Poll: If (when) aliens conquer Earth, what do humans become?

[Anaiya Arnold]

I'd have to vote with "something else" but what on earth it could be to make the resource costs (of getting here) worth the return, I cannot even begin to imagine.

Or in other words, don't ask me to fathom the mind of an alien.

At any rate, being highly unlikely, this is an event we should prepare for.  My advice is that we all learn to stand about mooing while facing the same direction.  The aliens will mistake us for cows and leave us alone once they get bored "tipping" us.  Unlike cows, humans like being tipped so it's win-win all the way.

[Janelle Darkstone]

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Anaiya Arnold wrote:

My advice is that we all learn to stand about mooing while facing the same direction.  The aliens will mistake us for cows and leave us alone once they get bored "tipping" us.  Unlike cows, humans like being tipped so it's win-win all the way.

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...... . . . . . .  !!  (head explodes from the sheer awesomeness of Anaiya's logic)

/me steeples her fingers.  "Yes... yes.. it sounds crazy, but, it just... might... work..."

(runs outside and starts practicing while ignoring strange looks from the neighbors)

[Janelle Darkstone]

I wish I could remember where I read it, but the idea was we should be wary of any visitors from outer space, primarily because they're more likely to be predatory than benevolent humanoids with slightly different foreheads.  :smileywink:

If our own planet is any indication, the predators are the entities that develop most of the intelligence and subsequent technology while the prey remains prey.  Which, presumably, is why any space aliens we meet will be the ones that have dominated their own planets and systems and wouldn't be looking to share as much as to take to sustain themselves.

I really wish I could find the text.. it was kind of scary.

[Randall Ahren]

Maybe they would be like one of the alien species in Joe Haldeman's Study War No More. The aliens I'm thinking of introduced a virus to make humans more empathetic, so much so that humans could not inflict pain on another without feeling such pain in an equal amount in themselves. The effect was to end war and to turn humans into vegans. It also eliminated most crime.

[Anaiya Arnold]

Yes, ignore the neighbours.  In any event, they'll be the first with their backs against the wall when the aliens come.

[Void Singer]

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Roseysun Galicia wrote:

Those are grim choices; what if the aliens were friendly and helpful?  We could become all of those things or they could be helpful to society...or they could simply come and watch us from outerspace and never make contact.

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 life is a grim business, and there are pretty obvious principles known in in critical thinking that suggest "helping" ,ironically , might actually do more damage, and that active observation causes changes in the observed (both in microcosm and macrocosm)

@ Janelle:

at some level we are almost all predators or scavengers, even cattle (they just pick on easier prey).... although an argument can be made that all species that are successful in the long term also manage to achieve a sort of symbiosis, a balance in which the cyclic chains of continued life all balance out over time.... anything that breaks this principle will ultimately fail as soon as it runs out of available resources, and if the balance is broken by too much, then the entire system can collapse.

[Suella Ember]

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Void Singer wrote:

I wish someone had told at least two of my exes about that legend.... they seemed more focused on the violent and crazy legends.

 

hmmm would you believe that it just occurred to me that my attraction to red heads (or at least those two) might be a symptom of some of my past relationship failures?

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Well yes, unfortunately the 'violent, crazy throwing plates at your head' legend seems to have become quite prominent too. To our species, we're not really violent and crazy though - it's just natural for us. We like it a bit rough! :smileyindifferent:

Your attraction to redheads is perfectly understandable though. We use a pheromone specifically engineered to attract you to us. It makes the whole interbreeding process that much simpler!

[Suella Ember]

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Janelle Darkstone wrote:

@Suella -- Preparations for the Invasion are proceeding; the inhabitants seem more preoccupied arguing about fiction and the asteroid belt than to be paying attention to our devious plans.  Please inform High Commander Zorkon that we are on schedule.

However... we might have a slight problem.  Although most of the future breeding stock and sides of bacon seem to have accepted their fates, there might be a few who choose to...

resist

.  I have to admit I have never seen this before:

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Lanas Criss wrote:

Karate Kickaroni (!!!)

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Should we be concerned?

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Excellent work agent Darkstone. The breeding stock are so obsessed with us it's quite easy to hide our true plans from them.

I am aware of a few who are likely to resist. However, High Commander Zorkon is drawing up plans to deal with them as we speak. We have been made aware of something called 'Second Life' that they seem to be somewhat obsessed with. It appears to be an alternate reality where they spend their time locked away from the real work. We plan to keep the resistance preoccupied with this virtual world where they will be so busy arguing about land pricing, griefing and such things that they will be oblivious to our interbreeding with the rest of the docile stock. 

I do have one misson for you to carry out though. We have also been made aware of a group called 'The Lindens'. Intelligence suggests that even the resistance fear these evil overlords accusing them of all sorts of unspeakable deeds. I need you to investigate these claims and assess whether these 'Lindens' could pose a serious threat to our plans.

Remember our motto agent Darkstone - the carpet matches the drapes, always.

[Dillon Levenque]

My word. I take a week off and come back to find the GD forum has descended even farther into madness. Fortunately, Anaiya has indeed hit upon a solution so elegant as to be almost breathtaking.

 

....slips on a pair of suitably round-heeled pumps, gazes serenely at nothing....

                             Mooooo

[Charolotte Caxton]

Now?

http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html

[Dillon Levenque]

Thank you! :smileyvery-happy:

[Void Singer]

pheromones? whew, for a second there I thought it might just be poor taste or self destructiveness... good to know... although the plate throwing was much less worrisome than the "I'm cultivating icicles to test the theory about them being perfect murder weapons, but  I'll wait till you're asleep"

you may want to be aware that this planet has have a history of violent murderous cattle here...

http://images.mmosite.com/answer/dict/upload/2009/06/09/192bb35aa4b8434e9b071b627e6dfa6b.jpg

http://mjcache.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/killer-cow-charles-valek1.jpg

http://images.onesite.com/my.telegraph.co.uk/user/mike_hunt/20080101134034.jpg

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lerp0lxxD01qdya2a.jpg

 

PS:
I'm not part of the local stock, I'm just here for recreational purposes.

[Magnus Brody]

Douglas Adam put it best, as he so often did:

"People of Earth, your attention please.  This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council.  As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank-you."

Although I think it funny that the destruction of earth be overseen, in a somewhat bored manner, by a contracted bureaucrat, I do remember reading some Erich von Däniken when I was a kid.  His general theories, across many books, basically indicate we're been visited over many years and his paleo-contact hypotheses (attributed to wikipedia) can be categorized as follows:

• Artifacts have been found which are alleged to represent a higher technological knowledge than existed at the times when they were manufactured. Däniken maintains that these artifacts have been manufactured either by extraterrestrial visitors, or by humans who obtained the necessary knowledge from them. Such artifacts include the Antikythera mechanism, Stonehenge, the statues of Easter Island, and the Piri Reis map.
• In ancient art throughout the world, themes are observed which can be interpreted to illustrate astronauts, air and space vehicles, non-human but intelligent creatures, and artifacts of a high technology. Däniken also points out details that are similar in the art of unrelated cultures.
• Origins of religions might be a reaction to contact with an alien race by primitive humans. The humans considered the technology of the aliens to be supernatural and the aliens themselves to be gods. According to Däniken, the oral and literal traditions of most religions contain references to visitors from "stars" and vehicles traveling through air and space. These, he says, should be interpreted as literal descriptions which have changed during the passage of time and have become more obscure, rather than as symbolic or mythical fiction. One such is Ezekiel's revelation in the Old Testament, which he interprets as a detailed description of a landing spacecraft.

I can remember that he explained angels being depicted with halos, as perhaps crude drawings of astronaut helmets and biblical descriptions of angels with "wings of fire" being some sort of jet pack.

Now, I'm not saying I agree with von Däniken, but he was certainly interesting philosophical reading for a child.



 

[WADE1 Jya]

The "We Are All Happily Oblivious" Scenario:

Yay! I love this thread :matte-motes-inlove:

I choose "other" as I think the ways we might be used could easily be beyond our comprehension & happen completely outside of our observations.

Maybe aliens already did conquer Earth and we are unaware of the fact, and forever will be :matte-motes-grin:

Ways we might never know the invasion occurred:

Scale Issue:

The aliens are too small or too big to interact with us. Too small and they might just be observed as some quantum effect or proposed extra particles. Too big and they maybe can not physically land on our planet, they are happy just to own from a distance and edit & alter our world in ways we cannot observe/comprehend.

Memory/Observation Technology:

The aliens erase our memories or edit our observations. The aliens manipulate us at will, and are using advanced tech to edit themselves out of our memories/vision. They can edit our minds similar to how we can do major edits to simple lifes like bacteria.

Dimensional, Neutrino, Antimatter, Dark Matter Options:

The aliens can not be interacted with using our primitive tech. Meanwhile the aliens manipulate and edit us at will to do their wishes (ex. mind control us all into working hard to convert our own atmosphere into greenhouse gases which aliens require to live or whatever... trick us into killing each other with wars, nuclear disasters, oil spills & wealth imbalances, all to control the human populations, etc) & we are completely unaware we are being duped.

With these options, the aliens might control all of us and have conquered our whole galaxy, reaching into our 3-D spacetime as needed to manipulate stuff, including us. They move parallel amongst us in our world, unseen to us, in dimensions outside of our 3, or/and outside of linear time. Basically, same idea applies if they are made out of unusual matter... in this case they are physically in our dimension, but we lack the technology to interact with them, meanwhile we are completely exposed, oblivious & defenseless.

:matte-motes-shocked:

 

[Randall Ahren]

It's not the face, but the impressions on it. It's not the voice, but what you say. It's not how you look in that body, but the things you do with it... You are beautiful.
   -Ian O'Shea, the Host by Stephenie Meyer

I'm reading a new (for me) SF novel about aliens that have conquered earth. The premise is really interesting. The aliens are a kind of a parasite with hundreds of tentacles for connecting to the nervous system of their hosts and controlling it. Their home world, called Origin, is the only planet they know of in the universe where they can survive outside of a host. The alien lifespan is unlimited and exhibit negligible senescence like some aquatic earth species. When their host begans to dies, they move to another host.

Another race attempted to invade the aliens' home world, which is how they escaped into the galaxy. They've conquered about nine worlds now, some of which are home to really extraordinary extraterrestrial intelligences. 

The story concerns one of the aliens that is implanted into a human host, but instead of erasing the host's mind, human and alien mind co-exist together.