# If aliens became aware of us, would they conquer/enslave/exploit/displace/exterminate us? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 12, 2010, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124 "2010-05-12T00:52:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2010, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/41 "2010-05-12T15:35:19Z")
Our very existence might offend them, in some religious way - the fact that we don’t Splooon or Vlub might make us anathema to them. Or our radio transmissions are futzing with their hyperSoapies reception, and they’re not standing for it. They may have a need for planets of a certain type for other than economic reasons, like maybe they can only breed on Earth-like planets. Or are only \*allowed \*to breed on ELPs. Maybe they’re environmental fanatics, like some species in Brin’s Uplift Universe, and they see killing us off to protect Earth’s potential as a sacred duty. Or to get at our dolphins and chimps for Uplift before we do. Or they might just like hunting and killing new things, like that one _ST:Voyager_ species (Hirogen?), Predators or the Affront in Bank’s _Excession_. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2010, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/42 "2010-05-12T17:00:13Z")
Then again, ETs might only want to study us out of scientific curiosity . . . [which could be even worse . . .](http://galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=31) ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2010, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/43 "2010-05-12T19:51:42Z")
If you became aware of E.T.'s, would you conquer/enslave/exploit/displace/exterminate them? ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2010, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/44 "2010-05-12T20:17:10Z")
I assume an alien’s response to us would be much the same as our response to those tube worms living on undersea volcanic vents - that is, we’d show up in a their equivalent of an IMAX documentary, with aliens ooohing and ahhhing at how goddamn wierd and wonderful we are, and with alien scientists struggling to get grants to study us. Enslavement, expoitation? Not a chance. No possible eploitation could be worth the huge trouble it would take to get here. If they somehow had godlike powers to transport easily, what possible worth could human slaves be? ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2010, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/45 "2010-05-17T12:17:41Z")
I think that they’d use us for sex, food and entertainment. They’re alien for gods sake, we have no idea of their thought processes, feeling or motivations. Alien means just that, not a human with a brow ridge or pointy ears, who just happens to have only one of our human emotions in predominance. For all we know they might arrive here and start worshipping a small, desert dwelling lizard . Aliens can be so…alien sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2010, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/46 "2010-05-17T13:58:08Z")
If they want our planet, surely they’d just sterilise it and move in their own flora and fauna? ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2010, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/47 "2010-05-17T14:08:56Z")
We’re the alien colonists, and our planet was colonized the only practical way for planets to get colonized - microbes. ---
**Author:** ![Mince](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecd19e/32.png) [@Mince](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mince)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2010, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/48 "2010-05-17T14:14:00Z")
What a ridiculous notion. Having the capability of galactic travel, why would they not just colonize any number of other planets that would be (presumably) unopposed? ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2010, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/49 "2010-05-17T14:30:34Z")
Any alien species advanced enough to travel here would probably have the technology for advanced robotics – if they mastered computer science to the extent of humans – and the ability to mine other rocky planets and asteroids, regardless of atmosphere, for the resources they need. Why enslave humans? Also, there’s likely to be rocky planets with Earth-like atmospheres that don’t have sentient lifeforms living on them. If I were the leader of an alien race in need of “lebensraum”, and had the choice of settling on any of 50 habitable planets without sentient creatures, or one with humans, I’m going to go for the low-hanging fruit. Just because Earth supports life doesn’t necessarily mean it will support alien life. It’s not just the atmosphere, but also temperatures, length of the day and year, and gravity. If the aliens originate from a planet with half the gravity of Earth, have a circadian cycle of 40 hours, and depend on crops that have a 300 day growth cycle, from germination to harvest, Earth isn’t going to be the place for them. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2010, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/50 "2010-05-17T16:44:51Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Then there’s Niven’s Sphere of Potential Awareness, which I just made up the name and probably the idea wasn’t original with Larry Niven but who cares? > > And that is a sphere defined by how far radio/television/etc. waves emanating from Earth have reached. Being, of course, dependent on when you think sufficiently powerful radiation began to get out into space from here. Say, what? 1930? 1940? Well, then, ok, you got a sphere 140 light years in diameter. And even a half-assed technology is likely to notice an unnatural amount of radio waves coming out of a second rate planet circling a mediocre yellow star. Any electro-magnetic signal broadcast from Earth would become too weak to distinguish from background noise long before it ever reached 140 light years. IIRC, it wouldn’t reach much beyond our solar system. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2010, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/51 "2010-05-17T19:49:53Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > They’re alien for gods sake, we have no idea of their thought processes, feeling or motivations. > > Alien means just that, not a human with a brow ridge or pointy ears, who just happens to have only one of our human emotions in predominance. Math only has one solution, while as reason has many, but the total number of reasonable answers to any question is limited. An irrational answer is irrational regardless of anything. A species that has been able to develop to travel outerspace in reasonable periods of time is most likely going to approach things rationally. You can’t develop to that point if you’re too irrational. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2010, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/52 "2010-05-17T20:15:08Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > I assume an alien’s response to us would be much the same as our response to those tube worms living on undersea volcanic vents - that is, we’d show up in a their equivalent of an IMAX documentary, with aliens ooohing and ahhhing at how goddamn wierd and wonderful we are, and with alien scientists struggling to get grants to study us. > > Enslavement, expoitation? Not a chance. No possible eploitation could be worth the huge trouble it would take to get here. If they somehow had godlike powers to transport easily, what possible worth could human slaves be? In S.M. Stirling’s [Domination of the Draka](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domination_of_the_Draka) AH/SF series, a human culture emerges dedicated to, well, what might be called collective self-actualization, through the conquest and enslavement of all non-Draka. They even develop a power philosophy about it, based partly on Nietzsche; and while a philosophy of that kind might be invented originally as a justification/rationalization of what the culture is doing anyway, it can come to exercise independent influence over the minds of later generations. In the fourth novel, _Drakon,_ the Draka of the 25th Century are exploring nearby star systems and conquering/enslaving any sentients they find there, making them worship “the gods from the sky” – just because that’s what Draka **do.** It’s how they get interesting new toys, and they like having slaves truckle to them. They plan to conquer the whole galaxy eventually, however many millennia it takes; that’s what they see as their destiny. It is not inconceivable there is a real-life culture somewhere in the universe that thinks like that. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2010, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/53 "2010-05-17T20:23:05Z")
I’ve found myself wondering what Stirling’s Draka would do, if they encountered an alien sentient race so utterly alien that any meaningful enslavement of it to humans would be imponderable. Such as the neutronium-based cheela of [_Dragon’s Egg,_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg) by Robert L. Forward, with whom even basic communication faces both physical and time barriers. I rather suspect the Draka would try very hard to find some way to **exterminate** the cheela, simply because the existence of a free non-Draka race, anywhere, does not fit in with their view of proper order of the universe. And, again, there might be an ET culture out there that thinks like that, and will kill us if, and because, they cannot enslave us. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2010, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/54 "2010-05-17T20:26:11Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > In S.M. Stirling’s [Domination of the Draka](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domination_of_the_Draka) AH/SF series, a human culture emerges dedicated to, well, what might be called collective self-actualization, through the conquest and enslavement of all non-Draka. They even develop a power philosophy about it, based partly on Nietzsche; and while a philosophy of that kind might be invented originally as a justification/rationalization of what the culture is doing anyway, it can come to exercise independent influence over the minds of later generations. In the fourth novel, _Drakon,_ the Draka of the 25th Century are exploring nearby star systems and conquering/enslaving any sentients they find there, making them worship “the gods from the sky” – just because that’s what Draka **do.** It’s how they get interesting new toys, and they like having slaves truckle to them. They plan to conquer the whole galaxy eventually, however many millennia it takes; that’s what they see as their destiny. > > It is not inconceivable there is a real-life culture somewhere in the universe that thinks like that. Another example of this sort of thing is Olaf Stapelton’s SF classic _Star Maker_: > **[Star Maker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Maker)** > > Star Maker is a science fiction novel by British writer Olaf Stapledon, published in 1937. Continuing the theme of the author's previous book, Last and First Men (1930)—which narrated a history of the human species over two billion years—it describes a history of life in the universe, dwarfing the scale of the earlier work. Star Maker tackles philosophical themes such as the essence of life, of birth, decay and death, and the relationship between creation and creator. A pervading theme is that... Briefly, the semi-omniscient narrator encounters civilizations who have created world-spanning utopias, and who in some cases seek to “export” their utopian systems to alien sentiences, for their own good and in the name of higher morality - in some unfortunate cases, the utopian ideal turns perverse, in that the prostletization of aliens takes on the nature of a jihad, which in turn taints the “utopia”. All very unlikely IMO. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2010, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/55 "2010-05-17T20:39:46Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > Another example of this sort of thing is Olaf Stapelton’s SF classic _Star Maker_: > > [Star Maker - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Maker) > > Briefly, the semi-omniscient narrator encounters civilizations who have created world-spanning utopias, and who in some cases seek to “export” their utopian systems to alien sentiences, for their own good and in the name of higher morality - in some unfortunate cases, the utopian ideal turns perverse, in that the prostletization of aliens takes on the nature of a jihad, which in turn taints the “utopia”. > > All very unlikely IMO. What, you think the development of high technology is enough to put an end to crazy-thinking? From George Orwell’s 1941 essay [“Wells, Hitler, and the World State”:](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part15) > [@](#): > > Mr Wells, like Dickens, belongs to the non-military middle class. The thunder of guns, the jingle of spurs, the catch in the throat when the old flag goes by, leave him manifestly cold. He has an invincible hatred of the fighting, hunting, swashbuckling side of life, symbolised in all his early books by a violent propaganda against horses. The principal villain of his OUTLINE OF HISTORY is the military adventurer, Napoleon. If one looks through nearly any book that he has written in the last forty years one finds the same idea constantly recurring: the supposed antithesis between the man of science who is working towards a planned World State and the reactionary who is trying to restore a disorderly past. In novels, Utopias, essays, films, pamphlets, the antithesis crops up, always more or less the same. On the one side science, order, progress, internationalism, aeroplanes, steel, concrete, hygiene: on the other side war, nationalism, religion, monarchy, peasants, Greek professors, poets, horses. History as he sees it is a series of victories won by the scientific man over the romantic man. Now, he is probably right in assuming that a “reasonable”, planned form of society, with scientists rather than witch-doctors in control, will prevail sooner or later, but that is a different matter from assuming that it is just round the corner. There survives somewhere or other an interesting controversy which took place between Wells and Churchill at the time of the Russian Revolution. Wells accuses Churchill of not really believing his own propaganda about the Bolsheviks being monsters dripping with blood etc, but of merely fearing that they were going to introduce an era of common sense and scientific control, in which flag-wavers like Churchill himself would have no place. Churchill’s estimate of the Bolsheviks, however, was nearer the mark than Wells’s. The early Bolsheviks may have been angels or demons, according as one chooses to regard them, but at any rate they were not sensible men. They were not introducing a Wellsian Utopia but a Rule of the Saints, which, like the English Rule of the Saints, was a military despotism enlivened by witchcraft trials. The same misconception reappears in an inverted form in Wells’s attitude to the Nazis. Hitler is all the war-lords and witch doctors in history rolled into one. Therefore, argues Wells, he is an absurdity, a ghost from the past, a creature doomed to disappear almost immediately. But unfortunately the equation of science with common sense does not really hold good. The aeroplane, which was looked forward to as a civilising influence but in practice has hardly been used except for dropping bombs, is the symbol of that fact. Modern Germany is far more scientific than England, and far more barbarous. Much of what Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany. The order, the planning, the State encouragement of science, the steel, the concrete, the aeroplanes, are all there, but all in the service of ideas appropriate to the Stone Age. Science is fighting on the side of superstition. But obviously it is impossible for Wells to accept this. It would contradict the world-view on which his own works are based. The war-lords and the witch-doctors MUST fail, the common-sense World State, as seen by a nineteenth-century liberal whose heart does not leap at the sound of bugles, MUST triumph. Treachery and defeatism apart, Hitler CANNOT be a danger. That he should finally win would be an impossible reversal of history, like a Jacobite restoration. And yet, he very nearly did win. And are we not, even now, worrying about Iran developing atomic weapons and putting them in service of a neomedieval conception of Islamic theocracy? Why **not** a jihad among the stars? ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2010, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/56 "2010-05-17T20:51:52Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > What, you think the development of high technology is enough to put an end to crazy-thinking? > > From George Orwell’s 1941 essay [“Wells, Hitler, and the World State”:](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part15) > > And yet, he very nearly did win. And are we not, even now, worrying about Iran developing atomic weapons and putting them in service of a neomedieval conception of Islamic theocracy? > > Why **not** a jihad among the stars? Time, distance and expense. The Jihad may appear to modern sensibilities as purely irrational, but in point of fact it served many strongly rational purposes: it allowed what was originally a group of weak tribes living in a crappy desert to overcome and appropriate several centres of world-civilization for themselves. The problem with a Jihad among the stars is that the stars are so damn far away. Unless our aliens can overcome the laws of physics, any trip among them is going to take many years, and involve vast expense. Notions of interstellar troopers descending on Earth for a Jihad seem IMO very unlikely. It is possible that the aliens would lob what amounts to a grenade in our direction - a small probe with some bio-war agent or loaded with advanced nukes, or something more esoteric - but that, too, seems unlikely to me; we would no more be a threat to them, than australian aborigines threatened England circa 1780. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2010, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/57 "2010-05-17T21:41:25Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > It is possible that the aliens would lob what amounts to a grenade in our direction - a small probe with some bio-war agent or loaded with advanced nukes, or something more esoteric - but that, too, seems unlikely to me; we would no more be a threat to them, than australian aborigines threatened England circa 1780. Probably; but, see post #53. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2010, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/58 "2010-05-17T23:02:35Z")
There _was_ a thread recently on this, but what the hell, I’ll repeat myself: I strongly doubt that aliens would want to conquer earth. If earth was of any value at all for extraterrestrials it would be to study our biology and culture; for curiosity only. Because to travel here they would have to cover astronomical distances and expend astronomical amounts of energy, to get to somewhere that is a _grain of sand_ on astronomical scales. And, to cut a long story short, none of the reasons for them wanting this grain for themselves stands up to scrutiny IMO. And that’s before you even start to consider how much the rest of their technology and society will have progressed by that time. I see no more reason to suppose that they’d behave like the conquistadors than like cavemen. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2010, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/59 "2010-05-18T03:04:06Z")
If I understand Hawking correctly, he’s saying that since interstellar travel _is_ so difficult, any species that could do it would almost have to be specialized as an interstellar horde or swarm, looting the resources of entire systems to build and fuel their next move. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2010, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124/60 "2010-05-18T03:16:29Z")
Well, if we build power armor then we’ll be able to fight off the Posleen horde and keep them from putting us in their feeding pens as snacks… -XT [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-aliens-became-aware-of-us-would-they-conquer-enslave-exploit-displace-exterminate-us/539124.md?page=4)