[del]Stock up on food, water, gasoline. Prepare to shelter in place, and hope for the best.[/del] Oops. That’s what I would do.
Tell people to stock up on food, water, gasoline, and prepare to shelter in place.
Realizing that it would be risky to be viewed as the apex species on Earth, the answer is painfully obvious, is it not?
First: replace all headshot photos of people with those of cats—particularly those at military institutions: Captain Kitty, Major Toonces, General Garfield…that sort of thing. Use mean looking cats.
Second: 30 minutes before alien arrival, place cats in places where they will look in charge of things: on the driver seats of cars, nuclear missile silos, in the cockpits of jet fighter sorties on autopilot.
Third: 15 minutes before alien arrival, each human is advised to don a dog costume and blend in with real canines.
After the aliens have ray-gunned down the jet fighters (they will of course have seen the pussy pilot faces through the cockpit glass before firing), meet the arrival party with a tail wagging welcoming committee (half dog, half faux dog). Have a few hissing, claw and fang bared cats mysteriously thrown onto some of the aliens as they climb from their space ships. Have some dogs chase away those cats while other dogs lick the alien’s wounds. Engage in some slobbering and butt-sniffing if you have to.
This plan accomplishes two goals: 1) puts us on good, subservient terms with an advanced alien species. 2) solves our pesky cat problem.
This is when we discover the aliens are sentient mice.
I actually thought that was a really fun movie, and a lot better than its origins would suggest!
I liked that the aliens weren’t invincible, it made the whole thing actually feel more like a battle with both sides making moves and countermoves rather than the unstoppable alien steamroller most movies depict.
I like this plan! And though I like cats as well they would make good decoys.
Our alien liberators might not be too impressed though…random human, “Ummm…woof?”
Anyway we know who the ‘go to’ guys would be in this scenario, who knew that furries would be the saviours of us all. 
A good idea for individuals but it might be better for the first alien follow-on forces to see humanity in general at least attempting to put up a fight, if they have anything like human psychology they would respect courage more than cowardice. Not that I think you’re idea is cowardly but it would probably be seen as such if everyone did it.
“Sorry Private Bob, its time for a futile sacrifice and you’re it, got to impress those alien blighters you know”
Seriously I always wanted to see/read an alien invasion movie/story where both sides have a mutual ‘Oh shit!’ moment when they realise what they’re up against. Of course that assumes they’re here to do battle and not simply exterminate us.
I think that we can safely assume that due to a miscalculation of scale the entire alien fleet will be swallowed by a dog.
This might work.
Note that aliens don’t necessarily have FTL.
They could totally be abducting us with helicopters and trank guns.
Tractor beams are cool but bungee cords work fine.
And all that anal probing? Their version of a frat initiation.
I’m forced to conclude that the first message was a hoax. Not because it’s necessarily true that it’s a hoax, but if it’s not, we’re screwed six ways to Sunday. Any enemy that has the capability to travel between the stars, by any means, can wipe us out more easily than we can swat a fly, and there’s absolutely nothing we can do to stop it.
So, we wait. If nobody else shows up, we forget about it. If someone else does show up, we open communications by giving them all the information we have about the delinquents who buzzed us. If the original message was in fact a hoax, this puts us on the right side of the people we want to be on the right side of. If the original message wasn’t a hoax, we’ve lost nothing, since we’d be just as dead no matter what we do.
…what the…?!?
…of all the…?!?
…why, I outta…!!!
Here, I pry myself for many, many hours, away from the top echelon of an über-pretentious, internationally renowned think tank (the name of which is too clandestine to drop indiscriminately), to create, develop and present a cogent solution to an imminent, world-shattering problem…and, I get a silly, snarky response! “Sentient mice”, indeed! Why not “sapient wallabies”?
C’mon, people, the threat is real, let’s stop with the wacky replies and work with me to save all mankind…and dogs.
I believe there was an argument in another thread that this isn’t necessarily true, their ship(s) don’t need to be that much more advanced than us other than in the capability to create components that don’t wear out, if they’re using generation ships or other relatively slow means of travel.
Perhaps their ship coasts into a braking orbit around Earth with no means to move to another position, so they may have powerful weapons and the ability drop things on us but they are severely limited in terms of numbers of personell and material.
Granted thats very much a best case scenario, but I don’t think its a given that they have to be untouchably more advanced than us. And they may not be here to exterminate us, perhaps they merely want to dominate us and they have their own ethical considerations with a strict policy of ‘escalating minimum force’ for achieving their goals, so they start with trying to talk to us, move to harsh language, threatening gestures, personal insults, fist-fights, guns, tanks, fighters, heavy bombers, Chuck Norris, thermonuclear weapons…and whatever they have more powerful than that!
The first alien species just hope they make it to rescue us before the second set of aliens break out the antimatter bombs but knowing humanity that isn’t likely…
“We do not wish to fight, we merely want access to your resources on an equitable bas…”
humanity presses The Button
Yeah, but I don’t think that position was very convincing, even in the other thread. Even the supposedly “simple” generation ship is centuries ahead of us in technology. We barely got people to the moon and back, and Mars is still a pipe dream, but intersteller travel is “not much more advanced than us?” Folks are consistently and significantly underestimating the difficulty of building one by several orders of magnitude.
In any case, my answer is: hide. Literally build trenches, basements, bunkers, etc. and wait for the rescue. If we have the ability, make it look like the planet’s abandoned. If not, at least take no offensive actions.
If we believe the alien message “They will be here within a week. Stand fast. Help will come.”, then it makes sense to survive until that time any way possible. I’d presume that we’d have no useful way of fighting an interstellar travel-capable foreign power on our own. Better to bide our time and be around when the help arrives. Certainly for civilians, but also for the military, I’d think. Enter negotiations with them, if possible, and drag them out as long as possible.
I think ‘a’ century, not ‘centuries’, away, probably less.
but let me ask this- would you consider undersea colonies a good intermediate step?
If we can build a permanent settlement underwater, are we at that point close to being able to build a starship?
Still the question is whether aliens hopelessly outpower us, or whether we can fight.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a human being. We stand and fight.
Well, let’s break out whatever they’ve hid in Area 51…
Please, no one show M. Night Shyamalan this thread, or that’ll be the plot of yet another time-wasting, un-amusing epic.