Bagelfish – A Weblog

Having seen that the film Signs was on tonight, I got thinking about aliens…

My main concerned thought is that, why would aliens come to our planet wishing to kill us all? That seems to be the scenario of every alien movie… invasion and extermination. But why? What would motivate these creatures to annihilate all life on earth?

To begin with, humans wouldn’t do that! As brutal and terrible as we can be… we, as a people, would not discover sentient life on another planet and immediately think, “I know, let’s kill them all”. That just wouldn’t happen… unless we look forward to a grim future dominated by sadistic psychopaths.

Even if, and this is an extreme situation, even if at some point a new incarnation of Hitler or Chairman Mao were to arise and somehow manage to seize control of the Earth. The world would be a huge facist or communist state run by a ruthless leader who uses any means to keep people in line. Even if this were to happen, say this generation of people discovered intelligent life on another world, and we had the capacity to reach it, I sincerely doubt the first thought Chairman Hitler has is, “I know, let’s kill them all! Why? Because we can!”

There is no motivation for the hypothetical aggressor. Even in a world of extreme regime with strong military influence, the most hostile of people would need a solid reason to wipe out existence for a complete new species. The aggressor would need a reason to be hostile towards our pathetic planet. And if they are flying around in space armed to the teeth, it would suggest that they are already in hostile interaction with someone else (because of course other cognitive species would also have divisions and disagreements with each other). In this case, it is more likely for the extraterrestrial species to try and befriend us, to gain as much support as possible for their conflict.

It seems that logical thinking would be, well… logical! Other intelligent life, if they have got to the stage of distant space travel, then surely their primary objective would be similar to ours (also Star Trek’s), exploring new planets/star systems/galaxies in search of new discoveries and possibly even life. It wouldn’t be wise to engage in conflict with an unknown species for flimsy reasoning (i.e. conquering the universe).

The only reason I could possibly think that a foreign invader would want to wipe us out is to make room so they can inhabit our planet. But of course relating back to the logic, they would need a damn good reason i.e. their species has no other hope of survival. To that I would say fair do’s. Not to being wiped out, but to the concept. If humanity gets desperate in the future, and the only hope of survival is to wipe out an alien race to inhabit their planet so we can live, then I say go for it! Sure it seems morally wrong… but who are we to say that, after all we are a rather brutal, ‘ends justify means’ race.

Off the main topic slightly is the common idea that if we were to be invaded fo’ sho’, we would be vaporised (or something equally futuristic and awesome). Why though? After all, it seems the trend that life forms are all soft and filled with guts, and put enough lead into anything it will keel over into a bloody heap. Especially nowadays with conflicts all over the place, most nations are pretty well armed and ready for war were one to break out. Maybe bullets might not do the trick against ’super armour’ or collossal robots or whatever, but I reckon missles would do a pretty good job at blowing most things to pieces. “Force fields” and “laser shields” seem rather improbable technology, and besides, hellathick metal seems to do the job just as well. But add enough explosives and even the thickest of armour can be blown the hell up.

Man: 1      Alien Scum: 0

Though that’s just wishful thinking. If aliens have good enough technology for intergalactic space travel, the I’m sure their arsenal is pretty devastating.

And now to end with some light hearted humour:

Overall I don’t reckon that aliens would ever attack us without some damn good reason, or at least fair warning. After all, ‘Do unto others as you would have done to yourself’. But then again, aliens won’t have read The Bible, tying in neatly with the idea of logic again.

Song: ‘Senses Fail – Shark Attack’