If you were an Alien with the goal to invade the Earth, how would you do it?

submitted by Leo_Littlebook from self.ScienceFiction

Inspired by a Reddit prompt: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/hhdc3m/if_you_were_an_alien_with_the_goal_to_invade_the/

I have a feeling my answer would get censored. Feel free to give your own.

Direct conquest

Evaluate Earth's space capabilities. Secretly colonize the Solar System where possible.

Prep asteroids and comets for Earth bombardment. One asteroid should contain a burrowing probe capable of taking control of the Earth's magnetosphere and disabling her radiation shielding. Weaponize the Sun to target Earth with solar flares, or appear to.

Abduct test subjects. Develop slow-incubating nonlethal virii that reduce IQ and testosterone of Eurasians, both current phenotype and descendants' genotype. Prep cyberwarfare package.

Release biological virii in all major ethnically Eurasian cities simultaneously. Wait until humans start noticing the virii. Release cyber-warfare payload onto the Internet. Wait until effective cyberwarfare countermeasures commence. Simulate a huge solar flare that EMP fries Earth's non-hardened electronics. Infected will flee the cities, spreading the virii. Wait until spread is checked or saturation achieved.

Deliver asteroids, obscuring Earth's skies. Eliminate remaining human space assets. Begin openly colonizing the Solar System except Earth.

Monitor radio chatter for a decade to gather intelligence on survivors. Then send in the drones to mop up with WMDs. (Environmental degradation is no big deal. Mars is clean.) Make honeypots out of destroyed shelters. Maybe drop toxic comets to poison the atmosphere.

Begin terraforming Earth. Establish navy and undersea colonies. Maintain air superiority. Build amphibious landing armies. Take continents, starting with Antarctica.

Collect gene samples of extinct native flora and fauna for archives and future zoos.

Subvert and usurp

Surveil and then infiltrate Earth.

Cause three generations of unprecedented prosperity in the USA, EU, China and Russia via technological advancement. Send infiltrator tech "inventors", CEOs, coders etc. Render the population degenerate through luxury. Maneuver unqualified leaders into power. Gain technological control over key systems such as stock markets and strategic defense. Encourage immigration and miscegenation to reduce IQ of Eurasian IQ 100+ ethnicities. Encourage IQ- and testosterone- reducing environmental and nutritional pollution and social policies. Develop suborned AI.

Cause rapid destabilization and economic collapse. Support simultaneous left-wing singularities in the USA, EU, Russia and China.

Ally with Democrats to counter the USA. In Russia, encourage dysgenics to reduce IQ. In China, exploit populist unrest and cults to cause civil war. Keep Europe a militarily-feeble satellite. Foment conflict between Russia-China and NATO. Precipitate a nuclear war. Infiltrate command and control and expend all WMDs, prioritizing IQ Eurasian IQ 100+ population centers.

Establish a world government and unified religion combining Judaism and Christianity, seated in Jerusalem. Restore prosperity. Subvert and destroy any holdouts. Register all humans. Require a digital implant to buy and sell.

Propagate IQ-reducing virii. Populate vaccinated elite with gengineered psycho-cybernetic thought-controlled humans perfectly loyal to aliens (cloaked in religious mythos).

Proceed with direct conquest plan, using enslaved humans as supporting partisans. Then sell the useful ones to alien colonists as chattel, and liquidate the remainder.

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[–]AFutureConcern 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

It's simple. Simply immigrate to Earth. There will be inevitable resistance to alien invasion by "hateful far-right reactionaries", but simply say that you're there for a better life for yourself and your species, and leftists will defend you. Co-opt civil rights groups to campaign for "alien rights", eventually gaining state benefits. Make sure to commit terror attacks to kill a few resisters, but only enough to cause more of a backlash among right-wingers. Despite the fact that you obviously look and behave differently to humans, make sure any research that demonstrates any differences is suppressed. Convince the population that there is a "rise in far-right radicalization and hate", and use that to censor any reasonable voices who object to alien invasion.

Eventually you will have enough rights and institutional power to start directly advocating for the invasion. At this point, start tearing down monuments to humans, claiming they are hateful because the humans are bad as evidenced by their history of violence. As the number of aliens on the planet rapidly increases, start persecuting humans who dare to speak up in their own interest. Their time is over. For the planet, aliens are a source of our strength.

Once you have full institutional control, begin to eliminate the last traces of human resistance. At this point there are no human organizations that can act together to resist your invasion, so it's only a matter of time before you win. Confuse the remaining humans by calling their theory of "alien invasion" a "conspiracy theory" and "something that Hitler would have supported". Then shoot them in the head with a phase blaster for committing anti-alien hate crime. All the humans who helped you along the way may now be targeted without resistance. Line them up against the wall and shoot them.

[–]Leo_Littlebook[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This is basically the "Ally with Democrats and diaspora Jews", and implies that the USA will be used as a vehicle to create an alien NWO. China and Russia aren't susceptible, though.

[–]jet199 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Like you'd have to dominate or attack anything.

Just give out free shit.

Tell everyone you'll match their government's handouts plus 10%, cut taxes, better services they'll all come over to your side easy.

Then once you've got rid of any competition for leadership you can do whatever you like to people.

[–]Leo_Littlebook[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

You'd certainly get a war out of at least one of the great powers for trying that. The benevolent approach is a good diplomatic opener to get a foothold, though. And things can proceed from there to divide humanity.

It requires exposing oneself on the ground in some capacity, though, which is vulnerable to attack and tech leeching. I suppose that could be mitigated with modified human representatives and capped tech presence.

This is probably compatible with the opening prosperity step of my subversion scenario. Might be the best way to do it.

[–]jet199 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Meh, the great powers are run by individuals too. Just buy them off. Or send them children to abuse like Epstein.

[–]NorfolkTerrier 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I gamed this out for a writing project a while back. I think that doing it openly with economic domination would be the most effective way. You can look at how third world countries have become subordinated to major powers solely through making deals that seem to make things better for them. Or even how major powers' citizens have allowed their leaders to develop alliances that undermine their sovereignty, and kill their jobs and ways of life in exchange for cheap foreign goods.

As long as aliens have something to offer Earth, I think a lot of our leaders would easily sell us out in exchange for nice things in the short term. Humans would fight over who really had the right to make a deal with aliens, while our boldest governments and individuals would just go ahead and do it. You'd be looking at a loud, peaceful "first contact," followed by a bunch of starry-eyed rhetoric about moving forward to the future, growing into an interstellar community, etc. In the end ordinary people would have little control over Earth's relationship with aliens, and in return the aliens would be able to do just about whatever they wanted, since they'd have most of the cards (assuming their tech level is far beyond ours).

With an understanding of human cultures, it would also be pretty easy to manipulate public opinion. Conservatives could be manipulated with appeals to renewed power/sway to one's country through cooperation with the aliens. People delude themselves into thinking they're more important than they really are, that they'd be equal partners, or that they'd be the ones exploiting the aliens. Liberals could be manipulated with appeals to social justice. Just like corporations use milquetoast social issues rhetoric as a shield against whatever bullshit they're up to, the alien/pro-alien faction could attach itself to some idea of progress, improvement of human society, etc. And anyone who wanted things to go back would be painted as a regressive.

Edit: I'm not going to argue with you about IQ or whatever, but it's worth remembering that third world countries are often pretty good at shitting all over open occupiers and invaders. People with inflated ideas about their own sense of civilization are easier to manipulate. Third worlders would start shooting/bombing a lot sooner, and if they couldn't win many would burn their country to the ground before giving it up to invaders.

[–]Leo_Littlebook[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Trading isn't invading. 3rd world countries require outside support and priestly self-restraint of the invading military power to mount successful guerilla campaigns against superior military power.

[–]NorfolkTerrier 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I guess my idea was that that's how they would move in at first, but in the end they'd have de facto control, since human sovereignty had been bargained away over time, and people had developed heavy dependence on them. At that point it would be possible to deny various civil rights, regulate birthrates, take private ownership of large segments of territory, etc.

If you want to go win the Afghanistan war, be my guest. Obviously if you don't need the territory to be livable you can just bomb it into the stone age, but for my purposes I'd assume the only reason to invade an inhabited planet would be because you value something about the way it currently is.

[–]Leo_Littlebook[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

https://blog.jim.com/war/when-the-west-started-losing-wars/

Subversion beginning with trade is part of my subversion answer.

A goldilocks planet is valuable even with significant war damage, and would probably require terraforming anyway for alien comfort.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Place large disc between the sun and the earth, large enough to block sunlight from reaching earth, probably in a tidal lock to move with the Earth's orbit.

Wait for all the plants to die without light or heat.

Invade empty planet ready for terraforming with zero resistance.

[–]Leo_Littlebook[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Requires building a giant disk that's immune to all the junk Earth can shoot at it, which sounds pretty hard. Dropping an asteroid to cloud the skies with dust is a lot cheaper.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Well I can't argue with that. Crazy how the best way to kill a planet is to throw a rock at it.

[–]SedateApe 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Destroy all satellites. Disruption of communication and transportation. Then non-stop EMP attacks. Everytime some form of electrical signal is located, EMP that area again. Then sit back and wait.

I've heard an EMP attack can kill off a large part of the population of an industrial nation within a year.

Without the "first world countries" to keep the peace and pay money the third world countries will fall into war and genocide.

One year after the first attack it's time for a biological attack on the newly organized population areas.

In about two years the planet will be ready for the colony fleet or the salvage units.

[–]Leo_Littlebook[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I like how you think. Ad astra!

[–]Inspector_Monkfish 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

First: I’d ask you humans how to do it.

Second: 🤷‍♂️

Third: profit!!! 💰

[–]Sw0rdofDam0cles 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I would erect a force field around Earth to quarantine humanity. Then simply go about the process of extracting resources from the other planets in the solar system. I wouldn't concern myself with humans seeing our activity, but I would enact strict policies to prevent humans from receiving or sending transmissions beyond their atmosphere. Then when all that is left is Earth and Luna, I would have the moon consumed for her resources. Let humanity suffer the ecological devastation to follow. By the time I deign to allow my species to make contact, human civilization would have long since collapsed and be in no position to oppose me.

[–]Leo_Littlebook[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

That's ridiculously expensive. Just launch a bunch of junk into Earth's orbit and add more whenever they try to clear it. Blockade is a good idea though.

[–]Sw0rdofDam0cles 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

For us humans with our current level of technology, yes. However, if I'm a member of an extra-solar civilization able to cross the void by means of FTL travel, I would have a variety of means by which I could contain a planet inexpensively. Further, if the force field has the ability to deflect photons and I decided I wish to destroy humanity passively, I would simply place Earth in permanent darkness killing off all flora, leading to the extinction of the bulk of complex life on the planet.

[–]Leo_Littlebook[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

If you're going to handwave everything, just say magic. The prompt didn't specify FTL. An AI Von Neumann probe swarm might invade the Solar System without FTL.

[–]Sw0rdofDam0cles 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

[–]Leo_Littlebook[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Any sufficiently advanced pedophilia is indistinguishable from Disney.