Is the US Military Ready for an Alien Invasion?

[All Seeing Eye]

There's always the 'secret' weapon the US military has. It uses two forms of EM beam that alone are harmless but if a person is stood in the spot where the beams cross nothing survives and the beams can penetrate even the deepest and thickest of bunkers so no alien spaceship will be safe.

 

[The Borg Queen]

Unless those bunkers are lead-lined, I assume. Or plastic.

 

[captcalhoun]

If they wanted control of the planet and wanted us out of the way, they wouldn't bother with conventional weapons like bombs or beam weapons. They'd probably just kidnap some humans from around the world as test subjects, genetically engineer a targeted virus, deploy it all over the world simultaneously, and wipe us out without us ever knowing they were here, leaving the animals, environment, and human infrastructure intact for them to exploit.

Doesn't exactly make for an exciting movie though.

why fuck around with viruses? use a neutron bomb and wipe out every city and military base then land troops to pacify the out-lying areas.

as for the snarky comment about raggedy-ass a-rabs beating the mighty US war-machine with IEDs and so on, that's precisely WHY humans could win an alien invasion; these days nearly every major nation has fought a geurilla or terrorist war and is a master on under-handed tactics. Russia has Chechnya and Afghanistan, the US has Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, Britain has Iraq, Afghanistand and Northern Ireland. China has its own civil war and other incidents where it supported the guerillas...

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Unless those bunkers are lead-lined, I assume. Or plastic.

These beams can penetrate lead a mile thick.

 

[The Borg Queen]

What kind of EM beam is it? Magic?

 

[All Seeing Eye]

What kind of EM beam is it? Magic?

When the two beams cross they become a new type of beam. You wouldn't understand, it's top secret, this kind of technology and science isn't known to scientists outside of area 51.

 

[Lindley]

However, it is possible to imagine a scenario of an alien invasion that is fightable and winnable. If a generational ship arrived expecting an uninhabited world to settle and found it occupied, they could conceivably have a leadership or culture that would (or feel desperate enough to) want to conquer or destroy us. Since they would have limited resources and be without a dedicated military, they would have to improvise. This would be an interesting scenario for a novel.

Closest thing to that I've seen done so far is the Scrin storyline in Command & Conquer 3.

 

[The Borg Queen]

What kind of EM beam is it? Magic?

When the two beams cross they become a new type of beam. You wouldn't understand, it's top secret, this kind of technology and science isn't known to scientists outside of area 51.

Um, I'm guessing you don't understand physics, because what you said is complete rubbish.

Maybe you're confusing it with an episode of Star Trek?

 

[Locutus of Bored]

If they wanted control of the planet and wanted us out of the way, they wouldn't bother with conventional weapons like bombs or beam weapons. They'd probably just kidnap some humans from around the world as test subjects, genetically engineer a targeted virus, deploy it all over the world simultaneously, and wipe us out without us ever knowing they were here, leaving the animals, environment, and human infrastructure intact for them to exploit.

Doesn't exactly make for an exciting movie though.

why fuck around with viruses? use a neutron bomb and wipe out every city and military base then land troops to pacify the out-lying areas.

What part of wanting the animals, environment, and infrastructure intact but humans gone in that paragraph escaped you?

Neutron bombs are not what they're depicted in popular culture. It's still a nuclear bomb, just with less explosive yield in favor of higher neutron radiation (yet the smallest yield is still 100 times stronger than the most powerful conventional bomb). It would destroy a large portion of the targeted city, and much of the animal and plant life in the area.

It would also leave human survivors in areas that were shielded or out of range, and couldn't be used to hunt down every last person, only target cities or mass groups, which would only be effective so long as people continued to mass together instead of going to ground and avoiding others, which they would as soon as they saw that cities and large groups were targets. Your scenario basically encourages a long term guerrilla war with the aliens having to hunt down isolated groups of humans on their own turf.

A virus - especially one that's designed to remain dormant yet contagious for a long period of time before the infectee becomes symptomatic - would be able to spread quickly among human populations before anyone knew something was wrong, especially if you introduced it in numerous high traffic areas around the world simultaneously.

What kind of EM beam is it? Magic?

When the two beams cross they become a new type of beam. You wouldn't understand, it's top secret, this kind of technology and science isn't known to scientists outside of area 51.

Well, I remember in science class that Professor Egon Spengler specifically said not to cross the streams, that crossing the streams would be bad. Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.

Important safety tip.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

What kind of EM beam is it? Magic?

When the two beams cross they become a new type of beam. You wouldn't understand, it's top secret, this kind of technology and science isn't known to scientists outside of area 51.

Um, I'm guessing you don't understand physics, because what you said is complete rubbish.

Maybe you're confusing it with an episode of Star Trek?

Look, i've just told you clearly that your understanding and the understanding by scientists of the laws of physics isn't up to date. The scientists at area 51 however have gained this knowledge and developed this weapon.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Look, i've just told you clearly that your understanding and the understanding by scientists of the laws of physics isn't up to date. The scientists at area 51 however have gained this knowledge and developed this weapon.

Watching Tachy talk science (or politics, geography, or anything) is like watching the boat in 'The Perfect Storm' try to crest that last giant wave. He's so determined that you just can't help but root for him to reach the top, but at the same time you know inevitably he's going to get slapped down hard by an overwhelming wave of reality.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Look, i've just told you clearly that your understanding and the understanding by scientists of the laws of physics isn't up to date. The scientists at area 51 however have gained this knowledge and developed this weapon.

Watching Tachy talk science (or politics, geography, or anything) is like watching the boat in 'The Perfect Storm' try to crest that last giant wave. He's so determined that you just can't help but root for him to reach the top, but at the same time you know inevitably he's going to get slapped down hard by an overwhelming wave of reality.

If you're trying to persuade me to take off my tinfoil hat you are wasting your time. Who do you work for? the government? answer me god damn it!

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Stargate Command.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Stargate Command.

Do you think me a fool! That's science fiction! How dare you mock me!

 

[Danoz]

The biggest problem is that a hostile alien race capable of traveling that far would have very likely anticipated our defense capabilities and would easily counter them. It's hard to say what we would do if they weren't hostile. I would hope that they would have the foresight to understand that there would be conflicting personalities in our society hoping they blow them out of the sky before they even got close-- and other, more trusting, naive personalities ready to lay out the red carpet.

 

[DanTheGrey]

^ Hard to say. The Turtledove World War series postulated a very slowly advancing race that sent a probe here 600 years before, saw knights and figured it would be a cake walk. Who gets up to tanks and primitive rockets in 600 years they thought. And end up showing up and finding we were almost on par with their technology with the exception of space travel.

As for the question, I really doubt that any military is ready for an alien invasion. I think the question is going to be whether or not there's going to be a frame of reference for discussion or if we'll just be viewed as being as worthy as negotiating with as a small yappy dog. I think just being in orbit alone gives them an advantage over destroying us. Being planet bound means that they can do what they want...energy beams, throwing asteroids at the planet, whatever they want and we have very few if no methods for defending ourselves. Hell a bio-agent alone or a terraforming technology could be used against us.

In the end I would expect that we would be left alone unless there's something about the planet that someone else wanted. That is unless we get out there and become some sort of threat that has to be put back in the box. I can just see the Galactic Council now saying "they have FTL ships they can deploy in up to 45 minutes"

 

[Danoz]

Plus, let's also consider, that a truly advanced race could engineer a pathogen, wipe out all intelligent life from a distance, then come and pick up all the resources it needed without a fight. We'd never even KNOW why we were being destroyed, or what the cause was.

 

[Dayton3]

This is a serious real-world question, not a goofy one. If an alien armada arrived in orbit tomorrow and started shooting missiles/beams at our cities, what is the US (or world) military prepared to do about it?

Does an anti-alien invasion military plan exist? We have plans for everything, even invading Canada, right?

Are our ICBMs still ready to fire at any moment? Can they be re-targeted to orbital targets?

Do we have any kind of weaponized satellites in orbit already?

Are our space shuttles of any use? How quickly could you do an unplanned emergency lift-off, let's say with nukes in the cargo bay?

Do we possess secret military space shuttles like they said in West Wing?

What about the classified aircraft they test at Area 51?

Also, do we currently have any kind of surveillance of our solar system to see if aliens arrive in our system?

No to all of these. Except the ICBMs can be fired within seconds, but not against orbital targets.

This question was put to a number of top generals by a news magazine a few years ago. Back when Independence Day came out IIRC.

The military does not plan for contingencies that are considered "unplannable". That is possibilities where no intelligence data on the nature of the threat exists.

 

[Dayton3]

If an invading alien race really wanted to exterminate humans it would be ridiculously easy.

Just wait in the outer solar system, then accelerate a multiton piece of matter, 50 tons would do easily, up to one third the speed of light and aim it at Earth.

The impact would devastate half the planet. Another such projectile 12 hours later would devastate the other half.

 

[Dayton3]

Guerrilla warfare only works when the power the guerrillas are attacking are not willing to use total force to achieve their objectives.

For example in "Independence Day".

The tactics of attacking the city ships or whatever only was viable because the aliens traveled from world to world seizing the resources.

If the aliens had been interested in simply devastation they could've done that from millions of miles away.