How easily would aliens occupy earth if they decided to invade?

[Thoughtcrime]

Alright, my apologies - you did come to play. Solid point.

Yeah look, I'm open to talking about anything and open to having my mind changed on everything. I can talk about things and disagree without calling someone stupid so when people are insulting over a casual conversation I'm not going to engage with that person specifically, that's all I meant. The subject; and thinking about it from many angles still interests me a lot!

I would think that the practical goal of all space fearing species would be colonization and expansion. Those lead to even more sustainability because the resource drain is spread out and the population isn't limited to one solar system.

Well, for me personally I'm against colonisation and expansion for a bunch of ethical reasons. I would hope in time we would only do it for the explicit purpose of preventing our own extinction and (if life isn't found elsewhere) the rest of life on Earth. There's a lot to talk about with just that topic alone, and I went into briefly in another thread here in regards to colonising Mars but the gist of it from my perspective is that outside of preservation I don't feel like we have a right to colonise other worlds when we can, and should, live within our means.

My basic argument on that front is that life on Earth was single celled and uneventful for billions of years, and that it was only comparatively recently that anything "interesting" biologically happened around 500 million years ago. Say an alien species came along during those 4 billion years, which was the vast majority of time that has passed after the formation of the Earth and said "well this world is fine for colonisation, nothing but slime". Going out to colonise other worlds, we'd be those invaders; I don't think we have that right, and I want to think we could and should be better than that.

In terms of sustainability I think if we focus on something we already know, it is clear that expansion does little to further that goal over practical timescales (but still tens of billions of years, and in the case of a red or white dwarf up to trillions of years), because what we know already in a nutshell is that mass is energy. It doesn't really matter what that mass is; whether it's oil, coal, hydrogen, helium it's all energy. If we can convert mass into energy with 100% efficiency; such as black holes do, there is no difference between controlling one solar system or a billion. The result is enough to meet all ours needs "forever" because mass is an astounding amount of energy. Unless ours and alien space ships run specifically on coal and oil, then yeah maybe civilisations need to spread everywhere and compete for resources. Civilisations greatest challenge is not finding and taking resources, it's fully exploiting the resources available to it. I think as the universe ages, expands (to the point at which interstellar travel becomes impossible) and cools this becomes more important than how far we spread, and is in fact vital. Say we colonise a planet around a red dwarf, by the time we run out of energy in that system we wouldn't be able to reach another solar system anyway due to the accelerating expansion of the universe. So what purpose is served by spreading all over the galaxy?

While it's not outside the realm, it's highly unlikely that Humanity's population will remain in check enough to be sustainable without just this solar system - especially on the time line you suggested.

Actually, that's not what population trends are showing. The U.N estimates that the human population will rise to around 11 billion by the beginning of the next century before leveling off for a variety of reasons. It's a topic for another conversation but search for Hans Rosling talks to get more information. We won't keep multiplying forever, and sustainability is not only practical and realistic but logical and desirable. I think that would be true for any complex civilisation, though I could be wrong. Civilisations are just a complex structure and any that grow too large fracture or collapse, without exception.

We'd have to gain a foothold on at least one other star system, as you pointed out, and at that point, why not further spread out the liability, so to speak. More stars colonized, less chance of extinction. Take that to other star fearing species, and that's how you logically get to aliens some day visiting our area. If Earth isn't habitable for them, another one of our Solar System's planets will be, and they'll want to make sure Humans don't interfere. And now we're at invasion. Only the timeline is uncertain.

Well I think outside of scientific endevour and exploration at the point where you reach sustainability and reasonable protection from extinction the incentive to expand and conquer dissipates.

[cubby]

The whole atmosphere is poisonous you mention wouldn't make our planet a prime target, just opposite.
The thing your not getting is if any race that had interstellar travel they would be able to terraform worlds in the goldilock zone that missed afew chances to grain life. Why try to take over a world that has a species already that has littered the world with poison when they can get a pristine world on the sly without worrying about their own sjw warriors acting up.

Terraforming takes time - no matter how good you are at it. A planet "ready to go" is much more attractive, especially if the current species can be removed within one year.

us fighting back against an alien invasion relays depends on why they would come.
If they just wanna convert us into worshipping the space pope then we would have a chance with a guerrilla fight (assuming no mind control)
If they just wanna kill everything, they can just send a missile at our polar ice caps followed by the destruction our moon resulting in countlesss deaths from tidal waves/starvation.

They wouldn't do either if their intention was to kill us. Blowing up the moon would eventually destroy Earth, and they would know that, so that's out. Melting the polar ice caps is equally useless - it would change the planet. Just drop a couple thousand kinetic weapons at 50% c from long range orbit and we'd be effectively done.

[munkeyinorbit]

Lets face it guys. If an extraterrestrial species with the ability to travel the stars decided they wanted earth it's highly unlikely that we have anything that would be able to stop them. How long would it take them to conquer earth?

Depends if they're exterminating which could ruin the planet or occupying. If they're exterminating they could nearly wipe us out without coming out of orbit. If they come down planet side, we have more of a chance to resist. Beat them? Probably not. But I bet we can piss them off so much that they start to think "Is this even worth it".

People keep on saying that the Aliens will wipe the floor with us and that we are an anthill to be stepped on. But people forget that there may be circumstances where the aliens don't want to risk the planet by just annihilating us from space. Maybe their WMDs are just as bad as ours for the planet, maybe they are too powerful. Maybe they are here for our dogs and don't want to risk hurting them. I do't fucking know. The best example of this in modern history is Vietnam. America had huge resource advantage, huge tech advantage and could have literally wiped the communists off the face of the earth but they couldn't. The risk they were not willing to take was if USSR decided to retaliate in kind, so that basically took nukes off the table. In the end, the most advanced nation on the planet got a lesson in warfare from a bunch of rice farmers. We could do the same.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Depends on what they came here for. Since they have a long way to bridge their tech would most likely be worlds apart from ours, so they have an already scary advantage there. If they just came for resources they could nuke us into submission without any hassle.
If they had to preserve the enviroment for some reason and had to rely on ground combat then they probably had a harder time. But since the level of tech required for long distance space travel in reasonable time is probably still vastly above our, they would probably still easily pull ahead. In the later scenario it's probably more down to preventing us from going full scorched earth and nuking our planet out of spite.

We are fucked either way and better hope that they forgot about viruses and bacteria (unlikely..).

[cubby]

To add to this - I believe that any species that has come to the point where they are capable of interstellar travel would have also understood the need to not recklessly reproduce (since economically reproducing above replacement rates in a stable society doesn't make much sense), so there wouldn't exactly be hundreds of billions of aliens needing a home or materials - most of the work would probably be done automatically and the aliens themselves would be dedicated towards research and technological improvement as a whole, possibly coming to earth to research the possibility of life being here.

Well, at least colonization at the expense of already existing life forms would be rather pointless. Better to take a planet in the habitable zone of a star and make it your own rather then trying to colonize a planet with an intelligent, potentially violent species. There are enough terrestrial planets in the galaxy to provide able opportunity to this, some around stars which will last much longer then our sun.

Reproducing at a great speed isn't reckless if you can conquer other planets. It might actually be useful, depending on how many habitable ones are out there. And Earth has a particular atmosphere that might be very attractive, and hard to find. So we could be a likely target, depending.

[lucred]

I see three possible reasons that aliens would want to invade:
1: For some reason they want living slaves --> Some difficulty as humans are NOT fond of that idea, and a lot of the tech they could use from safety might just glass the race, so it would take some time/effort.

2: They are just looking for land/resources and don't care about our lives in any way --> specially tailored virus infects us all and then activates, killing us all 1-4 weeks after they first analyze our immune systems leaving the earth with no sentient life to defend it, so easily.

3: They saw how we act and want to make sure we do not spread and infect the rest of the galaxy --> virus as above, or just glass the planet, VERY easily

[Saybel]

Reproducing at a great speed isn't reckless if you can conquer other planets. It might actually be useful, depending on how many habitable ones are out there. And Earth has a particular atmosphere that might be very attractive, and hard to find. So we could be a likely target, depending.

It's reckless because it provides no discernible benefit past a limiting point. An empire with 100's of billions - trillions of lives spread across so many light years that communication is impossible (remember, it takes 4 and 1/2 years to communicate with the nearest star) to manage and would just devolve into a bunch of locally based, isolated communities. Any civilization that's capable of developing that sort of technology should surely realize that dividing themselves into isolated communities that would realistically end up competing (and thus actively hinder each other instead of helping) with each other is not advantageous in any way.

Even though muh aliens, the laws of physics still apply. The speed of light is the speed of light, that's not something that's navigable.

[mickybrighteyes]

This discussions get biased too easily. If tech alone was enough to enforce dominance, why then hasn't a single organization taken over the world... formally?

[Zigrifid]

what if the meteor that killed the dinosaurs was actually an alien spaceship and humans were in there !!! what if we are the aliums ?

[Thoughtcrime]

This discussions get biased too easily. If tech alone was enough to enforce dominance, why then hasn't a single organization taken over the world... formally?

When one civilisation has a decisive technological advantage over the other it never ends well for the less advanced side. Ask the Mayans*.

[scrangos]

Posh? I'm being realistic. The primary materials that make up the Earth are the most abundant in the universe. As much as we might like to think we're really special the truth is we aren't. Judging by the number of exoplanets we've discovered already there are potentially tens of BILLIONS of Earth like worlds in our galaxy alone, why would any species invest that much effort to travel anywhere up to 100,000 light years within our galaxy for anything we might have? It makes absolutely no sense.

they mightve run out in the nearest area and were the next closest that has what they're looking for.

[Sykol]

They'd just have to claim to be refugees and we'd let them right in.

[Silakka]

We are perfectly safe, Trump has nukes

[Ripster42]

Well, would colonisation and expansion be the end goal of all species? Or is sustainability a more logical goal? It's not outside the realm of possibility that just the Earth alone could sustain humanity at least until the Sun increases in output enough that the habitable zone shifts to further out into the solar system. With settlements on other planets and moons in our own system, and in the future around another star we would be immune to extinction from almost all natural causes.

Going back to what I said earlier, we have now discovered thousands of exoplanets and while we haven't yet found an exact Earth analogue all evidence suggests that rocky, terrestrial world's are probably quite common in the universe and probably not worth travelling hundreds to thousands of light years to conquer.



They wouldn't be so advanced you mean? Probability says otherwise. If they're capable of interstellar travel the chances are high that they are anywhere up to several billion years more advanced than us. That puts the likelihood that their technology would be comparable to our own at negligible, but basically zero.

Sustainability is only a logical goal if you actually naively believe that every alien race is going to be peaceful when the universe is limited, and if you actually believe the universe isn't going to end in heat death. Sure, on a short time scale, on the interval of 100,000 human lifetimes, sustainability is a good option. It's not when you want your race to survive as long as possible, even when dealing with the limited resources of a cooling universe. It's supremely naive to believe that no other race will think this way when we literally have no basis to think that.

Rocky terrestrial worlds (and it's not likely every alien race definitively needs terrestrial words to survive) are very common right now. They won't be in the distant future as the universe approaches heat death, and we have no reason to believe every alien race won't be thinking on that time scale. All it takes is one race believing this way and believing sustainability is the way to go is an evolutionary dead end.

BTW, I'm not the one who started with the insults. You saying that believing any other way than you is "infantile" is what started it. Take a look in the mirror.

The idea of alien invaders is infantile.

My sig applies to you.

[Thoughtcrime]

Sustainability is only a logical goal if you actually naively believe that every alien race is going to be peaceful when the universe is limited, and if you actually believe the universe isn't going to end in heat death. Sure, on a short time scale, on the interval of 100,000 human lifetimes, sustainability is a good option. It's not when you want your race to survive as long as possible, even when dealing with the limited resources of a cooling universe. It's supremely naive to believe that no other race will think this way when we literally have no basis to think that.

Rocky terrestrial worlds (and it's not likely every alien race definitively needs terrestrial words to survive) are very common right now. They won't be in the distant future as the universe approaches heat death, and we have no reason to believe every alien race won't be thinking on that time scale. All it takes is one race believing this way and believing sustainability is the way to go is an evolutionary dead end.

I think that ultimately it doesn't matter. Whatever path life takes is an evolutionary dead end, that much is inevitable. I do think that sustainability provides optimal longevity however because eventually every solar system will be isolated and will be FORCED into it anyway.

You saying that believing any other way than you is "infantile"

Did I say that anyone who believes any other way than me is infantile? Or did I say that the concept of alien invasions (at least so far as most people understand it) is infantile? There's quite a big difference in there and I think you were just projecting your own meaning onto what I said. For the record I will just say it in a way that's less likely to lead to misinterpretation.

I think that the idea of alien invaders is just a nightmare fantasy conjured up by our monkey brains for entertainment and is probably nothing close to reality. It may very well be impossible, but it's almost certainly not worth it. I think alien explorers, observers; and possibly intervention is far more likely but my own thoughts lean closer to us being the only technological civilisation in the galaxy anyway. Disclaimer: I do not think you're stupid if you disagree; and you're more than welcome to do so.

I won't make any apologies for saying that Independence Day is a stupid fucking movie, doesn't mean that I think everyone who likes it is stupid. Likewise I can think an idea is ill conceived, without thinking or saying that everyone that has it is a moron.

[Gref]

How can we defend against something that can do a planet wide orbital bombing like the protos does to zerg infested planets.

[Deleted]

As easily as we could invade theirs. We're all aliens at the end of the day.

[Elim Garak]

It would be so fast it already happened.

[Blur4stuff]

It's pure fantasy that humans would get a chance to fight back. Aliens don't have to enter Earth's atmosphere to enslave or kill us. They wouldn't even have to enter the solar system.

[lockedout]

Lets face it guys. If an extraterrestrial species with the ability to travel the stars decided they wanted earth it's highly unlikely that we have anything that would be able to stop them. How long would it take them to conquer earth?

17.8 minutes give or take.