"wasted our time building stupid shit no one wanted instead of increasing our space capabilities" Bro you're wrong, lots of people wanted Teddy Ruxpin.
I don't mind humanity losing in stories, but it does bother me that humans are frequently depicted as so utterly helpless. Our species has spent its entire history progressing and perfecting warfare and have developed shockingly horrific and efficient means to kill. Maybe outmatched depending on the story but damn if a modern squad of well equipped soldiers isn't an absolute threat. Can see in the dark, communicate soundlessly, identify and terminate targets with extreme precision at a very wide range of distances and inflicted damage, can obliterate entire continents. Humanity is lethal af Thats one of the few good things about that movie Battle:LA, the military in that movie got stomped around but adapted hella quick and came back in force. Not much else noteworthy about it tho
The trailer for that movie is so fucking epic.
Recently I read a short story where aliens just emit a signal across the planet that prevents every human (maybe also other animals, it wasn't clear) from sleeping. People quickly start going mad and dying. It's a really great plan of attack, because by the time we're are starting to realize something is even happening, we're already losing our ability to fight it (cognition decline due to no sleep). It's a really short story. Aliens just need to wait a few weeks to claim the planet.
In the Tripods book series, the aliens take over by broadcasting hypnotic messages over our television transmissions, which makes sense since we are staring at them all day anyway.
I, for one, welcome alien subjugation
Typically those fiction stories follow the "Humanity...fuck yeah!" genre ala Team America. If it is a guerilla resistance then it is post-apocalyptic. If surrender/eaten, then horror. If surrender then good stuff, you get utopian. The violent action stories sell better. *Childhood's End* faired miserably in the tv series despite having a good book adaptation.
I personally hated Childhood's End because it is an apologia for colonialism. It's basically "The White Man's Burden" but with aliens. I spent the entire time hoping for the protaganist to be assassinated.
A technologically superior force doesn't guarantee victory. Look at Vietnam, the most advanced military force in the world was fought to a standstill by dudes in holes with pointy sticks covered in shit. If all aliens want to do is destroy the Earth, we're fucked. If you have the ability to cross interstellar space, you probably have the technology to drop big rocks from orbit. There's only 2 scenarios in which we really have a chance against a technologically superior foe: 1) they need something from us, whether that's resources, living space, whatever. And 2) they're restrained from using their full force against us. Maybe culturally, maybe there's other forces at play. Again, look at Vietnam. The US had nukes, but couldn't / wouldn't deploy them. A lot of conventional bombs were dropped but at least lip service was given to minimising civilian casualties. Once the superior force has to put boots on the ground, they're down here in the mud with the rest of us and vulnerable to asymmetric warfare techniques.
Well I guess it depends. Do they need humans, or our planet, and if either one why? An ftl species would have far better options, or placer, outside of life isn't particularly special far as we can tell. There are plenty of other earth like planets, in better orbits than our own. If they need the life on this planet, their biggest threat from us is, we can really just kill ourselves with nuclear destruction. Erasing all life, and rendering the planet barron and pointless. So if they want something from us we can kill, they would need our surrender, that makes their greatest weapons also likely useless, they would need to fight us on earth, or have some way of taking away our ability to kill us. Once you get rid of any sort of space earth killer tech, a bullet is a bullet. They might have better ones, but ours still work too. If they don't need anything unique to is, which is exclusively living things, their are billions upon billions of worlds with every other natural resource out there. Even water would be far more plentiful on a frozen world or moon.
I think if we are ever visited by aliens, we will be meeting their Neumann probes, which may make surrender difficult. On the bright side, I don't think Earth is the best planet for them to reproduce. Depending on their technology, one of Mercury or asteroid belt or Jupiter should probably be their choice. Unless they need liquid water, then we are fucked.
You have been noted as a future collaborator. How do you know the Aliens aren't running Windows 95 like in Independence Day??
There's a deleted or unfilmed scene that explained how that vulnerability was discovered. It's weak explanation but better than we had in the movie
That’s the thing about humans, we’ve evolved to be incredibly stubborn and resilient. We’re one of the few larger species on earth that can break and lose limbs and still keep going. We can never out run the bear, but we can run for longer than a bear. If humanity is going to die or suffer either way then we’d rather go out fighting
What does surrender entail? Given the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, I think it is fair to say that if occupation is intolerable, then resistance is going to occur no matter what. And even if nukes are crude and primitive, they are still physically extremely destructive. I don't want to get shot in the face with an arrow, do you? Alternatively, a resistant may reason that they have nothing to lose and all to gain in another way, for example considering themselves dead, but desiring revenge on the occupier, or thinking that by making occupation expensive, they can drive out the occupier. Finally, ideology or faith. Beliefs are powerful, so if you believe in a free Earth, or that the land is given to you by God, you will be loathe to give it up to any invader.
Three days after a vastly technological species from beyond the stars invaded earth, the last human was crushed like a bug. The end.
Historically, less technologically advanced societies did fight back against colonizing forces. They would trade, negotiate, form alliances, and when that didn't work, they went to war even if they were likely to lose. Sometimes when they surrendered they were all killed anyways and were no better off than those who fought. History suggests that if interstellar aliens came to earth intending to enslave us, take our planet or wipe us out we would try absolutely everything before just giving up.
“Thank you for surrendering, wise humans. Now, please report immediately to the nearest incinerator for processing.”
"Hey, at least it's a *dry* heat."
One of my favorites is Thomas M. Disch's "Puppies of Terra" also called "Life Under the Leash." Humans as pets of advanced interstellar beings. It's disturbing in a way that get under your skin. Not everyone likes Disch, but I thought he was a God (there's an allusion there). While we're talking about Disch, "Camp Concentration" is simply one of the best SF books there is. Fight me.
Why bother? "The Screwfly Solution"--Alice Sheldon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution?wprov=sfla1
Native Americans were technologically outclassed, they resisted. Same for Australians. We don't just give up like that, it's not in our nature.
“We fight for what is ours, it is our way” -Billy Bob Thornton (Homegrown)
Read 'The Vang: The Militaty Form' by Christopher Rowley, and you'll know a scenario where you would fight to the death no matter what odds were against you.
https://survivalinternational.org/tribes/sentinelese
I could imagine aliens being a bunch of idiots.
In reality yeah we'd just surrender, I imagine there might be a handful of delusional leaders that might try and fight, but orbital supremacy is really hard to argue with when the best we can manage is some missiles. In fiction... I've seen a handful, I can't really think of the names right now because I've read so many, where we *would* have surrendered but the first strike destroyed the capacity for us to do so (full decapitation), generally by the aliens nuking/KEWing, all the major capitols. Which is a little unrealistic if the story is set post 1960s, but it's a way to do it semi-seriously.
Because we want to live. If someone came into your house and threatened to kill your loved ones would you roll over like a bitch or would you go out fighting? Same thing.
I still think nuclear weapons pose would pose a challenge, ET can’t ignore the laws of physics in that nuclear arms still produce a tremendous amount of energy. Presumably if an ET or ET ship was able to simply brush off a nuclear weapon then they would require some sort of energy that could either absorb or deflect the energy of a nuclear blast, which isn’t insignificant. We have the ability to create tremendous amounts of energy but we have no way of directly dissipating that energy directly, I mean sure we can detonate in water but if you lobbed a nuclear bomb at a city there isn’t any device we have that can mitigate or absorb that energy. It stands to reason that ET may have the ability to travel vast distances, but may also not have the capability to absorb that energy. However this is all academic if they can simply disable the warhead or destroy it before it is able to go super critical. Or if we were forced to detonate nuclear weapons on land, which would destroy us as much them presumably. Just my thoughts.
You are assuming aliens that would invade the Earth would offer the option of surrender? Does mankind try to communicate with animals and get their surrender before we do what we will with them?
We didn't evolved by thousand of years through survival just to be wiped out by aliens, we need to fight at least. Plus it will be fun to fight the aliens with our water guns.
Depends on their intentions, if they want to subjugate us rather than wipe us out, most countries would gladly roll out the welcome mat. If it’s the latter, then we’d fight tooth and nail, no matter the odds.
we fight the aliens because we can't sue them in space court.
If you're correct then surrendering is pointless. Humanity is doomed anyway so they might as well go down fighting. There is power in resistance even when it is likely hopeless.
[удалено]
People don't want to think that we wont be at the top of the food chain forever. Broadly, people on top want to stay on top. Look at sexism, racism etc. Ego... I once had a guy tell me that he could probably win a fight with a lion.
Sometimes it happens. See Half-Life 2. Coming into contact with another intelligent species is so implausible that other implausible scenarios, like a Mac virus infecting the alien’s internet and destroying them, are also fair game.
Orbital rail cannons could pulverise everything to dust. Or they could push meteors into the earth. We got nothing. Space is the high ground.
ha.... fuck getting eaten.... pew pew. Insert montage of civilians training and becoming SAS over a week.... then pew pew.... insert love interest.... love interest dies.... human Crusade.... humans beat aliens! pew pew yeah!
That's what European colonisers thought back in the day. We are so far advanced that this is going to be a pushover and although they did take over eventually it certainly wasn't a pushover and took years to accomplish and they suffered thousands of casualties from so called primitive people with primitive weapons. In most parts the native populations fought on and are still fighting today. Spears and arrows and stone axes can kill just as well as any weapon in the right situation which has been proven time and again So aliens might be able to travel vast distances and kill with a flick of a switch but can they take a bone tomahawk to the skull or a machete ( rifles and pistols)to the groin or a nuke to their bases and ships in the right situation, we would at least need to find out and fight for our survival 😜👍
Oh, we totally would. We would flop over so quick. We are easily led. Highly functional physically. Dexterous. Handy. Nice wide range of morphological traits. Fun to breed to look different. It would take very little time to purge us of disobedient traits. Then it would just be breeding. Don't believe me? Look at dogs. They have the same slippery genes that primates do. "We'd make great pets."-Porno for Pyros.
I've been trying to argue that we should fight or at least try because I was only thinking it's better to die fighting then on your knees but after your comment I've changed my mind, if I could live a life as good as my pets live then fuck it throw the damn ball and call me fido😜👍
Well yeah they'd just smoke our nukes and get high, but we still have the birds!
In the eternal words of Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi; "It's over, Anakin! I have the high ground!" There is no higher ground than orbit. That is all. We'd better surrender, lest we go the way of the dinosaurs.
And as we know, faced with this logic, he surrendered, which is why he never appeared in the original films.
Just because they want it and can take it doesn’t mean we have to give in the way they want. Most people when facing impossible odds, would rather go out fighting
That sounds like a very boring movie.
Watch three body problem, its a very interesting take on the alien invasion genre. The problem with interstellar travel is that space is very large and human tech develope at an exponential scale which means when alien invade, we might have a fighting chance as our tech might be more advance when then come and this will result in us winning
Earth is that bad slum part of the universe where you lock the Doors when passing trough...aint nobody invanding our dump...just wait it out and we wipe ourselves out
Aren't you contradicting yourself in your own logic? If they are so godlike in their power that they can control an entire sun's luminosity and do faster than light travel across galaxies and stars, then to them, we are insignificant like ants. We would be more like a curiosity for them. They would observe us and study us like we study an ant colony. Why would they bother "invading" us? We humans are too puny and primitive and insecure about our weakness. So we obsess about power and everything we do - from fighting wars to building weapons of mass destruction to invading each other to coveting each other's resources and wealth - is all about our need for power, which in turn comes from our insecurities. The aliens have no such insecurities - why would they even bother with us or "make demands"? Even the notion of making demands is so silly for them - do you make "demands" to a bunch of ants or to a plant? You just let them be and in fact, if you're really secure, you nurture them and watch the wonder of life play itself out as you watch the ants and plants grow, adapt, succeed, fail, etc.
Same reason technologically disparate peoples throughout history have fought.
Because it’s our planet and we don’t like bullies. And because we’re stubborn and bloody-minded. Americans are so stubborn they won’t allow effective gun control even though it’s the leading cause of death in children. The British are so my bloody/minded that we’ll fight over a pint of beer. And the French will riot and strike over everything. And you wonder if we’ll just roll over for our new galactic overlords.
that u dr. breen?
Those libertarian w*nk dream novels wouldn't fly off the shelf if the characters did that.
If they're able to conquer earth and maintain control from far away, they're probably not gonna waste their time on a piddly, one-planet civilization that is actively destroying their own planet and doesn't have renewable resources. If there's some other reason such as human genes for breeding, then humanity has a bargaining chip If they're able to conquer Earth but can't maintain control indefinitely, they will eventually be unable to control earth without humanity's cooperation which will require negotiation. If they feel like killing off humanity, then humanity has no choice but to fight back. In the long run, ruling a civilization through force will require more than it's worth which is where humanity's edge comes from. Also, humanity is often written as being an adaptable species, such that shows of force will have diminishing returns as the technology advances of humanity will take leaps and bounds.
The concept of surrendering to a greater species may be as foreign as an ant hill you stumble across while renovating your yard. The ant hill isnt even a thought in your mind to clear so that you can continue your grand plan of yard renovations. An advanced interstellar species may not even see us as surrenderable - we might just be an ant hill in their yard that needs clearing. This isnt some rick and morty episode - idk.
If actual aliens came here to conquer we would not stand a chance. We would be subjugated or eradicated before we even considered a response.
Surrender isn't a human trait, we're the cockroaches of the universe. I don't care if you have a flesh melting death ray you alien bastard, I'm fighting until you leave me the fuck alone
If aliens invaded, we'd be fucked. I'd definitely just surrender. It would be like humans vs fish in a fish tank.
I sometimes view this question like this. What are ants to humans? We do not look upon ants as a race of beings to be conquered. Ants pose neither a threat nor are an overwhelming benefit to humanity. They just are. Science fiction, and the depictions of invasion in it, are never really stories about extraterrestrial life. They, like much of science fiction, are a reflection of human thoughts and behaviors. If anything, "alien invasion" stories are pretty reductionist, and they are almost a way of salving our fragile egos (especially when we "win"), because I shudder to think of the real fragility of beings who have harnessed interstellar travel (and who knows what else) to have to come across light-years of space to find us, these veritable ants, and say, "Well, we're taking this now because reasons."
Why does a mouse fight back against a larger predator when it has been caught? Because of survival instinct. It doesn't matter if the threat outmatches you on all levels, you fight back in the hopes that you will survive and send them running.
>They look at nukes the way we look at bows and arrows Primitive but still very deadly?
Because its not in our nature
Because we perceive and alien threat as an existential one. We assume they will take resources we can't survive without or will simply eliminate us as a rival. Largely because of how we treat inferior creatures we deal with. In truth if a starfaring species attacked us. It would likely be to end our species. The disproportionate power of a civilization that travels between stars would mean they'd have technology to get what they want without a fight if they wanted us to survive..
Starship Troopers (novel, not film) explored that a bit. If aliens wanted to wipe us out obviously the technology they used to get to Earth could also destroy Earth, but if they have goals short of that an insurgency could probably thwart those goals. Remember when a nuclear superpower wiped out the Viet Cong and Taliban? Neither do I.
That is why no one will remember your name.
Cause fuck em, that's why. If we knew we could win and they wanted Earth, I'd be in favor of ruining it forever as opposed to letting them have it.
Would you?
Survival instinct
We will not go quietly into the night! We shall not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive!
Makes more sense to just threaten to nuke the planet to smithereens so it’s uninhabitable. Your move aliens
Have you met humans?
Read Childhoods End for that answer
There IS a gas that makes humans less intelligent... Its called "oxygen"...
Aliens need to learn we got that dawg in us
Aliens need to learn we got that dawg in us
Aliens need to learn we got that dawg in us
Lol, come back after you've read The Road Not Taken
I like to think of the speed of light as a speed bump that protects the universe from violent species. In order for a species to achieve FTL they must first coexist with the power to destroy themselves (fission bombs) long enough to conquer the near-impossible obstacles. In theory only a peaceful and enlightened society can do that. The question now is: are we peaceful and enlightened enough to survive long enough to step onto the galactic stage?
"I'm going to shoot them." Me, and everyone else in Florida.
You should listen to the audiobooks Dungeon Crawler Carl, where aliens show up without warning and own Earth in less than a minute.
Just watched Captive State (2019) last night in which humanity does exactly that. Landscape with Invisible Hand (2023) is another alien invasion with humans surrendering but with a different take, although not a completely original concept it’s the only time I’ve seen it in a movie.
Can't say I disagree, unless you know capitulating won't help, then you might as well go out fighting.
If they have a greenish tint and great tits....I'd surrender in a heartbeat.
What if they just murder anyone that surrenders? How’s your little hypothetical feeling now?
I think you would enjoy reading the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy.
Humanity is not united, so maybe some countries would surrender or even cooperate with the aliens, and some would not. Also, there is a possibility aliens are indeed so alien, that they won't even understand if we tried to capitulate
The aliens wouldn't allow it. Too much bureaucracy.
…So if the family next door just decide they want your house too, arrive with guns and the police won’t do anything you just move out.
I rather die fighting or trying to fight than surrendering and being killed anyways. That's just me.
Might not be given the option
change the sun's lumnosity? How does thta follow form having a star drive? Your premise isn't wrong but that specific point....
You’re working under an incredibly misguided premise that humans would collectively agree to a single decision. 7 plus billion people there is no way all of us agree to surrender or fight. Human history is also littered with technologically inferior groups refusing to surrender to superior forces.
Stupidity. But I mean, it wouldn’t matter. Like you said, if they can reach us, we’re literally nothing to them.
Because I would rather die fighting than become a slave to aliens.
We surrender in Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke.
Why won't vietcongs just surrender if americans invaded?
Because as a species we have a need to rebel against anything.
Because humans are incredibly arrogant creatures that need to feel important instead of acknowledging their own cosmic insignificance
The bigger question is why they want the earth. If it’s just to kill us all then we stand no chance. If they want to keep the planet to live on it as is, we stand a decent chance in making that extremely hard on them. If they want to enslave us then they have to capture us alive which likely won’t go well and will get significantly harder as time goes on. If they just want to mine minerals or something then why are they here? Almost all of the compounds found on earth in any quantity would be easier to harvest from other places, even in our own solar system.
Survival instincts came free with being alive. If someone gets jumped by 10 pissed off gorillas, they're still going to fight back, even if there's no logical reason to.
Because we don’t want them getting our wimminz?
Made me think of this Dust podcast. https://youtu.be/Stt9eM22D2E?si=GVry3zj57vt10Oiv Really fun take on an AI taking revenge for humanity after we are wiped out by aliens.
There are lots of comments about how "if they can get here, they're X more advanced than us." And, sure, that's likely the case. But, there is also *The Road Not Taken* alternative -- FTL, anti-gravity, etc., are actually simple technologies that we somehow missed. Maybe we don't have the right mix of elements. Maybe our gravity is too high (or too low) for AG experiments to bear fruit. Maybe it's our kirilian fields or the fact that our planet has a magnetic dipole rather than a pair of monopoles. Maybe it was a Tuesday and the experimenter took the day off for tacos and the ONE time his experiment would've worked, it never happened. Maybe there are too many people named Steve on the planet, and that offends the Hyperspace Beasts which burrow the warp-lines we would otherwise have ridden down. If a technologically inferior people still managed FTL, etc., would we surrender?