# We need to hide human civilisation! (sci-fi hypothetical) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 19, 2017, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-need-to-hide-human-civilisation-sci-fi-hypothetical/777581 "2017-01-19T22:02:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**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:** [January 20, 2017, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-need-to-hide-human-civilisation-sci-fi-hypothetical/777581/21 "2017-01-20T15:59:50Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > There are powerful organizations of people who aren’t even convinced that the world was created more than 8,000 years ago. How do we convince them to shut down their massive array of super-powerful radio transmitters blabbing endlessly (as they’ve been commanded to do by their Almighty) on every spectrum? IIRC in the story I read, military force is used. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2017, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-need-to-hide-human-civilisation-sci-fi-hypothetical/777581/22 "2017-01-20T17:59:56Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > 11.5 billion miles is only a light day. Any signal sent out yesterday is already way past that. Yeah, but 22 watts ain’t much. Television stations in the US are limited to 5 MW, about a quarter of a million times more powerful. That’s for a single station, and there are a lot of stations. If alien beings want to find us, and they’re scanning for radio waves, we’re making a hell of a lot of noise. It might not be an intelligible signal, but the only information that they need to get is that we’re broadcasting. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2017, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-need-to-hide-human-civilisation-sci-fi-hypothetical/777581/23 "2017-01-20T21:06:30Z")
Inverse square law and all that. Out near Voyager its transmitter is far louder (brighter actually) than all of Earth’s put together. It’s also be more obviously coherent and hence stand out better than would Earth’s more muddled collective signal. If the weapon happened to be arriving from a different direction than where the Voyagers happen to be the math would work out the other way. Another vote the Earth is screwed, end of story. ---
**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:** [January 23, 2017, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-need-to-hide-human-civilisation-sci-fi-hypothetical/777581/24 "2017-01-23T14:42:30Z")
Ten years. OK, that’s sufficient time. I was worried about our probes orbiting the big planets, but we can probably de-orbit those. I hope. Sink a whole lot of money, through publishing and radio, into convincing the fundies that the alien superweapon is The Second Coming. Build a giant transmitter designed to draw the weapon (or to “sing to the Lord”). Then use their obvious suicidality to provoke a war of elimination. Get rid of most of the fundies, and focus humanity’s collective mind on survival. Then shut down the globe’s power grids for the five weeks, if you know when they are. And if the aliens were lying, hey, all you really had to go through was a religious purge, not nuking the surface, **Mnemosyne.** ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-need-to-hide-human-civilisation-sci-fi-hypothetical/777581/25 "2017-01-23T14:51:06Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Sink a whole lot of money, through publishing and radio, into convincing the fundies that the alien superweapon is The Second Coming. Build a giant transmitter designed to draw the weapon (or to “sing to the Lord”). They won’t do what you want, because they just won’t believe you. Also, they’re not the only, and maybe not even the biggest problem. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-need-to-hide-human-civilisation-sci-fi-hypothetical/777581/26 "2017-01-23T15:38:24Z")
> [@Mnemnosyne](#): > > Now, sit tight and quiet in the secure facilities. Hope that, when the alien device arrives, it sees that humanity has destroyed itself, and moves on without conducting a more detailed search. Mister President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-need-to-hide-human-civilisation-sci-fi-hypothetical/777581.md?page=1)