Filmmaker
Look out Earthlings! Ladd got himself a Classic Trek shuttle!
Hmmm. Our enemies are way down there in the bottom of that well. Let's jump in and duke it out with them!
We've seen all the films. "Independence Day." "Skyline." All the various incarnations of "War Of The Worlds." When the aliens come to conquer Earth, there will be lots of explosions and heart-thumping excitement. It all looks so fun, everyone wants the aliens to attack. Who doesn't want to see an F-22 Raptor take on a big fat mothership? Or have some germs save the day when all seems lost? More fun than working for the man.
Well, a few years back, I had to do a special sandtable study for... someone... and I'm here to tell you that the "Independence Day" scenario is sillier than you originally thought. In all likelihood, when the aliens really do come to attack, it will be boring. We'll surrender in the first hour or two. Assuming, of course, that they even want us to surrender, as opposed to just die out completely.
We won't even see them, much less see their spaceships hanging out in the sky, giving us that special "Vogue" apocalyptic pose.
Consider: You are the commander of an interstellar battle fleet. You've just arrived to conquer Earth militarily. Do you:
A. Fly your ships into the atmosphere and hover them over skyscrapers because it looks cool (risking those ships you've just moved through countless light years of interstellar space at untold cost), or...
B. Park yourself in the asteroid belt (far outside the range of Earthling missiles) and fling very large rocks at the Earth, causing incredible damage and wiping out all enemy forces before they even know you exist.
If you answered A, you are stupid. Or a Hollywood screenwriter with zero military study under your Gucci belt. Which is not exactly what I think the alien commander of an interstellar battle fleet would be.
It is impossible to defend a planet from a technologically superior force in space, if that technologically superior force is as smart as, or smarter than, you. A planet is at the bottom of a gravity well, which means it is incredibly expensive to launch tiny things out of it (just ask NASA), and incredibly cheap to drop BIG THINGS into it.
Yeah, your government paid for this study.
Heck, if I was up there in even a wimpy Classic Star Trek shuttle, I could probably conquer Earth all by my lonesome in about 15 minutes and a bathroom break, bad special effects notwithstanding. Just shove a few big rocks, sit back and enjoy the ensuing fireworks as billions of people die, and the remainder are left to die in a decades-long super-winter caused by all the dust flung into the atmosphere. Just like what happened to the dinosaurs.
You may be saying: "Hold on. What if the aliens want to capture the Earth intact, without any damage from rocks?
I can't presume to guess the motivations of our conquering aliens (why would they want Earth anyway?), but if they are smart enough to fly all the way here, why would they be stupid enough to send in "ground troops" to conquer Earth? Why not just genetically engineer a virus that wipes out all humans (or gives them a really bad case of the runs so they can't defend themselves) and "seed" it from high earth orbit?
Anyway, flinging rocks is cheaper, and the Earth will recover in a decade or two. Not a long wait if you're part of a civilization that can fly across light years. If you're Einstein (and you're not), you know that this will take a very long time to do.
So I suppose the main takeaway from all of this is: 1) Mankind desperately needs to get into space right away and then 2) it needs to find other planets to attack, since it's so cheap once you're up there.
Before it's too late!
contact ladd @ filmladd dot com
