Why on earth--okay, why in the UNIVERSE--would aliens invade?

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@OtakuLoki

Glad you liked it.

I was just surprised I was in time to make the comment - I was almost an hour and a half later with it.

So shall I insert the mind-control chip in Diggs or Portman? Those things aren’t cheap, you know, and they’re both trying to chew their way through their bonds, so I need to get hopping.

[OtakuLoki]

Natalie, please.

[Interconnected_Series_of_Tubes]

To those positing that the human race would manage to stand a chance against interstellar-tech aliens deadset on annihilating us…

How do you propose defending against, say, a few modestly sized chunks of asteroid snatched from the belt on their way to our doorstep and slung at us from orbit? Orbital weapons would simply obliterate our manufacturing and population centers if they didn’t want to destroy the ecosystem by creating their own impact event.

[Iamametalrobot]

@Sunspace

Alien invaders wouldn’t even have to be sentient or self-aware! Here’s a scenario that occurred to me in the shower this morning:

A ship lands. The aliens in it do whatever they came to do, and then the ship takes off. But while it’s here, a breeding group of pests, mere annoyances to the aliens, escapes.

Imagine creatures something like rats: tough, fecund, horny, adaptable, and not at all fussy about what they eat. But these creatures are larger, faster, and smarter than rats, better fighters overall with greater resistance to wounds and disease. They breed fast, eat constantly, and work in groups, cooperating to survive and achieve goals.

But they’re still not what we would call intelligent. There’s no self-awareness, no awareness of history, no words or culture.

If these creatures were diurnal and liked the same environments we do, they’d be a very tough invasion force from our perspective. There’s no political leadership, so we couldn’t even negotiate with them. Nothing to do but defend, fight back, and maybe domesticate a few, if we’re lucky.

That sounds quite a bit like the Watchmakers from “The Mote in God’s Eye”. A non-sentient species that instinctively builds complex tools would be very frightening to deal with.

[Some_FNG]

Perhaps the alien invaders come to hire/coerce meat-shield mercenaries to fight their battles against their arch enemies? Sort of a “We don’t fight, we have people for that sort of thing” mentality. Through their off-planet research department they’ve found us, a nasty race with some really violent tendencies and a propensity for greed, but with blessedly fragile and short-lived bodies. And so They arrive, make wonderful overtures of peace and prosperity on our planet if only we could spare a few men and women to do job for them.

Our leaders jump at the chance to gain alien tech and lose some excess population and thereby gain an edge over our own earth-bound rivals (I’m thinking of some really vile Cold War/Spy vs. Spy thinking here).
So They then take off for home with a ship’s hold full of ‘volunteers’, give them unheard-of weapons and training at a staging site located on a moon far enough away from their home world that our rebellious nature won’t threaten their own stability and then ship them off to duke it out with the bad aliens. The survivors are then kept in captivity until needed again or die a natural death.

The aliens could very think that they are being completely humane and only using a species that was born and bred for warfare and perfectly suited for this end. It’s like us using horses and other beasts of burden- they’re ideally suited for the task, so why not use them for the task?
Just my thoughts, refute at your leisure.