Well, humans have been using propellant-based projectile weapons for over 500 years so far and our current weaponry (with the exception of nuclear weapons) isn’t THAT much different from that of the 14th century. (We shoot a little object at something using hot, expanding gasses.) I don’t see why we should expect that some alien civilization has spent a lot of time inventing ways to burn off our atmosphere or explode an entire planet at once. Same with killer robots, brain suckers, and other movie favorites.
No real idea on DC, I could guess like everyone else. But NYC, it would be ticketed and towed.
They’ll be greeted as liberators.
Um, no, it doesn’t. It assumes the microbes interact with the available chemicals in whatever environment it finds itself, which I am confident is likely true of any life-form since I discount hypothetical versions that might survive without any sustenance or who draw sustenance directly and solely from electromagnetic radiation.
It’s favoured element doesn’t have to be nitrogen (though I see no reason to assume it impossible), it just has to find something in this environment that Earth-based lifeforms rely on and it is better at collecting and processing. Some Terran lifeforms might be able to evolve quickly enough to adapt to this new competition - I doubt mammals could.
Yeah, I’m not prepared to bet the planet on your risk assessment, especially since you’re not backing it up with anything. Human agriculture has had a measurable affect on the nitrogen cycle. I don’t find it that taxing to imagine an alien life-form that could also do so, and possibly to a much greater degree if it could multiply unchecked in an environment that from its perspective is (A) a lot richer than what it’s used to and (B) free or mostly-free of the competitors and predators it has to deal with at home. The nitrogen cycle is only one biochemical process a new lifeform could disrupt - there are numerous potential candidates. Heck, we’ve only recently started toying with enzymes that can break down plastic. Suppose the aliens unintentionally bring a microbe that has similar abilities but has been kept in check in their environment because their technology uses very little plastic. Such a microbe would just love it here, nom-nomming away unchecked… It won’t directly kill any humans (those who are currently on medical life-support that uses plastic parts may as well get selected out anyway), I just hope somebody remembers how to make bakelite.
Anyway, probably nothing like this will happen. Possibly something a lot worse could.
So you say this non-communicitave ship landed in the capital city of a major country? This tells us several things right off the bat:
- They landed. It’s sentient and not some random falling object.
- They landed in a city. They understand the concept of human civilization, at least well enough to tell us from forests.
- They landed in the capital of a major country near the seat of government. They’re clearly intelligent and understand our society quite well.
- Based on that, they also have some idea of how we’d react to them. They probably wouldn’t have landed if they thought they were going to be immediately killed. Which means they can probably take us in a fight - or alternatively they don’t care if they’re immediately killed.
Which leaves us two obvious scenarios:
A: They’re peaceful and wish to establish peaceful relations with us for…some reason. So they’re no going to attack us immediately - though they might retaliate with force if we attack them.
B: The ship is a probe to see if we’ll attack it and destroy it. If we do they might consider us to have failed the test and react accordingly.
The next thing that would happen, of course, would be us humans attacking the alien ship.
:dubious:
What is the science fiction novel where the aliens land and communicate but do not show themselves for hundreds of years because they resemble popular notions of the devil?
What if it has diplomatic plates?
Do they have pussies?
Do they consider being grabbed by them a friendly greeting?
Childhood’s End, I think.
Yes, thanks.
Yes. It was a reasonably good mini-series too.
I’m pretty sure there’s a folder somewhere outlining our initial response including shutting down the stock markets and closing banks to prevent runs. So financial ruin isn’t likely in the opening rounds of whatever happens. While that’s happening the national guard will be put on alert but not deployed against the possibility of rioting.
After that it’s kind of up to the visitors what happens next. Are they just parked there incommunicado for days?
There’s really no point in illustrating the Pythagorean triangle. Demonstrating base 10 and prime numbers. Unless absolutely nothing else had garnered a response. They would certainly have seen all the junk in orbit on their way down so it’s obvious we’ve got a fair handle on basic math.
I think that was acceptable in one of F.M. Busby’s Demu novels. Otherwise, grabbing anything uninvited could end badly.
If they do, rule 34 will take full effect upon arival.
Not really a debate.
Off to IMHO.
“It’s a cookbook!”
I literally had a vivid dream where aliens landed on Earth back when I was 6. First contact consisted of the aliens and 2 humans (male and female) greeting each other in a large sterilized room. Both humans were completely naked and communicated with the aliens using sign language, I think as a sign of being as non-threatening as possible. Aliens communicated back via telepathy once they figured out what we were doing.
I agree with the idea that development of some kind of interstellar travel (which I find unlikely baring another Einstein type figuring out the physics to allow it) doesn’t mean a concomitant development of advanced weaponry. As another poster pointed out, we humans have not really gone beyond chemical based weaponry. Advanced yes, but still no spec fic weapons. Aside from Gort, even Klattu had no weapons ( and if I recall the original story correctly, Klattu was Gorts servant).
In any case thanks to all, interesting discussion.
To the moderator, I will choose my board more carefully next time😂
Hey, just what you see, pal.
I’ve noticed that in the 1950s British Science Fiction movies – the Trollenberg Terror/the Crawling Eye, The Quatermass Xperiment/The Creeping Unknown, Quatermass 2/Enemy from Space* – the aliens tend to be super gross, often goopy, and incredibly hostile. But I suspect the real reason they didn’t like the aliens is that the Just Weren’t British.
This is why they Loved Dr. Who. He’s and alien who is undoubtedly British. If a TARDIS landed in the courtyard of Buckingham Palace, or outside Parliament, or in Trafalgar Square, they’d love it. Even if it weren’t stuck in “Police Call Box Disguise Mode.”
*Not invariably, of course. Devil Girl from Mars, for instance, proved that some are leather-clad dominatrices. Which the British still distrusted, for some reason.
I doubt it’s worth worrying too much about alien microbes. After all, the aliens know their own microbes better than we do, and, going with the general they-didn’t-nuke-us-from-orbit-and-therefore-are-peaceful logic, there’s no reason to think they don’t have sterilization protocols well in advance of our own.