How would the discovery of aliens devastate everything?

The human species currently has enough issues on Earth, and any alien visitation will just add to the confusion! Check out today's spectacular new narrative to see why we NEVER want to discover aliens! 👹😖😖👹

Although there is currently no way to determine whether or not we are alone in the universe, humanity isn't taking any chances. Two golden records, each containing sounds and images intended to describe life on Earth, were launched into space by the Voyager spacecraft in 1977. The hope is that aliens will discover them, possess the technology to play a record from 1977, and discover more about our small planet. What could possibly go wrong? It turns out to be a lot. Perhaps they'll pay us a visit. Since the dawn of the space age, humans have been fixated on the idea of making contact with aliens. The majority of scenarios start out the same: an alien space ship lands, and some tiny green or gray men emerge. Take us to your leader, they say, and you can meet the president.

Okay, so if you ask the optimistic people who can't wait for aliens to visit us, they'll tell you those only good things are on the horizon. Aliens are likely to bring technology that is far superior to our own, and they'll be eager to share it with us. Perhaps we can obtain the technology they employ to clone bodies and defeat death. They might take us on a trip through space at the speed of light, and we might even get the flying cars they promised us in The Jetsons, all because of our space-based, high-tech new friends. No wonder everyone was anticipating their visit. However, things may turn out very differently in reality. Scientists are in charge of searching for signs of life in space, but if you speak with many of them, you'll find that they're the ones who are most anxious about discovering whether or not there is actually someone else watching.

And when scientists have concerns, we should probably pay attention, right? While they are still working to reveal the hidden faces in galaxies far beyond our own, many also privately believe that the likelihood is high that if we are successful, the outcome could be a very sobering realization of our place in the universe because we might no longer be the best. Since we are the only sapient species on Earth and have dominated the planet for more than a million years, we really don't have any rivals. We seem to be the only ones who actually pose a threat to ourselves. However, we are still limited to traveling a very small distance in space. Humanity has traveled to the moon, sent sophisticated unmanned probes to Mars, and carried out Milky Way surveillance missions.

We have sent some one-way missions on some of our most distant probes. We are fairly certain at this point that the Solar System does not contain any additional intelligent life that we are close to locating. While it is possible that life could exist now or has existed in the past on Mars and on some of the large moons of the gas giants, such as Titan or Io, the majority of the surfaces in our Solar System are extremely hostile to the emergence of life. Therefore, any life that comes looking for us will do so from a great distance. As a result, any extraterrestrial species that contacts us is likely to be much more developed than we are, and once they do, we will be dependent on their goodwill. In the best-case scenario, any aliens that come across us would be fellow researchers who were interested in learning about our way of life before they departed.

We probably wouldn't have much to offer them, but we can only hope that they would adhere to the Prime Directive, which states that Starfleet should not interfere with the advancement of more ape-like cultures. Even so, there are dangers involved. Imagine that an alien spacecraft visits Earth, scans us for information, and then departs because it decides we are not interesting enough to communicate with. You aliens sure know how to bring about a worldwide mental collapse. However, most scenarios present a much gloomier picture. One kind of space visitor is friendly, like the "Take us to your leader" aliens, but there are other, less amicable, visitors. No matter the reason for the alien invasion, the harsh reality is that humanity would have very little chance to defend itself against an alien invasion because their technology would be extremely advanced compared to ours.

How many movies have started with aliens landing and immediately attacking Earth? What do they exactly want humans to take upstairs for probing? Maybe it's a hunting expedition for an alien bachelor party? Even if you send the Top Gun crew to scramble the fighter jets, chances are good that any spacecraft that could travel across multiple galaxies to find us would be able to handle whatever technology we have. But what if the aliens aren't even here for us? The 1996 movie Independence Day featured one of cinema's most famous depictions of an alien invasion, in which a swarm of disk-shaped alien ships descended on Earth silently and launched an attack, destroying major cities and blasting huge holes in the planet's crust with lasers. The reason behind the invasion was more terrifying than the size of the victory for humanity, which was partly due to a pilot giving his life by crashing into the mothership.

The aliens didn't care about humanity; they simply wanted to mine the planet for its resources and leave a destroyed husk in its place. The small, non-human animals that lived on the surface didn't concern them. Furthermore, there would probably be very little we could do to fight back if an advanced alien species suddenly decided they wanted to exploit humanity for its resources. Goodness, I think there's no history of humanity doing that, right? Maybe the biggest threat of an alien invasion is that humanity would wind up being the latest victim of alien colonialism. When ships appear on the horizon, a society is largely keeping to itself. This brutal story from human history would play out once more. According to the colonists, their goal is to civilize the tribe and conquer it in the name of a glorious, distant empire. In the best-case scenario, the tribe loses its independence and many of its traditions. Assimilation may be forced, children may be taken away to be educated according to the colonizers' system, and a new government may be imposed.

And even then, many colonizers considered the people they colonized to be subhuman. They would enslave them and make them labor on their own land so that the colonial power could take the resources back home. Many colonizers committed outright genocides against the indigenous people and brutally killed them if they rebelled. Therefore, one of the biggest dangers of alien contact is that the aliens wouldn't see us as equals at all but as their new property instead. But the danger to the natives during colonization wasn't just in terms of the occupiers' actions. In many instances, disease rather than murder wiped out the population. The colonizers brought their own diseases from their home countries, while the natives lived in their own ecosystem. The indigenous population's immune systems were unprepared, and diseases like smallpox and cholera wiped out a large number of them.

The majority of deaths were caused by accidental exposure, though some cruel colonists did occasionally weaponize this. The good news is, medical science has advanced a lot since then, and the introduction of new alien diseases would be studied by scientists who might be able to cure them in short order, but only if they abided by the known laws. Although new viruses do occasionally appear, they are typically closely related to other viruses already in existence. Vaccines for previous coronaviruses, such as the common cold, were being developed when COVID-19 suddenly appeared and wreaked havoc on the world in 2020. As a result, scientists who were working on these vaccines sprang into action and were able to produce effective vaccines in less than a year. But without that foundation, trying to understand an alien virus could be like trying to decipher a cipher in a foreign tongue—and that's assuming it doesn't just wipe out humanity quickly because our immune systems are so vulnerable from the first handshake.

Disease is a potential threat in a number of bad scenarios, but it makes sense that we would be more susceptible to it if we were the less-advanced species in the equation. However, this may not always be the case. The aliens might not be able to handle diseases because a more developed species might also be one that is more sterile. So, the situation might be reversed. First contact is made by friendly aliens who shake hands and catch every disease we have. Suddenly, we have a dead alien delegation on our hands. Even in the best-case scenario, this was a huge opportunity lost that might never be made up for. In the worst-case scenario, a vengeful second delegation in biohazard suits is now on its way to sterilize this planet. And there are other ways that an alien organism might have an impact on the planet.

Let's start with a first-contact scenario that is a little less tense. Imagine that humans succeed in landing on the moon Io, penetrate its atmosphere, and find a strange animal residing there. It is about the size of a rabbit, made of what appears to be black stone, and is rather adorable. The mission brings one back to Earth to be studied, and it turns out that the creature reproduces asexually and survives by consuming the oxygen in Ios' atmosphere, which is primarily composed of sulfur dioxide. When exposed to the oxygen-rich atmosphere of Earth, it begins to multiply exponentially and depletes the resource we need to survive. It reminds me of the apocalyptic situation from The Trouble With Tribbles. Yes, this is an unlikely series of events, but nothing can be ruled out given how little we understand about the potential for life beyond Earth.

Scientists assert that because we are staring into the unknown, we ought to be frightened. Enrico Fermi, a nuclear physicist, and other scientists have studied the possibility of interstellar contact and noted that if extraterrestrial life existed, it would seem that it would have contacted us by now. The reason they haven't is because there are very few circumstances in which intelligent life can arise, and since the universe is more than 13 billion years old and human life has only been on Earth for about two million years, there aren't many windows of opportunity during which we could make contact. Any first contact would be extremely dangerous and almost certainly involve two planets that are at radically different stages of development. It's entirely possible that some intrepid aliens discovered Earth one hundred million years ago, traveled here to visit, and were then devoured by enormous reptiles.

Since leaving a "Do Not Visit" sign on Earth, they haven't been back to their home world. But surely it's not all bad news, right? Let's say everything goes right. Our space program advances to the point where we can explore more outside of our galaxy and make contact with another species from a neighboring galaxy. They're similarly advanced, maybe a century or so ahead of us in terms of progress, including having a universal translator that makes communication possible. In neutral space, we were able to establish the first contact. We then returned to Earth to assess the situation there and decide what to do next. The human race's inability to agree on anything is a sad reality, and that's likely to continue here. This is the most difficult aspect of making first contact with aliens. Humans have long been fascinated by the idea of making contact with aliens, but they are not exactly ready to do so.

If this were to happen, it would be one of the most significant events in human history. So what could go wrong? Try just about everything imaginable. Humanity has had some experience with alien landings, and generally the response has been complete chaos and an over-eagerness for violence. You just have to look back to what happened in Flatwoods, West Virginia, in 1952. It was September 12th when two brothers and their friend saw something streak through the sky that seemed to land on the plot of a nearby farmer. They went and told a local woman, who accompanied the three boys, along with a local National Guardsman and two children they allowed to tag along. When they reached the top of the hill, the group claims to have seen a tall figure with a round red face surrounded by what looked like a massive hood.

While this is now believed to be a barn owl perched on a dead tree, it caused a panic in the town that created a decades-long mystery and no shortage of people ready to confront a space alien without a moment's hesitation. And that reveals another potential problem with first contact. Who makes the contact? Assuming we are not being invaded, we still know essentially nothing about alien cultures, and we have no way of knowing what their culture is like. A handshake, the most famous human greeting, might be an unpardonable insult in alien cultures because they consider the hands the most unclean part of the body. The only way to find out is through trial and error, and then we have to hope that they're a particularly reasonable species. The odds are that those first few days after first contact might be some of the tensest in human history.

But it's nothing compared to what would be going on back on Earth. The odds are that everyone would want a piece of the aliens, both figuratively and, in some cases, literally. No doubt, world governments would be competing to get the first face-to-face meeting with the alien leader to explain to them who the good guys and bad guys are on Earth. The advantage would go to whoever's space program discovered the aliens, but the opportunity is so large that no one should be surprised if it turns into a shooting war to see who can be first in line. And that means that the alien delegation could be caught in the middle. But what if it's not a government at all? The process of space exploration has been increasingly privatized, especially in the United States. Struggles back home and a lack of progress in making big leaps have led many countries to cut funding for their space programs, and into the breach stepped billionaires Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos.

They've focused so far on heading for Mars and sending unmanned spacecraft into deep space, but if they made contact with an alien species first, it would put the governments of the world in a sticky situation. While Musk does partner with NASA on many of his space projects, there is no guarantee that the messages will sync up when it comes time to make contact. And that's to say nothing of the chaos in other areas. No one would be shaken more by alien contact than the religions of the world. Most have a doctrine that humanity was created in God's image, and most either quietly or loudly believe that we are the only intelligent life in the universe. The discovery of another intelligent species would result in a crisis of faith not seen before in human history. Some religions might change their doctrine to account for it.

Others might see people leave the faith as it no longer makes sense to them. Yet others might preach that the aliens are agents of the devil and should be opposed at any cost, potentially putting the alien delegation in danger when they arrive. And yet another group might try to convert the aliens to their faith. Don't worry; the human escorts will likely just tell them to ignore the pamphlets. But religious fervor isn't the only kind of fervor they might encounter. What's one of the most dramatic issues of modern immigration? Not only are many countries concerned with keeping their borders secure, but many people don't even like the idea of immigrants coming in legally. There have been calls for reducing the number of visas given for work and visitation, as well as some demanding to eliminate birthright citizenship, which grants citizenship to any child born in the country to a foreign parent.

And that's just other humans; so what happens when the sky parts and aliens make it clear that even our atmospheric border might be open to new visitors? While most people would likely respond with curiosity, a good number would respond with fear and even anger. Is there even a way to secure ourselves from a visit or invasion like that? Do we hear someone chanting, "Build an atmospheric wall and make the aliens pay for it"? But those are all extremists, and at least the governments should have things in order. The governments of Earth have been planning for alien first contact for a while, and while they're not always in sync, there is an international plan to follow. But that doesn't mean things will go smoothly. For one thing, any alien visitor will be bringing with them technology that is far beyond anything we've ever seen, and the temptation will be high for governments to try to get their hands on it and weaponize it.

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