What's The Smartest Thing To Do In An Alien Invasion? | Unveiled

What’s the Smartest Thing to Do in an Alien Invasion?

There’s always the hope that if intelligent aliens were to one day pay a visit to Earth, then they’d come in peace. But not every extraterrestrial eventuality is quite so friendly! If the history of human expansion and conquest is any indication of how another being would behave, then we’d better anticipate a more violent invasion. So, where to start?

This is Unveiled and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; What’s the smartest thing to do in an alien invasion?

First of all, where are these aliens coming from? The chances that another intelligent species will ever arrive from a particularly nearby planet or moon appear fairly low… because we’ve already had a good look at most of them, and so far… nothing! We know a lot about our solar system and are learning more at an increasing rate. We’ve put landers on our moon, Venus and Mars, and some of the moons of other planets, too. We’re yet to have a real good look inside the gas giants, and our knowledge of the ice giants is pretty minimal… but, generally speaking, it’s thought that if intelligent alien life is out there, then it isn’t in our solar system. Tiny, microbial life in places like the subsurface oceans of Europa or Titan, maybe… but a communicative, all-conquering alien race, not likely!

Realistically, then, the closest an alien civilization could be to us is if it were to reside around Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the sun at 4.2 light years away. But, even a distance of 4.2 lightyears is frankly massive. It means that if these hypothetical Proxima Centauri aliens were to also have access to hypothetical light speed travel, it would still take them four years of continuous spaceflight just to get here. Barring something incredible, then, life on Earth is reasonably safe! Unfortunately, though, say an alien society did put itself through the extremely difficult and probably expensive process of interstellar travel to reach us, then you can bet they wouldn’t be just passing through. They’d have come for a reason, and if that reason was to take over… then we’d have some fight on our hands!

According to Sun Tzu in the ancient text, “The Art of War”; “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles,”; the idea being that it’s the understanding of an opponent’s motivations which is the key to winning. In this scenario, though, we wouldn’t know anything about the aliens invading us (having most likely been taken by total surprise) while they’d most likely know all about us (having planned their arrival) - so we would be at a major disadvantage by default.

But, with quick thinking, we could still at least predict their needs… and there are a few options here. They could want to settle on our planet because something went wrong with their own. Or they could be seeking some sort of Earth-specific resource to take from us. Or Earth and the solar system might be just the latest in a long line of worlds all across the universe that these invasive alien overlords are capturing as part of their ever-growing, intergalactic empire. The fact that they were physically here would immediately force us to question why, and to react accordingly.

The blockbuster, Hollywood movie answer is usually a simple one - fight back. Prepare all our armies, load up all our weapons, and let ‘em have it! In the real world, though, this type of resistance really could be futile. Let’s look at the advantages and disadvantages.

First, humans have the home field. We live on our own planet with all the resources we need to survive for the long term. We know our planet - its topography, its layout, where to hide and where to get things. By contrast, the aliens would only have as many supplies as they could carry on their ships. Admittedly, those ships could be sprawling, substantial behemoths in the sky, potentially even bigger than Earth, and stacked with technology the like of which we could only dream of... But, still, our extraterrestrial engagers would be limited to just whatever they had brought with them. And they’d be entering relatively unknown territory, too. If we decided to fight, we might also expect to have more fighters - unless the invading alien fleet could match twenty-five to thirty million people, which is about the number of the active military personnel there are in the world… assuming the world works together - which is perhaps quite a big assumption.

But then come the disadvantages, and these mostly boil down to technological capability. An invading alien species would almost certainly have far better technology than us - the argument being, how else would they have got here? Even the most optimistic predictions tend to imply that we’re decades, perhaps centuries, away from achieving any form of interstellar travel, but these guys will’ve already mastered it. Apply the same idea to weaponry and firepower, then, and Earth could quickly find itself totally helpless. It wouldn’t matter how many soldiers we had, or how well we knew the lie of the land, the aliens would just be packing way more heat! And any attempt to fight back might only serve to antagonise them - which wouldn’t be a good idea!

The next option, then, is to run away; to abandon Earth in the face of our overlords, and just try to find another planet to live on. To today’s mind, of course, that’s so much easier said than done. But, in a future time, maybe not. Even were switching planets a simple task, though, it presumably wouldn’t offer a lot to us… because, if there actually was a habitable world within reachable distance from us, then it’s likely that our alien invaders will’ve also captured there, too.

The moon, for example, likely wouldn’t be safe. Say we could get to Mars, even - a far-off dream for this generation, but perhaps a reality for future humans - well, when we reached the Red Planet, we’d most likely find only the aliens we had been trying to escape from. Ultimately, an invasion of Earth would probably be just one part of an invasion of the entire solar system for any extraterrestrial army advanced enough to get here… so unless we were at a comparable stage, where busting beyond the Oort Cloud was possible for us, then we’d really have nowhere to run to. Of course, if an alien invasion were to happen tomorrow, when Mars and even the Moon aren’t even nearly viable destinations, then we’d be unavoidably trapped from the outset. In all cases, running away isn’t an option.

So, we can’t run, and we’d be sitting ducks if we tried to fight… which leaves us with just one chance of survival - working with them. Indeed, one of the riskiest aspects of fighting or resisting such an incredible foe in the first place is how it could disintegrate humanity from within. Should the world map become split into various factions, for example, with different nations or regions approaching the alien problem in different ways, then our ET visitors could well find that human in-fighting - chaos amongst our ranks - makes their business of invasion that much easier from the beginning. But, if humanity as a whole could agree to cooperate, then the experience is made much easier, hopefully a great deal safer, and potentially even profitable.

From some perspectives, it could be seen as surrender. But there’s wisdom to this white flag, because if the aliens want our planet (for whatever reason) but we still need it to survive, then a co-operative stance at least ensures humanity’s continuation. Quite how we’d establish a harmonious relationship with otherworldly creatures is another matter - check out our video on “how to speak to aliens” for more - but once we did, it would mean a number of things. One, we wouldn’t find ourselves wiped out, which is always good. Two, we’d inherit an unparalleled wealth of knowledge to boost our own understanding of how the universe works. And three, if our extraterrestrial visitors were prepared to share it, we’d have alien tech. And then, maybe we’d be in a position to explore other galaxies and star systems, too.

You might even argue that working together would be in the aliens’ best interests, as well. If they just plain destroyed the human race, then they’d have forsaken a valuable resource for information about the Earth they’d just taken over. True, if they’d made it this far, then they would probably work Earth out on their own quite quickly… but we can hope! And, in the meantime, we can take some solace in the realisation that none of this is especially likely to happen anytime soon. First, although we suspect it does, we don’t know that alien life exists… then, we certainly don’t know that intelligent alien life exists, or what it would be like if it did… and then, Earth is just one planet in amongst billions and billions of others. It’s certainly a beautiful and miraculous world from our perspective, but that doesn’t automatically mean that the rest of the universe is beelining straight for us.

If we did see an alien arrival, though, and if we hoped to survive it, then let’s at least try to find some common ground. It’s not quite as exciting as most big budget movies, but that’s the smartest thing to do in an alien invasion.