Is there a GOOD reason for an alien invasion

[Ensign_Redshirt]

I think by far the best and least used motivation(in science fiction) for an alien invasion would be religious in nature. Something along the lines of our fictional aliens feeling that all sentient beings in the universe must acknowledge their deities.

That's not a million miles away from the reason behind the Human/Covenant war, in the Halo games; The Covenant begin systematically wiping out humans in the galaxy, because they believe the human race is an affront to their gods.

Then again, what's the chance of space travel being invented by fundamentalists?

At least on Earth, religious fanatics have the habit of curtailing social and scientific progress (the sciences either directly because scientific discoveries tend to contradict the established view of the universe or as an indirect byproduct of curtailing society and therefore open-mindedness as a whole).

 

[Kegg]

Then again, what's the chance of space travel being invented by fundamentalists?

At least on Earth, religious fanatics have the habit of curtailing social and scientific progress

Curtailing them or encouraging them. Newton was a very religious man, for example, and also kind of a big deal as far as scientific progress goes.

Firstly, whatever religious beliefs they have may not conflict with scientific advance and even if they did, there's no saying they were always a dominant position in this alien race - indeed, the idea I threw out of aliens wanting Earth because a human religion or a variation of a human religion is now popular among them would be a case where the religion comes only after interstellar space flight.

 

[Servo]

I think by far the best and least used motivation(in science fiction) for an alien invasion would be religious in nature. Something along the lines of our fictional aliens feeling that all sentient beings in the universe must acknowledge their deities.

That's not a million miles away from the reason behind the Human/Covenant war, in the Halo games; The Covenant begin systematically wiping out humans in the galaxy, because they believe the human race is an affront to their gods.

Then again, what's the chance of space travel being invented by fundamentalists?

At least on Earth, religious fanatics have the habit of curtailing social and scientific progress (the sciences either directly because scientific discoveries tend to contradict the established view of the universe or as an indirect byproduct of curtailing society and therefore open-mindedness as a whole).

Well, first of all, you can't really impose human religious precedents and stereotypes onto an alien empire composed of several different species and cultures.
Secondly, it's likely these races had their own forms of science and space travel prior to being part of The Covenant, all of which have been co-opted by their new masters.

Plus, it only takes a small number of fundamentalists to gain power in order to drag the rest of the population into its beliefs and actions. Just look at Hitler, the Nazi party, and Germany.
Or for a more sci-fi example; look what happened to the Republic in Star Wars when one man with a thirst for ultimate power managed to take control of it. One minute you have a peaceful and democratic republic, next thing you've got an evil empire.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

How about pure wonder and curiosity as a motive? If sapient life is so rare, the discovery of a new world with native intelligence might be the greatest discovery in generations. Scientists might flock to the world to study it, and if they're so much more advanced than the natives, who's to say they wouldn't just land and set up shop, invitations be damned? And maybe they'd be a bit like the old ornithologists whose study of birds involved them saying "look! A Red-breasted Doomed-thrush! Very rare, only four have ever been seen. Quick, shoot it so we can stuff it!". In other words, their enthusiasm might not involve a sense of conservation, particularly if their eagerness gets the better of them, or competing groups of explorers/researchers are trying to uncover all the secrets first (like the Bone Wars in paleontology, where on occasion fossils would be smashed to prevent the other side getting them?). And if these beings are so much more advanced on top of being alien anyway, who's to say they'd empathise with the primitive natives whose civilization they were rummaging around in? Why not have aliens land and start researching? It might even end up as "I believe I understand how the community's social dynamic works, professor. I would now like to observe how the social order reconfigures itself after the sudden disappearance of every third adult female! Pass me the death rays!"

I mean, say some sapient race has spent millennia expanding its way across space, never finding evidence of other civilizations, and eventually making peace with that. Their understanding is that they're the only sapient life in the galaxy (maybe the gods made it so, giving them further cause to be shaken when a new world is finally discovered). Their sense of their own existence is heavily dependent on their exclusivity. Then they stumble across our corner of the galaxy and OH MY ZOG THERE'S ANOTHER CIVILIZATION THERE. Surely they'd go nuts, one way or the other (or many ways at once)? They might well fall upon us in a frenzy of excitement and start taking us apart to learn as much as they can, be the first to redefine their people's base understanding of philosophy, theology, science.... And after millennia of believing they're alone, and all sapient life is their kind of life, would they find it easy to empathise with us? Rather than open a dialogue, they might just invade excitedly and start prodding, while arguing about the ramifications of what they observe? Possibly?

Assuming, I guess, that the initial discovery doesn't instead leave them totally unable to deal with the revelation. Then they might reconcile the awful truth with generations of doctrine and understanding by simply removing the evidence and pretending it never happened. "Can you imagine the chaos back home, commander? Our perfect, millennia-in-the-making-order, toppled by this discovery! They can't find out, sir. For The Greater Good, no-one must know. Just drop an antimatter bomb and head back! And never speak of this day again!!"

PS: Also, while the idea is still amusing me, maybe just standard curiosity on the part of average aliens? If space travel is available enough and not super-rare, who's to say aliens might not fly low into the atmosphere and have a look, if they were advanced enough not to worry about our weapons (which I'm guessing they are if they made it that far)? It might well be considered an "invasion" if it's happening a lot. Human societies have put other humans in zoos before, for "come and look at the eskimo" type entertainment - well, Earth pretty much is a ready-built zoo, isn't it? "Look at the fascinating bipeds, children. They're clever, too. They have atomic bombs and other primitive tools, and a rudimentary form of language. The experts say we were once a bit like them thousands and thousands of years ago!"

 

[Scrambo]

It does seem that though us humans are curious about whats out there we always seem to think the worse. Maybe there are some alien species who would just be "lonesome" and want to make friends with other alien species? Would they (if friendly) actually help us advance technology wise or simply give guidance rather than assist and let us develop in our own time? But then again this wouldnt be classed as an invasion.

If Hostile? Well thats another whole can o worms.

Looking at us humans all it takes is one mad person to become dictator...perhaps they would be led by someone who is indeed not acting on behalf of their species? Some if indeed are like Klingons do just kill to conquer maybe that would be the reason "because they can." Maybe they are like a native animal on this planet (cat like for example),have come to seek contact and discover us humans are killing their kin so to speak and end up killling us? or maybe it doesnt start off as an invasion...all it takes is one set group of humans who do not agree with accepting said aliens and start an upraising against the alien race and so causes a war?

Mind you would you want to invade Earth? Humans destroy each other and our planet so really why could an alien race want to invade such a hostile species even onto itself?

 

[Guy Gardener]

What if they came for our porn?

And they enslaved the human race to make more porn?

 

[RAMA]

There are very intelligent men who think to get anywhere in space you have to have shed most if not all of your species' violent tendencies, and now once again there are others who suggest a more cautionary approach, that there are species who are in search of raw materials from life sustaining planets and we should be silent as possible in sending out signs of our existence...the reality is probably somewhere in between.

I think the 5 likeliest alien contact scenarios are, in order...1)alien signals, not necessarily for us are picked up. 2) We spot life on extra-solar planets but have no way of contacting them in a timely fashion. 3) An alien species comes to earth....but they are representatives of a starseed project...automatons who seek out planets for colonization, perhaps anything with life on it is off limits...perhaps not. 4) Sentient machines themselves contact Earth, likely they may not have much interest in us, but they will either appear, investigate and leave, or they will simply take over non-maliciously, possibly preserving us in some sort of virtual library. 5) Alien organics announce themselves in our solar system. Organic beings may have more interest in coexistence. Raw materials don't seem like a likely reason to visit, they will either want "companionship", info-sharing, or to colonize a living world if they are organically similar to us.

RAMA

 

[sojourner]

Extermination is more likely than extinction. Taken from the Aliens section of
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/

From The Killing Star by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski (you really should read this book):
The great silence (i.e., absence of SETI signals from alien civilizations) is perhaps the strongest indicator of all that high relativistic velocities are attainable and that everybody out there knows it.
The sobering truth is that relativistic civilizations are a potential nightmare to anyone living within range of them. The problem is that objects traveling at an appreciable fraction of light speed are never where you see them when you see them (i.e., light-speed lag). Relativistic rockets, if their owners turn out to be less than benevolent, are both totally unstoppable and totally destructive. A starship weighing in at 1,500 tons (approximately the weight of a fully fueled space shuttle sitting on the launchpad) impacting an earthlike planet at "only" 30 percent of lightspeed will release 1.5 million megatons of energy -- an explosive force equivalent to 150 times today's global nuclear arsenal... (ed note: this means the freaking thing has about nine hundred mega-Ricks of damage!)
I'm not going to talk about ideas. I'm going to talk about reality. It will probably not be good for us ever to build and fire up an antimatter engine. According to Powell, given the proper detecting devices, a Valkyrie engine burn could be seen out to a radius of several light-years and may draw us into a game we'd rather not play, a game in which, if we appear to be even the vaguest threat to another civilization and if the resources are available to eliminate us, then it is logical to do so.
The game plan is, in its simplest terms, the relativistic inverse to the golden rule: "Do unto the other fellow as he would do unto you and do it first."...
When we put our heads together and tried to list everything we could say with certainty about other civilizations, without having actually met them, all that we knew boiled down to three simple laws of alien behavior:

1. THEIR SURVIVAL WILL BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN OUR SURVIVAL. If an alien species has to choose between them and us, they won't choose us. It is difficult to imagine a contrary case; species don't survive by being self-sacrificing.
2. WIMPS DON'T BECOME TOP DOGS. No species makes it to the top by being passive. The species in charge of any given planet will be highly intelligent, alert, aggressive, and ruthless when necessary.
3. THEY WILL ASSUME THAT THE FIRST TWO LAWS APPLY TO US.

...
Your thinking still seems a bit narrow. Consider several broadening ideas:

1. Sure, relativistic bombs are powerful because the antagonist has already invested huge energies in them that can be released quickly, and they're hard to hit. But they are costly investments and necessarily reduce other activities the species could explore. For example:
2. Dispersal of the species into many small, hard-to-see targets, such as asteroids, buried civilizations, cometary nuclei, various space habitats. These are hard to wipe out.
3. But wait -- while relativistic bombs are readily visible to us in foresight, they hardly represent the end point in foreseeable technology. What will humans of, say, two centuries hence think of as the "obvious" lethal effect? Five centuries? A hundred? Personally I'd pick some rampaging self-reproducing thingy (mechanical or organic), then sneak it into all the biospheres I wanted to destroy. My point here is that no particular physical effect -- with its pluses, minuses, and trade-offs -- is likely to dominate the thinking of the galaxy.
4. So what might really aged civilizations do? Disperse, of course, and also not attack new arrivals in the galaxy, for fear that they might not get them all. Why? Because revenge is probably selected for in surviving species, and anybody truly looking out for long-term interests will not want to leave a youthful species with a grudge, sneaking around behind its back...

I agree with most parts of points 2, 3, and 4. As for point 1, it is cheaper than you think. You mention self-replicating machines in point 3, and while it is true that relativistic rockets require planetary power supplies, it is also true that we can power the whole Earth with a field of solar cells adding up to barely more than 200-by-200 kilometers, drawn out into a narrow band around the Moon's equator. Self-replicating robots could accomplish this task with only the cost of developing the first twenty or thirty machines. And once we're powering the Earth practically free of charge, why not let the robots keep building panels on the Lunar far side? Add a few self-replicating linear accelerator-building factories, and plug the accelerators into the panels, and you could produce enough anti-hydrogen to launch a starship every year. But why stop at the Moon? Have you looked at Mercury lately? ...
Dr. Wells has obviously bought into the view of a friendly galaxy. This view is based upon the argument that unless we humans conquer our self-destructive warlike tendencies, we will wipe out our species and no longer be a threat to extrasolar civilizations. All well and good up to this point.
But then these optimists make the jump: If we are wise enough to survive and not wipe ourselves out, we will be peaceful -- so peaceful that we will not wipe anybody else out, and as we are below on Earth, so other people will be above.
This is a non sequitur, because there is no guarantee that one follows the other, and for a very important reason: "They" are not part of our species.
Before we proceed any further, try the following thought experiment: watch the films Platoon and Aliens together and ask yourself if the plot lines don't quickly blur and become indistinguishable. You'll recall that in Vietnam, American troops were taught to regard the enemy as "Charlie" or "Gook," dehumanizing words that made "them" easier to kill. In like manner, the British, Spanish, and French conquests of the discovery period were made easier by declaring dark- or red- or yellow-skinned people as something less than human, as a godless, faceless "them," as literally another species.
Presumably there is some sort of inhibition against killing another member of our own species, because we have to work to overcome it...
But the rules do not apply to other species. Both humans and wolves lack inhibitions against killing chickens.
Humans kill other species all the time, even those with which we share the common bond of high intelligence. As you read this, hundreds of dolphins are being killed by tuna fishermen and drift netters. The killing goes on and on, and dolphins are not even a threat to us.
As near as we can tell, there is no inhibition against killing another species simply because it displays a high intelligence. So, as much as we love him, Carl Sagan's theory that if a species makes it to the top and does not blow itself apart, then it will be nice to other intelligent species is probably wrong. Once you admit interstellar species will not necessarily be nice to one another simply by virtue of having survived, then you open up this whole nightmare of relativistic civilizations exterminating one another.
It's an entirely new situation, emerging from the physical possibilities that will face any species that can overcome the natural interstellar quarantine of its solar system. The choices seem unforgiving, and the mind struggles to imagine circumstances under which an interstellar species might make contact without triggering the realization that it can't afford to be proven wrong in its fears.
Got that? We can't afford to wait to be proven wrong.
They won't come to get our resources or our knowledge or our women or even because they're just mean and want power over us. They'll come to destroy us to insure their survival, even if we're no apparent threat, because species death is just too much to risk, however remote the risk...
The most humbling feature of the relativistic bomb is that even if you happen to see it coming, its exact motion and position can never be determined; and given a technology even a hundred orders of magnitude above our own, you cannot hope to intercept one of these weapons. It often happens, in these discussions, that an expression from the old west arises: "God made some men bigger and stronger than others, but Mr. Colt made all men equal." Variations on Mr. Colt's weapon are still popular today, even in a society that possesses hydrogen bombs. Similarly, no matter how advanced civilizations grow, the relativistic bomb is not likely to go away...
We ask that you try just one more thought experiment. Imagine yourself taking a stroll through Manhattan, somewhere north of 68th street, deep inside Central Park, late at night. It would be nice to meet someone friendly, but you know that the park is dangerous at night. That's when the monsters come out. There's always a strong undercurrent of drug dealings, muggings, and occasional homicides.
It is not easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. They dress alike, and the weapons are concealed. The only difference is intent, and you can't read minds.
Stay in the dark long enough and you may hear an occasional distance shriek or blunder across a body.
How do you survive the night? The last thing you want to do is shout, "I'm here!" The next to last thing you want to do is reply to someone who shouts, "I'm a friend!"
What you would like to do is find a policeman, or get out of the park. But you don't want to make noise or move towards a light where you might be spotted, and it is difficult to find either a policeman or your way out without making yourself known. Your safest option is to hunker down and wait for daylight, then safely walk out.
There are, of course, a few obvious differences between Central Park and the universe.
There is no policeman.
There is no way out.
And the night never ends.

 

[Kegg]

1. THEIR SURVIVAL WILL BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN OUR SURVIVAL. If an alien species has to choose between them and us, they won't choose us. It is difficult to imagine a contrary case; species don't survive by being self-sacrificing.
2. WIMPS DON'T BECOME TOP DOGS. No species makes it to the top by being passive. The species in charge of any given planet will be highly intelligent, alert, aggressive, and ruthless when necessary.
3. THEY WILL ASSUME THAT THE FIRST TWO LAWS APPLY TO US.

There's a problem with this line of reasoning and it's mostly one of tone. My survival is more important to me than the survival of a waiter serving me drinks, and I've yet to stab any waiters in the throat.

Likewise, humans and wolves may both kill chickens, but humans and wolves also eat chickens. Because we're compatible enough that that's actually a healthy thing for us to do. Quite often it's our chief reason for killing the chicken to begin with.

If it's not really in the interest of an alien species to wipe us out or kill us it's less likely that'd be their course of action and as this thread's pointed out you do have to stretch a little for them to particularly care about what's going on in Earth.

That doesn't even touch on this assumption:

The great silence (i.e., absence of SETI signals from alien civilizations) is perhaps the strongest indicator of all that high relativistic velocities are attainable and that everybody out there knows it.

Take your Occam's Razor and apply it: If nobody answers the doorbell, it's more likely nobody's home rather than the inhabitant is a ravenous murderer who will slit your throat if you're a waiter serving drinks.

Absence of signals suggests firstly the absence of those who could send them.

 

[Myasishchev]

What if they came for our porn?

And they enslaved the human race to make more porn?

Color me a collaborateur.

1. THEIR SURVIVAL WILL BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN OUR SURVIVAL. If an alien species has to choose between them and us, they won't choose us. It is difficult to imagine a contrary case; species don't survive by being self-sacrificing.

This point's actually quite arguable. Assuming we can and will artificially create better successors, homo sapiens will inevitably be rendered extinct or highly marginalized, but our history and best values will be carried forward--at a certain technological point, it becomes less meaningful to talk about species than it does societies. And, again assuming all of the above, they would no doubt be profoundly more powerful than homo sapiens is today, even if content with the knowledge that they too will be replaced.

In that regard, a "self-sacrificing species" is very plausible, even if it is a genetic/modern synthesis "failure," it survives in the fashion humans arguably care more about, if it is a successful mimetic organism.

 

[Deckerd]

Any race that acts as irrationally as us, or as much against their own interests as we do, will never make it here to invade.

Except of course when we have a common enemy. Then we are formidable.

I don't see any scenario where it would benefit space travellers to come to a gravity well full of incredibly hostile, sneaky, inventive and most of all stubborn inhabitants and try to take it from them.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Extermination is more likely than extinction. Taken from the Aliens section of
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/....

Well, to be honest, I'm not convinced at all. The idea that sapient beings operate at all times on the broadest animalistic instincts is rather troubling, and is something I find it difficult to get my head around. I certainly don't go though life on the desperate, heart-pounding assumption that everyone's out to get me unless I get them first, or that the extinction of my genetic line just can't be risked, so I'd better quietly poison everyone's water supply now. Why would entire species/civilizations be behaving like this? I guess it's entirely possible, but this strange certainty that a species will be overcome by terror and xenophobia and go on a killing spree is somewhat incomprehensible. The whole point of sapience is that a creature has options and capacities beyond being a slave to fearful instinct.

And this insistance that "WE CAN'T AFFORD TO WAIT TO BE PROVEN WRONG!!" is frankly downright disturbing. If you want to trigger another being or civilization's threat response instincts, a good way is to show aggression and paranoia, and act as if you believe conflict inevitable. That might well trigger an "it's them or me!" response in extreme cases. If the strongest instinct is self-preservation, then avoiding situations where you provoke an unecessary conflict is a good place to start.

Basically, I don't feel the urge to bomb other civilizations into oblivion just because they might hypothetically want to destroy me, and I don't see how you'd guarantee enough beings would to set up a planetary policy of "kill everything!" as those people seem to be suggesting is the supposed norm.

Plus, their argument is based upon the idea that instincts propell a species to aggression. But competition between or within species is because they're after similar resources or require the same, limited living space. Lions and hyenas kill each other's young because they're direct competitors, but lions don't swim across to the americas and start killing hummingbirds. What posible threat are hummingbirds to lions? If an alien race is very different from us, physiologically, etc, and is also half a galaxy away, would we even register on their instincts as a potential threat to begin with? I don't lie awake at night thinking "those deep-sea vent worms are down there somewhere...we should take them out, now, lest millions of years hence they evolve sapience and become a direct threat to humanity!" Yes, sapience might allow lions to project a level of threat onto hummingbirds and propel them to kill the birds, but, again, why assume sapience will be used to augment the "red in tooth and claw" instincts rather than subvert, adapt or simply ignore them?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Watching the pilot to Threshold.

Invasion, invasion invasion.

It's kind of senseless till the end, since humans are just being modified and converted to an alien cause to propagate further conversion, and it all seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with aliens over the hills and far away benefiting from the invasion until the last episode when we see that they actually don't.

The plucky humans defending the earth discover that there's a cosmic storm on the way and any unmodified life on the planet will be arbitrarily exterminated by this natural disaster which "suposedly" the faraway aliens have nothing to do with.

They were trying to save humanity through invasion.

A Humanitarian Invasion.

It happens.

Iraq and Afghanistan.

Even the Nazi war machine if you believe their press.

The Mother of all press.

 

[Deckerd]

Invading Iraq and Afghanistan, begging your pardon, had precious little to do with humanitarianism. It was a nice afterspin, though.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Invading Iraq and Afghanistan, begging your pardon, had precious little to do with humanitarianism. It was a nice afterspin, though.

You think it's a coincidence I follow up the mention of those incursions on a compliment towards the imagination of Nazi propaganda?

I recall Dukat claiming that the Cardassians arrived on Bajor to bring them "culture".

Consider the separation of Germany WWII. America liberated and Russia conquered despite being allied, although for Stalin the entire effort was more personal. I mean truman was Fresh off the boat and Churchill hated EVERYONE... Dude wanted to execute Gandhi.

 

[Deckerd]

Consider the separation of Germany WWII. America liberated and Russia conquered despite being allied, although for Stalin the entire effort was more personal. I mean truman was Fresh off the boat and Churchill hated EVERYONE... Dude wanted to execute Gandhi.

This choice of words is sweet considering the Nazis used the word 'liberate' for conquer too. Peace at any price takes on a new poignancy when you consider that particular unholy alliance. All Churchill was interested in was keeping our island Nazi-free; the rest of Europe was a minor irritant. Stalin was just Hitler without a good tailor. Piggy in the middle was the USA who arrived fashionably late and then discovered not only was the buffet finished but they had to clean up.

 

[Guy Gardener]

If there is an age of empires in space, all the first species has to do if plant a flag, tag the planet ni some way to say "FIRST" and that's fine. They don't have to tell the monkeys wandering about that they don't own the planet they're infesting no longer, however... When the second Empire shows up, they have to make more of show of the matter than just trading flags.

They have to garrison.

Earth could already belong to a species that is letting this world go to seed like that summer house up north you bought as an investment but never have the time to visit.

CRIKEY!

Remember the Gorges from Fraggle Rick who thought that they were the King and Queen of the Universe?

Saying don't make it so.

Oh dear.

We think of the Gorges as harmless, although delusional, Hillbillies, right?

But these masters of the Universe are 40 stories tall, taller, and they weigh a million million tonnes and if they wanted to armour up and take on the Military of any country Country on Earth, the King and Junior would kick ass. Hells, they would be using Submarines as shortswords batting away bazooka volleys turning the White House to splinters with a light kicking and deafening entire cities with a single roar.

Fuck me.

I want to see this movie.

 

[Deckerd]

I said, on more than one occasion, that my preferred BSG ending would have been that they arrived at present day Earth, only to find that they were all around 3 feet tall. It would have been awesome. I want to see this movie.

 

[Guy Gardener]

And so say we all.

 

[Deckerd]

It crushed me that that's not what happened. The Earthers would have been completely torn between all the cool toys the colonials had and trying not to call them Hobbits to their faces.