April 11, 2011 2250

I have noticed a common misconception about alien invasions that needs addressing.

If an alien invasion were to occur, why would they come down guns blazing Independence Day style? The reality is there would be no need to. If an alien species wanted to destroy our species, the most efficient way would be to create some sort of virus.

Why would a virus be more efficient? Not a single alien would be at risk. By creating a virus, they would not have to send down military to capture the planet; instead, they would all be completely safe. Let’s assume that they did start a military invasion and for every million people killed, we would only kill one alien: with our current population at 6.91 billion people, that’s 6910 dead aliens. Why waste those lives? Other reasons for a virus include the man(alien?)power involved in an invasion, and the resources such as ammunition and fuel that their military would use.

People have told me before that an alien species might not be able to develop such a virus but the truth is we can do this today. So a species with technology vastly superior to our own, capable of traveling between planets on such a large scale as colonization should definitely be able to.

They only reason for a military invasion would be if they did not want to exterminate humanity (perhaps they want humans as slaves or they plan to leave us after they get what they are after), or if they simply get off by fighting like Predators.

I suppose I’ll just have to accept that in movies and books the aliens are simply fearful of a virus mutating into something threatening to them. It’s a rational fear. I just wanted to put this idea out there.