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

[Radaney]

Probably within 24h.

They could probably terraform the planet or kill us with biological warfare before they even land.

[dextersmith]

An unlikely scenario, but what if they were a completely peaceful race that didn't even know how to fight wars because they never had to? Maybe they initiate contact because they encountered a war-like race and were losing a war because they didn't know how to create weapons or how to fight, and so they reach out to us because we're less advanced and they feel less threatened by us, but want to study our history of warfare to learn from it?

Anyone with a spaceship can go kamakaze, everything is a weapon. Desperation and will to survive makes retaliation instinctive. Even domestic animals bite back.

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I would love to see that documentary. "Human sitting on couch stuffing his face with chips as he watches TV."

Or "Those who can't act become porn stars."

[Thoughtcrime]

ROFL

That's about as wrong as you can literally get. The universe is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay bigger than you can clearly even begin to BEGIN to begin to comprehend if you honestly think that.

I mean, Jesus Christ.

But sure, it's "limited" in the "so limited that you'll never reach that limit" sort of way.

Yeah, I've tried explaining that the universe is essentially limitless in all practical terms that could affect civilisation at least for several TRILLION years, at which point the universe will have long become equally limited everywhere due to expansion and it doesn't matter how far you've spread because you can no longer reach other stars or communicate with anything outside your current solar system. What this means is that in the short term competition for "resources" is unnecessary, and in the long term it's impossible.

There are hundreds of books that touch on the subject, so I'd give links to a bunch of those to read if I cared enough but I just don't have the inclination to discuss with someone who's belligerent. Rather just ignore and move on.

[Deleted]

Don't know. They could have invented interstellar travel and still only be 10 inches tall. Or maybe their weapons wouldn't affect our physiology or only feel like a bee-sting. Maybe kool-aid would be poisonous to them. Maybe they're all allergic to dogs or don't see well in our atmosphere. Maybe they'd be so advanced that they'd left violence behind eons ago.

[Allybeboba]

I thought aliens had already taken over. Isn't the world already controlled by the reptilians?

[carenard]

Any civilization capable of interstellar travel wouldn't need to invade another planet. We have absolutely nothing of value to such a species. Likewise if we were able to go to other stars.

The idea of alien invaders is infantile.

it is called natural resources, for all you know the planet(s) they are from have highly limited sources of something that is abundant on earth, which would make us a highly valuable target for invasion, and since we have inferior tech most likely it wouldn't be hard to take us over

the only issue we have is... we have nukes, we can make this planet a desolate wasteland in mere hours

[Thoughtcrime]

Pfft where's your imagination. A civilization capable of interstellar travel could for example be socially and culturally interested in aliens (us) they could be conquerors, or in need of slave labor, or perhaps interstellar travel is cumbersome to them aswell, and they stumble on us inadvertently and use our planet and our species for their own designs.

There's no way to know what aliens would want or be capable of should they come visit.

If they're socially or culturally interested in us why invade? If they're conquerors what do we have that they couldn't gain elsewhere with less effort? I'm not talking about slaves one more time in this thread, it's inane. If their solution to interstellar travel is cumbersome how are they able to mount an invasion? You don't just "stumble inadvertently" into an an invasion over interstellar distances. You're implying that two of the most complicated, planned and coordinated actions that a civilisation could take (space travel and invasion) could be bumbled into? What invasions or space missions in history have been yolo'd? Did the allies just wing it on D-Day?

Interstellar travel of the kind needed to mount an invasion of another solar system would require precision and a technological level that is almost impossible for most people to understand. It's easy to write fiction about it and brush over the details, but the realistic view of things tells us how much those details are holding us back and how massively daunting a task it is to travel between the stars. I think it rules out buffoonery.

[dextersmith]

For a challenge, for epeen, for testing their skill?

Don't see how an advanced civilization would find challenging killing us off, getting +rep for obliterating a civilization like ours or testing their skills.

Destroying a civilization could be a royal child's rite of passage.

[Jinxz]

I'd say it'd be pretty ez for a species capable of interstellar travel. Then again, we'd probably kill them first with the sheer amount of stupidity of the human species.

[dextersmith]

I've elaborated on all of that further into the thread, Slaves are mostly worthless to humans already; that's the biggest reason we don't use them anymore. How useful would they be to a species hundreds of millions to billions of years more advanced than us? On the subject of minerals, to a species capable of interstellar travel there are much better targets for resource acquisition.

The equivalent to slaves and people who fulfil such functions are ubiquitous. Maids, nannies, butlers, housekeepers, dog walkers, assistants for CEO's, waiters, janitors, prostitutes, minimum wage burger flippers, gardeners, child laborers, and people who make Nike shoes in third world countries.

[Aliven]

There is no single reason for species who can traverse space to even make a stand by near earth. In fact, if earth would be their destination they would be some very, very, very stupid species.

[Thoughtcrime]

The equivalent to slaves and people who fulfil such functions are ubiquitous. Maids, nannies, butlers, housekeepers, dog walkers, assistants for CEO's, waiters, janitors, prostitutes, minimum wage burger flippers, gardeners, child laborers, and people who make Nike shoes in third world countries.

Is the acquisition of butlers and nannies a reasonable and realistic goal that requires interstellar travel and invasion to achieve?

[dextersmith]

The US would protect the world by uploading a virus or something to the aliens like in Independence Day or Trump would negotiate a deal with them.

He'd build a space wall and make them pay for it?

[Osmeric]

It's possible that incompatible biospheres could produce extreme allergic/toxic reactions. The chemicals in living things here are mostly compatible with the shared biochemistry, but that needn't be the case with an alien system.

Of course, this doesn't prevent the aliens from sterilizing our planet to remove potential competition/danger.

Fortunately, what evidence we have (Fermi argument) suggests we don't have much to worry about.

[Jeezy911]

There are couple things to consider that people can't seem to comprehend:
1) The civilization would not actually have to travel to us to destroy us, they could kill us in 2 very easy ways with technology. Direct a stars light focused at our planet from afar similar to a gamma ray burst, or if they can travel at near light speed, just trowing a couple pieces of trash out the window directed at us would also do the trick. E=MC2.

2) Most likely any civilization that far advanced would either be an immortal being or able to create their own universe simulation. Thus , there doesn't seem to be any need to actually travel within the universe, just create what you want. I feel like this is the most likely solution to the Fermi Paradox, aliens find a simulation utopia and have no need to worry about cave men millions of light years away.

[Shadee]

He'd build a space wall and make them pay for it?

If they were here to mooch off our tax payers and commit crimes than yes.

[Shiny212]

If they're socially or culturally interested in us why invade? If they're conquerors what do we have that they couldn't gain elsewhere with less effort? I'm not talking about slaves one more time in this thread, it's inane. If their solution to interstellar travel is cumbersome how are they able to mount an invasion? You don't just "stumble inadvertently" into an an invasion over interstellar distances. You're implying that two of the most complicated, planned and coordinated actions that a civilisation could take (space travel and invasion) could be bumbled into? What invasions or space missions in history have been yolo'd? Did the allies just wing it on D-Day?

Interstellar travel of the kind needed to mount an invasion of another solar system would require precision and a technological level that is almost impossible for most people to understand. It's easy to write fiction about it and brush over the details, but the realistic view of things tells us how much those details are holding us back and how massively daunting a task it is to travel between the stars. I think it rules out buffoonery.

Those technicalities and things you deem "realistic" might be trivial to said aliens. Space travel is to us science fiction, there is little no chance according to what our science currently tells us, that we can ever make interstellar travel a reality, and if we did, it'd take a many lifetimes, folding space, warp, lightspeed etc, is to us impossible.

Assuming aliens have figured out a way to do something impossible to us, doesn't it stand to reason they could different needs and wants than us, and not really give a second thought to all the human concerns you just mentioned. If anything's inane it's applying the logistics of historical human conflicts to aliens invading earth. For aliens to get to earth, they would literally have magic in our eyes, our science would be unable to explain what the hell they're doing. How can you presume to know what they might be socially or culturally inclined towards, be it war or bizarre cohabitation.

And I never said buffoonery was the reason why aliens might stumble into our path. Maybe an entire alien race has become nomads due to planet death and they desperately use experimental technology to "jump" and accidentally arrive in our solar system, having the only habitable planet, we will of course refuse to share and there you go, reasonable scenario even from our limited viewpoint.

[Lochton]

Depends on level of technology, as well as method of conqouring and their path. Within a month, I guess?

[Deleted]

Don't you think it's a bit weird that you say there is no conceivable reason for aliens to come invade us?
In the time it took me to make this account I came up with several reasons...

Religious forced Conversion
Aliens come, with a missionary fleet to convert us to an alien religion. We join, we are all good, we don't we die. Religious purging would take whatever time it takes their military fleet to arrive and glass our planet.

Religious Extermination
We stand no chance. By the time they announce that we are "heretics" we are already to late to mount any resistance as that would mean fighting back in space. Entire planet turned into a husk quite likely.

Imperial Integration
Random spaceship passes by and "invites" us to a galactic empire, what chance to do we have? Since we aren't even capable of leaving our solar system we would probably be uplifted to some standard but be the servant species or cannon fodder... or food.

Consumable Biomass
Tyranid/Zerg/Aliens from the movie Alien like aliens (great sentence) finds us and realise we are a great snack. Or they have less swarm behavior and turn the entire planet into some breeding ground for humans where we are processed like cattle.
This scenario most likely has some chance for us to fight back. If we are the resource at least the idea of fighting back could exist, all depends on if we get EMP'd because fighting aliens without our industrial strength and logistics/communications networks would be difficult, if not impossible.

Test Subjects
Doesn't mean they would make landfall, maybe they just beam us up... if they do, probably like above scenario.

Artefacts
Alien imagined/real artefact under the crust or something... Requires the planet to not be a burning cinder. We could possibly fight back or hamper their excavation procedures.

"Forced Unity" / "Forced Uplifting"
Alien empire/power comes to forcibly uplift us to next level of technology but also integrates into our society. Denying offer results in termination. This one is a bit of a stretch, maybe it makes sense on their moral compass, maybe it is done so we can fight off some zerg/tyranid/whatever species..
Whatever the reason we might not fully comprehend, our option to say No doesn't exist until after we are uplifted.
This could also include the idea of us being plugged into some kind of digital network to "shed" our bodies... what chances would we have to resist?

We are the scourge of the galaxy!
We have actually, all along been imprisoned on this planet because we breed and consume like a virus on macro level. Aliens detect that we are moving to Mars and come in to curb us back to our planet again. This one at least means we aren't exterminated but also means that our existence just got a bit shittier...
They would probably just release a Prion Pathogen engineered to curb us plus EMP us and Bam! back to the stone ages unless of course they decide to just get rid of us right away.



Resources and To halt/exterminate progress of Artificial Intelligence.
Let's consider the fact that there might not be aliens coming to get us, but some form of AI or sentient robotic life. It doesn't matter if this entire planet is made up of the most abundant resources in the universe, if the input to acquire them is less than the resources allocated it is a given to get them.
Complete sterilisation of Earth would be no problem for an AI, specially if it is quantum based (or whatever comes after that). Maybe they just put a dyson sphere around our sun and we die from exposure..

The second idea, the minute we flip the switch of an AI they Warp in (or whatever) around earth and just crack the planet. Most likely they would view another AI as a threat and would exterminate it before it could challenge their hegemony.
Or it breaks some intergalactic regulation and aliens come to forcefully remove it from our knowledge...


All of the above likely ends in flawless victory for the aliens, we have nothing to stop them. If they can traverse these kind of distances to, in some form, invade, it is quite probable they developed weapons to absolute destroy us before we could even consider retaliation, and what retaliation could we even muster? By the time we would have united under a council to fight back, an invasion fleet, or even an expeditionary fleet who is led under a single high council or Military commander would already have wiped us. Few scenarios involves "landfall" and in those scenarios we still stand minor chance to survive and even less to make them leave us alone but as long as we are discussing scenarios where they can just bomb us from orbit, we have nothing to defend us with.. we fire nukes? They could just blow them up in our atmosphere..
Our only chance of fighting back lies in them finding earth important or our lives marginally important to keep alive that they would make landfall...

[Direpenguin]

I dunno, what do you think the chances are that a race millions to billions of years more advanced than us would act like human children?

But that's just relative. To a full grown ant, a human child, and his/her technology, is millions of years more advanced. Besides, we're discussing hypotheticals here. So let's say it's a group of aliens on a weekend joy ride that happen upon the planet earth in a drunken stupor. Not unlike a truckload of drunken college kids who decide to sexually harass/assault a woman they encounter walking home on a dark street in the early, early morning.