Britain has alien-war weapons, says former government adviser

[Josquius]

Josq, presumably the invading aliens want the planet in somewhat decent shape.

Why would they want that?
There's nothing much here they can't get much easier elsewhere in the solar system let alone the cosmos.
The only ways to make alien invasion feasible  are really silly sci-fi plot worth what ifs, like AI and cloning being impossible and they want to harvest our brains or somesuch.

[Eddie Teach]

Why would they want that?
There's nothing much here they can't get much easier elsewhere in the solar system let alone the cosmos.
The only ways to make alien invasion feasible  are really silly sci-fi plot worth what ifs, like AI and cloning being impossible and they want to harvest our brains or somesuch.

Oxygen and water are much more readily available here than the rest of the solar system. They might like our atmospheric pressure and temperature ranges better as well. Though I'd agree that alien invasion feasibility is based on a silly sci-fi what if, that being the possibility of ftl travel or wormhole manipulation that makes interstellar travel possible. 

[Syt]

There's nothing much here they can't get much easier elsewhere in the solar system let alone the cosmos.

Maybe they're not looking for resources but living space because their homeworld is overpopulated.

[jimmy olsen]

Why would they want that?
There's nothing much here they can't get much easier elsewhere in the solar system let alone the cosmos.
The only ways to make alien invasion feasible  are really silly sci-fi plot worth what ifs, like AI and cloning being impossible and they want to harvest our brains or somesuch.

Oxygen and water are much more readily available here than the rest of the solar system. They might like our atmospheric pressure and temperature ranges better as well. Though I'd agree that alien invasion feasibility is based on a silly sci-fi what if, that being the possibility of ftl travel or wormhole manipulation that makes interstellar travel possible. 

The Ort cloud is full of millions of comets. Comets are made of ice. If you want water and oxygen you just need to use them.

[Eddie Teach]

The Ort cloud is full of millions of comets. Comets are made of ice. If you want water and oxygen you just need to use them.

Since I apparently didn't make it clear enough, I was saying the same thing as Syt. They presumably want the planet because it is habitable.

[Grey Fox]

W00t! W00t!

[Josquius]

There's nothing much here they can't get much easier elsewhere in the solar system let alone the cosmos.

Maybe they're not looking for resources but living space because their homeworld is overpopulated.

Its unlikely our planet would be habitable for alien life.
And even if it was, these aliens are capable of travelling between star systems. Its unlikely they're reliant on naturally occuring habitable worlds.
It'll be much easier for them to just xenoform somewhere or build a bunch of space habitats.

Alien invasion has too many layers of maybes upon maybes. 1%s of 1%s of 1%s, etc....

[Eddie Teach]

You're making an assumption that one technology we don't have would be easier to implement than another that we don't have. That hardly makes somebody else silly for assuming it's the other way around. We can't even manage to regulate our global temperature as of yet.

[Josquius]

You're making an assumption that one technology we don't have would be easier to implement than another that we don't have. That hardly makes somebody else silly for assuming it's the other way around. We can't even manage to regulate our global temperature as of yet.

They clearly need the technology to build at least somewhat self sustaining space habitats if they can build galaxy travelling space ships.
Terraforming is a 'technology' we have the basics of today. Just look at global warming, and that's without trying.

[Eddie Teach]

Something tells me that a world being too big or small or too close or far from their stars or having an atmosphere full of poison gases are bigger obstacles than factories pumping out too much CO2.

Also, I suspect it's a lot cheaper/easier to transport people to a habitable world than the amount of resources it would take to make a barren/toxic/whatever planet livable.

[CountDeMoney]

Alien invasion has too many layers of maybes upon maybes. 1%s of 1%s of 1%s, etc....

As long as it involves tentacle rape and school girl uniforms, there's still always a chance, right? 

[viper37]

As if we could even hope to touch an enemy with orbital dominance. 

Unless they're literal space vikings who have ideological or religious issues compelling them to mix it up with us close up on the ground we'd be completely fucked.

Depends.  Eventually, they need to send ground troops to hold the place.  What is it they want the Earth for?  They want the natural resources and need slaves to extract it?  Or they don't need us at all?

If they need us alive, we have a chance.  If they wipe us out from orbit, you're right, we're fucked.

I'm thinking a scenario à la V is more likely to happen.  Technoligically superior army, but limited manpower and can still be defeated if trying to attack openly.

[Razgovory]

You guys assume a human motive for invading the Earth.  If it was an alien it's motives are likely to be alien.  Perhaps flying saucers come down and demand access to our top secret chili recipes.  Or the alien is just one guy, and he's an asshole and he's doing it for shits and grins.  He's just so much more advanced then we are it's like a guy pouring gasoline on an anthill and lighting it up.  Or maybe they land on earth and just begin to settle and don't recognize us as sentient beings.  They level whole cities without the notion that we are intelligent enough to care.

Authors of Sci-fi usually seem to assume that aliens are essentially people and that we can interact with them in a similar way we might interact with people of another culture.  But an Aliens is most likely going to be a different species completely unrelated to any life on Earth.  I imagine it would be less like Cortes in Mexico and more like the Great American Interchange.  Species competing and causing one another to go extinct but not understanding each other in the slightest.

[Eddie Teach]

I dunno, Raz, terrestrial animals don't act like humans, but they do act in ways we can understand. I think a lot of evolutionary pressures will be universal and not dependent upon being carbon based or breathing oxygen or anything like that.

If they leveled our cities and we spotted some strange anomalous energy readings in space we'd send nukes at it. They'd probably realize those were attacks even if their shields naturally thwarted them. And screwing around with lesser beings for kicks is kinda how the ancients imagined their gods, not so hard to comprehend. So your scenarios aren't that implausible, but they don't imply the two species wouldn't understand each other at all.

[Razgovory]

Well it is a bit difficult to come up with scenarios that the human mind can't comprehend, sorry if my ideas fall short of that.  I'm pretty divorced from normal thought, but not that divorced.  My point is that we probably couldn't communicate in any meaningful way and their motives might be totally irrational to us.