# If I Were To Find A "Stargate" Complex - Should I Inform The Rest Of Humanity? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 22, 2013, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025 "2013-05-22T15:27:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/21 "2013-05-25T01:44:15Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Also, find some hell-planet somewhere – totally unliveable, hyper volcanic, nasty – worse than Venus – and dump all our radioactive waste there! For all we know, that radioactive material may eventually be useful when heretofore undeveloped technologies are developed. It may be better to set aside a non-hellish planet as a repository, so that retrieval would be easier. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/22 "2013-05-25T01:53:21Z")
Why take it off-planet at all? After reprocessing, the total amount of nuclear waste produced each year could fit under your desk. Just cast it into leaded glass bricks and stack them in the middle of [White Sands Missile Range](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Sands_Missile_Range). Put a fence around them at about a hundred yards with signs that say “Radioactive - If you cross this fence you will die.” Then just leave them there. We might need them someday. After all, the Romans just threw away all that petroleum that was waste product of their water wells. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/23 "2013-05-25T04:15:34Z")
Well, once you include the low-level stuff – the medical radioactive waste, etc. – it’s more than will just fit under a desk. And, while I can’t see any possible use for it, sure, **Max the Immortal** is right, put it somewhere that we can get it back if it does turn out to be useful. (Leave it to an immortal to take the long view of things!) ---
**Author:** ![Doggo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/87869e/32.png) [@Doggo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doggo)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/24 "2013-05-25T05:21:49Z")
Please don’t tell. Mankind has destroyed one planet already, don’t let us spead our destruction to other planets. ---
**Author:** ![Phnord\_Prephect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/df705f/32.png) [@Phnord\_Prephect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phnord_Prephect)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/25 "2013-05-25T06:12:07Z")
The Rest of Humanity? No. By all means, no. Just me. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/26 "2013-05-25T08:48:37Z")
> [@Max\_the\_Immortal](#): > > Absolutely. Cashing in on the discovery is a secondary concern. This planet is terribly overcrowded, and under great ecological stress. Getting most of our population off-world should alleviate this strain. Also, more land and more resources should spark an economic boom, and provide more opportunities for the world’s poor to achieve prosperity. > > I’ve wondered before: How many people alive today would be willing to start a homestead on a new planet? Assuming that it’s decent land, and free, and they’re equipped with a starter kit of tools and other supplies, I imagine that a great many people would jump at the opportunity. I doubt that this would be standard practice for establishing colonies, but among hundreds of thousands of worlds there would be room for people who would want to take that route. > > Let’s all spread out so that there are at most a hundred million people per planet. Ecosystems should be able to cope with that. Sounds good to me, but I no longer have the health to let me pioneer somewhere. But I bet there are more than enough adventurous people to start at least one colony world. And I bet that some of the more totalitarian overpopulated countries would be able to colonize at least one planet each. Do you think North Korea would opt to take themselves off to another planet that would be entirely theirs? I bet some of the odder militia types would consider it. > [@Trinopus](#): > > Also, find some hell-planet somewhere – totally unliveable, hyper volcanic, nasty – worse than Venus – and dump all our radioactive waste there! Get rid of all our other really nasty pollutants. > > (Jack Vance did this in his story “Rumfuddle.” All our trash went into a duplicate of earth where nothing lived. We dumped everything in the “Apathetic Ocean.”) I could see moving our waste to different planets, sorted into radioactive and nonradioactive categories. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/27 "2013-05-25T13:22:54Z")
> [@Doggo](#): > > Please don’t tell. > Mankind has destroyed one planet already, don’t let us spead our destruction to other planets. Destroyed? Hyperbole much? And on the topic of the thread, the OP specifies ‘hundreds of thousands of uninhabited inhabitable planets’, I’m struggling to see how this scenario could be anything but a win-win _(assuming access is granted on anything like a reasonable basis)_. From being stuck on one world humanity suddenly has an incredible number of worlds to populate and explore, its like one of the dreams of space exploration has suddenly become possible without the whole lengthy and messy process of actually _getting_ to the new worlds. All and all, everyone wins…unless you’re a misanthrope of course to which all I can say is meh… Then again the main transporter would have to be carefully controlled as it seems to be the bottleneck allowing access to the Gates. Best case scenario is that it itself can be studied and replicated. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2013, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/28 "2013-05-27T17:25:22Z")
> [@Doggo](#): > > Please don’t tell. > Mankind has destroyed one planet already, don’t let us spead our destruction to other planets. We haven’t destroyed any planets. We don’t even have the power to destroy a planet. At most we have the power to destroy ourselves. Far more species have gone extinct through natural agency than because of human intervention or exploitation. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/29 "2013-05-28T02:33:22Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > You release the info…but lie just a bit. Tell others that you have the ability to ship people to _one_ habitable planet only, no return trip, and see how they handle that information. No way you could release “a little” such information. Any slight and credible hint that you had some kind of teleportation technology and every spy agency, military power, and Fortune 500 company would be on your tail 24/7. But IMO the OP is impossible anyway. I can’t imagine you can find, and use, the Gateway as an entirely solo project. How are you gonna test it? How can you know that there will be an identical system on the other end that you can use to get back? Also, if you DON’T tell the rest of the world about it, what are you going to do with it? You can go exploring within a few miles of the Stargates of a few of the planets, but that’s not really going to tell you whether the planet is really habitable long-term. What if has a really eccentric orbit, and at the moment is at a reasonable distance from its sun, but at other times it’s as close as Venus or as far as Jupiter? Making any use of it is far too big a project for one guy. You have 3 choices. 1. Tell the world, hope you get some kind of substantial reward, and stand aside. 2. Bury it, walk away and try to forget you ever found it. 3. If you are really down on the human race as a whole, blow the thing up so nobody else can use it for EVIL. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/30 "2013-05-28T09:30:17Z")
Bring through items of virtue & val;ue (inventions, books, art, etc) that are common on those other worlds, but rare or unknown here. Sell them. Become rich. Start a colony secretly. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/31 "2013-05-28T10:25:39Z")
I’m somewhat disappointed and surprised _(though I probably shouldn’t be)_ at the lack of altruism in some/many of the replies here. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/32 "2013-05-28T13:54:52Z")
I’d be very altruistic with the find. Later. First I’m getting Gates-rich. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/33 "2013-05-28T14:07:46Z")
Unless there’s some reason why I have to remain alive and willing to cooperate, I don’t see any real set of circumstances (short of the base also coming with impenetrable defensive tech) that allows me to both reveal the presence of the complex _and_ maintain some kind of involvement. I’d be pushed aside or killed or imprisoned almost immediately. ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/34 "2013-05-28T18:30:37Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > I’d be very altruistic with the find. Later. First I’m getting Gates-rich. Stargates-rich. ---
**Author:** ![Doggo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/87869e/32.png) [@Doggo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doggo)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2013, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/35 "2013-05-31T10:20:01Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > We haven’t destroyed any planets. We don’t even have the power to destroy a planet. At most we have the power to destroy ourselves. Far more species have gone extinct through natural agency than because of human intervention or exploitation. You are correct. I should have said that we have destroyed one ecosystem. Planet Earth will get along just fine without humans. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2013, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/36 "2013-05-31T12:29:45Z")
Depends: Would you also be a foot taller or more after the discovery? 😉 Relevant thread: [Physical Changes - Would You Be Suspicious? - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=691369) **AHeinrich** , dude (which is intended to cover both genders): You signed up this month and have started a whole bunch of speculative threads: this one, the physical appearance thread, a re-birthing/DNA thread… All interesting - do you have an overall…“agenda”? Or are you more like our own **Skald the Rhymer** who focuses on hypothetical situations across a wide variety of situations… So - are you our **Techno-Skald**?? ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2013, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/37 "2013-06-03T23:33:51Z")
> [@Doggo](#): > > You are correct. > I should have said that we have destroyed one ecosystem. > Planet Earth will get along just fine without humans. We haven’t destroyed our ecosystem either. My cite is the fact that humanity is not currenty extinct. ---
**Author:** ![Jake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jake)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2013, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/38 "2013-06-04T16:15:38Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Depends. Can you exercise control over the initial nano-transporter? If you can, the riches of the world are yours, because you can sell governments access to the perfect population control mechanism. You could sell the rights to entire planets to combines interested in colonization. The Human Diaspora is in your hands. > > If you can’t control it, get together a group, lay claim to a few planets, then tell the world. Step back and watch the chaos. It would knock every religion in the world for 6, that’s for sure. Yes! Just think, every religion in the World would have its own planet to screw up! And leave the rest of us alone. (Unless they had their own Star-Gate) ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2013, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025/39 "2013-06-04T18:34:49Z")
> [@Jake](#): > > Yes! Just think, every religion in the World would have its own planet to screw up! > And leave the rest of us alone. > (Unless they had their own Star-Gate) How do you think they got to the new planet in the first place? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-were-to-find-a-stargate-complex-should-i-inform-the-rest-of-humanity/659025.md?page=1)