Aliens land and target US, UK nuke sites

[Dugganator]

Dairy cows dont seem to attack each other they just sit there eating grass all day long. I mean they are so stupid that you can walk up to one after it just watched you cut another cows throat with the knife in hand and it would just stand there. I dont think all species work the same way but my example is a bad and crazy one.

 

[Orcish-Horde]

that would be a mass driver style weapon works fine in space.

Find large chunk of matter, attach some form of propulsion and slam it into a planet to make a huge explosion and kill most of the "higher" life forms.

The saga of the seven suns in one of the books they did that very thing, long story short. A powerful alien race attacks a small human outpost mining gas in a gas giant. The aliens lived within the gas giant, so as revenge a small number of humans put engines onto a number of comets which over a year or so. Drive the comets into the gas giant totally destroying the aliens there. One big one would finish us and we would not see it till the last minute.

Then frankly they're one of the weirdest species ever to evolve, to create interstellar travel which during it's development with have caused numerous accidents which will have shown how easily all that civilian tech can be weapons tech with minor changes.


You tell me not to make assumptions which are for the most part very plausible, yet you keep making more and more ludicrous examples of why an incredibly intelligent race couldn't make a weapon.






Very useful if you want to make a big spaceship though.


And will have most likely been encountered during the development of any civilian nuclear power facility.

You'd have to be the dumbest intelligent race to make nuclear power and not notice along the way that it can destroy huge areas.

It could be there was no nuclear material on their planet and they are highly susceptible to its effects, leading to their technology giving them a high level of protection to its effects. In turn earth is to radioactive for them and the act of us using nuclear weapons alarms them greatly, they want us but we are to hot to handle.

 

[ChrisJSY]

Just because they can travel large distances doesn't mean they will be immune to all our weapons. Pipe dream or not if we suddenly discovered the ability to fold space/ftl speeds and travel anywhere we wanted in mere hours/days/weeks rather than a lifetime or multiple ones, who's to say we will have the technology to shield our craft from; for example, nukes.

 

[Cosimo]

No the bomb is thrown out the back then a large amount of plastic /other material is fired out between the bomb and the base plate the bomb explodes turns the material into plasma which then pushes on the base plate and pushes the ship forward.

You're beginning to sound like a mad scientist.

 

[Captain_Slick]

Then it's unlikely they'd have become intelligent let alone developed.

Also no threats?

So no meat eaters on the planet?

Who's to say evolution can be observed on their planet? You can't make assumptions based on our planet in a universe of millions of planets.

Still doesn't make it's "stumble upon incident" you'd have to know where to look, and if you're peaceful surely your first port of call a heavily armed military base.

Err... No. They could absolutely have stumbled upon them. Perhaps they have a MAGIC PLANET SCANNER that scans planets for uranium and hydrogen or whatever?

Again that's a huge assumption and doesn't make any sense.

As are yours that these aliens will be almost copies of us with the same thought processes and decision making skills as a result of a similar history... in a universe containing millions of planets possible of supporting life.

But odds are it's not, everything we've seen points to nature being violent and competitive.

Again, only on our planet.

And based on it's random nature at some point something is going to figure out it's better to eat the small furry thing than try and be friends with it.

Again, based on our own environment.

You're not really getting where I'm going, are you?

We know literally nothing, very little about the universe, only of our planet. Therefore, it is silly to make assumptions of alien species based upon our own actions and history.

 

[Tefal]

If they were planning to take the plannet they would need to be sure we did not mess it all up with nasty radiation and chemicals in the battle...

maybe they are checking out what we have and how it works to make sure they dont end up with a big clean up operation...

if you attack from orbit/outside of orbit who exactly are we going to nuke?

oh and if you're worried about the pollution side fo things you'd shut down nuclear power plants not weapons.

the plants contain vast amounts of radioactive material nukes are relatively clean by comparison.

 

[manveruppd]

If this is real we should all be terrified, but for some reason I find it extremely funny! Is the press conference DEFINITELY real, the speakers genuine ex-USAF officers and the whole thing actually being reported by CNN?

I have a feeling that if there even the slightest truth to this the US armed forces would've clamped down on these guys hard and not allowed any of this to come out, even now, decades later. So my suspicion is it's an elaborate hoax by these guys. Or maybe they were being experimented on by the USAF by having some strange hallucinogens dropped on them, I wouldn't rule that out!

 

[Dugganator]

If they were planning to take the plannet they would need to be sure we did not mess it all up with nasty radiation and chemicals in the battle...

maybe they are checking out what we have and how it works to make sure they dont end up with a big clean up operation...

I agree this could be a very logically way of thinking. I mean if they invaded and won with ease wiping most of us out I'm sure we would do everything possible to make the victory a wasted one. Then again they could be so advanced that they would find this funny and send in the cleaning robots in after the planet was nuked to death once again who knows.

Think I'm gonna go home and watch the film Signs tonight

 

[iamTakeo]

I want to believe =p

Guys, load up Celestia
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

You can zoom out of our solar system and get a feel of the number of stars and what it looks like. It really blows my mind.

I'm sceptical of any stories, and I've yet to see a convincing video of a UFO, but the odds are all pointing towards more life, elsewhere.

Its just that we don't have the tech to travel or discover.

REMEMBER ALSO, we, as a species, are dicks. Very violent and aggressive on the whole. Sure things are getting liberal and I hope we keep moving forwards, but we are still sitting ontop of enough nukes to ruin this Earth. Maybe that's why we don't have any galactic friends.

 

[Tefal]

Who's to say evolution can be observed on their planet? You can't make assumptions based on our planet in a universe of millions of planets.

So they all popped into being then?

what where you saying about making assumptions?

Err... No. They could absolutely have stumbled upon them. Perhaps they have a MAGIC PLANET SCANNER that scans planets for uranium and hydrogen or whatever?

we don't use hydrogen in our nukes any more, and that scan would be ruined by all the water being h2o and all.

As are yours that these aliens will be almost copies of us with the same thought processes and decision making skills as a result of a similar history... in a universe containing millions of planets possible of supporting life.

I've not said they're anything like us.

I'm saying the power they control would be evident to them, and it will most likely occur to them how to use it in such a way.

Again, only on our planet.

As opposed to magic happy land where nothing seems to make any sense?

Again, based on our own environment.

You're not really getting where I'm going, are you?

We know nothing about the universe, only of our planet. Therefore, it is silly to make assumptions of alien species based upon our own actions and history.

instead it's perfectly sensible to make wild assumptions that go against all known data for the reason "well **** it we have to be the bad guys in this story".

 

[Duff-Man]

No the bomb is thrown out the back then a large amount of plastic /other material is fired out between the bomb and the base plate the bomb explodes turns the material into plasma which then pushes on the base plate and pushes the ship forward.

A nuclear bomb is space isn't much use, it has practically no blast because it ahs so little mass, it's only real effect is a lot of visible and other radiation, which can be used to vaporise some styrene etc.

I appreciate that, but the force which the vaporised material exerts on the ship baseplate is still a function of the magnitude of the blast. Therefore real limits must be placed on the maximum explosive strength, based on the design of the ship. Besides anything else, fuel constraints will determine the optimal explosive magnitude (since each explosion will have a associated cost in fissile materials).

I don't really see what the argument is here A series of small controlled nuclear explosions are still an application of nuclear fission / fusion with a practical purpose in mind - no different to "civilian" applications of nuclear fission / fusion (for power generation).

This is a big step from creating uncontrolled nuclear explosions which have no purpose other than destruction. While it is clear that such an application is possible, the specific nature of an alien intelligence or culture would determine whether they would even consider building such a device. Devoid of the need for conflict between members of their species, and without any large-scale external threats, they may not have any need for such a device. Hence curiosity as to why we would construct them...

 

[Orcish-Horde]

If this is real we should all be terrified, but for some reason I find it extremely funny! Is the press conference DEFINITELY real, the speakers genuine ex-USAF officers and the whole thing actually being reported by CNN?

I have a feeling that if there even the slightest truth to this the US armed forces would've clamped down on these guys hard and not allowed any of this to come out, even now, decades later. So my suspicion is it's an elaborate hoax by these guys. Or maybe they were being experimented on by the USAF by having some strange hallucinogens dropped on them, I wouldn't rule that out!

Maybe they don't want to clamp down as they have finally got over the shock and think its better to get it out in the open.

 

[Pixel]

I have a feeling that if there even the slightest truth to this the US armed forces would've clamped down on these guys hard and not allowed any of this to come out, even now, decades later.

These guys have been giving public statements for a while now, in the same manner as the CNN coverage. It would be hard for the military to bump them off without raising some serious questions.

 

[Tefal]

Just because they can travel large distances doesn't mean they will be immune to all our weapons. Pipe dream or not if we suddenly discovered the ability to fold space/ftl speeds and travel anywhere we wanted in mere hours/days/weeks rather than a lifetime or multiple ones, who's to say we will have the technology to shield our craft from; for example, nukes.

Because nukes in space are only radiation weapons, the same radiation you need to shield yourself from to survive in space.


But more importanly we don't have anything to fire our nukes out into space accurately and quick enough not to be intercepted in the days/weeks long flight to their target

 

[Captain_Slick]

Tefal, you need to stop applying our logic and science that we've learnt from one single planet to the entire universe.

If there is intelligent life out there, there is nothing to say that all that we know could in their world be meaningless.

I'm not making any assumptions at all, as evidenced by my tongue in cheek 'rainbows and cake' comment. I'm simply saying that we don't know nearly enough to say that aliens will have evolved like us and discovered nukes like us.

 

[Tefal]

I appreciate that, but the force which the vaporised material exerts on the ship baseplate is still a function of the magnitude of the blast. Therefore real limits must be placed on the maximum explosive strength, based on the design of the ship. Besides anything else, fuel constraints will determine the optimal explosive magnitude (since each explosion will have a associated cost in fissile materials).

I don't really see what the argument is here A series of small controlled nuclear explosions are still an application of nuclear fission / fusion with a practical purpose in mind - no different to "civilian" applications of nuclear fission / fusion (for power generation).

This is a big step from creating uncontrolled nuclear explosions which have no purpose other than destruction. While it is clear that such an application is possible, the specific nature of an alien intelligence or culture would determine whether they would even consider building such a device. Devoid of the need for conflict between members of their species, and without any large-scale external threats, they may not have any need for such a device. Hence curiosity as to why we would construct them...

They are military weapons though, nukes yields are not exact they differ slightly even among the same clas, this use of nuclear explosions is as controlled as the average nuclear weapon, it is X kt/mt (approximately) and it will be set off in X location.


if this is "controlled" then nuclear weapons are also controled not uncontrolled as you have said.

 

[Tefal]

Tefal, you need to stop applying our logic and science that we've learnt from one single planet to the entire universe.

Ok, large thing/rock is coming at their ship they or it is going to fast to avoid, how ill they solve this problem?

Any solution to that is a solution to us.

 

[hux]

*snigger*

Found that level have we

 

[ChrisJSY]

Because nukes in space are only radiation weapons, the same radiation you need to shield yourself from to survive in space.


But more importanly we don't have anything to fire our nukes out into space accurately and quick enough not to be intercepted in the days/weeks long flight to their target

None of what I said was relevant to nukes in deep space though, but yeah I get you.
But I'm not qualified enough to say if a nuclear weapon would work in space, if they need an oxidant or not, if it's self contained, but from what I've read they have worked.

 

[Tefal]

None of what I said was relevant to nukes in deep space though, but yeah I get you.

who's to say we will have the technology to shield our craft from; for example, nukes.

?