Dumbest Alien Invasions
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- Опубліковано 13 сер 2022
- An Alien Invasion of Earth is a terrifying scenario, yet science fiction rarely has good reason for those invasions. Today we'll discuss the worst reasons aliens invade in fiction and some plausible scenarios for why they might do it in fact.
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Alien Civilizations: Dumbest Alien Invasions
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
Episode 355a, August 14, 2022
Written, Produced & Narrated by Isaac Arthur
Editors:
David McFarlane
Konstantin Sokerin
Graphics:
Darth Biomech
Ken York
LegionTech Studios
Cover Art:
Jakub Grygier www.artstation.com/jakub_grygier
Music by:
Martin Rezny, "Lifelight"
Denny Schneidemesser, "Bridge Ambience"
Stellardrone, "A Moment of Stillness", "Cosmic Sunrise", "Limbo", "Red Giant"
Aerium, "Fifth Star of Aldebaran"
Miguel Johnson, "Strange New World" - Наука та технологія
You really should sell a poster with "Isaac Arthur's Rules of Warfare", listing every rule of warfare you've mentioned over the years, handily listed in numeric order from 1 to 1.
Got to confuse those aliens listening in on our deepest secrets of warfare
I think he has already considered that, but then scrapped the idea...
Turns out it won’t fit on just one poster 🤷♂️
@@bobinthewest8559 is that rule #1 for making posters. It has to fit on one poster
The first rule of warfare is that they are all first.
Oh, you saw that too? I thought it was just my screen.
Another possible reason to invade Earth: to stop humanity's unending redefinition of the first rule of warfare.
Ironically that would probably end with them violating the first rule of warfare and loosing in embarrassing fashion
First rule of warfare: Confuse your enemy wherever possible.
Constantly changing definition is the first rule of war....
Sir, how many first rules of warfare do you want this episode?
Isaac: Yes.
just 1 (one)
I think this episode may have the best First Rule of Warfare yet: "Never hand someone a loaded gun unless you are sure of whom they're going to aim it at."
That's the first rule of warfare; never tell your enemies how much resources and intel you actually have.
Never pick a fight with someone bigger than you. Hitler and Tojo can confirm the wisdom of that rule of warfare.
Glad someone pointed out how many 1st rule of warfare there were.
Take a shot everytime Arthur says "That's the first rule of warfare". preferably non-alcoholic drinks.
Did the drinking game with Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters.
Luckily had a backup copy of my brain.
*Mixes Pangalactig Gargle Blaster
"No."
Take a drink or snack every time he brings out the first rule of warfare :D
Just be careful not to drink too much. That is, after all, the first rule of warfare.
After all, do not get drunk before battle is the first rule of warfare.
The most realistic alien invasion I can't think off is a group of a few billion alien teenagers who think invading and opressing a less advanced civilization would be funny.
Teenagers being jerks is an universal constant.
I always believed that any and all UFO sighting over military bases may be the teenager equivilant of an alien species I can't fathom why even though we're less advanced why someone would play chicken with military bases... Other than stupid teenagers doing stupid things with daddy's car
@@jimmiedmc1 Yes, somehow that would be more scary than a imperialistic alien army.
That or some guy is power tripping
@@Embassy_of_Jupiter Yes, in a post scarcity civilization a single guy could affort an invading drone army
@@jimmiedmc1 ...
Allegedly, there have been cases of UFOs hovering over (or near) missile silos, and remotely shutting down the missile systems...
I would imagine that anyone with such capabilities, can pretty confidently “play chicken with our military bases” .
Just saying
"Enslaving a smart, aggressive, predator that is known for being inventive, ruthless, and often inventively ruthless is not a good idea." I laughed at this for at least 5 mins. Might be one of his best lines.
It is a good line. I just think the logic is flawed. If a species likes enslaving other species, enslaving just such a species may be considered a prestigious accomplishment. If your hobby is rock climbing, you don't seek out the shortest mountains.
Psycho teens torture cats, so I can imagine some psycho alien teenagers torturing all humans for 5,000 years before roasting the entire planet with the heat of a thousand suns.
Kind of sounds like that is what man did to wolf
Or ruthlessly inventive
I thought the one about the aliens being equivalently water soluble to the Wicked witch of the West was the best of this episode.
Two minor points:
In Dune, Arrakis' lack of terraforming was 100% eco-political. Nobody really wanted to mess up the planet's natual cycles because nobody understood how Spice was made. Later, it's understood that it's a byproduct of the Sandworm life cycle, so if you terraform the planet you kill all the sandworms and you lose all the Spice. As of the start of Book 1 the Fremen are already starting work on terraforming Dune in a guerilla low-budget manner, and they have their own hidden ecology labs. The consequences of a possible terraforming of Dune become a MASSIVE plot point later in the series, as thousands of years pass between some of the books.
And in Ender's Game, it's not so much that the Bugs didn't think the Humans would care at ALL about losing some settlements, or that they didn't recognise Humanity as a species to be sentient, just that they didn't think humans would give THAT much care to losing a few planets. In Bug culture queens would just be like, constantly wiping out each other's settlements, but it wasn't seen as anything other than a neighbourly spat. So them exterminating the humans on those planets just wasn't a particularly evil thing to do in their moral view, and they were just expecting the humans to come back and grab a few of their planets in return, a minor border dispute, instead of a full scale galactic war erupting. Bugs were basically just playing civ, then wondering why the humans were getting so tilted over it.
Re: Dune, besides the diegetic explanation regarding the sandworms and melange, the decision to not terraform Arrakis can also be read as an analogy for how real-world empires deliberately under-develop regions on the imperial periphery to make the resources and people in those regions easier to exploit.
While ants and bees may look like distinct lifeforms, due to how reproduction happens it is the hive as a whole that forms a single evolutionary unit, a single oeganism. The drones are merely extensions of the hive, machines that specialize in certain tasks the same way we have planes and cars. The queen had a bug-centric view of humans as drones and therefore has no compuction about killing them as long as she wasn't killing the (nonexistent) human queen.
I believe in Enders Game, there is a specific few sentences which state that the Queens only consider Queens to be people, and wiping out the workers (drones) was essentially the equivalent of cutting off the hair or nails of your enemy, and that they initially thought of human individuals as equavilent to their drones. When they realised that every human was a person, they were horrified, but it was too late.
On eating humans: One of Niven's Tales of the Draco Tavern stories hit this topic. The aliens by no means _needed_ human meat, but they liked variety. And they got genetic samples as part of clearing the human diplomatic team for landing on their planet. Very civilized about it, offered to pay them royalties for each copy (they promised to not grow heads on the meat animals), and pointed out that they could either be rich from taking the royalty money or somebody would leak the data onto the black market and it would happen anyway.
Fascinating
I never got why anybody was bothered by cannibalism. Like, its unsanitary for sure, the odds of food-born illness is much higher than with eating other species, but thats a health issue not a moral one. Morally I don’t see any issue with eating humans, so long as they were already dead beforehand. Obviously murder is still murder, so killing someone to eat them would be wrong. But if somebody is already dead then there’s no reason that meat should go to waste. When I’m dead you can put me in a stew for all I care. If you’re dead you’re dead, you ain’t gonna be bothered by anything that happens at that point.
Everything I’ve ever eaten was the corpse of something that was once alive, its only right that I return what I took from the food chain when i kick the bucket. I consider donating my corpse to the life that still remains an honor, one last act of charity, one of the only acts that can be considered wholly selfless, since you’re giving away the very thing that used to be you, with no possible way to receive any reward. Its a beautiful thing.
But for some reason society refuses to see it that way. So I’ll have to settle for being composted and turned into fertilizer for a tree instead. It’s a more roundabout route but it still accomplishes the same thing in the end. Everything that I am gets recycled and the world moves on.
If aliens wanted to eat me I’d definitely be down for that. Just let me live out my natural lifespan on the ride over, then put my body in the freezer to preserve the meat. I could be the first life-form from earth to ever be incorporated into an alien biosphere. My microbiome could become the seed for an entirely new Kingdom of Life on that planet, who’s legacy could stretch on for billions of years as their descendants evolve into myriad forms in this new alien environment, what an inheritance to leave behind.
And I recognize that I’m in the minority here. But even if it was an extreme minority that would still leave plenty of people willing given a large enough sample size. With billions of people on the planet there have got to be at least a few million who wouldn’t care. So aliens could probably just ask politely and receive plenty of Volunteer Barbecue Donors without needing to bother with the cloning
@@Wertsir 100%
the one hesitation with things eating humans that makes complete sense to me, is that eating humans can create a desire or habit for eating humans, which naturally increases the pull factors for killing humans, and as humans we want there to be as many reasons as possible to not kill humans.
like with the example u gave there are ways for creatures to eat humans that minimise the desire to kill humans, but even with humans who never had brains being grown in labs, getting a taste for human would increase the disire to hunt one. that said, human or nonhuman people with the desire to hunt and to hunt sapients specifically are going to be anomolies and the thrill of the hunt pull will pull them regardless of if theyve eaten it before.
They'll eat Campbell's vegetable beef and like it...
Agree for royalties and 3 genome copys of their peoples- no heads of course...
A sensible reason to actually *invade* earth instead of just sterilizing the planet: you want to eliminate a possible competitor while preserving the local biosphere for later exploitation.
I think we have that one in here today :)
This. Though causing an artificial pandemic would probably be a good first strike before launching anything else towards Earth.
There's not really anything about our biosphere that would make that worth it, tho, really. A civilization with the ability to do that would almost certainly be able to make any product of our biosphere using the incredibly abundant resources not being utilized by another sentient species.
@@isaacarthurSFIA I worked at NBC for over a decade, literally so a famous people every single day. Nobody ever really impressed me enough to approach them and ask for an autograph or anything like that… But Isaac if I saw you? I would definitely want to have a conversation with you! Your content is awesome!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA Do you really think we could become a competitor for an advance alien civilization?!!
HAHAHHAHAHA HAHAHHAA OH BOY!! I really needed to laugh today.
The formics in Enders Game had their reasoning expanded in the prequels. In the first invasion they assumed earth had unimportant/unintelligent life forms, like the previous 100 worlds that they had discovered and colonized, until we fought back. It probably would have been a good idea to spy on the planet before trying to take it over just to be sure, but with such a long history of not finding other intelligent life, they assumed that they were the only intelligent life. When they invaded the second time they were looking for the intelligent caste of humans by yelling "take me to your leader" in their telepathic language to every human that they encountered. They also randomly dissected human bodies, looking for evidence of the ability to communicate. None of the humans replied and none of the humans cut open had the correct telepathic organs, so they continued their search. They expected to find a leader that they could communicate with to force earth to surrender, but only found what they considered to be the mute, robotic, expendable drone humans fighting to the last to keep the formics from capturing the human equivalent of a queen. When they realized that every single human actually was the equivalent of a formic queen, they stopped and spent their time trying to find a way to communicate with Ender as he unknowingly xenocided them.
Yeah it's an interesting one. No telepathy to them meant no intelligence
It's still stupid. Like are we ignoring humans have built, have engineered? We have things in space! What unintelligent animal can do that?
@@ericreid8111 Have you looked at a bee hive before? They can be extremely complex. They also thought that there might be a queen somewhere doing the designing we were seeing
@@ericreid8111 That's a matter of scale and perspective.
Lots of other animals build things. We just don't consider those things impressive enough to be worthy of comparison to what we build.
I don't find it hard to imagine a civilization more advanced than us looking at the Hoover Dam or whatever, and feeling the same way about it that a human feels about a beaver dam.
@@macdeus2601 ok sure. But do other animals have space craft?
Do other animals invent machines that can fly? Even if they fly through inefficient methods? Nuclear reactors? Even if it is fission, perhaps radiation isn't as dangerous to 1 specie's cells, as another.
There are just too many things to prove humans are intelligent
One thing I like about Halo is that it's brutally realistic in the sense that the Covenant, by and large, just orbitally bombarded most human worlds without invading. Most 'battles' during the human covenant war were over once the Covenant gained control of the local space, because then they'd just proceed to glass the planets.
In regards to Water in dune:
1) They do have water efficient greenhouses, the Atreides build one to house their garden when they first move to Arrakis. It’s just insanely expensive, so only the nobility can afford it and not the lower classes. It is seen as a sign of their immense wealth and power.
2) Space travel is not cheap, it is insanely expensive. This is because the spacing guild maintains a monopoly over space travel allowing them to charge whatever they wish for its use, and because guild navigators need to be fed a constant stream of spice, the most expensive thing in the dune universe, to maintain their precognition.
3) The Spacing Guild intentionally undermines the power of other factions in the dune universe in order to keep them dependent on the guild, as this maintains their own political power. Arrakis is of particular interest to them as it is the source of their power, and the home of their most important strategic resource. By limiting the amount of water they ship there, they keep Arrakis dependent on them providing constant shipments of it, and are thereby able to exchange the cheap commodity of water for the expensive commodity spice. Water is not rare by nature, but by artificial scarcity and monopolistic practices.
4) The sand worms that live on dune consume water in massive quantities. Indeed they are the ones responsible for making Arrakis a desert planet in the first place. So simply shipping more water in would not, in and of itself, solve the problem. It’d just end up creating more worms.
5) Leto does eventually terraform Arrakis and bring more water to the desert planet, as he and his father promised to. Eventually leaving only a small patch of desert on the entire planet, a reserve set aside for Leto himself, who has at this point metamorphosed fully into a sand worm.
Overall the world we are presented in dune is not one where water is actually rare. We are repeatedly described how common it is on other worlds. Instead it’s rarity on Arrakis is artificially enforced as a part of the political power struggle that makes up the primary narrative of the series.
I thought the sand worms were killed by water?
Damn, nice point. I really should re-read it
Regarding your 4th point: open water in any significant quantity is also poisonous to the sand worms. In the books, the Fremen are actually keeping single worms imprisoned by surrounding them with a water reservoir, thereby stunting their growth.
That is another important reason why Arrakis is a desert world at the beginning of the story: it could easily be turned into a green utopia with the technology available (as you point out, Leto II does exactly that in the later books), but that would mean losing the sand worm, which would mean losing Spice, and there goes your ability for interstellar travel. And as Arrakis is the only known producer of Spice, it is in everyones (apart from the Fremen, of course) best interest to keep the deserts as they are
@@ta4ai The Adult Sandworms are, but their Larval Form, the Sandtrout, is not. And they effectively act as water leeches, draining underwater reservoirs and causing steady desertification of whichever planet they are on, thereby creating the very environment that the adult sand worms need to survive. Since the Sandtrout and Sandworm are two stages in the lifecycle of the same species, like frogs and tadpoles, it is still generally true that sandworms are responsible for consuming the water, though I could have phrased it better in the initial post.
The sandworms are not native to Arrakis, Leto’s ancestral memories reveal that they were brought there from elsewhere, and that before they were Arrakis had been a wet planet with a thriving ecosystem that the Trout and Worms destroyed, leading the planet to its current state. They’re basically an invasive species that causes ecological collapse and desertification on a planetary scale.
@@Wertsir Ah yes. This one is strong in the weirding way.
The only possible reason I can think of, that actually makes any sense whatsoever, is that the aliens want their stuff back from Area 51.
No other earth invasion scenarios make any sense.
Criminally underrated comment.
You’re applying human logic/thought process to an alien species. We don’t know how they think/ what they think/ if they even think
If they cared that we possess this stuff they would be more careful not to let it fall into our hands. But they don't seem to care at all.
What about invading Earth is a training exercise for a coming of age fleet.
I feel like that would be less of a full on invasion and more of a raid.
About the Dune "issue", there's actually a threefold explanation for this in-universe:
1) Long-term Harkonnen occupation purposely keeping the population technologically primitive and poor.
2) Massive Fremen Spice-bribes to the Guild to keep satellites out of orbit (combined with the fact that Dune-verse satellites are usually limited by being *man-operated* due to a widespread religious-cultural taboo against anything resembling AI)
3) The local (and highly implied to be descendant of artificial organisms) ecosystem is *very* effective at sequestering water into underground dispersed pockets, functionally removing it from circulation.
Agree that the Dune criticism isn't quite valid. First of all the planet's arid climate is essential to the creation of spice (no spoilers). Secondly, the larger inhabited areas (eg. Arrakeen) are not water starved (remember the date palms). Third, the only people that need to struggle for water are the Fremen: the unfortunate and disenfranchised natives who nobody cares about. In fact the waterless climate of the planet probably isn't even necessary for the plot, just that the planet has an extreme environment. Might as well have been a cold ice planet with ice worms where the idea of resource scarcity doesn't even matter.
I’m glad someone pointed this out - Arrakis was kept a desert on purpose as it’s the only way to keep the planet producing Spice.
@@johanngreffrath2357 I purposely decided not to mention the climate-spice production link, because for the first 3 books, this isn't really widely known.
(And, spoiler:
In book 4, Arrakis actually did get properly terraformed, only for it to be undone again in the period between book 4 and 5, but at that point, the whole Spice-situation got even more convoluted)
In Dune was anything like Earth in terms of quantities of water, then they should have an ocean's worth of worms/trouts under the sand and feeding on the inner planetary heat. Sand which is produced by these worms consuming a sizable part of the crust as well. 😄
@@Fridaey13txhOktober Which is basically confirmed in book 4.
I'm surprised no one wrote a story where aliens take over Sol while ignoring Earth entirely
That be a very interesting and cool setting for a story, but it be problematic for the central conflict, and resolution.
As the aliens would just end up being a background issue in the story.
a short story maybe, but for a longer one, you would need a conflict, this has very little, we see them, but cannot do anything, probably they ignore us, who cares for the ants.
@@lunaticbz3594 I could still see it working. If they didn't send us any messages you'd have to suspend disbelief on why they didn't so much as say "hey we're taking the metals, volatiles, and fissionables in your asteroid belt, but we have no interest in your planet."
if they DID send us that message, I could see it causing massive unrest on earth as not everyone is going to be content with taking the alien invaders at their word, or the translation could be wrong, or screw them that's OUR asteroid belt dammit! and it provokes a response from our militaries.
@@xXx_Regulus_xXx If we're going for realism though the military response would be nil, if its in Earth's current time. Yeah we could throw some nukes at them, but that's a bad idea as who knows what they'd throw back at us.
I liked the other commenters suggestion of a short story, then their isn't a need to resolve the alien issue. I could not just see that working, but if I could write would be stealing those ideas right now.
@@lunaticbz3594 And what happens when the Sun came crashing into Earth..? but wait! There's more! Planet-sized Mexican tomatoes are coming! And vampire cat ghost monsters! And sociopathic teddy bears! And whole lot other crazy things the movie!
I actually don't think the "Eating Human" is necessarily as dumb as you make out.
It could be the equivalence of the Japanese eating whales. Which aren't economical to farm and is considered distasteful by many other humans, just not something considered so repugnant as to escalate to war. I don't see why a vast alien empire couldn't have a sect that eat other intelligent races as delicacy which while considered distasteful by the majority of that empire do not view "saving humans" as something worth military response.
Especially if you consider that "uneconomical" is a matter of scale.
Eating plants is far more economical and healthy than animal flesh, yet we still do the latter because of flesh industry propaganda and "muh taste pleasure".
synthesizing meat is cheaper
@@nickolasbrown3342 thats not really a counter at all. Many traditions aren't economical and yet we still do them.
@@hoominbeeing yay of course you don't need animal protein or certain vitamin to live. Clearly meat is useless to societies who couldn't afford to engineer specialised drugs packed full of the stuff we need to survive. Clearly people who are allergic to some types of vegetables don't need at all to concern themselves with meat even though they are unable to consume some plants necessary to a vegan regimen. It's also not true that you can overdose on drugs that compliment your regimen like vitamin D, a small drug with 0 calories (therefore your body can't warn you that you've "ate" too much) packed full of vitamin D can't possibly be dangerous when not monitored responsibly.
Meat is so unnecessary that every medical authorities heavily recommends to get medical survey whenever you are attempting a vegan regiment.
Plants are so economical that several human societies like the mongols relied essentially on their animals to produce their food and their way of life. Almost as if animal life was more than just numbers and statistics with reciprocity involved like ants with their aphids.
God i hate vegan propaganda, if you want to go vegan there are real risk involved. Turns out meat is kind of part of our diet since we were apes.
Uncompatible biochemistry?
Could be less about the capabilities of the slaves and more about “look at me! I have so many rare and exotic species as pets!”
Like a cultural status symbol. Heck, the harder they are to keep could even be seen as a good thing, makes holding onto them worth more than some properly domesticated pet species instead.
People used to do that with elephants and tigers after all.
Well mammalian animals can be tamed. Crocodile is a better choice
orvil had species like that
@Trivial Whim Used to? Ppl are still doing that with tigers!
honestly, a well taken care of pet of an individual or family of an advanced species doesn't sound bad. Nor does a well made zoo with our own tiny houses and fun things to do all day.
On the opposite, being forced to do gladiatorial entertainment or kept in terrible conditions would be an absolute nightmare, one that I'd rather take my chances of surviving a kaiju attack, zombie apocalypse, or space aliens that plain just want us dead.
I am not a Pokemen!
Mars Attacks- the most realistic alien invasion film of all time.
Ack!
It has already been demonstrated that murder bots don't work as proved in the documentary series Futurama. As demonstrated by war hero, Zapp Brannigan, you just have to send waves of infantry until their murder or kill counter is reached and they shutdown.
Is this like mad scientists and self-destruct buttons?
"FOR SCIENCE"
Just wait for a buffer overflow of the kill counter? That's pretty funny.
what if the kill bots don't have a kill counter tho ?
26:40 I would call the predator series an example of this. They aren't necessarily eating souls but they are looking to fight warriors, and do seem to follow an honor system of some sort. and are interested in something intangible.
Yeah! Plus given our history and culture that is filled with wars and warriors of legend, it makes sense to look for a proper good fight.
Yeah I never take the alien invasion over lack of human morals to be realistic. When we look at ants we would never involve ourselves in an ant colony for the purpose of correcting their morals, or chastise them for waring with neighboring colonies. In fact we sometimes monitor ant colony vs colony warfare with scientific curiosity. Aliens likely would monitor human warfare with similar curiosity.
It makes me wonder if aliens would want to see humans saved from extinction in the same way we want to see an exotic bird species saved from extinction.
Yeah, and pour boiling water down their holes when they are fire ants, so there's that, too.
@@therealdarklizzy or maybe the ones that eat us conserve us, but their conquerors kill us all to starve them out
@@MrJdsenior because they’re invasive species that cause major damage to the environment but unable to purge them completely
That's only if aliens are significantly more intelligent than us rather than same intelligence but more technologically advanced. Compare your example to how colonialists viewed "inferior races": They certainly felt the need to violently interfere with their cultures and shame them for perceived moral degeneracy.
Well, we do have elevated levels of phosphorus.
Before the technology to extract nitrogen from the air was developed, countries would routinely go to war for any rock in the ocean covered in enough bird crap because they needed the nitrogen to expand farming efforts.
I think you said yourself that phosphorus was rare and needed for ATP, so…
I'm still waiting for the promised "Sexy Alien" video.
Plot twist: All the aliens are sexy
Looking forward to that alussy
I'm up for some more "first rules of warfare"!
So many 1st rules
First is a relative term...oh wait. I'm sure you've heard someone say "there are many firsts". Never mind, you are correct.
It's a joke surely you've heard of one?
If I recall correctly, the second fleet of Ender's Game was sent long before the first one arrived. The first fleet was meant to prep the way for their arrival and contained only the species' drones, and the second was the first fleet to actual contain one of the Hive Queens. The queen in turn was targeted and killed by Mazer Rackham, ending the invasion but also preventing negotiations as the Formics were realizing how they messed up.
The Formics assumed that the first humans they encountered were teleoperated, because that is how they would do it. They thought we'd take tortuous vivisection as calmly as we would, in fact, take the destructive analysis of the Voyager probe.
The reasons for an invasion probably don't have to make sense. From humanity's own history, we know that invasions have occurred for such obscure reasons as capturing human sacrifices (Aztecs) or simply "painting the map red" (British Empire). The desire to attain military "glory" might be another motivating factor.
There is also Religious drive, like the one that allowed Islam to conquer The Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia in the 7th and 8th century. And No, I don't subscribe to the idea that "Advanced Aliens would be beyond religion" nonsense. Religion is a Powerful motivator and no matter how advanced you are technologically, even the most rational mind believes in something greater than themselves.
@@jonjohns8145 "even the most rational mind believes in something greater than themselves"
Maybe you misworded that, you seem to be implying that all rational minds believe in something greater than themselves, which is not true. The truth is that while believing in something greater than yourself is not itself a rational belief, an otherwise rational mind could hold some irrational beliefs. Holding one or a few irrational beliefs would not necessarily prevent a species from developing advanced technology.
They might destroy Earth just to build a new hyperspace bypass. That's a perfectly valid reason. You've got to build bypasses!
@@denisl2760 Yes, holding irrational beliefs won't retard development of advanced technology. But it's not that hard for a mind to look at the order of the universe and conclude that perhaps there is some form of order to it that belays randomness and could indicate an even higher level of intelligence than themselves and still be rational about such conclusion. I won't argue this point further as that would degenerate into a literal religious argument, but I firmly believe that rational minds can conclude that what order they see of this universe might just be the tip of the iceberg of what they might not see.
@@jonjohns8145 I think the key word there is "might be". Yes it is rational to believe that there "might be" a possibility of "something greater than us". But without evidence, it is irrational to believe that there "is" something greater than us.
One franchise that checked a lot of the boxes for dumbest alien invasion were the "V" television shows in 1983-84. The Visitors came all the way from Sirius in 50 giant motherships to steal the Earth's water, to harvest most of the human race as food, and convert a small number of humans to use as slaves and soldiers. I admit I did enjoy watching it as a kid though.
Yeah, if accuracy is a requirement for your movie entertainment you are basically screwed. But "Kessel run in 12 parsecs" sorts of lines somehow just make my hair hurt.
try signs aliens
The Minbari issue is one that's faced when talking real world alien motivations. Defenders will say they were simply fundamentally different from humans and the mistake was understandable, but the narrative itself says the Minbari live in a galaxy teaming with other aliens that all have a wide variety of relative norms. They absolutely would have encountered other species that would have taken open gun ports and crippling scans as hostile. If they have spent the last 3000 years responding to those aliens the same way they responded to humans they were likely a greater destructive force than both the Shadow wars that bracket the franchise.
And that still ignores the fact that none of the other races explicitly said "don't fire on the Minbari, they have weird customs that include pointing guns at you in peace and if you shoot them they will eradicate your species the way they have done a couple hundred others so far"
Once again good communication fails to save the day
In one of the first movies I believe Londo does warn a general and consultant whe they ask if the Centauri had contact with the Minbari
@@12pentaborane Yep. Londo does warn them that the Minbari are better left alone.
As part of my general preference to not assume galactic incompetence, I sometimes consider that it wasn't just any Minbari ship, but the one with the Grey Council aboard, who might be the most hidebound and detached of any of em, at least at that time, whereas maybe another ship would have more of a pragmatist in command.
Minbari suck.
"War is an argument determining not whom is right, but whom is left."
_Signs_ has probably the ultimate 'too stupid to count their toes, let alone achieve space flight' aliens: "Water adversely affects us. Let us raid a planet 70% covered in liquid water where it falls from the skies."
(yep, 14 minutes in)
I think they were actual demons and the water was blessed by a priest
Invade a planet covered with the stuff naked with no hazmat suit. Would be like if humans found a planet covered with sulfuric acid and decided to invade it naked. With all the water vapor in Earth's atmosphere their lungs should have melted just breathing. Let alone if a human gets injured and bleeds on them. Basically humans are like xenomorphs from Aliens to these aliens. Everything from our sweat to our blood to our urine is basically like sulfuric acid to them. I heard that originally the aliens were supposed to be demons instead of aliens but for some reason it was changed. Not sure if that makes it any better or worse though.
@@rommdan2716 Nah. The water was just the little girl constantly leaving her mostly untouched glasses of tapwater lying around everywhere. (My nephew does that...drinks a couple gulps of water and leaves them everywhere...)
Naked.
Lets invade the planet that is mostly covered in acid where acid randomly falls from the sky and acid just sometimes materializes on exposed objects at night... while naked.
Everything you state here about the aliens shown on screen is valid. They are even depicted as not intelligent enough to start such a thing.
But the conclusion should be that there is another actor not seen that is responsible for the events. Not that it is a stupid invasion.
We don't even know if it should be called an invasion, we just assume this because in every movie we've seen that was the reason for aliens attacking …
How about a technologically regressed generation ship that doesn’t know how to build new habitats but still has a giant stockpile of nukes to threaten a primitive planet with?
And is inexplicably compatible with Earth’s ecosystem.
Hey, it sounds interesting, but I don't think that I understand the idea correctly.
Because the Generation Ship would have to have habitats, I think...
And if the technology is on the ship, then they can probably figure it out during the long, long voyage, right?
As mentioned today: if you have examples all around you, it is a lot easier to learn new (or forgotten) technology.
Unless you meant something like "the civilization became feral again"... but then they wouldn't be using nukes...
Not sure if I understand what you mean^^
@@EliasMheart I'd go with them being around our tech level but enough to flee their home for some reason on a generation ship. Then going through "dark ages" stunting their progress.
@@paramutt5507 dark ages isn’t as severe as some people proclaim it to be.
Metallurgy for example, was more advanced in former territories of the western Roman Empire.
The tech that regressed are ones that require a lot of money and manpower to keep using. Like construction, no one is building aqueducts for cities with way smaller populations and that is why it’s lost. Whereas any Smith can forge metal tools and weapons and just keep doing these on a smaller scale.
@@EliasMheart I live in a house, doesn't mean I know how to build one.
@@joelkreissman6342 Yes, but this is a civilization, which would not share the same excuse
As for the 'capping out' of technology, I would think it's entirely plausible that an alien species may desire to interact with another similarly intelligent species (I.E. us) in order to possibly get a different perspective on things. It's possible an alien species may know all the underlying physics behind everything, but never thought to implement an idea such as crop rotation, as the concept never occurred to them.
If you're a vast alien empire, you may want to go around to visit as many other different intelligent species as you can manage in order to maximize the amount of different perspectives that you can obtain. In doing so, you also want to maintain a military presence near each species to A) Prevent them from rebelling (as you lose access to them) and B) Prevent other empires from accessing them (As they could benefit from their perspective similarly to how you have, giving them a leg-up against you). An obvious way to do this is to 'invade' in one way or another. Not the only way, certainly, but in many respects it's probably the most feasible option.
To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before, all to stimulate competition and innovation in a stagnating domestic economy
Would that make the reports of alien sightings the equivalents of a reported poacher at a galactic game resrve?
They're just sneaking in, bagging what they're prepared for, and getting tf out.
@@SirTorcharite that actually occored in anime rpg
That's a sensible motive, the problem with doing that with active invasion is that you've now created a species that opposes you and will be reluctant to share its insights. Also, if the civilization is pacifist or non-expansionist, you are contaminating their perspective by invading them. Furthermore, a society will retool itself to either pleasing its overlords or fighting back, not a good environment for scientific or artistic development. And if you invade too early, you'll permanently contaminate their perspective with yours. A planet who just mastered bronzeworking never discovers crop rotation after your invasion, because you didn't discover it and they're following your leads and cues.
If you're looking for different perspectives, the best way would just be to encourage their development from the shadows (doing things like shooting down asteroids and assassinating inventors of suicide-pact technologies) and when they contact you, tell them what you learned from them, the nature of your assistance, and to encourage them to go down their own path. Invasion would be counterproductive.
I was so hoping that Battle Los Angeles would get an honourable mention in the section for water resource extraction. It has, in my opinion, THE BEST early invasion scene of any movie out there.
That was a fun movie to watch.
That movie was great anywhere they weren't trying to explain the aliens or their motivations.
Just rewatched it. You also get the vibe that the invaders(Sharks) are basically poorly trained and equipped conscripts.
If you want a great alien invasion novel, read Footfall by Larry Niven.
trouble is, leaders don't always need a good reason to set off an invasion. hubris is a hell of a drug
24:30 I like the premise of both the Xenomorphs & the Hunters of the Jenkisverse for E.Ts that prey on Humans. For the former, Human bodies are hosts for a parasitoid, eusocial alien race while the latter involves carnivores who get immense stimulation from eating sentient flesh, upon which Humans are a notoriously dangerous delicacy.
A fun SiFi story based upon this would be one where the people of Earth suddenly discover a huge alien ship orbiting Jupiter sending smaller ships to explore all around the Sol System. The people of Earth frantically attempt to communicate but all attempts are ignored. Before long the aliens leave the Sol system and its flustered humans behind.
I had an idea long ago about aliens that just wipe out any intelligent life because they are afraid of it. Some astronomers discover multiple missiles traveling at a large fraction of the speed of light, but they can't do anything to stop it. The world's elites try to escape to underground shelters or escape to space, and all chaos ensues. In the end, the protagonist escapes to space on a small ship that can only support a small amount of people, and they watch the planet get turned into a molten lake of lava, totally uninhabitable to life, and now they are forced to drift through the depths of space for eternity.
I REMEMBER THAT!!!
That's not unlike the plot to Rama.
Another idea might be a first contact story involving a consortium of aliens coming to Earth to negotiate in good faith. Meanwhile we mess it up at every turn as nations and corporations all scramble to grab as big a slice of the pie they're offering as they can, eventually leading to the aliens to just give up in frustration and leave. And then we all start blaming each other for the fiasco! 😆
I think this episode may have the best First Rule of Warfare yet: "Never hand someone a loaded gun unless you are sure of whom they're going to aim it at."
In my opinion the "Burning of Kharak" scene in the Homeworld video game where the Tydan empire destroys the orbital platforms and then using a weapon that burns the planets atmosphere is a good way to destroy a planet, granted this was all because the people of Kharak just reached space flight.
Salvage corvettes: "Hostile frigates? Oh, free real estate, you mean."
kharak**; fren, its kharak, also taaidan**
lastly, the reason kharak was glassed, was because the kuushan redeveloped hyperspace technology, not because they achieved spaceflight, thereby violating the treaty enforced upon them when they were banished from hiigara in the first place after having their previous interstellar ftl empire crushed by a coalition led by the bentusi.
@@TS-jm7jm my mistake it's been a while since I played homeworld.
@@johngavin3180 it's been awhile for me aswell, but that was my first and for a good while, only 3d rts game, and i thoroughly enjoyed reading the lore that came with it
@@TS-jm7jm thank you for that. I was going to mention it, but I didn't feel like getting it out of the specifics. As it stands... I think I'm going to go replay home world for the 18th time.
Would be hilarious if an alien spying on us started communication because Isaac Arthur missed one detail on why somebody wanted to invade. Like the people who quoted a clasified tank manual in World of Tanks.
No, it would be a movie.
My biggest thought that you briefly touched upon, but never expanded on, is what if these aliens are basically Romans. An expanding empire that has a tradition of conquest would have a good source of motivation to conquer a planet. Whether that ends with a glassed planet or a conquered one depends on how the natives react. We also have to consider, as is demonstrated by the bugs that different Sapient species would have different reactions to things like being conquered.
How common is life in the milky way galaxy in order for conquering to become a tradition?
I can see something like that, the problem is that empires that depend on conquest and expansion to persist tend to devolve into civil war and rebellion if they don't have new targets. Why would a warlord spend 1,200 years conquering and invading primitives when they could gain even more power and glory FASTER by conquering another vassal or even their own overlord?
The only way I could see that being the case is if it turns out that space-faring civilizations are actually stupidly common in a cluster, to the point where there are (literally) at least hundreds of planetary lineages in a 100LY or so sphere. And you know what could give you a setup like that? An expansionist empire repeatedly falling to civil war in its region of space.
Was glad Isaac mentioned ‘Signs’. I consider that the most incompetent alien invasion since ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space’.
As I recall the Wraith were more like the Metroids in that they drain some kind of unknown biological essence from the cells of their prey, however in both cases we also find out that they can return said essence, and in the case of the Wraith essentially de-age and heal people, which makes no sense at all.
Galactus has much broader powers since he seemingly has the ability to consume all forms of energy (like when he drains all energy from Ultron with a mere glance), but for some reason only gains actual nourishment from the energy of living worlds, this is probably tied to what the Celestials need to nurture their eggs.
It is implied it is 'life force' as the victims of the Wraith age as they are being drained. Until they die of old age.
Dark Crystal
Dumb alien invaders immediately makes me think of Battlefield Earth. That is the dumbest movie with the dumbest aliens. And of course, it gets bought up in the video.
The movie was bad, loved the book though, if you read it I recommend giving it a go.
I remember watching that years ago. I wish I could un-see it and recover the braincells that decided enough is enough and jumped ship.
I think one of the most interesting reasons I've seen for aliens to invade was in Shin Ultraman. To be as spoiler light as possible:
it is discovered that mankind has a certain synchronicity with a plot relevant technology that makes them perfect candidates for being turned into powerful living weapons if exploited, ergo whoever can gain control over mankind would have access to a stockpile of weapons that could upset the intergalactic political landscape. Like really, only once this discovery is made, all sorts of aliens who previously did not care, suddenly take interest in humanity.
Human centric stuff like that always gets me hype.
Makes no sense
Even if that is true just get clones
@@LOL-zu1zr The Indominable Human spirit vs the cosmos is one of my favorite tropes.
@@Gaia_Gaistar yeah but human spirit counts for nothing when a random rock can erase its existence.
@@LOL-zu1zr My preferred type of fiction usually has humanity overcoming impossible odds. Check out GaoGaiGar if you're ever in the mood.
Any civilization that had already mastered interstellar flight and would find humans tasty would either do much better with becoming pig farmers, as they are supposedly the next best thing, or they would only require a few handfuls of skin flakes to be able to clone all the human meat their stomachs could ever hold. That's a good point.
Maybe they like free range.
Today's fact: The Himalayan Honey Bee, the largest of the honey bees, makes a hallucinogenic honey that tribes collect.
🐝 ❤️
yup, Red Honey, though I tihnk its just the flowers nearby not the specific breed of bee.
@@isaacarthurSFIA Opium honey when.
WANT! I must needs use in my Earl Grey for 'reasons.'
So these bees are really good at ... giving you a buzz?
Hmmm, might just be a tourist fable, kind of like "Spanish fly".
I wonder if anyone's tried to make mead from that honey.
I remember a book that had a race that went on a galactic conquest because it decided the other species were dirty and disgusting. So they cleansed themselves of bacteria and washed away the filth as they saw it. Was a great premise but I forget the name of the book/ author.
I haven't watched an Authur video in years, used to watch them all the time. Quite enjoyed it.
Well, there's the central plot of _LIfe, the Universe and Everything._ But that was more 'destroy the universe' than 'cleanse.'
The "butterflies in jackboots" of Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep" sounds right - they regarded other species (including humans) as vermin.
Sounds like Daleks. Fan fact: Daleks hatred for different species was artificially engineered as a strategy for survival, because their creator - Davros believed that peaceful cohabitation of two sentient species is impossible. It's actually a really interesting story.
In Final Fantasy IV, a higher tech species fleeing the destruction of their home planet headed for the Blue Planet but found it inhabited by primitive lifeforms. They debated whether establishing contact or just going into hibernation so that the inhabitants could technologically catch up with them, and decided on the latter. However, one of their number, Zemus, was a powerful psychic who disagreed and said they should just take the planet. They forced him to hibernate with them, though his will was so strong that he was able to stay conscious and wield a fraction of his powers across planets. Zemus ended up psychically controlling/corrupting the planet's lifeforms to disguise his alien invasion as a routine world conquering.
IOW, invasion in FF4 was basically a temper-tantrum from an immature alien who wanted to go all Stellaris.
One of the more realistic alien invasion scenarios I've seen was in Footfall, where the aliens mostly just take up orbit and hit everything of importance from there. Has a good psychological explanation, as well. Great read.
colony series is good too
1) In Dune they have greenhouses and they can supply planet with water. They even terraform it to be more hospitable.
2) Triffids aren't sapient and it isn't sure whether they are alien.
If I remember my Dune-isms, they were set on making Arrakis Earth-like, but decided not to so they could keep harvesting Spice. They didn't wanna give up the Golden Goose.
In the book I think it seems like Triffids are more likely to be alien I seem to remember. But yeah, they just floated down as spores, it wasn't a planned attack.
I'm not sure if the imperium knew it at the begining of the story, but too much water will kill the sandworms, won't it?
If I remember from the Book, the Triffids were implied to be some genetic experiment from the Soviet Union. They had already been cultivated widely around the world by the start of the novel. The meteor shower that rendered everyone blind was speculated to be some cold war weapons test/accidental firing.
27:15 tbh the Mass Effect Reapers, harvesting sapient races for their culture and technology comes kinda close to 'harvesting souls' territory without stepping into the Fantasy genre
Always down for more Isaac Arthur videos!
I like that Stargate sidesteps the entire question of why the Goa:uld want to invade & enslave Earth by just straight up admitting that they are insane.
The other threats in Stargate, the Ori & the Wraith want the peoples of the Milky Way for magical sapient energy which apparently humans are the tastiest!
Heck, the Replicators are pretty sensible in the fact they want all the resources & seemingly only attack the other factions out of "Oh you can hurt us, okay, so you're on the menu first". Most of the time a Replicator infestation was caught early, but the one time they had time to complete an infestation, they converted a whole planet!
The Asurans are another case of "we're insane".
7 billion people on one planet vs a few scatted tribes on scattered planets.
Not tasty, just shear numbers.
So it sounds like the movie Predator actually had a solid basis for an alien invasion.
You could also be a few dozen generations into your new colony, when the xenophobic owner's 5000 year patrol swings by and finds squatters.
I actually like Ender's games take. I don't hold the view that an insect like hive mind will automatically recognise tech or even think of better strategies to achieve their goals. Tech could emerge the same as other instinctual behaviours do, why can't they see their surroundings in simplistic terms if there is never selection pressure to force change?
If a bounch of bacteria start to build spaceships I'm sure we would notice
@@rommdan2716 Actually, this is also a plot point in the book Blindsight by Peter Watts: Being conscious is actually pretty rare, and most lifeforms in the universe are intelligent not not conscious (they essentially work on auto-pilot and self-organization, but are capable of great complexity like a termite-mound times a million)
So they invade because they considered our "communication" to be a form of warfare that makes recipients waste biochemical energy by figuring out abstract meanings and such...
In defence to the book, this "justification" is something presented by the Queen wile she is a prisoner in the hands of the human responsible for destroy her specie almost completely. Is perfectly plausible to imagine that she is lying. Perhaps the hive mind do knew what it/they where doing and decided to do it anyway, because "humans are disgusting". Miscalculate and lost.
So now what you do?
Germans who survived WW2 kept lying for the rest of their lives, usually. Saying they never imagined, could not have imagined, the plans of extermination Hitler Administration had. I totally understand the lie, and I would lie if I was in their shoes. Still: there was no secret. Nothing was object or more clear propaganda than the Final Solution. Generally speaking Totalitarian ideologies have that in their favour: they are in the habit of being obscenely honest about their worse intentions.
Just see how easily Black Supremacists nowadays say things like "white people don't matter". No one can (honestly) claim they are hiding anything important.
But they themselves have tech and analogous machines to our own. They also understand territory and don't take kindly to parts of their society being destroyed, even if no Queens are killed. Seems like a real stretch to think any intelligence could not recognize that their actions were, at the very least, hostile.
I always sort of took it as the first fleet, being only drones, were actually the ones that weren’t intelligent. They had tasks to do to prep the colony and just went about it as quickly as they could.
Intelligent life? Not my problem, get them out of the way so I can collect this thing full of fissionable materials. We’ll let the royalty figure it out when they get here.
Like, how far can a hive mind stretch anyway? Are thoughts faster than light?
Remember to always follow the first rule of intergalactic invasions: theres like a hundred first rule's of it.
The Scrin in Command and Conquer are wholly dependant on Tiberium. It appears that Tiberium spreads best on planets that have biospheres.
The obvious solution would be to just build O'Neill cylinders to farm Tiberium, but oh well.
Congrats on 700k, I really hope your channel will reach 1 million sometime soon!
I absolutely love how there's dozens of First Rules of Warfare.
I don't think it would be justification for invasion, but a good reason for secret alien tourism to Earth would be to witness total solar eclipses. It must be a pretty rare natural phenomenon.
But aliens could just move their spacecraft into an appropriate orbit and experience eclipses whenever they wanted, with any planetary body they liked.
Not really. It isn't something that is static here. It is only that way right now. Way back the moon was MUCH larger than the Sun to an Earthbound observer, and eventually there will be no moon orbiting Earth at all, IIRC. Tides were likely of the 1000' variety, and land tides were probably much higher than ocean tides are now.
We live such a short time that we think of things as static that very much aren't. Also, in the far future, the Sun will get VERY large on the horizon, perhaps the entire visible sky, actually, and if you think the Earth is warming now ...
Ehhhh, no. That can happen on ANY world in any other star system! No real use for a tourism place for it.
@@shcdemolisher No, it can't. not remotely. There are several factors that have to come together to have total solar eclipses that do what ours does, orbital inclination (likely), angular apparent size almost exactly the same from the planet (MUCH less likely).
As an example, I don't think there are any other planet/moon systems in our solar system that meet that apparent size requirement. Lunar eclipses, sure, in fact on Jupiter they happen every day for every moon, I would fully expect. Probably the other gas giants, too, and maybe others.
@@MrJdsenior Well I was referring to other solar systems, not the other planets in ours.
Great episode. Thanks for answering the last question I had. I was thinking the only reason someone would want to kill us is because they didn't want us turning into competition down the road.
In a TTRPG i'm running, an alien Duke found Earth on the edge of their empire and decided to invade, because an inhabitable planet, sold peicemeal to lesser nobles, was worth about a quintillion dollars. So he sent a quadrillion dollar fleet here to conquor us. He had to subjugate the locals to prevent them from hurting his clients.
And, of course, since they are already subjugated, you might as well use them as a cheap, nonvoluntary labor force to get the valuable minerals out of this system.
Humans just didnt take kindly to being "subjugated", and kept fighting until the Duke decided it wasnt worth the extra value of readily available slaves and subjects, and carpet bombed every city, then mopped up any survivors with his remaining troops.
Feel free to point out problems with that, but at least it's better than V saying "we need food and water", and forgetting all of the mining they could do and the fact that humans would gladly raise animals for them in exchange for money and fancy devices.
Which TTRPG?
@@herbertcrawford9634 running it in M&m
I feel like it's safer and cheaper for the Duke to use their own scanning equipment and have drones mine it out.
@@btrando1 that's what he's doing now.
inhabitable planets are probably not super-common, so any Duke who considers it to be within his fief most likely knew about it from Imperial Star Charts and his Fief Inventory Archive. If it's not in the fief, then it is frontier situation - he had to send forward recon/surveillance parties, then probably it will not be that expensive, as few nobles will want to live in the hole so far from anything important that it was only recently found. Nobles did not exactly flood the New World with the intention to live there - if some did, it is only to exploit it and to live closer to the capital using that money. So the premise of selling it to the nobles and high value of real estate there is dubious.
"You don't invade the planet of the lava people if your species has gasoline for blood" ... Welp, back to the drawing board! We'll get ya one day lava people... one day!
I want the entire list (a whole episode) on the #1 rules of warfare
From Murphy's Laws "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle not always to the strong, but that is the way to bet."
"The Equations of Invasions" - This should be the title of the modern day reboot of "The Art of War"
I always thought "Signs" was so funny that the aliens were deathly reactive to water 💦 yet then why come to earth at all? It's like "Mars Attacks" where country music kills the aliens. That's actually hilarious tho 😆
Speaking of the MCU, if I remember correctly, the entire universe only had about a trillion people (a character said Thanos was killing half a trillion people). That is rather odd.
Comic book authors tend to have an even worse sense of scale than scifi authors :)
The aliens from omicron persei 8 from futurama have actually have a pretty decent idea on why earth maybe invaded by aliens for something that is certainly unique to earth, that being our entertainment. In the show the season finale of what is essentially ally mcbeal wasnt broadcasted 1000 years ago due to a satellite malfunction they invade to see what happened. Deeper thought on the issue this could potentially be an actual thing. Something that is going to be unique to any world filled with intelligent species is going to be the culture and potentially the entertainment they enjoy. If your an ancient nigh immortal post scarcity alien species that has been around for a few million years there is a reasonable chance it could get quite boring if they have such a concept. Novelty may end up being the thing they seek for the most.
The backstory of Babylon 5 had a similar deal with the Centauri. They showed up as soon as we began settling other planets within our solar system as a benchmark for contact. The reason for this was that they had observed our artwork and heard our music for centuries. As a result, it ended up with the trade of interstellar travel in exchange for sculptures, paintings, and even opera.
I've always enjoyed "The first rule of warfare" bit. I was hoping you would employ it once or twice in this episode. I didn't leave disappointed.
I think I've been watching your channel since your first episodes. Back then it was really hard to understand you but the content was well worth the effort. You had mentioned that you had a speech impediment and that we should turn on closed captioning to help. That really did help. But man. You are clear as day now. I don't think it is just that I've gotten used to it either. I imagine your audio setup is a bit better now... But really I think your speech therapy has done wonders. You put in the effort and the results are absolutely stunning. Good job.
In a weird coincidence, I just finished listening to the audiobook of The Day of the Triffid, and it was unironically a masterpiece of apocalyptic science fiction, even if the science itself is a bit hazy at times.
With regard to Dune, the reason they do not terraform Dune is an economic and political one, not a technological one.
Sandworms are colossal, worm-like creatures that live on the desert planet Arrakis. The sandworms' larvae produce a drug called "melange" (known colloquially as "the spice"), the most essential and valuable commodity in the universe because it makes safe and accurate interstellar travel possible.
Reducing the amount of deserts would reduce the supply of spice directly, so they stopped the terraforming of Dune early on, and have since made it into a specialized mining colony. Additionally, large scale engineering projects attract the worms because of the amount of noise they make, and they do not want to kill them because they produce spice, so creating massive resevoirs is simply too dangerous, both in the making, and the potential conflict with the worms.
This is by far the best channel I've ever found on UA-cam. Incredibly well made, informative, and inspiring. Each episode is like a college lecture on futurism, physics, engineering, philosophy, or astronomy. It's like there's a video on every science related topic I've ever thought about, in extensive detail. Such a breathe of fresh air in the age of doomer-ism as well.
Thanks for making these videos Isaac and keep up the great work.
Don't forget, you also get a great lesson in the first rule of warfare
Thank you for all the work you do. You have really opened my mind to the various concepts of the universe.
1:18 Tsk tsk, how do they always forget.. it's literally the first rule of warfare!
As for why would civilization sufficiently advanced to invade planed half galaxy away, not only do it, but be also bad enough at it for locals to successfully fight them back, one possible explanation is they do it for entertainment. They purposely limit their means and methods of fighting, and then seek to win playing by those limitations, because it's more engaging and fun than to just CHIM entire planet away.
When it comes to motives, it wouldn't be beyond the scope of an interstellar empire to do so under the premise that they are doing it for our own good, emphasizing that their opponents on the galactic stage would do far worse. This is admittedly taking a page out of a lengthy history we have as a species, going back to the days of King Cyrus, where regional and global powers alike habitually jockey for influence over their neighbours even in the presence of a diplomatic body like the United Nations.
After all, that's the first rule of warfare: The enemy can't bring friends to fight you if those friends are in your pocket.
I do not disagree with your rules of warfare, but I think it's cheeky to keeping listing them as #1. 😄😄
Awesome channel with awesome content and great quality as always say
Well what were these alien empires expecting, they gave command of the armies of billions to a single disconnected writer!
Another welcome episode. I look forward to watching.
Thanks.
You're very welcome, enjoy!
24:00 I love that you bring up that.
Look up the reasoning behind the world of the manga “The Promised Neverland”
The only resource can think of that Earth has in abundance that other bodies lack is phosphorus, although having the technology to invade Earth for it implies also having the technology to manufacture it through nuclear alchemy, removing the need for invasion
I did enjoy this episode, but one thing bothers me now. The displayed logic of an alien invasion being unreasonable seems absolutely fine. If you apply a similar method of proof to the situation on Earth it would look like that an invasion of one country by another one is pretty unreasonable and still that happens time and again. Disturbing...
Made me think of 'Footfall' by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
Was very nearly the book of the month today :)
That was the first book I thought of too! When the book came out I remember reading an interview with Larry Niven where he said the biggest challenge he and Jerry Pournelle had when writing was coming up with a plausible reason for an alien alien invasion since most examples fall apart with just a little bit of scrutiny.
@@bbartky The story reasoning was fairly decent i thought, it was of course a bit of it's time but even so better than most invasion stories i can remember
I adore your mind, and the lines of your thoughts.
And I also like when you're a bit more playful and humorous in your delivery in topics like this :)
I love your narration dude. Lovely work
My favorite living author (Robert Heinlein being my all around favorite) is David Weber. Weber's most famous books are about a future space naval officer named Honor Harington. My least favorite of his novels,is Out of the Dark which is about an alien invasion of present day Earth. The book deals with various groups of humans fighting against the invaders after most of Earth's military forces have been destroyed. My problem with the book concerns the twist ending which I don't want to spoil in case anyone wants to read the book. So SPOILERS AHEAD:
*************************************
One of the characters, Mircea Basarab, is a Romanian man fighting to protect his local population. He and his men are amazingly successful which is explained at the end of the book when that Romanian is revealed to be Count Dracula. Yes, that Count Dracula. He and his "men" possess all or nearly all of the traditional vampire powers including the ability to transform into mist. Additionally, only new vampires are vulnerable to sunlight. At the end of the book, the aliens pull out their forces intending to just exterminate the human race from orbit. But the vampires clung to the outside of the alien ships as they left the planet whereupon they took control of the alien armada. The very end of the book is a postscript explaining that the still humans and vampires then use the armada to conquer the empire that sent it to Earth creating the Terran Empire. He wrote a sequel called Out of the Light that I haven't read yet but which I will probably read once I finish rereading the Honor Harrington series for 6th time. But i had to comment about this book as it featured both alien invasion and vampires.
You should definitely try Jack Campbell's lost fleet series, I think he's done the most amazing job of explaining battles in space.
That spoiler is actually good than a problem, it is a valid reason why humanity actually wins. 😄
@@Fridaey13txhOktober For some definitions of valid anyway. It was sort of the equivalent of reading a hard science fiction novel only to have Glinda the Good Witch appear and defeat the villains. I mean talk about a deus ex machina!!!
@@Fridaey13txhOktober I've read and enjoyed that series. I haven't seen any new books in that series in a while. I will have to see if John G. Henry (Jack Campbell is a pen name) has written anything new recently.
I utterly despise Out of the dark. An alien vietnam war would have been good, magic space vampires solve everything is not.
I did always think the most plausible valuable resource unique to Earth (especially one that makes it worth not just sterilizing the planet) would be the genetic material of it's inhabitants. It might be really hard to recreate billions of years of evolution/natural selection especially with life that is presumably a distinct lineage from some alien life, as a pool of possible diversity for genetic engineering. Kind of like of rainforests of today can be sources of unique molecules for antibiotics or drugs. Cost of invasion would be much less than the computation needed to brute force a similar amount of complexity.
Edit: sort of addressed around 22:00
You could just build a similation for that
Wouldn't quantum computing make that calculation much easier?
Though a peaceful solution could be even cheaper
@@rommdan2716 yeah but it might be cheaper to study the real thing with a small probe (by the aliens standards) than dedicate valuable computation to simulate it.
Simulation, especially of complex physical phenomena, may never become so 'easy' to simulate, and therefore be expensive
@@byaafacehead Then why not buying it?
Sci Fi Sundays!!! I love your videos! Thank you from North Texas!!! 😊
GREAT content as always
Alternate History Hub covered a book series where a boots on the ground alien invasion actually was well thought out in a plausible way. The Worldwar series By Harry Turtledove. Where an alien invasion by a species calling themselves 'The Race' happens during World War 2 and the books chronicle the ups and downs of the struggles between humanity and the race through the 1940s up until the 80s.
Technologically. The Aliens are only as advanced as human beings circa the early 2000s with the exception of hypersleep and FTL technology. Which puts them on somewhat equal military footing with humanity. Their motivation is religious and political, seeing conquering earth the the same way The Spaniards in conquering the new world. They want to convert humanity for glory of the empire and to save the souls of their human conquests. And humanity is the first species they've encountered that is even approximately on their technological level, since the only other two worlds they've encountered that have sentient life were only in the medieval or stone age, and they only initiate the attack because they're worried that if they leave to return to the homeworld with their findings and bring back reinforcements they'll return to find humanity has technologically caught up or exceeded them.
It's not that well written a book. But a good amount of thought went into the plausibility of worldbuilding for the alien invaders.
I do wish you would do a compilation video on all of your #1 rule of warfare.
I remember a platoon sgt saying "there is only one #1 rule of warfare, disregard all other rules of warfare. Just win."
There's only 1 rule of warfare, but man does it have a lot going on.
Congrats on 700k subs, outstanding.
You kind of came close with the aliens thinking they were eating souls, but did you consider then coming for religious reasons?
Maybe they believe that any other religion is an affront to their 'one true god',, and they have the power and tech to make an issue of it.
Most of these are the reasons I think the "dark forest" concept is absurd. There really is no good reason for another species to attack another one on a galactic/universe scale. There are enough resources out there and if you have the ability to get to another planet then you likely have the tech to gather far more than you could use without risking conflict on an inhabited world. You also risk retaliation if you do so from a larger force, be it the one you attack OR a "peacekeeper" type civilization older than your own.
The whole point of the dark forest is that any sufficiently advanced civilization, even one vastly inferior in technology to you, has the potential to completely eradicate you from existence, communications take many years, and there is no effective way to determine whether or not that civilization will be aggressive or not. You eliminate them because it is the safest option, and the first strike is not something you give your enemy, that's the first rule of warfare after all.
When you twist physics to allow for ftl travel, dark forest falls apart because all of those previous points are no longer true.
Check out the Kurzgesagt video on it, it makes a lot more sense then just killing civs because.
@@NotNitehawk I've already heard/read more than enough to know what the "dark forest" is and that its beyond stupid, only primitive tribalistic apes lacking education or logical capacity would ever think its a reasonable notion. Those would also not be the ones who are capable of traveling, or even attacking, another world. No advanced species, especially capable of interstellar travel, has any reason to attack/invade another inhabited world. There are NO good reasons, only excuses that humans make because we have been fighting over nonsense for eons and haven't gotten to the point where most understand the vastness universe.
The first rule of warfare is to avoid war if at all possible, that includes not risking pissing off someone you don't understand who could potentially destroy you easily, and NOT striking first just because you are trigger happy cowards.
Very good video. How many different first rules of warfare do you have though?
The first rule of warfare, grab a drink and a snack