would it be worth resisting invasion?

Let's say an extraterrestrial alien force invades us. Assuming they are 100 years ahead in technology. There would be no use resisting. Odds are we would be outnumbered and out gunned. Compare the sopwoth camel to the f-22. Compare the m1903 to the new m-8 or m-16. Compare the u.s.s Maine to the bismark. Compare chain mail armor to Kevlar. Compare sputnik to Hubble. Our only hope would be biological weapons and nuclear weapons but it is not unlikely the would have an anti missile defense system. Advances in chemical and biological warfare could lead to weapons that eliminate carbon-based life forms. What weapons could we use to defend our selves? Would we win probably, not? But would it be worth it?


p.s. looked through first 5 pages and found no similiar thread

EDIT: removing siren, as this is a "what if?" post

[edit on 12-5-2005 by Gazrok]

Our history has shown us that a civilization with advanced weaponry almost always prevails. That said, however, I don't think we have any proof that, although their technology surpasses us most obviously in propulsion and vehicle design, I don't believe there's any proof that they are more advanced than us in weaponry. They very well may be, but I haven't heard any reports of an alien laser gun being recovered from a crash site or anything. Given that, there's no reason to think we couldn't out fight an invasion.

Just because a race excels in one technological area does not necessarily mean they excel in others. For example, our computer technology has been increasing in exponential terms for the past couple of decades. For the most part, however, we still use the same guns we did back in the 40's, 50's, and 60's. The only thing that's changed is the size of the round. While our body armor has come quite a ways over the past century, it hasn't moved along as fast as, say airplane or automobile technology. Both of those have been rather slow in advancing as well when compared to some aspects of medicine research. For all we know, our visitors may have spent thousands of years perfecting advanced propulsion, but have yet to throw a rock.

Would it be worth it to fight back? I say why not. IF they have advanced weapons that are far superiour to ours, IF they can't be harmed by anything we throw at them, then yeah, we're screwed. But why go down without a fight? Why just submit? They may very well execute every prisoner they take. They may make all those who aren't killed in battle slaves of some kind. Resistance may be futile, but sometimes death isn't the worst possible outcome.

I am one of those people that believes that aliens, for the most part are not hostile, but more likely benign observers and scientists.

That being said, in the event that your scenario did take place, yes.
Resistence and concerted efforts to repel an invading force is always appropriate and never futile.

Everyone no matter how advanced has weaknesses. And those weaknesses can always be exploited.

A case in point is the Zulu revolt in the late 1800's-early 1900's lead by Shaka in Africa.
He, with an army armed with spears and cowhide shields, militarily forced the British to negotiation and stopped further colonization of his kingdom. Granted, the British later won them over, after Shaka's death, through economic strategy. But he did save, for the Zulu nation a respect and admiration no other colonized African tribal nation had.

I think we should go out with a bang if they did invade, we have nothing to loose. They might kill us off sooner or later, enslave us, or even eat us. I rather fight and die in glorious battle against a squad of seemingly invincible alien weaponry. Oppose then get used for experiments or slaves for the rest of my life. Also in history, it has been done before, the underdog has won, but not if everyone is hiding in their basements.

Also, aliens may have to have a constant amount of supplies coming from their planet such as weapons, troops, and vehicles to replace damaged or killed ones. We have all our resources here. So I think a full scale alien invasion is not possible or would be very difficult for them. Also, they should have invaded a long time ago when we didn't have guns, planes, nukes, chemical and bio weapons.

As in my Avatar, we have had them in our sights for 3 days at the Capitol.
Think of our technology in 1952 until now..There is nada we could do if they are/were not benevolent.



www.washingtonpost.com...¬Found=true

ive no doubt that any weapons they have got are far superior to ours, in that case im running but bring it down to hand to hand combat and im all up for it. if we live that long to get to that stage i mean!!!

bring it on lol


[edit on 11-5-2005 by madmartinez]

They would simply be doing what we do all the time. Every time you move into new digs you check it out. If there is a roach problem you bomb the hell out of it and anhilate every last one of the creepy little buggers. The roaches never know what or why it happened, they just die enmass.

If aliens invaded it wouldn't be because they hated us or felt anything about us. Its just that we have a really nice little piece of real estate and they are the new tenants.

They're just cleaning up a bit before they move in.

Love and light,

Wupy

It depends. What are the aliens going to do when they invade? Are they trying to wipe us out, conquer us, or something else? Regime change?

Some people might not think it worth fighting if they aren't trying to wipe us out. We might be able to reap the benefits of their technology if we are just conquered.

i agree, fight to the death. Have you all ever read war of the worlds? The invaders eventuley die of bacteria poisining. The only enemys killed were by lucky cannonfire. Guns have advanced alot since da 60's compare the m-14 to the newer xm-29.

Originally posted by bushfriend
i agree, fight to the death. Have you all ever read war of the worlds? The invaders eventuley die of bacteria poisining. The only enemys killed were by lucky cannonfire. Guns have advanced alot since da 60's compare the m-14 to the newer xm-29.

So you're surrounded by a bunch of alien war machines and they give you the chance to surrender. They assure you that you and your family will not be harmed. You KNOW that there's no way you'll win and that you're all sure to die if you resist. So....you'd fight to the death? Why?

I would be quite disspointed in the human species if we just rolled over for an extra terrestrial attack. I can understand if the E.T.'s came out guns blazing, and we ran for cover. I would also expect us to be ingenius enough, and use our ability to think laterally to resist for as long as we could.

I would expect that very soon we would also have some of the alien technology, and could begin in earnest to back-engineer it, I think as a whole community, the genius of the worlds top scientists working under the pressure of an invasion would be able to find some useful information.

We may not win, but its not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog. A very true cliche.

If your the last man standing and out of ammo, throw rocks or go hand to hand.
This is our world, and such as it is, it's still worth fighting for.

As pointed out by GoldEagle, they would have a very long supply line. The vast distance involved in an intersteller war would require an incredible amount of resources and consume an enormous amount of energy.

We would have to have something of great value, that they need or want very bad for this kind of investment to pay off.

But if some robot ship entered our atmosphere and simply introduced a plague, we may have nothing to fight against, and we'll all be gone before the colonist ship enters the solar system. We would die without ever seeing the face of our enemy, or even know that we had been attacked.

I'm sure most would fight if it came to that. Being no other choice.
But if I were the aliens I'd be sure of victory before I even attacked.

No matter how much body armor one can wear, etc. any moron could still kill him with a knife (such as when he takes it off to sleep)

Superior tech is nothing to sneeze at, but it isn't necessarily THE trump card. If it was, we wouldn't still be having problems in Iraq, and there would be both a North and a South Vietnam....

As far as resisting an invasion by superior technology, we only have to look at our world right now to see an example of that.

Consider the Iraq situtation. Despite anyones political thought on the subject, one thing is clear: The insurgents/terrorists/ are resisting what they consider an invasion. They are doing this without the benifit of armored vehicals, airpower, satillite technology, and advanced artillary. For the most part, they are using thier AK47s, RPGs, and old arty shells to devistate the US Military.

In many ways, we are at least 100 years more advanced than these people, but they still resist. The Viet Cong resisted the Japanese, French and the US for over 30 years, but still prevailed, despite thier lack of technology.

The same thing could probably be said about our race as a whole, should we be invaded by aliens. You can count on the world uniting and defying our would-be masters. Perhaps that is what the world needs.