taking our water brainbug

[Ahriman238]

So a number of alien invasion stories have depicted aliens coming to earth to steal all it's water, and this idea of invading a planet for one of the most common things in the universe has been frequently and justly derided.

But this got me thinking, about how and why it could work. It may seem odd for a race advanced enough to travel to another system, but isn't it possible that aliens could consider dealing with hostile primitives to be safer or cheaper than asteroid/ring-mining in the vacuum? I mean, space travel has more than a few hazards unknown to a planetary atmosphere, and I would imagine it would be a great deal more comforting to know that there's breathable atmosphere on the other side of a wall, in case something goes wrong.

For that matter, after a long space voyage, they may want to stretch their legs, breathe fresh air for a change and once their on earth, there's abundant water, and they could use it as a base for water-extraction missions all over the solar system. Or there could be cultural reasons, like that Star Wars species that believed if they died in space their souls would wander the void forever. Or the water gathering could be incidental, a bonus to their true mission.

So am I completly off-base here? Do any of you suppose you can come up with more plausible reasons for this old brainbug?

[KlavoHunter]

The only setting in which my intelligence is not offended by the "Stealing our water" thing is Half-Life, where there is no consideration of needing to physically ship the water in interstellar freighters across the galaxy to your destination, but that they instead do it with the assistance of direct planet-to-planet portals. Hell, the Combine might not even have space ships any seriously more advanced than our own!

[Sea Skimmer]

Well, aliens might want all our water in ordered to steal all our fish because they like eating fish but don't feel like sticking around, that would make some actual sense.

If aliens want water for the sake of having water, coming to earth does not ever make any remote sense. Even if humans can offer zero effective resistance, to the point that the alien ships don't even need to attack us, they just start pumping up the water from behind shields, it'd still surely be easier to take ice from moons or comets because they aren't stuck at the bottom of such a large gravity well. After all most water on earth is salt water, which would need purification and generally require moving a massive tonnage of unwanted salt in the process. If the aliens want salt meanwhile, you'd think they'd just start ripping it out of the various salt pans on earth rather then taking it from seawater. Its also just real hard to see what use anyone who travels between the stars could ever have with so much water, surely they'd already have lots, and its not like water is hard to purify and recycle as long as you have plenty of cheap energy; which by default an interstellar capable civilization will have.

I suppose they might want surplus water in ordered to make a different planet wet... but once more, why not just take it from comets and icecaps in that planetary system?

[Shroom Man 777]

The aliens could publicly say they're taking our water, to distract us from finding out their TRUE intentions!

[Stofsk]

Maybe they just want to come to our beaches to surf.

[Zixinus]

It would make sense if they don't want just the water but stuff that's in it: algea or other creatures. Earth has one unique thing that as far as we know isn't found anywhere else in the solar system or perhaps in the galaxy: our form of life.
Perhaps the aliens are using our form of life to do stuff, likely involving something organic.

But just for the water itself? It's stuff you can literarily find floating around or even makes the surface of moons.

[Simon_Jester]

If they want a place to park people, with an oxygen atmosphere, while harvesting water, Earth makes sense.

Why they would want to do that I have trouble imagining. One possibility is that they want the water for something they're doing right here- they don't actually intend to carry it off the planet when they're done with it, any more than you'd carry away a pile of mine tailings.

Though it's very difficult to think of a process that makes sense within the laws of chemistry for which that would be necessary.

[BlissAuthority]

Yeah, "they want to take our water" is just flat-out stupid.

If they need to do something underwater in a gravity well, or they're here for humpback whalesong or something like that, okay. But there's absolutely no fucking way that dealing with a potentially hostile planetful of aliens is worth it when you can just have water ice.

Though that example with the Combine made me laugh. That actually does make some sense.

[Raxmei]

Maybe the aliens are homeopaths and they need living water.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Maybe they need water for some industrial purpose and are also a species that favors arid climates; stealing the oceans is just part of xenoforming Earth for their own use. Two birds with one stone. Or they intend to xenoform both Mars and Earth for their use and are evening out the water; making Earth drier and Mars wetter.

Or for really soft sci-fi, they can be sucking the "life force" out of the water, which a dead ice moon wouldn't have. In that case the action itself makes sense; it's the setting that is wildly implausible .

[Shroom Man 777]

They could be like the Zoidberg aliens, and are insanely addicted to anchovies, but are too lazy to manually fish the fishies and so just cut to the chase and suck up all the oceans with all the fishies in them!

[Serafina]

Maybe the aliens believe in Homeopathy and in order to do it properly they need lots and lots of water

[Simon_Jester]

Maybe they have an industrial process that uses ridiculous amounts of water- hell, maybe just for coolant; a realistic power plant that runs at some of the extremely high power figures we throw around on this site comes to mind as something that would need a lot.

But, as a wrinkle, they also have secondary needs that explain their wanting to stop on a planet with an oxygen atmosphere for a few years. Say, they've got a hundred million colonists in cryo suspension and they're planning to stop, thaw everyone out, let them stretch their legs, and possibly clone/breed a few extra to replace losses to freezer-burn. That might be a medical necessity for a long STL trip, and they might look at Earth and say "granted you can't eat the wildlife without getting near-lethal allergies and the place is covered with apes, but it beats parking on Mars."

Of course, they don't count on how violently the said natives will object to their blocking out half of South America to use for their pit stop...

[Shroom Man 777]

Could aliens also harvest breathable air (assuming they breathe oxygen like us) from comets or moons or other planets in the solar system? If not, they could be primarily filling up their air tanks, and the water-stealing could be a secondary objective since, hey, this planet also has liquid water along with breathable air so why not get something extra.

[OmegaChief]

But if that was the case Shroom, couldn't they just extract Oxygen from water on ice moons and comets already mentioned?

[Uraniun235]

The energy used to take our water and oxygen could be more productively used in electrolysis to break apart water for oxygen. Water ice and nitrogen could be taken from the moon Titan in abundance.

[bilateralrope]

Maybe they intend to take all the water from our solar system. They start by attacking Earth because humans, if left alone as they harvest all the other water, might become a threat. Humans being a threat isn't likely but, since they are going to take Earths water anyway, they lose nothing by making sure.

[BlissAuthority]

Could aliens also harvest breathable air (assuming they breathe oxygen like us) from comets or moons or other planets in the solar system? If not, they could be primarily filling up their air tanks, and the water-stealing could be a secondary objective since, hey, this planet also has liquid water along with breathable air so why not get something extra.

You could still extract oxygen from solid deposits of dihydrogen monoxide (that is, water ice) in orbit, so no, this doesn't really make sense either.

[Darmalus]

Maybe they get a tax break large enough to pay for the whole operation and then some if it is liquid water extracted from a gravity well equal to ours.

[Sriad]

Maybe they're just assholes and don't want *us* to have water.

[Soontir C'boath]

Maybe they're just assholes and don't want *us* to have water.

This calls for a movie where we're pranked by alien rednecks.

[Srelex]

They represent an intergalactic soda company who see our water as the perfect formula, given it's unique blend of pollutants, plastic rubbish, and metal residue.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Maybe they're just assholes and don't want *us* to have water.

This calls for a movie where we're pranked by alien rednecks.

Well, if they are so powerful they can do it as a prank, maybe their motivation is nothing more than screwing with the heads of all the humans who say it's silly that aliens would show up and steal our water.

[Ahriman238]

This calls for a movie where we're pranked by alien rednecks.

How else do you explain Signs?

I was just remembering an old Animorphs book, the evil aliens (Yeerks) had an agenda of secret invasion and conquest, but they also had to invest signifigant resources into collecting fresh air and water for their fleet in orbit. Wouldn't it be amusing to have something similar, where someone sees an alien spaceship hoovering a small lake and assumes they came for our water, when they're really interstellar anthropologists or something? Or simply had completly different objectives and priorities?

Albeit, you'd probably never convince readers that you hadn't subcumbed to the cliche, and then tried an asspull to get out.

[Sarevok]

Wouldn't it be amusing to have something similar, where someone sees an alien spaceship hoovering a small lake and assumes they came for our water, when they're really interstellar anthropologists or something? Or simply had completly different objectives and priorities?

That's what happened in Battle:Los Angelos. There various talking heads shown on TV speculated the aliens motives, with some suggesting they came here for our water. It's human nature to invent a cause if they can not find one.