As it says on the tin, if aliens did make direct physical contact what is the best case scenario we could reasonably hope for?
I recall reading a fun science-fiction story by Alan Dean Foster where humanity comes into contact with insect like aliens called the Thranx. It turns out that humanity and the aliens are almost perfectly complementary to each other (both can live in the others environment but humans prefer cold and dry and the thranx warm and humid so there’s no real competition for living areas, humans are overly aggressive but thranx are overly pacifistic, larval stage thranx can speak human languages while humans can speak the adult thranx language and so on) to the extinct that the two species form a Commonwealth together. The Thranx are different enough to be interesting but similar enough that we can work together for mutual benefit.
The problem with the above scenario is that as its set in the future both species are space-faring races and on a roughly equal technological level, in any current ‘Contact’ scenario the aliens would be significently in advance of us and if human history is anything to go by the less advanced people tend to come off poorly in that situation.
So, if aliens arrived tomorrow what would be the best scenario we could hope for? And before someone says it, lets assume they don’t just visit, take a look around and then leave, they’re here to stay.
If they just say they are staying, nothing we can do about it, that means war. If they want to come here to live, they’d have to follow immigration laws for the various countries they want to live in, which for most nations would require some legislative updating.
Best case scenario is that they want to immigrate peacefully and integrate well into our societies.
Benevolent quasi-human aliens who really want to guide us and cooperate (think Vulcans).
Aliens who just want to observe (because of academic interest or a Prime Directive).
Conquerors with such slow metabolisms/social structures that we can hold our own (think The Race in the Worldwar books).
Aliens who find value in something that requires free-range humans. I heard a short story recently in which the aliens were only willing to trade technology for original human art.
Oh, that’s wonderful then. Plus, if space travel is as hard to do as physicists suspect, it’s unlikely that any planet could attack another and conquer it once you’re talking more than a light year or two of distance.
Oh, every glorx and their middle brood-spawner know that humans taste like over-ripe fnurdlegloop. You have to slather the wretched things with loads of shnoofloo sauce to make them even minimally palatable. Not worth the effort, really.
The are interstellar traders and travellers. They want a relatively modest amount of something that we have plenty of (salt water, maybe?), and are willing to trade technological know-how to get it.
They might be interstellar travellers, but still lack many things we have, like advanced medical procedures. If I wasnt dead tired I could think of a few other things too. Literature, art, flexibility in social organisation…
Best case scenario for mine is that they freely share technology, not just with one country but with everyone and that they have non-competing or even complimentary needs and want to live in peace.
Perfect scenario would be that they ate the stuff we throw into landfill and defecate rib eye steaks.
I think the best case scenario is much better than most here are imagining.
Frankly to give every human being any less-than-planet-sized desire would be trivial for them. It’s hard to make a case for why they would do this, but then it’s actually hard to make a case for Crush.Kill.Destroy.
(To them, we occupy a infinitesimal speck of dust, and are absolutely no threat in a way we cannot yet comprehend. Moths are a bigger threat to modern humans than modern humans would be to the average interstellar species).
Or, as the case may be, they are amazed at how theologically backward our increasingly strident non-believers are, and they correct the atheists’ error with a one-page proof that a third-grader could comprehend.
The aliens arrive in a generation ship, since they are subject to the same physical laws as we are. There are few of them, they are out of fuel, and even their recyclables (food, etc.) are running dry due to slight processing inefficiencies. Due to miscalculation or a failed gamble, it turns out that Earth is not particularly suitable to them: the oxygen concentration is too high, as is gravity and atmospheric pressure. They can survive on our surface with breathing masks, but it is difficult and weakens them. They do somewhat better in specialized shelters.
Their ship doesn’t have weapons, since they didn’t anticipate contact. It’s advanced, of course, but they can’t for instance use their computers to hack Earth’s and take over; they simply aren’t compatible. The power plant is advanced, but has limits; it can’t actually land on a planet with as high gravity as Earth.
So humans give them shelter, but not much more, because there’s not much we can do. They give us technology in exchange for making them more comfortable. We coexist, but it’s obvious they will never thrive on Earth.
Eventually they corral their resources and technology to refuel and refit their ship, and leave for other skies. Some stay, thinking that Earth is still not as bad as a ship, but eventually they die out and none are left. Some humans leave on the ship, but they are not heard from again.
The universe is billions of years old. So even though they are indeed subject to the same laws, the chance of their technology being merely thousands of years more advanced than ours is remote. They won’t limp here they will look like gods to us, even if limited to sub-c.
But obviously the OP is asking for best case so probability shouldn’t come into it. It just seems to me that weak aliens seems to be a popular meme at the moment
There is another best case scenario – like a combination of Independence Day and Signs. The aliens come with nefarious purposes – they want to invade, kill us all, eat our children, etc. But they are utterly incompetent warriors who die if you hit them with water or a baseball bat.
We get a bunch of smoking alien wreckage and corpses to examine, and reels and reels of new combat footage to amuse the masses.
I often thought of those rescue groups in Africa. You know the ones that try to save endangered species like the lion or tiger?
Maybe something like that. The aliens see all intelligent life as sacred. They know from witnessing it a thousand times before; if we keep going, the way we’re going, we are doomed. So, the benevolent aliens feel duty bound to “help” us fix our shit.
Weather we wanted that help or not would be irrelevant.
