How would society react to first contact with extraterrestrials?

[o-Serin-o]

Think about it. Would people be willing to embrace it, or would they rather cause havoc and mass disturbances?

Personally, I think there would be a spike in space exploration funding and military spending.


What do you guys think?

 

[Pikaville]

Depending on where they first landed it could go well or very wrong.

I think generally though, we could embrace it.

 

[SharkAttack]

At first I think people would be stunned or even a little bit terrified. It would be different to all of a sudden see an alien out of nowhere. If the Alien is threatened by the humans he alien might cower in fear, attack, or be confident in friendly. The thing is would humans be able to communicate with him/her/it? How different would the language and writing styles be of the alien compared to the the cultural spot where it lands? There are a lot of what if's to this scenario.

I agree with o-Serin-o though. Funding would definately increase with the discovery of the alien. Depending on how much information humans can collect from the alien the funding would either be a waste or possibly bring some success.

 

[Mota]

inb4area51alreadymetaliens

Mix of fear and excitement I'd say. Increase debate in the general populace about life on earth and other planets, religious stuff, how the universe began. It would be pretty chill one would hope, unless the aliens are packing massive heat we should be fine.

Maybe extend some friendship their way before eventually taking advantage and fleecing them of all their useful information, technology and resources!

I would hate to be the first alien to be captured by humans, experimentation and all.

 

[Teran]

I think we'd be angry that they didn't believe in God and didn't have a First Amendment so we'd fire all our nukes at them only to be laser ***** into oblivion.

Sometimes I wonder whether we haven't made contact because there's nobody there/just haven't crossed paths or they know about us and just don't want to make contact because we can't even maintain peace on our own planet.

Like really if we can't maintain any sort of cooperation within our own species and still have stupid **** like racism and homophobia, how on earth are we going to get along with aliens?

 

[Peeze]

We'll treat them like the aliens we have now and require visa's strict monitoring of their activities and make them feel unwanted until they eventually leave.

 

[Teran]

I wonder if the aliens have studied our history. It'd be hilarious if as a big troll they rounded up all the white people and made them slaves.

 

[Claire Diviner]

If history has taught us anything, is that the human race is naturally fearful of anything that isn't "normal", and will fight aggresively against what they don't understand. That being said, I can imagine the world powers banding together to wage (what could potentially be an impossible-to-win) war against said extraterrestrials. Assuming we win, it will be business as usual - waging war amongst ourselves... and the cycle of life goes on.

 

[Teran]

I think we'd finally get along together fine if we stole some alien technology and went around enslaving different species across the galaxy.

 

[Claire Diviner]

I think we'd finally get along together fine if we stole some alien technology and went around enslaving different species across the galaxy.

And soon, humans will war with one another over planetary territory, rather than continental territory. Humans - and other species, for that matter - are never satisfied with what they have, and the fact we'd bring extraterrestrials to the mix in said wars, it'd be like something seen in sci-fi movies, etc..

 

[Dragoon Fighter]

How many of you are familiar with the original HG wells War of the Worlds radio broad casting? (VERY RELEVANT TO TOPIC.)

 

[Claire Diviner]

How many of you are familiar with the original HG wells War of the Worlds radio broad casting? (VERY RELEVANT TO TOPIC.)

Weren't people actually panicking in real life, because they thought it was a real news report of aliens invading Earth, or am I thinking of something else?

 

[SharkAttack]

Weren't people actually panicking in real life, because they thought it was a real news report of aliens invading Earth, or am I thinking of something else?

Yes, they were. Some humans even went as far as to commit suicide because they thought the world really was coming to an end.

 

[finalark]

I think we'd be angry that they didn't believe in God and didn't have a First Amendment so we'd fire all our nukes at them only to be laser ***** into oblivion.

Sometimes I wonder whether we haven't made contact because there's nobody there/just haven't crossed paths or they know about us and just don't want to make contact because we can't even maintain peace on our own planet.

Like really if we can't maintain any sort of cooperation within our own species and still have stupid **** like racism and homophobia, how on earth are we going to get along with aliens?

Teran pretty much summed up my thoughts. How in the hell are we supposed to be okay with green, slimy, tentacle fish people if a number of us aren't even okay with people with a darker/lighter shade of skin?

Plus we would probably also have those religious nuts who rally together and violently attack the aliens convinced that they're Satan's demons who have come to **** our babies and convert people to Islam.

 

[Jane]

the day we finally make contact with alien life will probably be the most important day in human history.

i hope i'm alive for it. although it will be scary as ****.

 

[jiovanni007]

The alien would have its home ***** of its resources and tossed into chaos, kinda like Africa. That or we'll be colonized by the aliens like in Battle: LA

 

[Fuelbi]

Weren't people actually panicking in real life, because they thought it was a real news report of aliens invading Earth, or am I thinking of something else?

I think they were panicking not because aliens were destroying the world but more like they thought Russians or Germans were invading us because this was all while WWII was taking place... or something like that.

 

[GreenKirby]

Aliens would have their home planet ****.

Humans do it to themselves to this day. You think they won't jump at the chance to screw someone else for a planet's worth of reosources?

 

[Dragoon Fighter]

Weren't people actually panicking in real life, because they thought it was a real news report of aliens invading Earth, or am I thinking of something else?

Yep, you are correct.

 

[Life]

Unless somebody in the universe manages faster-than-light travel and communications, even if aliens exist (which is reasonable) we'll likely die out before we ever meet them.

Seriously, think about it. Alpha Centauri (that's what it's called, right?) is something like four light-years away from Earth. If we can accelerate a ship to one-tenth the speed of light (which is still roughly 30,000,000 m/s -- a RIDICULOUS speed), it'll still take forty years to get there. An entire generation will have passed by the time said ship makes it and another four years after that before we hear about it. You also have to figure out how to power a ship for that period of time... find a good place to land the thing... worry about getting people back... find a way to communicate on a four-year lag... get enough people together willing to leave the planet FOREVER (likely leaving their friends and families behind)... basically, resolve a total logistic nightmare. And even then that's just Alpha Centauri, the closest star to our solar system. There's likely not even life there. And even if we detect life somewhere, we have to get there before they develop nukes and potentially wipe themselves out like we always seem to be about to do.

"But what if they come to us?" They'll face the same problems.

tl;dr unless we find a feasible way to both travel and communicate at speeds MUCH faster than light, or an alien civilization does, we won't make contact with extraterrestrial life unless there's some hiding in our solar system we just haven't found yet.

I don't, however, agree with the aliens-avoid-us-because-we're-barbaric explanation. Most of us are generally reasonable people (from our perspective--we have no clue about extraterrestrial cultures, after all) that I'm sure they could share a few pro-tips with to fix some of our biggest problems.

 

[Zajice]

It all depends on how the aliens act when we first contact them.

 

[ryuu seika]

I doubt it. Humans are an overly warlike species.
Chances are they'd have about 3 seconds to prove themselves before we nuked them.

I'm hoping the first aliens we meet nuke us first...

 

[Teran]

Unless somebody in the universe manages faster-than-light travel and communications, even if aliens exist (which is reasonable) we'll likely die out before we ever meet them.

Seriously, think about it. Alpha Centauri (that's what it's called, right?) is something like four light-years away from Earth. If we can accelerate a ship to one-tenth the speed of light (which is still roughly 30,000,000 m/s -- a RIDICULOUS speed), it'll still take forty years to get there. An entire generation will have passed by the time said ship makes it and another four years after that before we hear about it. You also have to figure out how to power a ship for that period of time... find a good place to land the thing... worry about getting people back... find a way to communicate on a four-year lag... get enough people together willing to leave the planet FOREVER (likely leaving their friends and families behind)... basically, resolve a total logistic nightmare. And even then that's just Alpha Centauri, the closest star to our solar system. There's likely not even life there. And even if we detect life somewhere, we have to get there before they develop nukes and potentially wipe themselves out like we always seem to be about to do.

"But what if they come to us?" They'll face the same problems.

tl;dr unless we find a feasible way to both travel and communicate at speeds MUCH faster than light, or an alien civilization does, we won't make contact with extraterrestrial life unless there's some hiding in our solar system we just haven't found yet.

I don't, however, agree with the aliens-avoid-us-because-we're-barbaric explanation. Most of us are generally reasonable people (from our perspective--we have no clue about extraterrestrial cultures, after all) that I'm sure they could share a few pro-tips with to fix some of our biggest problems.

Oh come on where's your faith!

Gotta believe we'll think of something. Somehow humans find a way to push the limits and cross every boundary they can think of.

Probably not in our lifetime anyway so then again who cares lol.

 

[Life]

Call me a pessimist but I think the world's ending before we get that stuff sorted out Teran. Theoretically possible? Sure, why not? Take a one-kilogram object and apply three hundred million newtons of force for a full second. The problem comes first that ships will be more massive, second, that we don't currently have a way to apply 300MN to pretty much anything, and third, keeping that force there for the full second. (And having enough space so you don't run into things, and air resistance, and--)

Theoretically, FTLT isn't that difficult. It's just a matter of getting enough force for a long enough period of time. It's that part that's the hangup. And there's still the communication half to consider.

tl;dr Possible, but humanity won't live long enough to get the resources and knowledge to pull it off.

 

[Teran]

Man you know if there's one thing that's sure about science, it's that our actual understanding of things historically been shockingly inadequate.

Every day a new theory replaces an old established one, and yes there are some established laws, but heh I like to think that we're not actually anywhere near as advanced or knowledgeable as we think we are.

But yeah I do agree that we'll probably blow each other to **** before becoming spacefarers.

 

[Fuelbi]

I agree with Hawking's (was it him?) opinion on alien life in that if they see us and they're advanced, they'd do exactly what Columbus did to the Natives of the Americas. Sure we'd probably be friendly towards them (or nuke the **** out of them, who knows), but they'd end up pillaging our planet for resources.

 

[Life]

I actually don't think it'll be nukes. We're all afraid to use nukes (other than Iran-types, I'm not even gonna get into THAT) because we know it could potentially spiral into the end of the world.

I'm thinking more like some sort of superdisease (ie. a bioweapon--as in, not swine flu/AIDS/SARS/MRSA/etc--as in, something we'll likely not get much warning for) or possibly some sort of food problem (genetically modified corn--there's one specific genetic modification that... eh, too lazy. I can explain this one if you want, but suffice to say it gets disturbing).

 

[Kanelol]

There are some psychonauts who claim they've already made contact with entities not originating from this terrestrial realm, and most seem relatively calm and collected while recounting it, if appropriately mystified. Whether or not this is delusion or legitimate religious experience, I think it's a good indicator of what (some) people's reactions would be. Then again, these aforementioned psychonauts aren't necessarily world-renowned for being grounded, close-minded individuals.

Spoiler

http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=76614

Society as a whole is much too volatile to be easily predictable. These are a few things that are guaranteed: Religious/Political upheaval, FOX news claiming war of the worlds, and a few disgustingly misguided nerds inadvertently alienating these aliens.

Also, Fermi Paradox

 

[finalark]

^ Getting high =/= making first contact.

 

[Zero Beat]

What? A good topic?

It's really hard to even place a purpose or motive on intelligent life outside our own visiting us just to say hi. The problem with even discussing this is how much of the conversation in relation to the aliens will be humanized. (Ethnocentrism to some extent)

It's more likely they'd come to mine our planet. And if they indeed have the technology to travel at FTL speeds, we're pretty much done. The only thing that could be in our favor is that we're used to the Earth's gravity and its "defenses."(bacteria, viruses)

The amount of energy required to travel at light speed is so beyond us at this point in time and if indeed another species showed up, they'd literally have us by the balls.

How would society react to first contact with extraterrestrials?
I personally would have the natural instinct of fear(it's instinctual to fear the unknown) coupled with a lot of excitement. I'd probably shed some tears, whether they're here to overthrow us or not. It'd be such a glorious moment...

Note: At least by human standards, we're the crown jewel of the Sol system. Our planet harbors water and life. The next best thing would be Jupiter's moon, Europa and its theorized liquid ocean under a 4 kilometer shell of ice. And next in line perhaps in the future, Saturn's moon, Triton.

Resource wise, we're a pretty big target.

 

[N.A.G.A.C.E]

^your assuming the resources we find valuable is the same that they would find valuable.

Also maybe they come from a peaceful world were they have no concept of war, if thats the case we might be able to take them.

Now how would people react: well differently depending what u believe in. Like the religious nuts (not everyone who believe in god is a nut i am talking about the real over doing it super crazy ones) they idk might just go crazy with the proof that we are not alone. Almost everyone would be scared to some degree i mean our whole way of life and our thoughts on the universe could/would change. I just hope that the people with the power to fight back hold off till there is a reason, i also hope the mobs stay calm and dont riot or something. (i wonder how big a change this would be on day to day life i bet at first things would not change much. you know a whole well life goes on mentality)

 

[Teran]

I agree with Hawking's (was it him?) opinion on alien life in that if they see us and they're advanced, they'd do exactly what Columbus did to the Natives of the Americas. Sure we'd probably be friendly towards them (or nuke the **** out of them, who knows), but they'd end up pillaging our planet for resources.

Yeah but Hawking was thing from a human point of view.

These would be completely different life forms, so their train of thought would most likely vastly differ. It'd be unpredictable, but there's just as much of a chance as them being very docile as there is them being violent and greedy.

Mindsets like Hawking's are exactly why we wouldn't get along even if they were docile.

 

[Kanelol]

^ Getting high =/= making first contact.

Whether or not this is delusion or legitimate religious experience, I think it's a good indicator of what (some) people's reactions would be. Then again, these aforementioned psychonauts aren't necessarily world-renowned for being grounded, close-minded individuals.

Tbqh, an anthropologist or psychologist or philosophe would be more qualified to make a theoretical statement about first contact and the human races reactions than Hawking

 

[Pikaville]

If aliens with far advanced technology did land looking for resources, why wouldn't we help them out?

I mean in exchange for some of their secrets I'm sure most would be willing to give them what they needed.

Unless of course what they needed was beyond what we could manage.

 

[jiovanni007]

"defenses."(bacteria, viruses)

Why do people actually believe H.G. Wells on this? Even we're on the search for microbes on other planets so if some aliens can travel around or above light speed, then I'm pretty sure they know all about our microbes.

 

[Teran]

No they don't know about our microbes until they get down on Earth and study them.

Plus something like the bacteria in Yakult could completely annihilate them LOL

A whole new meaning to probiotic

 

[Fuelbi]

So btw, isn't the world trying to do a big thing with peace or something like that with different entities like the UN promoting it? Wouldn't that mean that we'd have some sense to not nuke (or w/e) the **** out of the aliens?

 

[Teran]

Yeah because that's working so well with the west setting up to bumrush the Middle East and guzzle their oil supply.

 

[jiovanni007]

No they don't know about our microbes until they get down on Earth and study them.

Yeah beacuse beings capable of faster than light speed travel surely can't study our planet without us knowing. That plus of course they would come to a planet that probably has a different atmosphere and wouldn't have protective suits.

I'm sure if they have life elsewhere, they also have bacteria (or a similar style of lifeform) elsewhere as well. I just find it hard to believe that an advanced species would be ignorant of microscopic organisms on another planet

 

[Zero Beat]

Why do people actually believe H.G. Wells on this? Even we're on the search for microbes on other planets so if some aliens can travel around or above light speed, then I'm pretty sure they know all about our microbes.

"We're on the search for microbes on other planets." Boy that sure sounds fantastic and pro-active on our part doesn't it? What does that even mean? They're microbes, spectrographs are not made to pick up microscopic bacteria. We found them on earth and named them extremophiles, for their ability to survive in extreme conditions(unbearable cold, places deprived of water, and obviously hot places). Thus, we assume that this may lead to extraterrestrial life outside our own planet once we're able to actually land on a planet(i.e. mars, which that in itself is extremely complicated).

I don't know who H.G. Wells is, but it makes sense. What does light speed have to do with researching extremophiles? You think the aliens will have a "tele-microscope?" Also, no offense but spare me the astrobio lecture, I'm well versed in it. I do admit that I forgot to mention that my idea of a certain type of alien in my explanation was to be organic, which is why I made the biology reference. If you break down the chemistry of a virus, it's still going to be made of the same elements you find in the periodic table. Just because they may be of alien origin, it doesn't mean they're magical and somehow dodge being made of elements, and elements interact...Mix and match. Unless the state of which they're made of comes from newer super/hyper novae whose chemistry is unknown to us. A likely event that may go either way.

And I don't know N.A.G.A.C.E, water, the apparent determining factor in life, developed us pretty damn far. My assumption seems pretty safe based on empirical knowledge.