An enemy that considered itself somehow “pure” might not even deign to communicate with us; seeing us as unworthy of the opportunity to sell each other out.
That’s what happened over here in Mexico. Hernan Cortes had considerable native support, to overthrow the hated Aztecs. Aliens might be able to exploit the same faultlines.
How many nations do you think would sell out their fellow Humans to get one over each other? Or, say, get revenge against the West? (Edit: Or the inverse really, imagine the US trying to cooperate with aliens to secure global hegemony. Lots of scenarios)
Edit: Please don’t take any of this seriously. It’s a Sci Fi scenario.
As many people pointed out in the past, if an alien species wanted to clap our asses, they absolutely could and there’s next to nothing we could do about it.
They have the technology for interstellar travel.
Our nuclear bombs would surely look like yesterday’s cannon, if not worse, to them.
Incidentally just rewatched Independence Day this past 4th and I have to say, one thing that reads very false in 2025 is the idea that the US would test a nuke on an American city.
Bruh; they would have launched a nuke at a ship over an enemy city. No question. Hell, they might have done a Mexican city if there were a logistical concern about a city further away.
To be clear: I’m not saying they wouldn’t be willing to nuke an American city. But the first nuke they launched would 100% not be over an American city.
This exact setting is actually explored in a game called Terra Invicta, where several human factions are competing against one another to advance their own goal during an alien invasion.
Assuming Aliens could invade us meaning they have the technology to do so, they would not. Our planet has very low amount of resources at this point.
They would either destroy us and we wouldn’t even notice, or they would contact us in peace cause they probably would see us as nothing more than pets.
Based on the current situation in the US many would love the opportunity to get off the planet. An alien invasion might give new meaning to the phrase “beam me up Scotty”.
No way of knowing as it depends on how they evolved. Lying/scheming/betrayal could be uniquely human and something they never evolved to have.
Hell the idea of war could be foreign to them, what if their species never grew the capability to harm each other or evolved with the inability to harm each other with violence.
Its even possible they viewed us as their gods, strange creatures in the distance blue dot who reside in heaven.
Or they could be hyper violent expansionist that will put us under heel before we can even think about resistance.
Space is infinite and the possibilities for life are infinite.
That’s a major plot point of The Three Body Problem. Basically there’s a portion of humanity that thinks the aliens should take over, and basically help them. And even outside of that group, there are other categories of people: People who want to leave earth, people who want to save earth, and some other groups that I forgot about. That book is fricken huge and sprawling.
It happened when the colonizers started occupying India, at that time India(which included Bangladesh and Pakistan) was split into multiple small kingdoms and many rulers of those kingdoms decided to join with the colonizers instead of uniting and fighting against the colonizers.
It’s funny how we’re all scared of a foreign race with better technology coming to kill us all and enslave the survivors, as if that hasn’t happened for most of human history.
this seems unlikely for several reasons. first it implies the alien race is able to communicate with humans.
secondly it implies that the alien race trusts there to be discord between different big groups of humans rather than being cautious and suspicious about allying randomly with the first group they make contact against others.
if you are talking purely in the sense of indirectly trying to have the aliens get the best of other nations first (i.e. by somehow “hiding” as a trivial example), sure… such might happen.
There was a really great series about this called, “Colony”.
It explored the many ways that humans would turn on each other to save their own skins in such a situation.
It was a great show. A high-quality drama that ran for only a few seasons.
I liked it because it never showed the aliens. Instead, its focus was on exploring humanity’s reaction to them.
So what did Netflix do? They cancelled it, of course.
As you speculate, there were those who became collaborators because of the perks they received from turning on their fellow humans.
I doubt we would be selling one another out, I think it would be a clear power struggle as to who is our representative(s). Ultimately it would be who the aliens pick, hopefully they let us pick.
Also, aliens come here it’s likely our weapons mean nothing. But it’s just as likely they do not have weapons.
The thing is, with an infinite universe… Aliens we imagine would be nothing like what aliens actually are.
We are constrained to human thinking. Quite limited. We can come up with ideas, but they are based on human thinking not alien.
I love how terra invicta handles this with humanity splitting into different factions each with their own plan for the invasion some trying to resist coming style some trying to flee some wanting to surrender, some actively working with the aliens and some just trying to make a buck
I’d like to imagine any visiting aliens to be in the same vein as professional humans dealing with endangered species.
Pick a couple of us up occasionally to tag and release, hovering out of reach as they watch, maybe a few softhearted scientists picking up and dropping off the occasional human in danger the way we do to animals we aren’t meant to interfere with.
Human trying to cross the highway? Scooped up and plopped on the other side the way we’d do to turtles and snakes.
Humanity would be united by collectively shitting our entire asses as a whole. Only after the last melted methane infused Hershey’s shart pops will we then either a. Sell each other out of B. Beg them to take us with them and fight to the end to do so. Though what’ll actually happen is the aliens would leave because the whole planet smells like a 7/11 bathroom that was last cleaned in 2019.
It depends. Do the aliens care to negotiate. If so then yes the more powerful countries would sell whatever they can of weaker ones. If the aliens attacked and didn’t want to negotiate it still would not matter because no country will engage until the aliens are already invading their territory. We have become a race of not happening to us not our problem.
That is why I believe our governments will disappear. My pattern recognition tells me that aliens are the fae. Aliens are the fae. Anything nuts and bolts is US! They want us free from this just as much as themselves. They are trapped, too.
In all reality an alien invasion has a power curve they have to meet or they would fail. If they meet it though we would stand no chance. They either have to have defense so good we cant hurt them or their fleet to be so large we can’t fight it.
Not to say they wouldn’t cause serious damage but short of using WMDs that render the planet useless I don’t think they would win no matter who they are.
If anything, either the elites of the world would band together to sell the rest of humanity down the river to make a deal or a particular group of elites would attempt to sell everyone else, including competing elites.
And that’s not even getting into the fact that they could just use a gas, frequency, or some type of weapon that makes us completely useless or obedient.
I have been watching Stargate SG 1 and to consider how they write the president or even the “evil” senator is so refreshing to how reality is now. Politicians now would side with the Goua’uld in a heartbeat.
Nations that are currently alone would probably do that, yes. However the ones with strong and trusted alliances (like Scandinavia or Europe in general), would definitely be more inclined to use collective diplomacy or defence depending on the attitude of the foreign arrivals.
Why would they bother with such a backward society still stuck in the dark ages of religious cults. They would probably just offer penguins a chance to live somewhere more suitable.
Read about how the Aztec were defeated or King Philip’s war. No matter the invader, it’s always more enticing to go and kill your neighbors over some beef from 50 years ago than it is to put aside you differences and fight the invaders.
Or do you think you can fight shoulder to should with ISIS for the greater good?
You should watch Space Traders. It’s part of the Cosmic Slop anthology. Personally, it’s stuck with me for 30 years. I’ve never rewatched it. I’d assume it holds up really well. I think it was that aliens come and offer unlimited natural resources in exchange for all the black people. Not sure if they explain why, just an offer and a vote.
Greg Bear nailed how they’d do it in The Forge of God: by taking one from our own playbook – send messengers promising technology and a new era of galactic membership, and also messengers saying hey, Earth is in big trouble and is about to get wiped. And while we’re arguing over which message is the real one, we get wiped without a struggle.
Any alien species that has the capacity to travel between solar systems, galaxies, etc., would look at us as nothing more than bacteria. It wouldn’t matter if we united, they could probably dispose of us at the snap of their fingers, or whatever the fuck they have for hands.
It wouldn’t even get that far. Most nations would just think it’s the country they are at odd with and attack accordingly. genocide without even knowing it was actually aliens.
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It would depend on the invader’s strategy.
An enemy that considered itself somehow “pure” might not even deign to communicate with us; seeing us as unworthy of the opportunity to sell each other out.
I for one welcome our new celestial overlords.
That’s what happened over here in Mexico. Hernan Cortes had considerable native support, to overthrow the hated Aztecs. Aliens might be able to exploit the same faultlines.
How many nations do you think would sell out their fellow Humans to get one over each other? Or, say, get revenge against the West? (Edit: Or the inverse really, imagine the US trying to cooperate with aliens to secure global hegemony. Lots of scenarios)
Edit: Please don’t take any of this seriously. It’s a Sci Fi scenario.
As many people pointed out in the past, if an alien species wanted to clap our asses, they absolutely could and there’s next to nothing we could do about it.
They have the technology for interstellar travel.
Our nuclear bombs would surely look like yesterday’s cannon, if not worse, to them.
Either they come in peace, or we rest in it.
Yeah we learned that from the colonization of the Americas. I also think the same issue would happen.
Same for zombies. We’d have half of humanity trying to argue that joining the zombies is the logical and ethical course of action.
Incidentally just rewatched Independence Day this past 4th and I have to say, one thing that reads very false in 2025 is the idea that the US would test a nuke on an American city.
Bruh; they would have launched a nuke at a ship over an enemy city. No question. Hell, they might have done a Mexican city if there were a logistical concern about a city further away.
To be clear: I’m not saying they wouldn’t be willing to nuke an American city. But the first nuke they launched would 100% not be over an American city.
This exact setting is actually explored in a game called Terra Invicta, where several human factions are competing against one another to advance their own goal during an alien invasion.
Yet it’s basically philosophy, yet not a shower thought.
Assuming Aliens could invade us meaning they have the technology to do so, they would not. Our planet has very low amount of resources at this point.
They would either destroy us and we wouldn’t even notice, or they would contact us in peace cause they probably would see us as nothing more than pets.
Look at how the Native Americans responded to the European invasion.
Precisely one unified response (Tecumseh), and centuries of bargaining/alliance against their existing neighbors while being swallowed up piecemeal.
I, for one, welcome our insect overlords!
U.S: Hey buddy go invade Russia, they have secret technology
Russia: Hey buddy go invade U.S, they have resources
Both: Hey buddy go invade China they have technology and resources
China: Hey buddy go invade India, they have an advanced space program
India: Come on we will cook a welcome dinner
Look what happened during COVID, it will be like that times a million
Actually I’m down for a show about some smol or 3rd world nation making first contact and becoming a superpower overnight w/ the tech imbalance.
This is what happened when Europe invaded the Americas. They didn’t have to divide and conquer, because the division part was already done.
And then, the “leopards ate my face” afterward.
Based on the current situation in the US many would love the opportunity to get off the planet. An alien invasion might give new meaning to the phrase “beam me up Scotty”.
I’d sell everyone out hard for a hoverboard.
We’d probably argue about who gets to negotiate with the aliens while they steal our WiFi.
Um, Ah, the classic “every man for himself” approach to interstellar diplomacy!
No way of knowing as it depends on how they evolved. Lying/scheming/betrayal could be uniquely human and something they never evolved to have.
Hell the idea of war could be foreign to them, what if their species never grew the capability to harm each other or evolved with the inability to harm each other with violence.
Its even possible they viewed us as their gods, strange creatures in the distance blue dot who reside in heaven.
Or they could be hyper violent expansionist that will put us under heel before we can even think about resistance.
Space is infinite and the possibilities for life are infinite.
That’s a major plot point of The Three Body Problem. Basically there’s a portion of humanity that thinks the aliens should take over, and basically help them. And even outside of that group, there are other categories of people: People who want to leave earth, people who want to save earth, and some other groups that I forgot about. That book is fricken huge and sprawling.
And now you understand the Spanish success in the Americas
We couldn’t even hold it together for a literal pandemic. We would be cooked.
If they have the technology to get to earth, or even know about us, they are tens of thousands of years ahead of us
THANK YOU. I’ve been saying this my entire adult life.
We’ve been happy to sell humans into slavery to other humans, as long as they weren’t members of our little group.
We’re not a nice animal.
Covid definitely changed my theory on an alien invasion to something like this.
The mini series Cosmic Slop (1994) is a good example of what would happen if aliens wanted a specific something from humans. OP is right.
Edit: It was on HBO.
I don’t have your resources. It’s at US’s house and UK’s house.
I think this would entirely depend upon the intentions of the aliens.
Watch 3 Body Problem/read the novels. This is just the sort of thing that happens, except it’s a cult.
It happened when the colonizers started occupying India, at that time India(which included Bangladesh and Pakistan) was split into multiple small kingdoms and many rulers of those kingdoms decided to join with the colonizers instead of uniting and fighting against the colonizers.
It’s funny how we’re all scared of a foreign race with better technology coming to kill us all and enslave the survivors, as if that hasn’t happened for most of human history.
A species of interstellar travel isn’t concerned with the opinions of ants
this seems unlikely for several reasons. first it implies the alien race is able to communicate with humans.
secondly it implies that the alien race trusts there to be discord between different big groups of humans rather than being cautious and suspicious about allying randomly with the first group they make contact against others.
if you are talking purely in the sense of indirectly trying to have the aliens get the best of other nations first (i.e. by somehow “hiding” as a trivial example), sure… such might happen.
There was a really great series about this called, “Colony”.
It explored the many ways that humans would turn on each other to save their own skins in such a situation.
It was a great show. A high-quality drama that ran for only a few seasons.
I liked it because it never showed the aliens. Instead, its focus was on exploring humanity’s reaction to them.
So what did Netflix do? They cancelled it, of course.
As you speculate, there were those who became collaborators because of the perks they received from turning on their fellow humans.
I doubt we would be selling one another out, I think it would be a clear power struggle as to who is our representative(s). Ultimately it would be who the aliens pick, hopefully they let us pick.
Also, aliens come here it’s likely our weapons mean nothing. But it’s just as likely they do not have weapons.
The thing is, with an infinite universe… Aliens we imagine would be nothing like what aliens actually are.
We are constrained to human thinking. Quite limited. We can come up with ideas, but they are based on human thinking not alien.
That is assuming the invasion isn’t fake, and there are actually aliens to sell others out to
Torchwood S03 Children of Earth is some of the most depressing sci-fi even in exactly this regard.
I love how terra invicta handles this with humanity splitting into different factions each with their own plan for the invasion some trying to resist coming style some trying to flee some wanting to surrender, some actively working with the aliens and some just trying to make a buck
TIL; IF aliens clap our cheeks, them cheeks gonna be clapping hard AF.
I’d like to imagine any visiting aliens to be in the same vein as professional humans dealing with endangered species.
Pick a couple of us up occasionally to tag and release, hovering out of reach as they watch, maybe a few softhearted scientists picking up and dropping off the occasional human in danger the way we do to animals we aren’t meant to interfere with.
Human trying to cross the highway? Scooped up and plopped on the other side the way we’d do to turtles and snakes.
You’ll see the people that are your real friends. The rest will fade away or backstab you
Humanity would be united by collectively shitting our entire asses as a whole. Only after the last melted methane infused Hershey’s shart pops will we then either a. Sell each other out of B. Beg them to take us with them and fight to the end to do so. Though what’ll actually happen is the aliens would leave because the whole planet smells like a 7/11 bathroom that was last cleaned in 2019.
It depends. Do the aliens care to negotiate. If so then yes the more powerful countries would sell whatever they can of weaker ones. If the aliens attacked and didn’t want to negotiate it still would not matter because no country will engage until the aliens are already invading their territory. We have become a race of not happening to us not our problem.
COVID19 is essentially an alien invasion, and look at how we jointly fight them.
That is why I believe our governments will disappear. My pattern recognition tells me that aliens are the fae. Aliens are the fae. Anything nuts and bolts is US! They want us free from this just as much as themselves. They are trapped, too.
In all reality an alien invasion has a power curve they have to meet or they would fail. If they meet it though we would stand no chance. They either have to have defense so good we cant hurt them or their fleet to be so large we can’t fight it.
Not to say they wouldn’t cause serious damage but short of using WMDs that render the planet useless I don’t think they would win no matter who they are.
If anything, either the elites of the world would band together to sell the rest of humanity down the river to make a deal or a particular group of elites would attempt to sell everyone else, including competing elites.
Yeah, totally.
And that’s not even getting into the fact that they could just use a gas, frequency, or some type of weapon that makes us completely useless or obedient.
I have been watching Stargate SG 1 and to consider how they write the president or even the “evil” senator is so refreshing to how reality is now. Politicians now would side with the Goua’uld in a heartbeat.
Nations that are currently alone would probably do that, yes. However the ones with strong and trusted alliances (like Scandinavia or Europe in general), would definitely be more inclined to use collective diplomacy or defence depending on the attitude of the foreign arrivals.
You should read the World War series by Harry Turtledove.
He writes alternative history fiction and it’s pretty fun, weird, but fun.
This series is basically like..
An alien species discovers Earth, we’re caveman at the time, the probe goes back and they decide to colonize the planet.
Time passes. They don’t have hyperspace tech, the conquest fleet arrives during world war two.
They’re shocked by the fact humans now have atomic weapons and they’re like.. wtf do we do, the colonisation fleet is on the way.
They decide to invade anyway – and the world units. Imagine Hitler, Stalin and Churchill all working together.
Was really cool. Seven books all told.
You think the invading aliens offer free health care,
Why would they bother with such a backward society still stuck in the dark ages of religious cults. They would probably just offer penguins a chance to live somewhere more suitable.
Read about how the Aztec were defeated or King Philip’s war. No matter the invader, it’s always more enticing to go and kill your neighbors over some beef from 50 years ago than it is to put aside you differences and fight the invaders.
Or do you think you can fight shoulder to should with ISIS for the greater good?
You should watch Space Traders. It’s part of the Cosmic Slop anthology. Personally, it’s stuck with me for 30 years. I’ve never rewatched it. I’d assume it holds up really well. I think it was that aliens come and offer unlimited natural resources in exchange for all the black people. Not sure if they explain why, just an offer and a vote.
Edit: spelling
Greg Bear nailed how they’d do it in The Forge of God: by taking one from our own playbook – send messengers promising technology and a new era of galactic membership, and also messengers saying hey, Earth is in big trouble and is about to get wiped. And while we’re arguing over which message is the real one, we get wiped without a struggle.
Some would sell out, others would work together.
20 years ao I would have disagreed. After recent history, I’m nodding in agreement.
There was a short story where aliens turned a town against one another by selectively turning off the power to specific places.
Ah yes, “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” outcome.
Any alien species that has the capacity to travel between solar systems, galaxies, etc., would look at us as nothing more than bacteria. It wouldn’t matter if we united, they could probably dispose of us at the snap of their fingers, or whatever the fuck they have for hands.
It wouldn’t even get that far. Most nations would just think it’s the country they are at odd with and attack accordingly. genocide without even knowing it was actually aliens.
Alien invasion? Shit, try having a small political differences. Some of our worst enemies are imaginary lines.
that South Park episode with the space cash and the nukes