How Would First Contact Really Go?

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Graham Kennedy
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Re: How Would First Contact Really Go?

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Sionnach Glic wrote:1) A few months from now a NASA probe lands on the moon to look around for stuff. Upon landing it crests a nearby hill to see what appears to be some sort of large mining operation being conducted on the moon. High-powered telescopes across Earth are turned to investigate, and the viewers see a fleet of ships (mostly civilian mining ships but a few military escorts) conducting operations on the moon, with a large complex on the surface. It quickly becomes clear that these aliens have FTL drives. They've made no attempts to contact us or even acknowledge our existance. How do we react? Do we hunker down and shut up and hope they don't notice us, or do we attempt to contact them?
Hell yes we try to contact them. And not with messages; we send people.

They would obviously know we are here already, so if they aren't talking it's because they've chosen not to. I'd guess because we're too primitive to bother with in their eyes... but if a ship lands outside their complex and astronauts get out and walk up, can they really keep ignoring it?

And besides, if we try to contact them then either they reciprocate, which is what they want, or they keep on ignoring us, in which case we're no better off but no worse off either. So contacting them is a win-draw proposition, whilst not is a draw-draw proposition.
2) One day radars across the planet light up as a bunch of massive unidentified craft suddenly appear in our atmosphere without any prior warning. They head straight to uninhabited parts of the planet (the Sahara Desert, the Salt Flats in Utah, parts of the Australian outback, Siberia, etc) and land. Any missiles fired at the craft are simply shot down by anti-missile systems, with no further action taken against those who fired it. The ships land in these uninhabited regions and the aliens begin setting up mining operations. They make no attempts to contact us, and any attempts to do so are ignored. Any approaching vehicles are warned in fluent English (or whatever the local language is) that they must turn around or they will be assumed to be hostile. Failure to turn around results in missiles taking down the offending vehicle. Given that these aliens clearly have technology far more advanced than ours, how do the nations of Earth respond to such a territorial violation?
I'd keep trying to contact them. I'd send the most obviously helpless, harmless group I could to make contact - no vehicle, walk in on foot.If they murder them, try to sneak in with stealth. If that doesn't work keep trying, try ANYTHING, and keep at it, over and over, in hopes that sooner or later they will get sick of the stand off and talk.
Give a man a fire, and you keep him warm for a day. SET a man on fire, and you will keep him warm for the rest of his life...
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