Why would aliens invade?

[Moontanman]

I watched a video last night, about an hour and a half long that asserted that the USA and other world powers had done some speculative war games based on an alien invasion. The video was well produced and had some good graphics but the reasons for an alien invasion were weak to say the least.

 

I gave it some thought and I couldn't really come up with a reason good enough to travel light years for a planet, the video finally came up with an invading robots scenario wanting to harvest earths forests for reaction mass for propulsion.

 

Considering how unlikely a planet enough like Earth exists, for us to travel there to do war with the inhabitants seems like a loosing proposition unless they are cave men or something.

 

The question, is there a realistic reason to invade an already inhabited planet if planets are as plentiful as current projections indicate?

 

There is also the question of just how Earth like a planet would have to be for us to thrive there?

 

The movie Avatar would be a reasonable example, a planet full of life but not really habitable, is it likely we will find planets close enough to "Earth like" to be colonized and would it be reasonable to expect a limited military force to conquer a civilization as advanced as ours?

 

I am not suggesting FTL and neither did the video, it just seems unlikely for so many different reasons with FTL much less with out it...

 

This also calls into question the idea of "if there are aliens where are they" is it likely another inhabited world would be much more than a curiosity?

 

Most science fiction assumes something like they want to take us over or colonize or steal our water but with literally an infinite number of variables would alien invasion really be a likely hood even given close by aliens?

[arc]

I've always thought the "Independence Day" scenario was interesting, the invaders being like locusts, using up the planet and moving on. Could that level of indifference be also technologically capable of interstellar travel? Could that level of technological capacity look at not just a dead planet like Mars or Venus, but a living biosphere in all of its entirety as simply a source of raw materials? Animals, vegetables and minerals to be recycled into whatever the invaders require.

 

Wait a minute, that's exactly what the Nazis would have done to our planet and any others they got their hands on.

[Delta1212]

Fun? Religion? Alien motivations we don't understand because they're alien?

[Endy0816]

Yeah, I was thinking religion would be the most viable reason. Possibly for economic motives(novelty items/genes/tech).

 

Realistically any invading force would probably do some version of an asteroid attack. Not that hard to sling a rock at us while bleeding off some speed. Wait for the inevitable social collapse and only then launch aerial and land based mop up teams. If biosphere recovery is an issue for them, they have the outer planetary resources to occupy their attention in the meantime.

[Phi for All]

Technology pirates and press ganging. Steal the stuff you don't already have and force the indigenous species capable of work into service. It's the invader way.

[john5746]

IMO, life intelligent enough for space travel is going to be very rare. But, we exist so I'm sure there are more out there. If we lived in a solar system that had another planet that was habitable or at least had some life, I'm sure our space programs would be much more advanced than current.

[Moontanman]

So far, and I know this is arguable, I see nothing that could be gained by invasion that simple industrial processes couldn't make cheaper and less costly in their own solar system or in any uninhabited solar system.

 

I think the idea of colonization would have to be much rarer than actual visitation due to the idea that life has adapted to the Earth not the other way around and life that had adapted to another planet wouldn't necessarily be able to thrive on the Earth.

 

The slave idea is tempting but robots can do almost anything a human can do and they don't require any special treatment and do not revolt (everyone knows humans are revolting all the time )

 

Trading technologies seems a much more likely idea but that implies a relatively equal footing for both sides...

 

Sadly religion might be the most likely scenario...

Then again maybe we taste like their version of chicken...

[CharonY]

To generate great movie plots. Such as "The squishing of disgusting bipeds". And of course "The Squishing II- there are more of them underground"

Edited December 13, 2013 by CharonY

[Danijel Gorupec]

Let me try.... If we people see that, for some reason, the whole population of macaques (monkeys) is endangered by some disease, we would not hesitate to kill a few in order to find a cure.

 

Science-Fiction: If a very advanced (and lonely) civilization finds that there are several millions of child-level civilizations all over the galaxy, 99% of them destined to die young without ever reaching maturity, the advanced civilization might decide to conduct some, possibly fatal experiments on few "civilization-specimens" in oder to discover a "cure" to preserve others.

 

We people do similar things sometimes when we are trying to preserve endangered species.

[Moontanman]

Let me try.... If we people see that, for some reason, the whole population of macaques (monkeys) is endangered by some disease, we would not hesitate to kill a few in order to find a cure.

 

Science-Fiction: If a very advanced (and lonely) civilization finds that there are several millions of child-level civilizations all over the galaxy, 99% of them destined to die young without ever reaching maturity, the advanced civilization might decide to conduct some, possibly fatal experiments on few "civilization-specimens" in oder to discover a "cure" to preserve others.

 

We people do similar things sometimes when we are trying to preserve endangered species.

 

 

Not bad, aliens with god like powers might very well do that...

[dimreepr]

We seem to have forgotten the assumptions that goes with overwhelming power, the history of this planet is littered with examples of those that assume superiority and act accordingly; why would an alien race with the ability to cross such vast/unimaginable distances think differently of us?

[Moontanman]

We seem to have forgotten the assumptions that goes with overwhelming power, the history of this planet is littered with examples of those that assume superiority and act accordingly; why would an alien race with the ability to cross such vast/unimaginable distances think differently of us?

 

 

Good point, I would like to think superior beings would indeed be superior but no reason to expect it...

[moth]

Human endorphins harvested during sexual activity affect the aliens the same way mushrooms affect humans.
The extra-terrestrial demand for naturally produced psychotropics is enormous. I saw a piece of it on Liquid Sky.

[Moontanman]

In fiction there are several possibilities often asserted as part of the story, Indifferent aliens, aggressive hostile or aggressive benign, curious but distant, but one of my favorite stories is about an alien super intelligence that goes mad and decides to play god in it's declining years... with humans as it's playthings...

[Delta1212]

In fiction there are several possibilities often asserted as part of the story, Indifferent aliens, aggressive hostile or aggressive benign, curious but distant, but one of my favorite stories is about an alien super intelligence that goes mad and decides to play god in it's declining years... with humans as it's playthings...

There is one I like, a short story that I can't remember the name of, that inverts the usual human-advanced alien civilization tropes.

 

Humanity is frequently the young upstart civilization that comes into contact with a more advanced civilization with tall, beautiful aliens who live long lives and are more enlightened. By comparison, human lives are "nasty, brutish and short" but humanity is also much more innovative than the advanced but stagnant civilization.

 

So this story had humanity descend on a pre-industrial planet with a small, ugly indigenous population whose reproductive cycle is extremely violent and who only live for an average of 2-3 years but who are brilliantly adaptable and with only minor input from humanity manage to go from a Stone Age level civilization to roughly WWI industrialization in like a decade.

[Bill Angel]

Perhaps aliens will come here for reasons similar to why missionaries came to the Americas, to spread their religious views. There is no reason to presume that invaders from outer space would be atheists. Or perhaps they will come like an invading army of Muslims, on a jihad to convert all the planets in the galaxy supporting sentient life.

[Moontanman]

Perhaps aliens will come here for reasons similar to why missionaries came to the Americas, to spread their religious views. There is no reason to presume that invaders from outer space would be atheists. Or perhaps they will come like an invading army of Muslims, on a jihad to convert all the planets in the galaxy supporting sentient life.

 

 

That is probably the scariest possibility...

[arc]

I'm going with a star hopping self determinate technology that out lived and possibly killed off its creators. Along the lines of the Borg meets Skynet, having a single centralized brain or command that can quickly glean out any usable technology, knowledge and resources from the host civilization/planet while efficiently rendering it all to self perpetuating purposes. This takes care of the need to live long enough for interstellar travel, it could be as old as some stars and as large as a planet. It can slowly move through the galaxy while systematically plundering planets with cold clinical logic.

 

Wait, wasn't that the first Star Trek movie?

[Moontanman]

I'm going with a star hopping self determinate technology that out lived and possibly killed off its creators. Along the lines of the Borg meets Skynet, having a single centralized brain or command that can quickly glean out any usable technology, knowledge and resources from the host civilization/planet while efficiently rendering it all to self perpetuating purposes. This takes care of the need to live long enough for interstellar travel, it could be as old as some stars and as large as a planet. It can slowly move through the galaxy while systematically plundering planets with cold clinical logic.

 

Wait, wasn't that the first Star Trek movie?

 

 

Actually I am writing a novel similar to that Groups of Von Neumann machines that go to planets and build and infrastructure out of the raw materials but they reproduce with variation and eventually they stop ignoring inhabited planets and go for the easy targets of already purified materials in the infrastructure of inhabited planets and built their own infrastructure like they normally would and another group that evolves to just make copies of themselves from the already available materials of inhabited worlds...

[Stetson]

Reasonable explanations that aliens would come here are finite. One could be that the aliens faced an extinction level event and sent off ships to different habitable planets for the continuance of their species. Or they may have similar scientific curiosity on sentient life, and perhaps we would not be bad candidates for their study. I can't say for sure, but do aliens need a reason? Who's to say that these alien species has the same thought processes as ours. They could have a hive function where they all think the same or similar, like ants.

 

Lots of possibilities, less sureties, and it's simply alien to us.

[Bill Angel]

I'm going with a star hopping self determinate technology that out lived and possibly killed off its creators. Along the lines of the Borg meets Skynet, having a single centralized brain or command that can quickly glean out any usable technology, knowledge and resources from the host civilization/planet while efficiently rendering it all to self perpetuating purposes. This takes care of the need to live long enough for interstellar travel, it could be as old as some stars and as large as a planet. It can slowly move through the galaxy while systematically plundering planets with cold clinical logic.

 

Wait, wasn't that the first Star Trek movie?

It was also the premise for the sci fi book titled Eater by Gregory Benford.

[Craer]

To generate great movie plots. Such as "The squishing of disgusting bipeds". And of course "The Squishing II- there are more of them underground"

LMFAO

 

But why does any invasion occure

Natural Resources(for this they would be better off stripping our solar system)

Cheap labor(as stated autonomous labor is less likely to be problematic)

No reason at all

Superiority complex(they think they can 'civilize' us)

Survival(they need to survive if they think they can co-exist or not)

[arc]

 

 

Actually I am writing a novel similar to that Groups of Von Neumann machines that go to planets and build and infrastructure out of the raw materials but they reproduce with variation and eventually they stop ignoring inhabited planets and go for the easy targets of already purified materials in the infrastructure of inhabited planets and built their own infrastructure like they normally would and another group that evolves to just make copies of themselves from the already available materials of inhabited worlds...

 

That sounds very reasonable and very interesting, I look forward to it. Something that has both a strong and immovable prime directive coupled to the capacity to quickly adapt and even more so, evolve, would make for a convincing scenario. This type of artificial intelligence might be inclined to send out massive amounts of interstellar probes, and more likely complete colonizing units that disperse across the galaxy like spores. With each allowed to adapt and change due to its own circumstances they may cycle back in billions of years and face off with each other, in a sort of galactic Wilson cycle of battles for supremacy.

 

Not unlike what humans have done since dispersing out of Africa so long ago.

 

Here's a twist, can you imagine any scenario where these adaptations would turn to a full biologic existence to adapt or would they stay in a more android or possibly cyborg configuration with or without central command and control? To evolve sometimes means to move to a total autonomous configuration whether biologic or artificial intelligence/techno-mechanical.

[Moontanman]

 

That sounds very reasonable and very interesting, I look forward to it. Something that has both a strong and immovable prime directive coupled to the capacity to quickly adapt and even more so, evolve, would make for a convincing scenario. This type of artificial intelligence might be inclined to send out massive amounts of interstellar probes, and more likely complete colonizing units that disperse across the galaxy like spores. With each allowed to adapt and change due to its own circumstances they may cycle back in billions of years and face off with each other, in a sort of galactic Wilson cycle of battles for supremacy.

 

Not unlike what humans have done since dispersing out of Africa so long ago.

 

Here's a twist, can you imagine any scenario where these adaptations would turn to a full biologic existence to adapt or would they stay in a more android or possibly cyborg configuration with or without central command and control? To evolve sometimes means to move to a total autonomous configuration whether biologic or artificial intelligence/techno-mechanical.

 

 

Well in my story the original machines setup and infrastructure and then grow the biological organisms that designed them and set them up in the cities they built. eventually the ones that just design and build themselves stop growing the biological organisms and become independant machine organisms...

[Craer]

 

 

Well in my story the original machines setup and infrastructure and then grow the biological organisms that designed them and set them up in the cities they built. eventually the ones that just design and build themselves stop growing the biological organisms and become independant machine organisms...

What would be the differential quality between the biological and the mechanical in this scenario? Or is that the point?

Edited December 14, 2013 by Craer