That's an old twilight zone episode.
Not a Drill: SETI Is Investigating a Possible Extraterrestrial Signal From Deep Space
- Thread starter timtonruben359
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That's an old twilight zone episode.
"To Serve Man" was first of all a science fiction short story written by Damon Knight in 1950. It's been referenced in many works since its adaptation for the Twilight Zone.
Yes - I sort of mentioned that we might cross paths *someday*, but my point was that neither of us could do it without a great deal of time, effort, and deliberation in planning. If one of us colonized another system, the other could safely just check it off of their consideration list - or we might plan to colonize together. But the idea of sending an invasion force that would take 50 years (or a lot more) to arrive would just be absurd. And maybe there would be other technologies to make that more feasible - cryogenics, transferring minds into robot bodies, etc - but I can't see any of them making it *more* likely that we would enter into conflict with one another. Cryogenics would make the distance involved less relevant, so why bother invading one of their colonies 80 light years away when there's another system we could have free and clear that's 100? And robot bodies would mean we could inhabit more places in systems we already have.
Yeah, completely different from Harlan Ellison having allegedly inspired Terminator. He really stole the royalties on that one, because when you look at his story The Glass Hand, it has very very little to do with the much more successful Terminator.
Just push a large asteroid down on us, and it's "job done".
The problem with asteroids is that compared to conventional armament they are really really slow. It takes weeks, even months to move them from where they are initially to your target.
Depends on your goal, honestly. If it is just to wipe us out, then weeks or months probably isn't an issue as it doesn't give us much time to mount a defense. If you want to use the planet afterward, then you probably want a biological agent designed to take care of us. Which is probably months or years of research.
But a long drawn out war? That would be fantasy. There would be no need for it.
You know the theory that the dust from a big asteroid impact will obscure the sun and cause a winter that will last approximately two years? The result will be the extinction of 99 percent of the species and as you may imagine an Earth that will be nearly inhabitable for hundreds of millennia. I don't know if you really want to colonize a planet like that.
According to this article on Snopes, they waited a long time because this really isn't anything special.
http://www.snopes.com/2016/08/29/alien-signal-from-space/
Which is why I said: "If it is just to wipe us out, then weeks or months probably isn't an issue as it doesn't give us much time to mount a defense", then added "If you want to use the planet afterward, then you probably want a biological agent designed to take care of us. Which is probably months or years of research."
I can't say I am surprised.
Sure.
Sure? It is right in the post of mine that you quoted.
So you think that to colonize a planet, unopposed, crashing an asteroid is the way to go?
Ok, my mistake, sorry.
No problem. I figured we were just talking past each other.
I am glad we cleared that up.
