The alien invasion reasoning thread

[weemadando]

Ok, given that a lot of the debat in the Battle LA thread has been "why invade?" theoretical stuff, here's a thread to discuss new and different motivations for invasion.

I'll kick it off:

Space Mafia
The invasion is the equivalent of a protection racket a city or two gets levelled then we get a broadcast going "It's a real nice planet ya got here. Shame if anything were ta happen to it. Asteroids these days. They just be fallin' everywhere."

We have to agree to giving them the rights to stripmine the solar system or sign up to their interstellar waste disposal contract or some further ill befalls us.

How do we win in the end?

Space feds put a wiretap on the moon and we are forced to testify in Galactic Court while the Space Mafia try to whack the whole planet to stop us from going on the stand.

Or something.

[Darth Fanboy]

Sadism for the sake of sadism.

[The Romulan Republic]

Religious fanaticism. Perhaps the number one reason for beings to do illogical things.

[Srelex]

Sadism for the sake of sadism.

The scenario in Mars Attacks, in other words.

[weemadando]

Sadism for the sake of sadism.

The scenario in Mars Attacks, in other words.

That's more pure dickery than sadism.

[Zor]

The Unifiers

In the history of these aliens, their was a nuclear war between various nations. Most of their civilization was wiped out and most of them were reduced to savagery. Despite this, a small enclave of survivors managed to retain enough knowledge and equipment to build a basic industrial economy and with this capacity conquer their world, building a single state out of the remains. They then set out into the stars. What their exploration ships found was that they were not alone, their were other planets that have/had sapient live emerge on them. These could be classified into three catagories...

• *Developing Primitives: Species that had not yet reached the Industrial Age
  *Extant Post Apocalyptics: Species that lived on Planets that developed to the Atomic Age and then went to war, destroying their civilization and reducing what survivors did survive to Iron Age or lower levels. Sometimes this had happened several times.
  *Extinct Post Apocalytpics: Species that developed to the point where they had nuclear weapons and with this capacity wiped themselves out.

As such these have come to a conclusion, unless a planet is completley united under one banner in one state, it WILL destroy itself with nuclear weapons within a few centuries of splitting its first Atom. When they come across humanity, they see that we have the capacity to destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons. They have some comprable morality to us and beleive that needless loss of life is evil. As such, they dispatch a conquest fleet to save humanity from itself and oversee its transititon to a single state and eradicate what they see as our worthless localist beliefs.

Zor

[Samuel]

Space Mafia
The invasion is the equivalent of a protection racket a city or two gets levelled then we get a broadcast going "It's a real nice planet ya got here. Shame if anything were ta happen to it. Asteroids these days. They just be fallin' everywhere."

We have to agree to giving them the rights to stripmine the solar system or sign up to their interstellar waste disposal contract or some further ill befalls us.

How do we win in the end?

Do they even need our permission? They can simply ignore us and do whatever the fuck they want.

[fgalkin]

They need our water or something similarly shitty.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Lord of the Abyss]

Instinct/Programming: They invade because that's the way they are made to behave. A species with an irresistible instinct to colonize or a fleet of malfunctioning terraforming machines.

Unique Resource: There's something on Earth they want for themselves, something they can't just mine out of an asteroid somewhere. Some sort of unobtanium, a chunk of exotic matter that fell to Earth millions of years ago, say. Or buried alien technology from an ancient supercivilization.

Hyperspace Bypass: We are just in the way, and they don't care that we are here - they may not even know, we may be too low on the evolutionary scale for them to consider interesting. Say, a bunch of deconstructor bots land and start dismantling the planet for the Dyson Sphere the aliens intend to build in this system.

[Mayabird]

Status: If you gain control of a solar system, or even better, one with extensive native life (and even better better, one with native sentient life) people back home think you are awesome hot shit. Maybe you'll get a fancy special title, or some shiny trophy that only super-special people in the cool club can get, or maybe you'll be in the running for some office of official officialdom.

[adam_grif]

Entertainment: Invading technological backwaters is an interstellar passtime. People bet on their favorite divisions and it's televised.

It's nothing personal: Wiping out everybody who could potentially threaten them in the future (ala The Killing Star).

Payback for shitty television programming: Aliens were deeply offended by I Love Lucy or something.

[RedImperator]

Do they even need our permission? They can simply ignore us and do whatever the fuck they want.

They need proof of permission from the native inhabitants of the solar system to mine, or else they can't trade on the Space Commodities Exchange.

[weemadando]

Do they even need our permission? They can simply ignore us and do whatever the fuck they want.

They need proof of permission from the native inhabitants of the solar system to mine, or else they can't trade on the Space Commodities Exchange.

Zigackly.

[hongi]

Space scientists, or at least a science project, dedicated to studying native fauna on different worlds. No ethical constraints about causing pain to us because of cultural reasons or whatever. So they go around abducting millions of people and when we fight back they bring in their animal control personnel.

[wautd]

Slavery

Our species might make a good workforce

[Shroom Man 777]

An inhabitable planet is an awesome place to have. The aliens can go tell their people that humanity is a dangerous terror-species with destructive massive weapons and cannot be allowed to reach the stars, so they conquer us and destroy our military and start building settlements for their people to colonize, while walling out the human population in ghettos and other such shit and denying us resources. Humans will try to protest by throwing rocks at alien tripods, and the aliens can reply by stepping on the children and dumping green phosphorus on freedom-hating human union workers on strike.

Suspected anti-alien humanist terrorists will be interrogated by waterboarding them with metallic hydrogen from Jupiter.

[Exonerate]

Trade/Resources: I think the chances of getting invaded for mineral wealth probably aren't that great (What's so goddamn great about Earth anyways? What does it have that other planets don't?). But our biosphere might be of interest, if not for interesting chemicals/genes, then just plain exotic creatures that would make fascinating pets or something. Cultural exports might also be worth something to snobbish alien art collectors or even just for their entertainment value. Maybe they'll park a jet-black space battleship in orbit and ask us to sign a treaty of peace and friendship that will open up ports and allow them to use Earth as a refueling station or something.

[weemadando]

The Bureaucracy - see Hitchhiker's Guide.

An accident, simply an accident - pure fuck up. A ship's brakes fail and it slams into earth at relativistic speed, they broadcast their friendly greeting on a spectrum that makes us go all Scanners or something else. Maybe there's a rapid response. Maybe mankind spends decades building retaliatory capabilities and then go on the warpath.

[hongi]

How about we're an evil expansionistic empire and the aliens are invading Earth to win the Great War Against the Evil Humies.

[Metahive]

Religious motives: Aliens believe they are in possession of a transcendent truth that they need to share with every sentient being in the galaxy, if they're willing or not. Essentially space-evangelists. The Tau from WH40k fall into this.

Scientific curiosity: The aliens view us as labrats they can use for all sorts of social/medical experiments. Think the Strangers from Dark City.

Out of our league: The aliens destroy us because they can, they don't even need to think about it much. Think of children kicking an anthill. The Traags from The Fantastic Planet are an example.

[Swindle1984]

Why aliens would invade:

1) Imperialism/colonialism. We're primitive, backwards savages and they're following the Green Man's Burden and taking over, helping to civilize us and improve our lives by introducing all kind of wonderful technology and cultural values to us as they follow their Manifest Destiny to populate the stars. Also, they can put us to work making exotic trade goods (foods, spices, artwork, entertainment, the sex industry, etc.) and mining resources on Earth while they stripmine the rest of the solar system.

2) They happen to be able to inhabit Earth's biosphere, and such habitable planets are incredibly rare. Yes, they could easily build space habitats and have done so often, but it's a planet they could be occupying. A shame about those pesky natives.

3) The Great Lord Xenu made them in His image, and as they expanded into space they found it empty and waiting for them to move in and occupy it. Then those primitive infidels and heathens had the audacity to exist as an affront to His creation and chosen people. Clearly, the only reasonable response is to invade and convert them by the sword. Or just exterminate them, ya know, whichever.

4) Intense xenophobia/paranoia. The aliens could follow Social Darwinism to its logical end; they're extremely competitive, and see any other civilizations/sapient species as a potential threat. They decide to attack us and eliminate the threat; after all, we'd do the same to them if we could, right?

5) They're giant dicks for the sake of being giant dicks.

6) They want to conquer Earth in the name of Space Communism! We shall make all species and individuals equal under our collective regime, comrade!

7) We have some relatively rare resource, or else it's not rare but simply more convenient to obtain on Earth... if you ignore the fact that we're sitting on it.

Similar to #4, they want to stripmine the solar system for resources but are aware that we might not be too thrilled about it and want to attack us preemptively so they can take our resources without having to constantly look over their shoulders to see if we're trying to attack them.

9) We captured/killed some of their people and technology and they're retaliating. They either are unaware of the various political subdivisions (nations, etc.) and the ignorance/innocence of the overwhelming majority of the population, or just don't give a shit and want to stack some bodies as revenge. An attack against a specific country or city could be an attempted rescue mission.

10) We scare the shit out of them and they're responding much like people who go completely nuts, spazz out, and irrationally attack some creature that frightens them (snakes, spiders, mice, etc.). They could find our very existence- the way we look, the way we move, the way we sound, the way we smell, the way we behave- repulsive, disturbing, and creepy, and then when you give them a look at our entertainment and cultures it just adds up and they're like the crazy lady shrieking, waving her arms, and trying to stomp the cockroach scurrying around her feet.

11) They're not actually attempting to invade/attack, they wound up here by accident/for a completely different reason and are defending themselves because we freaked out and scrambled the military.

12) Much like animals getting into fights, mounting one another, and pissing all over the landscape, they want to bloody our noses and show us who's boss before welcoming us to the intergalactic community/opening trade and diplomatic relations. They don't want to invade or kill us, just show us that they totally could if they wanted to so we know that humanity is their bitch.

13) They're on the run from another, more hostile civilization and they want to grab resources as quickly as possible so they can continue running. They only attack us because it's easier to just blow up a few cities, take what they want, and leave than it is to open diplomatic relations, learn to communicate, negotiate for what they want, etc., especially with an enemy attack fleet just a few years behind them and gaining.

[wautd]

Sport

Because hunting Man is the most dangerous sport of all

[Swindle1984]

Sport

Because hunting Man is the most dangerous sport of all

Or they're drunken college students from Intergalactic University who loaded up in a van with a gunrack and went to kick the hornet's nest for shits and giggles.

[Metahive]

Or they're drunken college students from Intergalactic University who loaded up in a van with a gunrack and went to kick the hornet's nest for shits and giggles.

Isn't that the plot of Signs? Alien frat boys playing pranks and getting melted for their presumptousness? O wait no, they were angels sent by God to help some dumbass farmer to rediscover his faith, because post-hoc reasoning surely isn't fallacious, my bad.

[wautd]

Because Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!!