Spoiler for those who haven’t read John Ringo’s novels, which, if you haven’t read, you should read, starting with A Hymn Before Battle (he gets much better after the first novel, but you have to read them in order):
This IS the plot for A Hymn Before Battle, in which the human race is approached by a staggeringly advanced stellar empire because they’re all pacificists and need us to defend the universe from locusts the size of Clydesdales. In the long run, it turns out we’ve been suckered into a war of attrition in which almost all the humans with fighting potential get killed off in the war, just as we wipe out the last of the bad guys.
What exactly are these hypothetical alien hippies offering us in exchange for military aid? I can’t imagine they possess any kind of technology that could best our smartphones and 1920’s-style Death Rays.
So if I’m reading this correctly: If we don’t get involved with these aliens (the nice ones) the insectoids will see us humans as insignificant and leave us alone because we’re not really a spacefaring species. (At least not by the standards of intergalactic aliens.)
OTOH, if we get involved, we’ve stirred the hornets nest (heh) and we now have the potential to loose several thousand lives in exchange for technology.
Technology I might add, that may very well collapse our world economy.
No thanks.
OTGH, if we don’t get involved, then we either get to stay on this little rock until we die out, or become a spacefaring species worth their notice in a few centuries, and face them alone after they’ve consolidated their hold on this region of space.
“Volunteers into the combat units will be guaranteed spending power equal to a Dollar billionaire on Earth for at least two generations of offspring. Those for behind the lines and support units will be guaranteed spending power of Dollar centi-millionaires.”
Add to that the (Earth) woman of my choice, or a satisfactory facsimile, every night while I’m deployed and I’m in.
There’s just too much about the alien story that doesn’t make any kind of sense. For example, how is that aliens who know nothing about war can assess how long and how many casualties for humans to win it? If they knew even that much about war, surely they could build robots to do their own fighting?
In particular, if we beat the insects, then what stops us from conquering the aliens who asked for help? If they’re really so helpless, then we should just respond with “We await your complete and unconditional surrender. It’s us or the bugs and we promise to be nicer than they will.”
But assuming any part of the story is true, I don’t see how the human race can refuse an opportunity to get a hold of their technology. We’re always going to be at someone else’s mercy until we can get our own tech up to par, and a few hundred years of advancement is something we can’t afford to pass up. We just have to get that technology without making excessive sacrifices in what’s almost certain to be some kind of trick. (If it sounds too good to be true and all that…)
Is there really any satisfaction in having all this technology if we weren’t the ones who invented it through hard work, tenacity and perseverance? It sort of takes away the human equation doesn’t it?
Just give them a complimentary 3-year subscription of Soldier of Fortune magazine, and let them recruit their army of human mercenaries from the classified ads therein.
I wonder at the specifics of the 300 to 400 years of advancement. Is it how far we could in advance in 300 to 400 of our years? Or is it up to where the hippies were 300 to 400 years after they were at our level? Because these aliens give off a vibe of being really stupid; it may have taken them centuries to accomplish what we could do in less than a decade. Even if it’s a boost of equivalent to 300 to 400 years of human research, maybe they (or a different and potentially hostile civilization they’ve neglected to mention) have a 15,700 year lead on us.
Are there other civilizations not too far from us? Perhaps we could let the bugs kill the hippies, then keep our heads down until the bugs are wiped out by a more competent band of aliens.
At any rate, I still don’t trust these hippies. We should consider conning them out of as much technology as possible (especially interstellar travel tech) in exchange for the services of military consultants (along the lines of the Western officers and veterans who assisted in the Boshin War). By “conning”, I mean we help them just enough that the bugs win a Pyrrhic victory, then we swoop in with our fancy new starships and kill the remaining bugs. Then we plant our flag on any newly-vacant and still-habitable real estate, and get as many humans as possible to become homesteaders there; a mass exodus is just what we need to avert environmental catastrophe on Earth.
I’m pretty sure you’re underestimating human nature here. As a cite, I offer the Seattle Seahawks. They’re our team, right? Seattle’s representatives to the world. We’re on the map now, baby! A team full of… Canadians and ex-49ers. :smack:
1.) It reminds me of why I liked ST: Enterprise. It showed us, by comparison, the Vulcans were dumb as a box of rocks. This is evident by the fact that it only took us a few years to develop technology that took them more than a century.
2.) In DS9 and (Enterprize) the humans in the “Evil Twin” universe took total advantage of the Vulcan’s first contact with humans. The humans blew the Vulcans to shit and basically went on to rule the entire Star Trek universe with an iron fist. Max the Immortal Do you have a goatee by chance?
It will be the projected level of development that the United States has achieved circa 2400, based on current and historical trends.
Other than us it’s just the alliance of space wusses and the bugs. No doubt there are others out there, but it’s a big galaxy.
They have run complex computer algorithms to arrive at the conclusion. As to the second point; there is nothing stopping us from establishing the Terran Empire, although they hope that we’ll realise all they were saying is give peace a chance.
You read it exactly right. Although when we take to the stars we may find either a race of victorious hostile bugs, or find the hippies have embraced the way of the fist and are rather embittered that humanity spurned them in their time of greatest need.
As well as FTL tech and devices that make a quantum computer look like a Casio calculator from the '80s, there’s also the fridge locker which is bound to whet your whistle.
Some of the responses to this thread just reinforce why, amongst the more civilized parts of the Galaxy, Earth is viewed as a depressing mudball full of dangerous savages, and the planet as a whole is best avoided.
Well, then, don’t come crying to me when you’re about to get devoured by space bugs.
Incidentally, how long have the hippies known about us? The OP says they deliberately avoided contacting us because they were scared of us. Are there other less advanced civilizations that they’ve also refused to uplift?
