The idea of an alien invasion of earth is a very common theme for a great many science
fiction works, from the War of the Worlds to Independence day.
While fun and spooky, these scenarios are often not very realistic.
The reality is that invading planets doesn’t really make very much sense, except in a few
key scenarios.
But the question is, what would that look like?
Would it be an all out invasion from a giant mothership, with fighters shooting lasers?
Well, maybe, but there are other options for what it might look like, so here are 10 Possible
Alien invasion scenarios
10.
Escaping Dying Star Systems
It’s an absolute certainty that if we survive indefinitely on this world, we will meet a
hard end at the destruction of planet earth by the sun.
But that doesn’t mean, we can’t simply move.
The question is, how likely is it that we’d find something in a nearby star system or
passing star system that would be suitably earth-like?
That could be a greater problem than we think, it may be that earth-like worlds are for some
reason scarce, and that’s backed up by the fact that we have not seen another analogue
of our planet amongst the thousands of known exoplanets we know of.
This could lead to a desperate situation for any civilization living around a dying star,
so much so that they may invade and take over someone else’s world for lack of any other
way to do it.
And that has been depicted in science fiction, and it might be one of those scenarios where
the invasion would look like a giant mothership launching attack craft.
But there is another possibility, it may be a fizzled invasion.
But by the time that civilization got here, they may well be in an exhausted state, having
had only enough resources to barely get here.
How we would deal with that depends on how advanced we would be when they got here.
If they got here, say, now and kept silent, and just collected resources for an invasion
in the outer solar system then we might not fare so well when the invasion hits.
But if they arrive in thousands of years, we may well be as advanced, or more advanced
than they are, and no invasion happens at all.
9.
You must be Stopped
One scenario that’s been floating around futurism is the development of technologies
that not only threaten your world, but if they escape, could threaten worlds across
the entire galaxy.
An example of this would be artificial intelligence, if an artificial intelligence that has a specific
purpose, it could head out and invade worlds to accomplish that purpose.
If it’s a generalized, conscious AI, it may have self-protection motives, or incomprehensible
to the biological motives to conquer other worlds.
Or it may simply do so to preserve its own hegemony over the galaxy, and to prevent the
development of dangerous technologies it may have to contend and compete with, it’s always
better to hedge your bet and invade a world and stop their development before they produce
an enemy on your level.
This type of invasion is likely to be almost incomprehensible, it would probably be very
highly technological, and a total surprise.
Think of a nanotechnological cloud showing up, descending on your planet, and basically
eating everything until the perceived threat is eliminated.
Or it could be targeted, and one day your AI or nanotech labs suddenly disappear, with
all records of their design, and the people that designed them have all disappeared.
You then, as an occupied species, must deal with sentinel nanotech that you may have no
real clue of its origins, or what lies out there in space presumably controlling it.
8.
All Biology Must Die
One particularly apocalyptic scenario involves artificial intelligence and it’s escape
from its progenitor biological civilization.
It’s a complete unknown how such a being would think, something that you basically
have to create and see how it acts to know.
The possibilities are terrifying to say the least, and range from it simply turning itself
off at the first moment of sapience, concluding that there’s no point to existence, to it
enslaving the creator race to enable it to reach immortality, or simply manipulate them
into launching it into space heading for parts unknown.
But there’s one possibility that is particularly chilling.
After destroying its progenitor biological civilization, such a technological Frankenstein’s
monster might conclude that the only way it can ever safeguard its own existence is to
destroy all biology wherever it finds it.
Think a permanent war of extermination between machine and biology, where both sides mutually
see it as there can be only one.
The universe must be either machine or biological, with no in between.
In such a state of affairs a machine civilization coming into contact with humans would be disastrous,
and likely technologically overwhelming, very much on the side of the machine.
It may be that a machine AI could very rapidly come to a complete understanding of the universe,
including the hypotheticals and unknowns and use them against us without us perhaps even
understanding what was happening.
One such hypothetical is the possibility of exotic or strange matter, which is a material
that is not prohibited from existing by nature, but as far as we can see there’s no way
to manufacture it, natural or otherwise.
Strange matter consists of a number of different forms, but in this case it’s something known
as a strangelet, composed entirely of quarks.
This type of matter could exist in the cores of neutron stars, but might also be free ranging.
A free ranging strangelet is the ultimate weapon, in that whenever it comes into contact
with normal matter, it converts that matter into strange matter.
It’s hard to envision what a planet being converted into strange matter might look like,
but the process wouldn’t be instantaneous, and indeed might constitute a relatively long
process that cannot be stopped where everything, slowly but sure, converts to non-viable strange
matter until full, utter and complete extinction occurs.
7.
The Forever Occupation
To take the opposite view, it may be that alien civilizations whether biological or
machine may find that the universe is largely barren of intelligent life.
Even if a civilization is vastly inferior in technology, they may be of interest just
for the sake of being another occurrence of intelligence and that may be unbelievably
rare.
As a result they may choose to seek out any intelligent life and do whatever is necessary
to preserve that species and avert their extinction if they are in danger of it.
In this case, the invasion would simply be an occupation without the intent of destruction,
and may take the form of a robotic army simply showing up from space and taking control before
we could do anything meaningful about it.
It’s a very scary proposition indeed, but a very likely one with advancing technology
where all warfare is done robotically and perhaps even without a single member of the
biological alien species being present.
In other words an automated artificially intelligent war machine that takes no casualties as we
define it, only material technological losses.
Even the artificial intelligence itself, say it’s sapient, is immortal because it can
simply upload itself into a new machine body.
It’s unlikely anyone could ever defend against that without like technology and the invading
civilization will very likely take over, Terminator style, and assert control and then manage
the affairs of the conquered civilization indefinitely and according to the wishes of
some distant alien civilization, perhaps even effectively forever.
6.
Incomprehensible Aliens
One of the biggest problems when trying to envision what alien life might be like is
the question of how similar or how different they would be from us.
We have a sampling of one as far as technological civilizations go, ourselves, but looking at
life on earth the diversity is astonishing.
An ant, for example, lives a very different existence than a crocodile, and while there
are some conferences, there are mostly differences.
This is likely to be the case for alien civilizations, we may find some commonalities, such as science,
that allow technology to be developed but socially we may be vastly different.
Even among human groups there can be huge cultural differences.
So an alien species may be peaceful, or they may value conquest and warfare, or even hunting
as Predator showcased.
Or they could think collectively, like the borg, and become more insect-like and existing
within a hive mind.
This allows for singular collective motives, and there is no guarantee that motive will
appear to make sense to us if they invade.
There are many ways this type of invasion could manifest, from the mothership attack
scenario to nanotechnology, but the one common theme is that with this type of invasion you
never get to know the motive of the attacker.
You just fight it, with no hope of any kind of reasoning with it.
It’s simply a matter of whether you win, or you lose.
5.
The Sleeper Attack Probe
One specific type of alien invasion scenario is that of a sleeper probe.
This is a probe that could be millions or even billions of years old, watching your
planet like a sentinel waiting for the right moment to strike.
Given that such a probe would be a needle in a haystack given the vast size of the solar
system, you’d very likely never know it was there, and if you did discover it, it
could trigger its attack.
The obvious reason for attack would be the development of any technology that poses a
threat to the entire galaxy, such as out of control AI.
But there may be other motives, an alien civilization with such a probe may choose to act preemptively
for some cultural reason, or to prevent a supercivilization arising on this world far
more advanced than our current state.
Such a probe once awakened could then use the resources of the solar system to create
weaponry through 3d printing for an eventual attack, or be outfitted with enormously powerful
weapons of its own.
Here, you may not know of an impending attack until it begins, but it still takes time to
travel the solar system and we’re nearing the capability with regular all sky surveys
to detect the approach of anything, making this one of the least stealthy ways to perform
an alien invasion.
4.
The Science We Don’t Know
For all we know about physics and astronomy, there is still a great deal we do not know.
In particular, our picture of how the cosmos works is somewhat broken.
We have General Relativity and Quantum Theory and the two really don’t quite meet up,
there are certain instances where Einstein simply breaks down and does not predict correctly.
This and other unknowns within physics hint at unknown areas of new physics that we have
yet to discover.
As a result, there may be loopholes and possibilities for technologies that we currently understand
as impossible or almost so, such as faster than light travel.
Another wildcard here is something more to do with our technology.
It has been suggested prominently by Ray Kurzweil that we are nearing a technological singularity,
a point where predicting developing technologies through the achievement of superintelligence
becomes impossible and incomprehensible.
If this is indeed how technological civilizations develop, almost instantaneously, into supercivilizations
then everything we can speculate about regarding how alien civilizations behave is frankly
out the window.
So to spin a scenario, imagine an alien intelligence that hits generalized artificial intelligence,
and that superintelligent mind goes on to very rapidly investigate the universe, learn
how everything works, use that to develop rapidly increasing advancements in technology,
and basically overnight that civilization goes from our stage of development, to the
highest possible stage a technological civilization can reach.
If this is the case, then any invasion done by a post-singularity civilization would be
utterly unpredictable in everything from motive to the technology used.
The saving grace here however is that we may be very close to the singularity ourselves,
some say it’s already begun, so any such invasion must happen within a few decades,
or we may be every bit as advanced and powerful as any other post-singularity civilization.
And that might be a reason in itself for invasion, to stop anyone from reaching the singularity,
because by achieving it, a species becomes invincible.
3.
Unwitting Pawns in an Interstellar War
It could be said that most people that see war aren't combatants, but are merely stuck
by circumstance within the conflict zone.
As wars on earth have shown, they often involve countries that would have preferred to not
be involved at all.
Projecting this beyond earth and into the galaxy at large, it could be that interstellar
space is dominated by politics and warfare much the same as Earth can be.
And if it indeed works that way, there are many scenarios where we could end up in the
middle of a conflict.
One specific one is the establishment of a protectorate, where one alien civilization
occupies earth in order to protect it from something that it deems to be far worse, an
enemy alien civilization.
This could look like anything, from a robotic or even 3d printed alien army occupying strategic
areas of the planet, to automated orbital defense stations, or huge battlestar galactica
starships being built by a von Neumann replicator.
The point here is though, the moment that you are under occupation by a superior entity,
you no longer call the shots.
2.
The Forgetful Invasion
Perhaps one of the most scary alien invasion scenarios is that of being in the position
of not remembering it having ever happened.
This could involve very advanced nanotechnology that in principle might be able to implant
false memories in a population to think that they had always been occupied, and may by
design think favorably of their occupiers, and even worship them as gods, because they’ve
been reprogrammed to do so.
Such an invasion may be invisible from the onset, with some release of nanotechnological
assemblers in the air that start their work, slowly set things up for the memory changes,
and the whole process might unfold before anyone catches on.
At the same time however, that very likely would be detectable by medical science, and
also very likely comes with side effects, which if so the target population would know
their minds are being changed, but have no realistic way to stop it in time and simply
occur, and that’s that.
Occupation and control established without the need for ever firing at shot.
Number 1.
The Silent All Powerful Von Neumann Dictator
The last entry in this list is the strangest in that it would be an invasion without an
actual invasion.
It’s simply the idea of control by presence.
Whenever a lesser advanced civilization comes up against a more advanced civilization, the
latter prevails and controls everything.
So just by virtue of an alien probe sitting in your star system, you are already at a
disadvantage and that probe calls the shots, whether you like it or not.
And while it may appear to be doing nothing, that can change if it doesn’t like what
you’re doing.
Any close presence of an alien civilization reduces the Fermi Paradox down to just one
solution.
And it’s the worst one, the Zoo Hypothesis.
So whether the probe is silently watching you and not imposing anything on you, it is
still by virtue of its more advanced technology ultimately in control.
And the odd thing here is that you may not see much from it, you may never know such
a probe is there, or all you may ever see of such an occupation is the occasional sighting
of something unidentified in your atmosphere.
Thanks for listening!
I am futurist and science fiction author John Michael Godier currently releasing this video
as a kind of prelude of what's to come.
Oh yes, the Halloween season approaches, and as usual October will be spooky video month
on this channel.
And this year, the ideas were plentiful, and the scripts are already in the outline stages.
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