Dealing with Other Interstellar Civilizations: From Science Fiction to Reality

originally posted by: Navarro
How could Picard have ever managed to defeat Adama, even? He can simply appear anywhere at any time, like magic. You can't hope to catch up given his jump drive versus your warp drive. There's no apparent solution.

The real question is, would he even need to be?

A single smaller Federation patrolship would probably obliterate a Colonial Battlestar. Fighters/bombers and it's main anti-capital ship missile weaponry would get instantly destroyed by tracking phasers and sheilds would absorb any smaller laser fire. The far, far more manouverable Federation ships would easily get into blind spots and launch devastating barrages of torpedoes at critical systems.

Or actually, the Federation wouldnt even need ships. As soon as a Colonial fleet appear in orbit, the nearby defense installations (shipyards, space stations, ground facilities, whatever) would just teleport torpedoes onto the Battlestar bridge and end the battle in seconds.

So I find your argument of a ships instant travel being an advantage in this clash of universes somewhat lacking considering the other side got instant travel weaponry.

Ok what if they are already here and their SOP is to make to an encounter seem so bizarre that we don't believe they are here? Jacques Valley Interveiw Even if it was just us nothing wrong with being prepared for a potential alien encounter,maybe we can have different ET greeting categories ranging from relatively similar to absolutely bizarre like a conscience nebulae.

originally posted by: merka

originally posted by: Navarro
How could Picard have ever managed to defeat Adama, even? He can simply appear anywhere at any time, like magic. You can't hope to catch up given his jump drive versus your warp drive. There's no apparent solution.

The real question is, would he even need to be?

A single smaller Federation patrolship would probably obliterate a Colonial Battlestar. Fighters/bombers and it's main anti-capital ship missile weaponry would get instantly destroyed by tracking phasers and sheilds would absorb any smaller laser fire. The far, far more manouverable Federation ships would easily get into blind spots and launch devastating barrages of torpedoes at critical systems.

Or actually, the Federation wouldnt even need ships. As soon as a Colonial fleet appear in orbit, the nearby defense installations (shipyards, space stations, ground facilities, whatever) would just teleport torpedoes onto the Battlestar bridge and end the battle in seconds.

So I find your argument of a ships instant travel being an advantage in this clash of universes somewhat lacking considering the other side got instant travel weaponry.

As I remarked earlier in the thread, the purpose to the comparison was for a simplified demonstration. In this case, showcasing the advantages and disadvantages of popularly conceived methods of FTL propulsion. I'll play your game though.

I can think of two Star Trek references which could shed light on Federation weapons capabilities in relation to Colonial. In Star Trek: Enterprise, the phaser was described as possessing an energy output of 500 gigajoules, or 500 billion joules. This is equivalent to the energy contained within 83 barrels of oil. The most energetic nuclear explosion we've produced on record so far came in the form of the Tsara Bomb, which produced an explosion of 50 megatons. This translates to 210 petajoules, or 210 quadrillion joules. That makes todays Tsara Bomb 420,000% more powerful than the phaser weapon aboard Enterprise.

Which brings me to my second observation. In Star Trek (The Original Series), the Enterprise encountered a 1960s USAF F-104 interceptor (fighter jet) equipped with air-to-air nuclear missiles. Spock explained that these weapons were a threat to the Enterprise, saying "if he hits us with one he might damage us severely, perhaps beyond our ability to repair." The Galactica is equipped with a number of nuclear missiles which appear similar to only our largest nuclear weapons of today, ICBMs. If a 1960s USAF fighter jet armed with small missiles tipped with a low-yield tactical nuclear warhead is capable of defeating the Enterprise, then Galactica's strategic nuclear weapons, monsters by comparison, are vastly overpowered for NX-01 and 1701.

While the Enterprise is unable to withstand direct impacts by nuclear weapons, the Galactica has been seen to regularly sustain nuclear blasts, and yet it remained viable. It would appear that not only are Colonial weapons greatly superior to the Federation, but so are Colonial defenses, such as armor. Galactica's flak may also prove problematic for Federation phasers and torpedoes. Furthermore, Galactica has some form of very large ship-to-ship missiles of undetermined strength, but are presumably quite strong.

The Colonials regularly demonstrate strategy and tactics beyond those demonstrated by the Federation. I don't suspect "The Picard Maneuver" would much impress Commander Adama. It seems probable that the Colonials would outmaneuver and confuse the Federation. This shouldn't be a considerable shock considering the Galactica belongs to a military organization comparable to a Navy, where the Enterprise belongs to an organization better comparable to the Coast Guard. Ships of war versus ships of peace.

Being technologically superior doesn't necessarily equate to being militarily superior. Hence why the advanced F-22 Raptor has been repeatedly defeated in simulations by "obsolete" aircraft like the F-16 Falcon. Hence why the advanced US Military never quite managed to defeat the "cavemen" of Afghanistan, despite trying for more than a decade. Hence why The Axis was ultimately defeated in WW2 despite having nearly every technological and scientific advantage. After all, Star Fleet apparently never even figured out how to use its phasers effectively for point-defense purposes. As far as "instant travel weaponry goes," the Federation doesn't appear to grasp such things. They don't do that, which makes the matter another example of the Federation's inferior capacity for strategic and tactical thought.

I think Adama could go on raiding the Federation for just about as long as he likes. Commander Adama won't have to put up with that toaster Commander Data. At all.

originally posted by: Maverick7
A couple points to ponder.
1. We do not have even the most rudimentary 'control' of the space around our planet. IOW, no planetary defenses to speak of. Remember the analogy of a country thinking that strong forts along river entrances and coast lines was a great defense if your walls were thick enough and you had a lot of troops', back in the 1600s-1900s? They didn't realize that there could be fast and lethal flying machines invented (in the future) making all that stuff moot. Fixed defenses are basically worthless, even then they were a poor plan, because of siege-based warfare (keep them in and starve them out).

To obtain 'control of the space' around Earth we would need ships with 'inertia-less drives', IOW, ships that can fly around as they do in the atmosphere and not need to still use circling the Earth and gravity assist to obtain orbit. To get the the ISS the shuttle has to make ever-widening orbits to finally reach about 300 miles up (the one or two times they went to the ISS). That is about on par with having a windup toy vs a modern jet fighter. No maneuverability. Having ground-based missiles, or even satellite based lasers or particle beam weapons is ludicrous against a highly maneuverable non-terrestrial threat.

2. There is only one or perhaps two motivations that a non-terrestrial species could have that are favorable or benign with regard to Earth and its inhabitants. The best we could hope for is benign or hands-off. I think it's silly to think there's any chance of encountering a 'favorable', friendly species coming here. BUT there are dozens of very hostile or frightening motivations a non-terrestrial species might exhibit, including an overtly friendly but secretly hostile posture.

It's a good idea, as Stephen Hawking says, to keep our heads down until we have control of our 'airspace' out past at least the Moon, with highly maneuverable ships and space-based weapons - not that we should shoot first, just that we should realize that now, we have nothing. We are, comparatively, primitives in wooden canoes, despite all our technology.

3. If a non-terrestrial species wanted to conquer Earth they could do it remotely. They could easily take over our computer systems, use nano-goo attack-bots, you name it. So even with mastery of LEO space and then relatively robust control out to an area including the size of the Moon's orbit, we have no defense against nano-attacks or electronic attacks. (without control of the Moon, for example, an ET threat could just set up there and lob rocks at us). Again a plethora of compelling reasons to keep your head down.

4. Having said that, its my contention that we are essentially 'alone' in the MW galaxy, though there might be a few 'intelligent' species on a few planets, they aren't space faring and they aren't coming here, and they probably died off already or haven't been born yet. Time sync is a big factor.

You're absolutely right. It's difficult to think outside of the box when your mind has spent its entire life entrapped by an obsolete paradigm. Once you've been programmed to think a certain way, the process of deprogramming and reprogramming is a difficult one. During the American Revolutionary War, the British envisioned the battlefield through the lens of rank and file. Rows of soldiers marching onto a battlefield just as they'd done since Roman times. When the (American) Colonial Army began utilizing asymmetric warfare, such as ambushing troop movements from the relative safety and concealment of woodlines, the British had no answer. Just as in the scenario presented in my original post, the British saw themselves facing an adversary which was seemingly capable of suddenly appearing and striking without warning.

You say "time sync is a big factor," but I'll go as far as to say that it's the biggest. Any species we encounter in open space is statistically likely to be vastly more advanced than ourselves. We've only just recently began our journey into space. Whichever species we find first will most likely have been operating in space far longer than we. The universe is said to have been around for fourteen billion years. What're the odds that species would just happen to be at the same technological level as us? It's more likely that they're thousands of years more advanced than we are. Possibly even millions of years more so. Could even be billions of years more advanced. Not only have they likely had more time to develop better weapons and defenses than we have, but also superior strategy and tactics.

It's statistically unlikely that we'll find a scenario comparable to Federation vs Klingons. It's more probable that we'll encounter Medieval Europe vs Borg. Fixed defenses will be an absolutely moot point. Whatever we'll find in space will most certainly be capable of things we can't even imagine today, and which we wouldn't even grasp if we were given a demonstration. Their capabilities will initially seem nothing short of magic. If humanity is to survive in space, it will do so through pragmatism, avoidance and intelligence gathering. We must be students of the universe; neutral observers of all things. We can't prepare defenses until we observe them fight. We can't form agreements until we observe them interact. We can't survive unless we see how they survive. The alternative is the devastating effects of ignorance and blunder.

originally posted by: TheKestrel04
or if in your into the "conspiracy" side of things we have be secretly space-faring for a few decades

I think it's difficult to deny that a secret space program probably exists. It would seem logical, especially if there are indeed extraterrestrials operating here as conspiracy theorists commonly believe. If there are aliens here, I wonder if we provided them a port so that we can closely observe them. We need to understand how they operate, or at least be aware of what "magic" they possess. If there's one species operating here, then I imagine that there's multiple species operating here, allowing us to observe how they interact, and perhaps even how they fight. A very valuable opportunity.

originally posted by: Navarro
I can think of two Star Trek references which could shed light on Federation weapons capabilities in relation to Colonial. In Star Trek: Enterprise, the phaser was described as possessing an energy output of 500 gigajoules, or 500 billion joules. This is equivalent to the energy contained within 83 barrels of oil. The most energetic nuclear explosion we've produced on record so far came in the form of the Tsara Bomb, which produced an explosion of 50 megatons. This translates to 210 petajoules, or 210 quadrillion joules. That makes todays Tsara Bomb 420,000% more powerful than the phaser weapon aboard Enterprise.

Which brings me to my second observation. In Star Trek (The Original Series), the Enterprise encountered a 1960s USAF F-104 interceptor (fighter jet) equipped with air-to-air nuclear missiles. Spock explained that these weapons were a threat to the Enterprise, saying "if he hits us with one he might damage us severely, perhaps beyond our ability to repair." The Galactica is equipped with a number of nuclear missiles which appear similar to only our largest nuclear weapons of today, ICBMs. If a 1960s USAF fighter jet armed with small missiles tipped with a low-yield tactical nuclear warhead is capable of defeating the Enterprise, then Galactica's strategic nuclear weapons, monsters by comparison, are vastly overpowered for NX-01 and 1701.

BSG nuclear weapons, monsters? Hahaha. If you are comparing phasers, yes. But phasers would only be used to wipe out BSG fighters and nukes instantly.

When you start looking at photon/quantum torpedoes and their isoton yeild, you will realize that the ST universe can deploy weapons in the hundreds of gigaton range. Just a regular torpedo is about the eqvivalent of a 60Mt nuke, the higher classes are much more powerfull. The nukes in BSG are tiny little firecrackers.

originally posted by: merka

originally posted by: Navarro
I can think of two Star Trek references which could shed light on Federation weapons capabilities in relation to Colonial. In Star Trek: Enterprise, the phaser was described as possessing an energy output of 500 gigajoules, or 500 billion joules. This is equivalent to the energy contained within 83 barrels of oil. The most energetic nuclear explosion we've produced on record so far came in the form of the Tsara Bomb, which produced an explosion of 50 megatons. This translates to 210 petajoules, or 210 quadrillion joules. That makes todays Tsara Bomb 420,000% more powerful than the phaser weapon aboard Enterprise.

Which brings me to my second observation. In Star Trek (The Original Series), the Enterprise encountered a 1960s USAF F-104 interceptor (fighter jet) equipped with air-to-air nuclear missiles. Spock explained that these weapons were a threat to the Enterprise, saying "if he hits us with one he might damage us severely, perhaps beyond our ability to repair." The Galactica is equipped with a number of nuclear missiles which appear similar to only our largest nuclear weapons of today, ICBMs. If a 1960s USAF fighter jet armed with small missiles tipped with a low-yield tactical nuclear warhead is capable of defeating the Enterprise, then Galactica's strategic nuclear weapons, monsters by comparison, are vastly overpowered for NX-01 and 1701.

BSG nuclear weapons, monsters? Hahaha. If you are comparing phasers, yes. But phasers would only be used to wipe out BSG fighters and nukes instantly.

When you start looking at photon/quantum torpedoes and their isoton yeild, you will realize that the ST universe can deploy weapons in the hundreds of gigaton range. Just a regular torpedo is about the eqvivalent of a 60Mt nuke, the higher classes are much more powerfull. The nukes in BSG are tiny little firecrackers.

That isoton yield you refer to is an example of Star Trek's bad science.

Swedish, Noun: isoton c
1.isotone (atom of the same number of neutrons but different number of protons)
Wiktionary

Two nuclides are isotones if they have the very same neutron number N, but different proton number Z.
Wikipedia

I have no doubt that some writer saw a reference to isotones within nuclear physics, and without reading on the subject, inferred: kiloton < megaton < isoton. However, they're not measurements of the same thing, despite the apparent similarity. To say "this weapon has a yield of 25 isotons" is to say "don't listen to me because I have no idea what I'm talking about." The only references to isotones which I can recall were in Voyager, and the energy conversion rates and yield of weapons described in TNG, DS9 and Voyager conflict with one another.

We see similar strangeness in reality. Traditionally, high-yield nuclear weapons are said to be capable of destroying entire city centers, but recently Russia announced the development of a weapon capable of annihilating the entire state of Texas.

With its huge payload, the RS-28 will be able to destroy an entire country the size of France or the state of Texas.
Washington Times

Texas is 790 miles long and 660 miles wide at its most distant points.
NetState

That's an awfully unrealistic technological leap considering the 57MT Tsar Bomb's blast radius was just 22 miles. Did Russia's physicists suddenly develop a warhead thirty-five times more powerful than their previous state-of-the-art weapon? I doubt it. If a single 1960's nuclear-tipped air-to-air missile was capable of defeating Enterprise, could a torpedo be more powerful when we observe that Enterprise is capable of surviving blasts from multiple torpedoes? When Enterprise must fire multiple torpedoes in order to disable or destroy its opponents?

You've been taken-in by Federation propaganda at best, and inconsistent, poorly researched writing at worst. It appears probable that Colonial weapons of war are more potent than Federation's weapons of peace.

originally posted by: Navarro
If a single 1960's nuclear-tipped air-to-air missile was capable of defeating Enterprise, could a torpedo be more powerful when we observe that Enterprise is capable of surviving blasts from multiple torpedoes? When Enterprise must fire multiple torpedoes in order to disable or destroy its opponents?

Yes. Clearly. Also you said yourself that the nuclear missile could damage the ship, not destroy it ("if he hits us with one he might damage us severely, perhaps beyond our ability to repair.", that's pretty much describe every Star Trek movie).

Per specs, a single Constitution class carry enough torpedoes to lay waste to an entire planet. Nevermind the vastly superior torpedoes that would be used by Picard on the later ship generation.

Besides, I seriously doubt your 50Mt would be anywhere near the anti-ship missile used on a Battlestar. Per lore, that's about the size that hit the cities on Caprica. Ships would probably carry much, much smaller versions (but of course many more), something like the 0.5Mt range.

Fun thread

But never underestimate the value of the barbarian in war. Not even Tsun Tsu can cope with a true barbarian.

The civilised man will see value in the enemy's civilisation and opt for minimal damage. The barbarian mindlessly destroys until the desired result. Values vs no values.

A barbarian has few weaknesses. A complex developed civilisation has many.

To fight a war with Extraterrestrials you don't need to understand the technology. You only need to know where to throw the spanner.

Both Adama and Kirk have weaknesses. They have ethics . . . .

The perfect situation would be ofcourse robots remotely controlled. In the centre would be a hidden planet or at least as difficult to detect as possible. No one would go out, it's all remote controlled robots. There would be trillions of them all around the base ever creating more in an exponential rate, preferably several galaxies so it would be easy to relocate the base. Which would be necessary anyway, just like cow herds migrate after eating all the grass so to say.

Whenever a space faring alien civilization is discovered the robots would pose as AI without biological life and tell them a tale depending on how the civilization is (human, completely different, hostile, benevolent). They could say their creators all died because of a disease which would hold off most civilizations because the virus would still be there. The entire area would be a lifeless place, only a lot of robots of which many for defenses gone rogue.

Or they could tell them their creators merged with the machines and went on to a next level of existence following a spiritual quest which would offer some form of contact like having holographic projections with a live person from that homeworld but presented as a recording coming from another plane unreachable through physical means (this is obviously for the benevolent but gullible type).

Or if they are hostile they could tell them how millenia ago their creators were killed by their creations and again the entire area is a wasteland filled with killer robots.

originally posted by: merka

originally posted by: Navarro
If a single 1960's nuclear-tipped air-to-air missile was capable of defeating Enterprise, could a torpedo be more powerful when we observe that Enterprise is capable of surviving blasts from multiple torpedoes? When Enterprise must fire multiple torpedoes in order to disable or destroy its opponents?

Yes. Clearly. Also you said yourself that the nuclear missile could damage the ship, not destroy it ("if he hits us with one he might damage us severely, perhaps beyond our ability to repair.", that's pretty much describe every Star Trek movie).

Per specs, a single Constitution class carry enough torpedoes to lay waste to an entire planet. Nevermind the vastly superior torpedoes that would be used by Picard on the later ship generation.

Besides, I seriously doubt your 50Mt would be anywhere near the anti-ship missile used on a Battlestar. Per lore, that's about the size that hit the cities on Caprica. Ships would probably carry much, much smaller versions (but of course many more), something like the 0.5Mt range.

What? Not clearly. You're being ridiculous. If a 1960's Air-to-Air missile carried by a fighter jet is capable of defeating the Enterprise, then one of Galactica's ICBM-type weapons should be more than a match. What's more, if the Cylons attacked the Colonies with 50MT warheads, then why would you reason that the Galactica only possesses 0.5MT warheads? The Cylons obviously carried those weapons aboard their Basestars, why can't the Colonials carry similar weapons aboard their Battlestars?

B-52's commonly carried Mark 28 thermonuclear bombs in the sixties, where Mod 5 warheads were 1.45 Megatons. Yet, the Galactica couldn't carry anything more than 0.5 Megaton weapons? Why? Even if the Galactica for some reason carried warheads with yields of 0.5MT, the aircraft that Spock was so concerned about probably carried something along the lines of the AIR-2 Genie, an air-to-air nuclear missile utilized by the USAF in the 1960s, which possessed a 1.5kT yield. If a 1.5kT weapon could defeat the Enterprise, a 0.5MT weapon could certainly achieve the same. A 0.5MT weapon is more than 333 times power destructive than a 1.5kT weapon.

You can adhere to Federation propaganda about how the Constitution could lay waste to an entire planet if you like, but Spock tells a different story. He tells us of a reality in which the Enterprise is too fragile to withstand a 1.5kT blast, let alone the destructive force of Galactica's massive by comparison ICBM-like weapons. That's not even considering that we've observed the Colonials equip Raptors and even Vipers with their own air-to-air type nuclear weapons. The M338 Nuclear Projectile, the "weakest" nuclear weapon ever developed, had a 0.1kT yield. You'd only need to fire fifteen of these to equal the destructive force of the AIR-2 Genie, capable of defeating Enterprise, and yet the M388 was a 1950s weapon designed to be carried by infantry, not fighter craft let alone capital ships. It appears extremely evident that the Colonials are a danger to the Federation, and that Adama had the potential to defeat Kirk, let alone Archer.

Nevermind the vastly superior torpedoes that would be used by Picard on the later ship generation.

If you want to talk about Enterprise A, B, C - X, Y, Z, then you might have a point. If we continuously propel the Federation further and further into the future, then the Federation should develop stronger and stronger weapons and defenses. However, this is like North Korea arguing that they could conquer the United States, if they were a thousand years more advanced than they presently are. If that's the game that you want to play, then I'll point out that the Galactica existed long before Star Fleet, given that Colonials discovered Earth and colonized it at a time when humans were still primitive hunter-gatherers, assuming humanity had even evolved into existence yet. As such, for the Galactica to attack the Federation it would have had to survive thousands of years until the Federation formed into existence, which would have occurred somewhere between Archer and Kirk. In that case, there's no reason why the Galactica couldn't have attacked the Federation when the Constitution still reigned supreme.

There's not enough information to estimate how the Galaxy, Sovereign or another other future classes would have performed against Galactica, but it's evident that the Galactica had the potential to defeat the Enterprise 1701, because Spock says so. Now that I think of it, the Federation formed into existence during Archer's time. In that case, we're potentially discussing Adama vs Archer, and we already know Adama appeared capable of defeating Kirk, who was about 100 years in the future from Archer's perspective. As it appears that Adama was capable of defeating Archer and Kirk, thus the Federation of those time periods, the question is whether or not Adama could have defeated Picard and the Federation of the 23rd Century.

originally posted by: Whatsthisthen
Fun thread

But never underestimate the value of the barbarian in war. Not even Tsun Tsu can cope with a true barbarian.

The civilised man will see value in the enemy's civilisation and opt for minimal damage. The barbarian mindlessly destroys until the desired result. Values vs no values.

A barbarian has few weaknesses. A complex developed civilisation has many.

To fight a war with Extraterrestrials you don't need to understand the technology. You only need to know where to throw the spanner.

Both Adama and Kirk have weaknesses. They have ethics . . . .

I think that may be an over simplification. If you don't understand the technology, you can't necessarily simply throw a spanner into it. How do you defeat what your weapons can't catch, and your electronics can't effect? Such a vessel does have weaknesses, but you must know and understand them before you're capable of exploiting them. You can't compromise a thing that you can neither capture or effect. You'll have to learn about that thing before you start throwing your spanners.

I think Star Trek 2 may be capable of illustrating this point, vaguely. Khan chased Kirk into a cloud which disrupted sensors and visibility. Thinking in two-dimensional terms, Khan pursued Kirk in a straight line based on last-known position. Perceiving the situation in three-dimensional terms, Kirk simply moved "downward," allowing Khan to pass overhead, before "popping up" and attacking Khan from behind, defeating him. If you don't understand the situation, and your opponent does, then your opponent has the advantage, and will crush you. It's imperative that you understand the situation, otherwise you're just groping in the dark, meanwhile your night-vision equipped opponent is casually aligning your head in his rifle's sights. As Sun Tzu said, "victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win." As the NORAD computer "Joshua" said in Wargames, "the only winning move is not to play." At least, that is, until you thoroughly understand your opponent, and thus how to defeat your opponent. It is absolutely necessary that you understand the technology of your adversary, if you wish to ever understand how to defeat that technology.

originally posted by: johnnyjoe1979
The perfect situation would be ofcourse robots remotely controlled. In the centre would be a hidden planet or at least as difficult to detect as possible. No one would go out, it's all remote controlled robots. There would be trillions of them all around the base ever creating more in an exponential rate, preferably several galaxies so it would be easy to relocate the base. Which would be necessary anyway, just like cow herds migrate after eating all the grass so to say.

Whenever a space faring alien civilization is discovered the robots would pose as AI without biological life and tell them a tale depending on how the civilization is (human, completely different, hostile, benevolent). They could say their creators all died because of a disease which would hold off most civilizations because the virus would still be there. The entire area would be a lifeless place, only a lot of robots of which many for defenses gone rogue.

Or they could tell them their creators merged with the machines and went on to a next level of existence following a spiritual quest which would offer some form of contact like having holographic projections with a live person from that homeworld but presented as a recording coming from another plane unreachable through physical means (this is obviously for the benevolent but gullible type).

Or if they are hostile they could tell them how millenia ago their creators were killed by their creations and again the entire area is a wasteland filled with killer robots.

I think you'll find that Cylon screen you've created will prove more threatening than the rival civilizations you hoped they'd protect you from. A civilization going about their business a 250 lightyears away will probably be less troublesome than the shroud of Strong-AI robots you've shielded yourself with. Not to mention, you couldn't fool everyone. I doubt you could fool many at all. Even as a fellow human, I'm unlikely to be persuaded to continue my exploration in another direction simply because a probe told me "there's nothing to see here." Yet, whose to say extraterrestrials will only be as intelligent as you and I? Our genome differs from that of the Chimpanzee by only one percent. Imagine a species which differs from us in the same way which we differ from the Chimpanzee. How likely is a civilization of monkeys to fool humanity? How likely is humanity to fool extraterrestrials of such immensely superior intellect?

There's so much potential for this to prove disastrous.

If a civilization as advanced as proposed really had some interest in us or our planet, for whatever reason, they wouldn't bother with war, invasion, etc. It would be a lot easier to, say, introduce yourself to key individuals in our social hierarchy and 'influence' them to do your bidding for you; through msm, etc. You could even, say, make the society completely dependent on electronics and infrastructure that can be easily disabled and destroyed; keep the humans fighting due to imaginary lines on maps, etc; or simply move the values and beliefs of the soceity to align more with your own. Or a combination of the above.

However, if the 'aliens' really wanted the whole physical planet for only themselves, then it would probably take a very short time for any intelligent species to realize they just need to sit, wait, and watch while we destroy ourselves.

originally posted by: VincoInterum
If a civilization as advanced as proposed really had some interest in us or our planet, for whatever reason, they wouldn't bother with war, invasion, etc. It would be a lot easier to, say, introduce yourself to key individuals in our social hierarchy and 'influence' them to do your bidding for you; through msm, etc. You could even, say, make the society completely dependent on electronics and infrastructure that can be easily disabled and destroyed; keep the humans fighting due to imaginary lines on maps, etc; or simply move the values and beliefs of the soceity to align more with your own. Or a combination of the above.

However, if the 'aliens' really wanted the whole physical planet for only themselves, then it would probably take a very short time for any intelligent species to realize they just need to sit, wait, and watch while we destroy ourselves.

It's unwise to assess limitations to the motivations and behaviors of beings who we've never met. The fact of the matter is that they could behave in absolutely any way. Some species may behave as hegemons precisely as you describe, while other species would undoubtedly behave quite differently. The universe is a very big place, and the personalities of the species which inhabit it would be equally expansive and variable. They needn't act in terms typical of humanity, because they experience the universe differently than humanity. We're talking about an entirely separate and unique evolutionary process, sociology, culture and history.

a reply to: Navarro

Yes, I was very simplistic and it does not apply always. Your right. But as a weapon of war, the barbarian mind can be a useful weapon.

I would suggest Khan and Kirk were equals on the battlefield and a fair fight either way. To the victor goes the glory. However, if the fight is not two warriors meeting on the battlefield, the barbarian may have the advantage.

Ghengus Khan carved an empire.

The legacy of the Persian warlord Hassan bin Sabbah and the absolute dedication to the philosophy are proving difficult to fight in modern days. Suicide bombers are an examlple., the concept is barbaric and frightening to the civilised mind.

But if it were a truely advanced civilisation that visited here that was very different from us, one would have to fight them unconventionally to survive. The situation defines the tactics.

If they did not destroy us outright, it means they want something. Most raw materials they can get elsewhere. Perhaps they want materials they cannot make themselves because it is dirty and risky, such as plutonium and similar materials only available after building an atomic civilisation. The lets get someone else to do it scenario.

They would nead leverage over us, a demonstration of technological superiority would do. They would also need collaborators, willing or unwilling. Dangle the carrot of knowledge to bring the scientific mind over to willing collaboration. To bring the unwilling under control one can use hostages or threats of harm to loved ones.

To achieve this, they need to be able to communicate with us. At very least, to get concepts across. That means they must communicate either directly or indirectly.

If they communicate directly they expose themselves. If they are organic, they can be killed. We would hunt them down. If they communicated telepathicly, they expose themselves directly in a psychic way and open themselves to attack via occult means. In the occult world distance means nothing and minds can be destroyed.

So no, and intelligent aliens would probably not do that.

Indirect communication would need proxies. Perhaps kidnapped people to use as telepathic proxies to other humans. Torture, cruelty and hopelessness would be the psychological tools of choice.

Yet this is not an ideal situation of safety. An advanced alien who is in contact with another alien race (humanity) would probably employ an intermediary layer. A lesser race perhaps engineered biologically for the purpose of doing the dirty work for the greater good.

If they can engineer life, then it is likely they would use living technology too. Solid state implants can be found and removed. Primitive.

Living implants are difficult in so many ways. Bodily rejection as in organ transplants is one example. Diseases are too simple in programming to be useful except in the most basic of control scenarios.

Psychic implants would be a possibility. Nevertheless, if discovered, there would be a psychic vector back to the aliens. Revenge employing black magicians would turn the tables on our aliens in a most (for the aliens) horrific manner.

A very complicated system would result and the more complicated the system is, the easier it is to sabotage.. In the above scenario, the occult (hidden) is the key.

The weapon of choice here is the barbaric mind (we have plenty of those). A mind that does not value knowledge above right and wrong, that can kill when required. That can put down those prisoners who are beyond help and are living a life worse then death. That can destroy the wonders of an advanced civilisation leaving nothing behind.

If aliens had moved beyond nuts and bolts technology to living technology such as living self aware computers, that just makes the job easier still to the psychic barbarian.

It would be better for aliens to just say hello in the first place or simply leave humanity alone lest they bite off more then they can chew.

Tsun Tsu fights the war first in the realm of understanding and tactics, then puts it into play to unfold. But how does one understand technology so advanced it seems to be magical?

I am splitting hairs here, one could say, but isn't understanding systems not quite the same as understanding technology?

A brilliant computer programmer can design a perfect program. But a kid hacker can sometimes wreak everything in a moment. Stupidity and a simple mind can often wreak more havock then intelligence. Thus the value of the simple minded barbarian.

Perhaps my thinking is this way because I am not easily awed by high technology or high intelligence.

But you guys here make a cool thread full of ideas. I like that.

originally posted by: Navarro
What? Not clearly. You're being ridiculous. If a 1960's Air-to-Air missile carried by a fighter jet is capable of defeating the Enterprise, then one of Galactica's ICBM-type weapons should be more than a match. What's more, if the Cylons attacked the Colonies with 50MT warheads, then why would you reason that the Galactica only possesses 0.5MT warheads? The Cylons obviously carried those weapons aboard their Basestars, why can't the Colonials carry similar weapons aboard their Battlestars?

B-52's commonly carried Mark 28 thermonuclear bombs in the sixties, where Mod 5 warheads were 1.45 Megatons. Yet, the Galactica couldn't carry anything more than 0.5 Megaton weapons? Why? Even if the Galactica for some reason carried warheads with yields of 0.5MT, the aircraft that Spock was so concerned about probably carried something along the lines of the AIR-2 Genie, an air-to-air nuclear missile utilized by the USAF in the 1960s, which possessed a 1.5kT yield. If a 1.5kT weapon could defeat the Enterprise, a 0.5MT weapon could certainly achieve the same. A 0.5MT weapon is more than 333 times power destructive than a 1.5kT weapon.

You can adhere to Federation propaganda about how the Constitution could lay waste to an entire planet if you like, but Spock tells a different story. He tells us of a reality in which the Enterprise is too fragile to withstand a 1.5kT blast, let alone the destructive force of Galactica's massive by comparison ICBM-like weapons. That's not even considering that we've observed the Colonials equip Raptors and even Vipers with their own air-to-air type nuclear weapons. The M338 Nuclear Projectile, the "weakest" nuclear weapon ever developed, had a 0.1kT yield. You'd only need to fire fifteen of these to equal the destructive force of the AIR-2 Genie, capable of defeating Enterprise, and yet the M388 was a 1950s weapon designed to be carried by infantry, not fighter craft let alone capital ships. It appears extremely evident that the Colonials are a danger to the Federation, and that Adama had the potential to defeat Kirk, let alone Archer.

You keep bringing up that one single instance while ignore the rest of the ST lore (which has torpedoes with a yeild towards 700 Gigaton) but here's a funny thing about that, assuming I recall the TOS episode correctly: Enterprise did destroy the missile and survived unscathed. And if the original series primitive Enterprise can do that, a Souverign class could probably intercept and destroy a hundred warheads or more at once.

Because that's really the core of this this comparison. The yeild of the nukes doesnt matter. Federation ships would wipe out fighters and missiles like swatting stationary flies. A Battlestar wouldnt even get a nuke missile out of it's tubes before a Federation ship phasered it from a 300,000 km away or starting to lay down a barrage of torpedoes at 3 million km to melt the fighter launch bays.

I have been utterly unable to find any decent references for Battlestar weapon ranges or Viper ranges but I bet they dont even come close to this.

And if they did get a missile through the phaser defense? Federation ships would just fly away from it.

To answer your question how could Picard beat Adama lets show some images:

Two main characters of the Picard clan:


if you would combine them you would get something like this:


Who would have known right? the Picard clan is in the early stages of the cylons.

a reply to: Navarro

I''ll concede to your point; however, are you proposing that we answer these questions:

"What do you think we should expect? Where exactly would you draw the line when it comes to the unwelcome advances of an unknown species?"

without first assessing 'limitations to the motivations and behaviors of beings who we've never met?' I struggle to see how we could even attempt to answer these questions without making some of these assumptions. The very questions themselves are flawed by this logic. How could we 'expect' something we have never encountered without defining possible limitations or motives? If it happened on Star Trek it's fair game? Why would there even be a line to draw? Would we really know they were here? Would there even be anything to physically see or detect?

Personally, I believe civilizations that advanced are probably not getting on physical spaceships and conquering planets with lasers and phasers... So, and this is just my opinion, even discussing war tactics, weapons, etc, is already assessing limitations to the motivations and behaviors of beings we've never met, as well as assessing limitations to their abilities and methods.

A reply such as "well they can do anything or behave in any way because we know nothing about them" could be made to just about any post in this thread. It seems more like you want to discuss hypothetical Star Trek scenarios. More power to you, I just misinterpreted the point of this thread.

originally posted by: VincoInterum
a reply to: Navarro

I''ll concede to your point; however, are you proposing that we answer these questions:

"What do you think we should expect? Where exactly would you draw the line when it comes to the unwelcome advances of an unknown species?"

without first assessing 'limitations to the motivations and behaviors of beings who we've never met?' I struggle to see how we could even attempt to answer these questions without making some of these assumptions. The very questions themselves are flawed by this logic. How could we 'expect' something we have never encountered without defining possible limitations or motives? If it happened on Star Trek it's fair game? Why would there even be a line to draw? Would we really know they were here? Would there even be anything to physically see or detect?

Personally, I believe civilizations that advanced are probably not getting on physical spaceships and conquering planets with lasers and phasers... So, and this is just my opinion, even discussing war tactics, weapons, etc, is already assessing limitations to the motivations and behaviors of beings we've never met, as well as assessing limitations to their abilities and methods.

A reply such as "well they can do anything or behave in any way because we know nothing about them" could be made to just about any post in this thread. It seems more like you want to discuss hypothetical Star Trek scenarios. More power to you, I just misinterpreted the point of this thread.

The point wasn't to discuss science fiction fantasy, but to reference the known fantasy in contemplation of the unknown truth. The topic required a certain degree of imagination and contemplation, which fiction writers have already provided us with. This isn't to be set aside and ignored, because there's real benefits to that discussion. Contemplation of the hypothetical can provide theoretical insight, and lead to future, more complex development of theory. After all, much of what we observe in science fiction eventually became reality. I'm not just talking about Star Trek's sliding doors becoming the first thing which greets us at supermarkets today. The US military used science fiction to propel itself into the 20th and 21st century. For instance, the bridge of the Enterprise was adopted as the blueprint for naval and air force command center development, and a separate science fiction novel later lead to the creation of the modern Combat Information Center aboard warships today.

The discussion never quite developed along the path I had intended it to, which eventually lead me to responding to the direct science fiction discussion and debate. However, my interest here has indeed always been "What do you think we should expect? Where exactly would you draw the line?" I'll point out though that "I believe civilizations that advanced are probably not getting on physical spaceships and conquering planets with lasers and phasers" is absolutely "assessing limitations to the motivations and behaviors of beings we've never met." If we know nothing of them, then what business do we have in suggesting they will or won't do a thing? How do we assess probability without examples? In truth, the only example we have is humanity, and humanity does attack, invade and conquer others. As 100% of technological space-faring species we're aware of do these things, it seems more likely that unmet space-faring species will also do these things than not.

Yet, without knowledge of any other civilizations, it's difficult to guess what others might do. As the universe is a fairly big place, I imagine the opportunity exists for many unique species, cultures and tendencies. I imagine then that we'd have to expect rather anything from them. That is, we'd have expect nothing, yet something. As such, given that we in fact know nothing of these species we've not met, it seems to me that the best way to approach the discussion is to not attempt to predict the behavior of those species, but to predict human reaction to various scenarios. We know ourselves. I know, for instance, that if I were to stand in front of you now, with my nose inches from yours, you would feel uncomfortable. Instinctively, you would feel hostile, even threatened. I'm too close; I'm violating not only social normality, but also the instinctive bubble of security which surrounds us all in an abstract way. Would an extraterrestrial also share this reaction? Not necessarily. So what would happen if an extraterrestrial civilization were to stand nose-to-nose with humanity, and what might that look like?