draliman on life

An alien, like the ones who could be visiting our resource-rich planet in the near future – or have they been here ALREADY?

“Independence Day”, “War of the Worlds”, “Battle: Los Angeles” – Hollywood is chock full of alien invasion stories and it’s safe to say that generally, it doesn’t go well for the human race.

I was reading a post on the origin of UFOs on The Matrix Times blog recently, and that got me thinking – what would happen if a bunch of extra-terrestrials actually landed here?

First of all, I’m hoping that they’ll be friendly. Okay, our planet has vast amounts of (moderately polluted) water – a resource which is undoubtedly scarce on the aliens’ home world (according to many Sci-Fi stories). They may wish to take this by force! But more than likely anyone with the technical skills to reach another planet will be willing to at least talk before crushing us like bugs.

My hypothetical aliens might bring a variety of special skills with them – technical know-how, telepathy, may even the ability to alter the very nature of matter, effortlessly changing one substance into another (like turning lead into gold, for example)!

Don’t even get me started on the popular alchemical pursuit of attempting to change a common metal into a rarer metal, thus making the rarer lovely shiny metal so common that the world’s economy collapses (again).

We humans have our own special skill – fearing and hating anything different. So, what would happen when these happy friendly aliens land, eager to be our friends and share their enlightened views of the universe? I’m assuming at this point that the aliens

1. Contact us first and over a number of years build up a relationship with us so that our fear is somewhat decreased prior to face-to-face contact, or
2. Have the necessary technology to protect them against the best missiles money can buy during their approach and entry into our atmosphere

Here’s my breakdown on what I think will happen.

• 10% of the population won’t notice
• 10% of the population will believe it to be a government conspiracy
• 50% of the population will panic
• 5% of the population won’t care
• 5% of the population will embrace the newcomers, eager for cultural exchange
• 10% of the population will attempt to exploit the aliens for personal gain
• 10% of the population will immediately form the “Children of the Sky” cult, worshipping them as gods

Okay, so maybe I’m being a bit down on the human race, but somehow those numbers look about right to me. Probably more than 50% of the population will panic but they fall into the other groups too.

And the funniest thing of all? After all this panic and cult-forming has taken place, it turns out that our new alien friends are actually just a group of student aliens from the Sirius Major College of Fine Arts, backpacking around the galaxy during their summer holidays.