So Hypothetically, Aliens are Invading the Earth...

[MegaRock35]

...and let's assume for some reason we can win. Would it be right to just kill all the aliens? Even ones that are seemingly harmless/surrendering (there's a communication barrier, so there's no sure fire way to tell)? Should we take prisoners? If we did, would the POWs have "human" rights? Would the "rules" of war go right out the window?

I have a stance on all this, but I wanted to see what others think first.

[Forte]

We must take all of their noncombatant troops and make them teach us their technology. Then we benefit from it and fly it out to their planet. And then we invade them. And then we have control of two planets. We win like four times, right there.

[lern]

We must take all of their noncombatant troops and make them teach us their technology. Then we benefit from it and fly it out to their planet. And then we invade them. And then we have control of two planets. We win like four times, right there.

We teach them our language and they teach us theirs and we use the technology first, slowly turning them into part of humanity's society and communicating with their home planet.

Oh, also, if it wasn't terribly obvious, Rule 34 had already kicked in. So interspecies mingling are quite accepted. Hybrids everywhere.

Also rule 46. Because everyone remembers 34 but no one remembers 46.

[Death Dark]

War... war never changes.

There are too many factor left untold.  I'll assume that by invade you mean full assault.

Let's consider how the aliens look.  If they are hideous monsters, they'll all be killed.  If they're attractive in a human sense, well, humans tend to like their instinctive pleasures.

It also depends on how heavy the attack is, and how much of their forces are military.  Further, if we shot first, we SHOULD let them surrender.

However, if something could make it to earth from one of the other inhabitable planets, we're pretty much their bitch.  Intragalactic travel isn't easy.

[Super Ultra Shroom]

We should take prisoners, but only to gauge what they are capable of, cause if we catch one and he phones home, I don't think we would want to capture any more.

The rules of war would only apply if they seemed to go by a similar code, but just killing children and stuff like that isn't cool.

And if so, POWs would have the same rights that any other POW would have.

[MegaRock35]

We must take all of their noncombatant troops and make them teach us their technology. Then we benefit from it and fly it out to their planet. And then we invade them. And then we have control of two planets. We win like four times, right there.

Considering that the our first priority would probably be to blow up any air/ground/sea vehicles, I doubt we'd have any noncombatant troops left. And, of course, chances are the soldiers would know very little beyond the basics of how their weapons work.

We teach them our language and they teach us theirs and we use the technology first, slowly turning them into part of humanity's society and communicating with their home planet.

The language would probably take a while, seeing as how it would probably be drastically different than any language we have on Earth. Them becoming part of society would be inevitable, should we choose to let them live. In a few generations, they'd be just as much Earth Natives as we are.

Oh, also, if it wasn't terribly obvious, Rule 34 had already kicked in. So interspecies mingling are quite accepted. Hybrids everywhere.

But of course. Though we won't see any hybrids unless the aliens have the same number chromosomes as us, and they wouldn't be able to breed.

War... war never changes.

There are too many factor left untold.  I'll assume that by invade you mean full assault.

Even if they didn't go full assault, we'd probably still be screwed. That is, unless they horribly underestimate us, but when you want to take any piece of territory from your enemies, you don't take such a risk.

Let's consider how the aliens look.  If they are hideous monsters, they'll all be killed.  If they're attractive in a human sense, well, humans tend to like their instinctive pleasures.

Sadly true.

It also depends on how heavy the attack is, and how much of their forces are military.  Further, if we shot first, we SHOULD let them surrender.

I'd like to hope that if aliens showed up in the skies one day, we wouldn't be stupid enough to shoot them before determining whether they're friendlies or hostiles. But...

However, if something could make it to earth from one of the other inhabitable planets, we're pretty much their bitch.  Intragalactic travel isn't easy.

Yeah. In a realistic scenario, the best we can hope for is that they don't plan on killing us all.

We should take prisoners, but only to gauge what they are capable of, cause if we catch one and he phones home, I don't think we would want to capture any more.

We'd probably strip 'em buck-naked, so that shouldn't be a problem unless they're too strange looking to tell where their gear ends and their bodies begin or they have some form of natural communication.

The rules of war would only apply if they seemed to go by a similar code, but just killing children and stuff like that isn't cool.

And if so, POWs would have the same rights that any other POW would have.

Yeah, that isn't cool, but you're working under the assumption that their society's morals match up to ours. There's also the fact that the ones doing the fighting usually aren't the ones deciding how they operate, which I'll touch on more in a second.


So this all spawned from when I watched Battle: LA, and I was disgusted to see how they operated on a live POW without anyone so much as considering whether it's right to torture another sentient being. And really, it got me thinking. I noticed that unless we're the ones doing the invading, fiction never shows any signs of "humanity," for lack of a better word, in the aliens. I couldn't help but wonder why no one else seemed to consider the aliens point-of-view.

In real life conflicts, there's never any clear cut good side and bad side. Take WWII, for example. While I and most other people are inclined to agree that Hitler was a great example of a bad guy, Germany itself was not bad. In fact, many of the Germans fighting the war went through just as much hell as everybody else, and quite a few of them didn't even like the Nazis. They weren't fighting because they agreed with the cause, they were fighting because they had to. Now consider the aliens: the nearest star system to us is over 4 light years away. It would take use 60,000 years to get there at our current level of technology. Even if the aliens are advanced enough to get here from outside our solar system, it probably wouldn't be in just one generation (unless they have freakishly long life spans). That means the invading force would likely have been born into the military; they have no choice in the matter. They're not choosing to take the Earth, they're being forced into it. Would it really be right to commit genocide because of what their ancestors made them do?

Ultimately, I say that just because they're an invading force, they shouldn't be treated like monster. It's very possible that none of them even want to be doing this, and we shouldn't assume that they do. Now, I'm not saying that we shouldn't fight back; it's wartime, after all, so there will be casualties. But if genocide isn't the only way, then it shouldn't be the first thing we try.

[Death Dark]

I noticed that unless we're the ones doing the invading, fiction never shows any signs of "humanity," for lack of a better word, in the aliens.

WRONG!

District 9 is one example.

[lern]

I noticed that unless we're the ones doing the invading, fiction never shows any signs of "humanity," for lack of a better word, in the aliens.

WRONG!

District 9 is one example.

oh cool. is that movie any good at all?

[MegaRock35]

WRONG!

District 9 is one example.

I was about to point out that I meant invading aliens, but then I noticed that I just said aliens. My mistake.

oh cool. is that movie any good at all?

Yes.

[Sepuku.exe]

I just finished reading the Ender's Saga. Murder the fuck out of the invading species, find another one and advance them to your level of technology and revive the species that you murdered the fuck out of.

[Super Ultra Shroom]

Yes. Best book series EVER

[MegaRock35]

That's good to hear. I guess I made the right choice by ordering Ender's Game afterall.[/offtopic]