Why Don't The Aliens Just Land In Front of the White House?

I know this is a simple question but why don't the aliens just land in front of the White House? Just because Star Trek has a "non-interference" clause doesn't mean the aliens must have one too! Why must the aliens carry on this "we don't exist" charade? If the ETs are so powerful, how is it that the world's governments who, presumably know about them, can keep the aliens "on ice", preventing the world from knowing about their presence.

If the aliens are friendly, well they shouldn't be sneaking around. They should just land in front of the White House and say "howdy"! And, if the aliens have an evil intent for the conquest of Earth, why keep it a secret. Surely an alien race that has mastered space travel and, probably, faster-than-light travel could just cow us into surrendering.

its probably much simpler for them to play the stealth card and be invisible.

Well every time they attempted to make contact they either got chased by airplanes, shot at by the whole anti-air battery or people just freaked and ran away.

Why bother?

Originally posted by moonchild
its probably much simpler for them to play the stealth card and be invisible.

But for what reason? It doesn't seem logical that an alien race would travel light years just to remain "invisible". If these ETs are so advanced, it seems sort of silly of them to study our feeble race of beings. It seems like a massive waste of their time, energy and intelligence. Why don't they just attack and get it over with? What could they possibly be waiting for? Or do they fear us?

Originally posted by nukunuku
Well every time they attempted to make contact they either got chased by airplanes, shot at by the whole anti-air battery or people just freaked and ran away.

I don't know. These so-called "highly evolved" aliens, masters of space-travel, certainly don't seem so advanced that a few airplanes or anti aircraft batteries can "chase them away"

This is certainly a good question and one which I have addressed before. The following are my personal reasons for why aliens do not simply reveal themselves in the manner you suggested:

1) When we look back at human history, we see that the overwhelming majority of cases in which a technologically superior culture has encountered an inferior one for the first time, the technologically inferior culture has almost always suffered as a result. Examples include the Native Americans, Australian Aborigines and Cortez's little band of conquistadors. This suffering has occurred even in cases where the superior culture had noble intentions. Even if disease or warfare didn't bring about the demise of a culture, even if the superior culture wanted to be friends or establish peaceful trade ties, the inferior culture has always been, at the least, altered to a form significantly different than it was pre-contact. Often this change has had certain benefits, but these are usually out-weighed by the negatives (loss of cultural identity, displacement, etc). I think that if aliens are truly intelligent (and I think they must be, just to get here), they would be aware of the potentially damaging effect that "revealing" themselves to humanity as a whole would have. For this reason, I believe they are leaving us well alone, at least until we are prepared to accept that such a revelation would alter our culture irrevocably.

2) If aliens were planning such a revelation, they would probably do their homework first to see what kind of reaction they could expect. If I were them, I would monitor human broadcasts (television, radio, internet, etc.) to see how we ourselves have imagined overt alien contact. They would see benevolent alien contact, certainly, but they would also see shows such as Independence Day, War of the Worlds, V, Signs, The Day the Earth Stood Still and other shows wherein the type of alien contact proposed resulted in mass panic and the destruction, or threatened destruction, of the human race. Even if such a reaction were not realistic, the aliens would surely have to consider it a possibility. Our own creations might tell them that we are scared, or at the least, apprehensive about such contact.

But this, to me, is a minor point compared to the implications of the first point. I sincerely believe that aliens would be well aware of the potential negative impact that direct contact would have on our race, even if they had nothing but the best intentions. That is why I think they will not be landing on the White House lawn any time soon and also the reason why I think that if we did see, for example, alien ships over our major cities, that the aliens would be either hostile or, at the least, inconsiderate.

Edited to congratulate benevolent for such a thought-provoking post.


[edit on 19/8/05 by Jeremiah25]

highly evolved or not i dont know, if youre smart you dont go where youre not wanted

Originally posted by nukunuku
highly evolved or not i dont know, if youre smart you dont go where youre not wanted

If it is intelligent "not to go where one was not wanted" then why come to Earth at all? Certainly, with what must be a civilization that has mastered technologies and overcome societal problems "back at home", it would be sort of silly to travel all that way without a concrete plan on meeting and greeting new civilizations on other worlds unless, of course, we are the only other race of beings around.

Why Don't The Aliens Just Land In Front of the White House?
Cuz Dick Cheney isn't there - he's at the undisclosed secure location.
Seriously, don't you think contact would have been overt if they wanted it to be overt? - they don't, and neither do the terrestrial powers that be for whatever reason or we'd know about it.

Originally posted by benevolent tyrant
If it is intelligent "not to go where one was not wanted" then why come to Earth at all? Certainly, with what must be a civilization that has mastered technologies and overcome societal problems "back at home", it would be sort of silly to travel all that way without a concrete plan on meeting and greeting new civilizations on other worlds unless, of course, we are the only other race of beings around.

I am leaning toward explanation that they are on some sort of research mission, you know, explore strange new worlds....or they are overseeing this ant farm...you know, making sure apes dont put nukes in space and such..and i dont think its that silly

Jeremiah has some good points as well.

it would be sort of silly to travel all that way without a concrete plan on meeting and greeting new civilizations on other worlds

But this in itself may be potentially disturbing for us. Since we have absolutely no idea regarding the aliens motivations, we have to once again look at our own history.

When people go forth in ships to travel great distances from their homes, they usually have some kind of tangible reason for doing so. Unfortunately, these reasons are oft-times not exactly in the best interests of those whom they encounter. Simply put, peaceful, content people typically do not leave their homes and travel to distant, foreign places. The people who do this are usually (though, it is important to note, not always) aggressive (not in a violent way, necessarilly) and put their own interests above those of the natives they encounter. History has shown us that this is usually true:

When people first came to Australia to colonise it, they wanted to use it as a penal colony. They weren't overly concerned with the safety or well-being of the Aboriginal peoples. One only has to look at the treatment of the Native Americans to deduce the mentality of many of those who first colonised America for the European powers.

My point is that the aliens we meet, if they do reveal themselves, may not have our best interests at heart. They will certainly have some reason for making contact and I doubt it will be something as intangible as "We want to be friends" or "We're peaceful space explorers". Just my opinion.

Il will also like to add that it makes perfect sense for a higher civilisation to hide itself from an inferior one. Even more if they are studying us or keeping an eye on us. There are many reasons why they could be here. They could be our creators (like it is said in the vedas). They could be harvesting ressources. They could even be living here somewhere (under the earth, like in is said in the vedas again), on in some military bases. for all these scenarios, it is better to be invisible.

Why in the world would they do that? You know that would upstage Bush/Cheney and they would have to get off of some of that classified intel. Besides, the S.S. would have one h&ll of a fit over that!

If the aliens are friendly, well they shouldn't be sneaking around. They should just land in front of the White House and say "howdy"! And, if the aliens have an evil intent for the conquest of Earth, why keep it a secret. Surely an alien race that has mastered space travel and, probably, faster-than-light travel could just cow us into surrendering

Obviously, friendship nor conquest goals seem to fit the evidence. But, these are not the only two possibilities. Most evidence seems to point more towards viewing us the same way we view lab rats. Beyond that, we're in sheer speculation land.....

My own feeling is that they simply see us as inferior, slightly more than animals, and that we're more a matter of "containment" until we're more ready to go out amongst the stars.

My own feeling is that they simply see us as inferior, slightly more than animals

Hmm, I have often considered this very point myself. Much of the time, we assume that, although aliens (if they exist) are clearly far ahead of us, they're not radically far ahead of us. By this I mean that we assume they will be hundreds or thousands of years more advanced then us. We base this assumption on the fact that UFOs appear to be their vehicles and, since we are newly entered into space exploration, we assume that, given hundreds or thousands more years, we might use similar craft with similar abilities.

But what if aliens are hundreds of thousands, or millions, or tens of millions of years more advanced than we are? Imagine if I walked into the bush and picked up an ant. I take the ant away from its fellow ants and examine it at eye level. Then I put it back down. Now imagine that another ant asks it "What was that?" How would it answer? When dealing with topics that involve alien life coming into contact with our own, we need to anticipate the possibility that they may be so far ahead of us that they may barely recognise us as life at all.

I think that Gazrok may not be too far off the mark with his "containment" theory.

[edit on 19/8/05 by Jeremiah25]

I think a good UFO landing is what we all need now...I remember movies like "The day the earth stood still" (re-runs, of course) and I've often wondered about this myself.
I think these aliens would have knowledge of what mankind does to himself and I agree, they would want us contained. Supposedly, they are more advanced than we are, (could they be stupid?) and they know that we would blow them up at a moments notice.

why the US and not Russia or China or France?

Be better off landing at the UN if aliens wanted to address the world. of couse the aliens could then get involved with whatever money making scheme the UN is currently practicing.

If we learned from one of our space probes that there was intelligent life on a planet near us, would you expect us to knock on the door and simply say "hi guys, we're from the solar system around the corner. if you ever need sugar or milk or someone to watch the kids, just let us know"? we would study the hell out of them, as covertly as possible so as to not get ourselves into an unnecessary situation of possible hostility.

Maybe the aliens want to land on the white house lawn but they are waiting for a better administration than the current one. maybe they planned on landing during Clinton's run but, when they saw how he was easily distracted by a fat girl and a stogie, they figured they'd sit it out.

we would study the hell out of them, as covertly as possible so as to not get ourselves into an unnecessary situation of possible hostility.

Possibly, but not for centuries or decades. A year or two maybe, but not much more...before initiating contact....just speculation though.

I imagine there'd be a period of keeping this knowledge from the public and just within the scientific community. Sure, there'd be leaks, but they'd be relegated to the "crackpot UFO nuts" by the general public until officially announced. This period of secrecy would be long enough to assess possible threat, weapons, intentions, monitor any broadcasts, etc. to try and learn more about them.

we wouldn't wait very long but if aliens have been peeking in on us, they are obviously more intelligent than we as they are here and we are not there and, that higher intelligence might dictate that they should keep studying our stupid behavior and see if will kill ourselves without the use of their intergalactic deathray.


or, perhaps they are smart enough to see that intervening in our lives will bring about the outstretched hand of a world looking for help.

I have often wondered the same thing myself as to why the Aliens haven't just landed at the White House and annouced their arrival. But then I remember that they did sorta back in the fifties when Ike was Prez. A group of UFO's buzzed the White House and DC while flying in formation. Pictures where taken and hundreds of people witnessed the spectacle. There are records, painting and documents in every culture, on every continent documenting somekind of contact with beings that would be considered other worldly. The Bible is full on text that literally smacks of Alien contact and interaction with the cultures of the time. It is a fairly common held belief among Ufologist that Aliens have been involved in human history from the beginning. Suppose that a higher intelligence had a vested interest in all things human. It wouldn't necessarily be to their advantge to be in the fore front. Just as a puppet master yanks and pulls the strings from behind a curtain, so too could our ET's. Anyone who has ever dealt with the general public knows that it is a pain. So why get the whole world in an uproar over Alien contact when you could just contact and control certain individual countries and or their leaders. As the old saying goes, 'You can fool some of the people all of the time', yadda, yadda. If you control the right people, then you control that country. If you control the right countries then you control the world. This way you have a small circle of people that really know who is in charge and you have less
personnel problems to deal with. Just think about 'Baghdad Bob' during the Iraqi invasion, 'There are no Aliens in Baghdad!' Makes you think!!