Aliens Have Conquered Earth

[JomBob]

Are the aliens hot?

It is relevant to my decision making process.

 

[rcs619]

So Aliens have attacked and in short time conquered the Earth for its resources. Our armies have been destroyed, and our population is being exterminated. You are one of the few remaining humans sitting in a Nuclear CIC with access to all of the USA's atomic arsenal.

What do you do? Would you glass the earth and take an "If we can't have it, no one can" stance?

I'd wonder very loudly about why they decided to conquer Earth when vasts amounts of largely the same resources are floating around in the rest of the solar system, and of course, the rest of the galaxy. Why not mine asteroids? Or gas giants? Or comets? Zero-G mining and industry is much more cost-efficient than mining on a planet and then exporting it up into space. Or go find a "carbon earth" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_planet ) that is literally made of resources. Maybe they are just enormous dicks?

Really the only thing to do at that point is twiddle your thumbs. You could nuke everything on the ground, kill everything on the surface and render it uninhabitable for a while, but there's still nothing much you could do to their actual ships, as traditional nukes are terrible weapons when used in space.

 

[monkey_man]

I want to call the Doctor.
Or perhaps just fire the nukes.

 

[LeroyJenkinsthe2nd]

I'd put on some glasses, grow a beard, & grab a crowbar.

 

[BathorysGraveland]

No, I wouldn't commit a mass genocide just for the sake of revenge. If humanity was defeated beyond all hope of surviving, I'd just continue fighting conventionally 'til I die. I wouldn't destroy a massive number of Alien people though, just like we wouldn't (or shouldn't) nuke a country we're at war with. Genocide is never a good thing, even to counter a genocide of your own.

 

[Talvrae]

It seem pity on me, even if it was enough to glassified the planet all it would do is well nothing pretty much all ressorces worth mining would still be there

 

[Heronblade]

As others have pointed out, even if the entire world's nuclear arsenal was attached to functional ICBMs and ready to go (it isn't, and couldn't possibly be, only a tiny fraction are ever actually ready to launch), I'd be far short of the numbers needed to glass the Earth to the point that another race couldn't snag resources by several factors of ten.

If we did have the necessary firepower, no I still wouldn't do it. If targeting and destroying the center(s) of alien power was possible, I'd do that, hopefully giving us a chance to seize technology and wage a guerrilla action. But a self sacrificial explosion, simply to give the finger to the enemy and mildly inconvenience them? No point in that.

 

[teh_Canape]

Are the aliens hot?

It is relevant to my decision making process.

>Earth is being invaded by Asari and Twi'Leks

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-

 

[Fishyash]

Nah, I'd try to not die... even if it involves waving a welcome banner to our alien overlords.

It would be a shame to see such a nice planet go to waste anyways. Maybe when they inhabit the planet, they will do it by accident themselves?

I dunno...

 

[Section Crow]

Nope, i would rather leave the earth unscathed, then at least i can keep my morality.

Plus the aliens might spare the plants and animals so that's a positive.

 

[CommanderL]

Eeh They won the planet fair and square I will not fire the nukes but I will form a ragtag group of Survivors to create le resistance

 

[Rowan93]

What the hell resources are they looking for on this stupid gravity well?

Anything worth getting is worth getting for about one millionth of the effort out in the asteroid belt. Or on any of the various moons of the solar system where the gravity is less. Even assuming the Earth is uninhabited - which as far as interstellar travellers are concerned, it may as well be unless they decide they care - it's a really dumb place to mine from.

Meat? Build space habitats using your asteroid resources. You can now grow whatever herd animals you like in much greater abundance than if you wasted your time with a planet, which is the worst habitat design possible.

God damn it I hate planets. Earth is fine for now but only because there aren't any other options. I offer whatever Quisling-type services I can if it will get me into a nice, efficient O'neill cylinder

Possibly trying to wipe us out before we wipe them out? You know, the whole prisoner's conundrum thing, but in SPAAAAAAAACE.

Oooh, and one benefit of a planet, at least garden worlds, is that it's possible to become fully self-sufficient. Any orbital habitat will always need resupplying at some point, whereas a planet could go on until the sun goes supernova.
So in the case of massive tech-degradation, the whole returning to the middle-ages situation which comes up in sci-fi a fair bit, anyone in a habitat will die, whereas those on planets won't.

Nope, OP specified they conquered the Earth for its resources.

Not being able to build space habitats that can go without resupply is just a failure of the imagination. Or possibly a failure to get enough resources, but if you're seriously operating in space that can't really happen to you.

I mean, I mentioned getting into an O'neill cylinder, which are pretty small, but I actually don't care about the advantage of being able to go without resupply. There are few locations in any advanced civilization that can go without resupply. But I still don't think planets don't have that advantage. Or any, except for "already there, because they're such a dumb design they happen accidentally".

 

[Zantos]

Take trench coat. Take katana. Ride grizzly bear. Save Earth.

Shirtless, battleaxe, polar bear, but it's the thought that counts. And the thought here is awesome.

OT: If there's an obvious good target a few megaton potshots sound good. Preferably in space. But hollywood has taught me that ragtag groups of survivors can form an effective resistance by being plucky, so I'd like to give them their chance.

 

[Alternative]

I for one welcome our alien overlords

 

[skim172]

It should be pointed out that the US does not have a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying even our species, let alone all life on Earth. Even the combined nuclear arsenals of the entire world aren't enough to wipe everyone out, humanity would survive. Fallout is extremely nasty, but it's not planet killing (at least not the amount humanity is currently able to produce). An interesting thing I read in a US nuclear survival thing, the amount of cancer caused by a nuclear exchange between the US and USSR in the 80s would be less than the amount of cancer prevented if wearing hats outdoors became a worldwide fashion.

Now, the death toll would be appalling, you'd fuck civilisation right up for a few centuries and all. That's what they mean by "end of the world", it really needs "as we know it" unless you are being pedantic.

In my experience, the effects of nuclear war are exagerated, possibly to change people's attitudes against it...presumably there are those who don't find massive death tolls, loss of infrastructure and governmental collapse to be scary enough.

On the other hand, the common or garden problems are overlooked, they don't seem exciting an nuclear enough. Lots of people will be horribly maimed by flying glass, and the medical facilities left intact will be swamped. You'll lose power and running water, you've got cities full of decaying corpses, your transport system is wrecked etc.

That's .... extremely debatable. he reality is, that we don't know exactly what would happen if nuclear war came about. We have no practical real world example - only two nukes were ever detonated in anger and those were child's toys compared to the tonnage of modern nukes.

So you're left with theories. What I can say is that the majority of academics and scientists would disagree with you and say that the effects of deploying the nuclear arsenals of the world would be enough to do irreparable damage to the planet surface and the atmosphere. Fallout would be damaging, but nuclear winter and other climatic effects are your biggest problem - crops would fail, temperatures would drop, weather patterns would experience catastrophic change. The chain effect would result in enough species on Earth being killed off to count as a mass extinction event. Whether or not it would kill all species, there's less consensus. But the majority of theorists would say that at the very least, civilization would collapse and human population would mostly be wiped out from famine, disease, and the war itself.

But on the other hand, this majority isn't overwhelming. There are significant numbers of theorists who say that human civilization could survive a nuclear war. At the extreme, they believe nuclear war will have minimal impact on the globe overall. It's all a big debate among strategists that won't be resolved until someone actually goes and tries it.

The complication is that any nuclear discourse carries major political overtones. It's not exactly that they're trying to scare the public. But the fundamental basis of nuclear deterrence and mutually assured destruction, the primary strategic doctrines of the Cold War, requires that nuclear use will always lead to escalation, which will always lead to humanity's destruction. If nuclear war would not lead to complete mutual annihilation, then deterrence can't possibly work.

And if deterrence doesn't work, and nukes don't result in armaggedon, then there is no incentive to not use them.

The strategists of the Cold War that proposed that nuclear weapons wouldn't destroy the world also tended to be the ones that wanted to use them. And yeah, there were a lot of them. There were many voices in the military and strategic community that wanted the US and USSR to incorporate nukes into regular war strategy. And quite a few legitimately supported a preemptive nuclear assault against the other country. There are recordings taken in the Oval Office during the Cuban Missile Crisis - Kennedy had stepped out for the moment, leaving the generals, who began congratulating each other into scaring Kennedy enough to finally give the order.

If that seems crazy, think about it this way: if deterrence doesn't work and you can survive a nuclear war, then obviously, whoever fires their nukes first will have the advantage. Meaning if you wanted to win a nuclear war, you needed to be that first shooter. Which is why saying nukes won't destroy humanity is a pretty controversial statement - not just because of the veracity of that statement, which is debated, but also because of implications of that geopolitically.


Anyway, TLR - roundabout way of saying "Nobody knows for certain" if nukes will or will not kill off civilization, humanity, and/or all life on planet Earth.

We do know that we can't literally "destroy the world." People tend to underestimate just how massive this planet is - the entire surface of the planet, where all human life exists, is just of a tiny fraction of the planet's mass. We don't have anywhere close to the nuclear material required to even crack its shell. Life on Earth would be wiped out in any catastrophe long before this planet ever broke apart.

 

[Thaluikhain]

That's .... extremely debatable. he reality is, that we don't know exactly what would happen if nuclear war came about. We have no practical real world example - only two nukes were ever detonated in anger and those were child's toys compared to the tonnage of modern nukes.

So you're left with theories. What I can say is that the majority of academics and scientists would disagree with you and say that the effects of deploying the nuclear arsenals of the world would be enough to do irreparable damage to the planet surface and the atmosphere. Fallout would be damaging, but nuclear winter and other climatic effects are your biggest problem - crops would fail, temperatures would drop, weather patterns would experience catastrophic change. The chain effect would result in enough species on Earth being killed off to count as a mass extinction event. Whether or not it would kill all species, there's less consensus. But the majority of theorists would say that at the very least, civilization would collapse and human population would mostly be wiped out from famine, disease, and the war itself.

But on the other hand, this majority isn't overwhelming. There are significant numbers of theorists who say that human civilization could survive a nuclear war. At the extreme, they believe nuclear war will have minimal impact on the globe overall. It's all a big debate among strategists that won't be resolved until someone actually goes and tries it.

That's true, yes (though, humanity being only "mostly" wiped out implies that in a few hundred or thousand years, civilisation would recover). I still maintain that humanity would survive, but I'm not too eager to be proved correct on this.

The complication is that any nuclear discourse carries major political overtones. It's not exactly that they're trying to scare the public. But the fundamental basis of nuclear deterrence and mutually assured destruction, the primary strategic doctrines of the Cold War, requires that nuclear use will always lead to escalation, which will always lead to humanity's destruction. If nuclear war would not lead to complete mutual annihilation, then deterrence can't possibly work.

And if deterrence doesn't work, and nukes don't result in armaggedon, then there is no incentive to not use them.

The strategists of the Cold War that proposed that nuclear weapons wouldn't destroy the world also tended to be the ones that wanted to use them. And yeah, there were a lot of them. There were many voices in the military and strategic community that wanted the US and USSR to incorporate nukes into regular war strategy. And quite a few legitimately supported a preemptive nuclear assault against the other country. There are recordings taken in the Oval Office during the Cuban Missile Crisis - Kennedy had stepped out for the moment, leaving the generals, who began congratulating each other into scaring Kennedy enough to finally give the order.

If that seems crazy, think about it this way: if deterrence doesn't work and you can survive a nuclear war, then obviously, whoever fires their nukes first will have the advantage. Meaning if you wanted to win a nuclear war, you needed to be that first shooter. Which is why saying nukes won't destroy humanity is a pretty controversial statement - not just because of the veracity of that statement, which is debated, but also because of implications of that geopolitically.

I disagree with this. You don't have to go all the way to "destroy the species" for it to be a good deterrent, you merely need to be worse off than you were before. If the US could have totally destroyed the USSR and survived, but have been reduced to a third world nation, it would have lost, even if it had won the war.

This sort of thinking led to the "sharing the pain" Soviet doctrine, where they would target neutral and even allied nations with their missiles, to stop them being in a position to conquer the remains of the USSR following WW3.

Secondly, pre-emptive strikes stop being attractive when your enemy has a second strike capability. The classic example of this is the nuclear powered submarine armed with ballistic missiles (known as SSBNs, or "Boomers"). Even if you get your missiles off first, there will be submarines lurking somewhere in the oceans of the world you can't hope to touch, and the US, UK and USSR all had those (China had one, but didn't seems to do much with it).

 

[Joccaren]

Well, that depends.
Is a genocide of the human race in progress, or are we just being made slaves or something?
Is there absolutely no hope of winning the war, or is some sort of miracle still possible?

If humans will be wiped out entirely, and there is no chance at survival, f*** everything and nuke the planet. I'm taking as much valuable stuff out as I can though. They want food? I nuke everywhere that sustains life. They want water? I turn as much of the damn stuff radioactive as I can. The want metals? I find out where the largest deposits we know of are, and nuke the hell out of those areas. I'm not going to be able to get rid of them, but I'll make the area hazardous for them to mine. Whatever they want, I'm doing my best to deny them it.

Preferably I'd like to end the war, or let humanity live on, but if those fail... I'm taking as much out as I can.

 

[Starik20X6]

My first thought- if they've managed to cross the vastness of the universe and decimated the human population, I feel like using nukes on them would be like trying to use rude words to bring down a harrier jet.

 

[Lt._nefarious]

I wouldn't fire the nukes but what I would do is create a rag tag group of survivors and lead them on an heroic suicide mission to stop the alien leaders and make puns...