Are we alone in the universe? There’s no way to know - yet - but humanity isn’t taking any
chances. In 1977, the Voyager spacecrafts carried two golden records into space, each containing
sounds and images designed to explain life on Earth. The idea is that aliens will find them,
have the proper technology to play a 1977 record, and learn about our little planet.
Maybe they’ll pay us a visit? What could go wrong?
It turns out…a lot. The idea of making contact with aliens
has been a fixation for us since the beginning of the space age,
and most scenarios begin the same way - an alien space ship lands, and out come some
little green or grey men. They say “Take us to your leader!” and get to meet the President.
Okay…now what?
If you ask the hopeful people who can’t wait for aliens to visit us, they’ll tell
you only good things are coming. Aliens will probably bring technology far beyond ours,
and they’ll be excited to share it with us! Maybe we’ll get the technology they use to clone bodies
and conquer death. Maybe they’ll take us on a tour of the cosmos at light speed! Maybe we’ll
even get those flying cars they promised us in The Jetsons. All thanks to our new high-tech
friends from the stars. No wonder everyone was so excited about them paying us a visit!
But the reality might be very different.
Scientists are the ones responsible for reaching out into space and finding evidence
of life - but if you talk to many of them, they’re the ones most nervous about finding
out if there actually is someone else out there watching. And when scientists are concerned,
we should probably listen, right? While they are continuing the efforts to unmask the hidden faces
in the galaxies far beyond ours, many also privately say that the odds are that if we
do succeed, the result could be a very harsh awakening about our place in the universe.
Because we may not be the top dogs anymore.
Humanity has dominated Earth as the only sapient species for over a million years,
and we really don’t have any competitors. The only real threat to us seems to be…ourselves. But in
terms of space travel, we still can only cover a very small area. Humanity has gotten to the moon,
sent complex unmanned probes to Mars, and conducted surveillance missions in the Milky
Way. Some of the furthest-reaching probes we’ve sent are one-way missions. And we’re
pretty confident at this point that there isn’t any other intelligent life in the Solar System
that we’re close to discovering. While it’s possible that life could exist or previously
has existed on Mars or some of the large moons of the gas giants like Titan or Io,
most of the landscapes in our Solar System are deeply inhospitable to the development of life.
Which means any life that comes looking for us would come from much further.
That means that any alien species that makes contact with us would likely be much
more advanced than us - and we’d be dependent on their good will once they arrive. The best-case
scenario is that the aliens who find us would be fellow scientists, looking to learn about
our culture and leave. We likely wouldn’t have much to offer them, but hopefully they would be
followers of the famous Star Trek concept of the Prime Directive - which is that advanced species
in the Starfleet should not interfere with the development of more primitive cultures.
But even that has its risks. Imagine if an alien spaceship shows up to Earth,
scans us for information, and then leaves because it didn’t think we
were worth talking to. Way to cause a global psychological breakdown, aliens.
But most scenarios paint a much bleaker picture.
The “Take us to your leader” aliens are one kind of visitor from the stars - but
another is much less friendly. How many movies have begun with aliens landing and immediately
attacking Earth? What do they want exactly? Humans to take upstairs for probing? Maybe
it’s a hunting expedition for an alien bachelor party? No matter the cause of an alien invasion,
the harsh fact is that humanity would have very little chance to defend itself against an alien
invasion - because their technology would be incredibly advanced compared to ours. You can call
in the team from Top Gun to scramble the fighter jets - but the odds are that any spaceship that
could travel across multiple galaxies to find us would be able to handle any technology we have.
But what if the aliens aren’t even here for us?
One of the most iconic depictions of an
alien invasion in film history is the 1996 movie Independence Day,
which saw countless disk-like alien ships descend on Earth without a word and attack,
blowing up major cities and shooting lasers into massive holes they created in Earth’s crust.
Humanity did wind up winning- partially thanks to a pilot sacrificing himself and
flying directly into the mothership - but the scariest thing wasn’t the scope of the invasion,
it was the reasoning. The aliens didn’t care about humanity, they simply wanted to mine the planet
for its resources and leave a destroyed husk in its place. They didn’t care about the small,
primitive animals living on the surface. And if an advanced alien species just decided they wanted
to use humanity for resources, there would likely be very little we could do to resist.
Good think there’s no history of humanity doing that, right?
Maybe the biggest threat of an alien invasion is that humanity would wind up being the latest
victim of alien colonialism. The same brutal story from human history would play out once again- a
society is largely keeping to itself when suddenly ships appear on the horizon. The colonists say
they’re here to civilize the tribe and take it over in the name of some glorious far-flung
empire. In the best-case scenario, the tribe loses its independence and many of its traditions.
There may be forced assimilation, the taking of children to be educated in the colonizer’s system,
and the imposition of a new government. And that’s the best-case scenario - many colonizers viewed
the people they colonized as less than human. They would enslave them and force them to work their
own land for resources to be taken back to the colonial power. If they resisted, they would be
brutally killed - and many colonizers committed outright genocides on the indigenous people.
So one of the biggest risks of alien contact is that the aliens wouldn’t
view us as their equals at all - but as their new property.
But the danger to the natives during colonization wasn’t just in terms of the occupiers’ actions.
In many cases, the population was decimated not by murder but by disease. The natives lived in
their own ecosystem, and the colonizers brought their own diseases from their
homeland. The immune systems of the natives were unprepared, and many were wiped out by
diseases including smallpox and cholera. This was weaponized by cruel colonists at times,
but most of the deaths were the result of accidental exposure. The good news is,
medical science has advanced a lot since then, and the introduction of new alien
diseases would be studied by scientists who might be able to cure them in short order.
But only if they followed the rules we know.
Novel viruses do pop up regularly, but they’re usually closely related to another virus that
already exists. When Covid-19 popped up and devastated the world in 2020,
scientists who were working to develop a vaccine for past coronaviruses including
the common cold jumped into action, and were able to create working vaccines in less than a
year. But without that base of knowledge, trying to decipher an alien virus could be like trying
to crack a cypher in a completely new language - and that’s assuming that it doesn’t just wipe
out humanity in a hurry because our immune systems are uniquely vulnerable from the first handshake.
And that’s not the only bad scenario that includes disease!
Assuming that we’re the less-advanced species in the equation, it makes sense that we’d be the more
vulnerable to disease - but that may not always be the case. A more advanced species may also be
a more sterile one, and it’s possible that the aliens may not be able to handle diseases. Thus,
the scenario could be flipped. Peaceful aliens make first contact, shake hands,
and come down with all our diseases. Suddenly we
have a dead alien delegation on our hands. In the best-case scenario,
this is a massive missed opportunity that may never be recovered. In the worst-case scenario,
we now have an angry second delegation wearing biohazard suits coming to sterilize this planet.
And that’s not the only way an alien organism could affect the planet.
Okay, let’s go for a slightly less intense first-contact scenario. Say humanity manages to
land on the moon of Io, get under the atmosphere, and they discover a strange creature living there.
It’s about the size of a rabbit, made out of what looks like black stone, and is kinda cute!
The mission brings one back to Earth to study it - and then it turns out that the creature reproduces
asexually, and lives off the oxygen in Io’s atmosphere of that is mostly made up of Sulfur
Dioxide. Exposed to Earth’s atmosphere filled with oxygen, it starts reproducing exponentially,
consuming the resource we need to live. It’s like the Trouble With Tribbles as an
apocalyptic event. Is this an unlikely series of events? Sure, but given how little we know
about the possibility of life outside of Earth, it’s impossible to rule anything out.
We’re staring into the unknown - and scientists say that should scare us.
Scientists like nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi have looked at the possibility of
contact with another species and observed that it seems like if they were out there,
they probably should have contacted us by now. The explanation for why they haven’t is that the
scenarios where intelligent life can develop are exceedingly rare, and with the universe
being over 13 billion years old and human life existing for around two million years,
the pockets of time in which we could make contact are few and easy to miss. Any first contact would
be extremely risky and likely involve contact between two planets at drastically different
stages of their development. It’s entirely possible that a hundred million years ago,
some enterprising aliens discovered Earth, came to visit - and got eaten by massive reptiles.
Their homeworld marked a “Do not visit” sign on Earth, and haven’t been back since.
But surely it’s not all bad news, right?
Let’s say everything goes right. Our space program
advances to the point where we can explore more outside of our galaxy,
and we make contact with another species from a neighboring galaxy. They’re similarly advanced,
maybe a century or so in terms of progress beyond us, including having a universal translator that
makes communication possible. We’re able to make first contact in neutral space,
and bring the knowledge we’ve gained back to Earth and figure out what to do next.
Now we have to deal with the biggest problem of making
alien first contact - having to deal with humanity itself!
The sad fact is, humans can’t agree on anything, and that’s likely to continue here. While humans
have been fascinated with the concept of alien first contact for a long time, they’re not exactly
prepared to do it - and the discovery would be one of the biggest moments in human history. So
what could go wrong? Try just about everything imaginable. Humanity has had some test runs
for alien landings, and generally the response is complete chaos and an over-eagerness for violence.
You just have to look back to what happened in Flatwoods, West Virginia in 1952.
It was September 12th when two brothers and their friend saw something streak through
the sky that seemed to land on the plot of a nearby farmer. They went and told a local woman,
who accompanied the three boys alongside a local National Guardsman - and two children they let
tag along with them. When they reached the top of the hill, the group claims to
have seen a tall figure with a round red face surrounded by what looked like a massive hood.
While this is now believed to be a barn owl perching on a dead tree, it caused a panic in the
town that created a decades-long mystery - and no shortage of people ready to confront a space alien
without a moment’s hesitation. And that reveals another potential problem with first contact.
Who gets to do the contact?
Assuming we’re not being invaded, we still know essentially nothing about
alien cultures, and we have no way of knowing what their cultural is like. A handshake,
the most famous human greeting, might be an unpardonable insult in alien culture because
they consider the hands the most unclean part of the body. The only way to find out is trial
and error - and then we have to hope that they’re a particularly reasonable species. The odds are
those first few days after first contact might be some of the most tense in human history.
But it’s nothing compared to what would be going on back on Earth.
The odds are that everyone would want a piece of the aliens - figuratively,
and in some cases literally. World governments would be competing to get the first face-to-face
meeting with the alien leader, no doubt to explain to them who the good guys and
bad guys are on Earth. The edge would go to whoever’s space program discovered the aliens,
but the opportunity is so big that no one should be surprised if it turns into a shooting war
to be first in line. And that means that the alien delegation could be caught in the middle.
But what if it’s not a government at all?
The process of space exploration has been increasingly privatized, especially in the United
States. Struggles back home and a lack of progress in making big leaps has led many countries to cut
funding for their space programs, and into the breach stepped billionaires Elon Musk, Richard
Branson, and Jeff Bezos. They’ve focused so far on heading for Mars and sending unmanned spacecraft
into deep space - but if they made contact with an alien species first, it would put the governments
of the world into a sticky situation. While Musk does partner with NASA on many of his space
projects, there is no guarantee that the messages would sync up when it comes time to make contact.
And that’s to say nothing of the chaos in other areas.
No one would be shaken more by alien contact than the religions of the world. Most have a doctrine
that humanity was created in God’s image, and most either quietly or loudly believe that we’re
the only intelligent life in the universe. The discovery of another intelligent species would
result in a crisis of faith not seen before in human history. Some religions might change up
their doctrine to account for it. Others might see people leave the faith as it no longer
makes sense to them. Yet others might preach that the aliens are agents of the devil and
should be opposed at any cost - potentially putting the alien delegation in danger when
they arrive. And yet another group might try to convert the aliens to their faith. Don’t worry,
the human escorts will likely just tell them to ignore the pamphlets.
But religious fervor isn’t the only kind of fervor they might encounter.
What’s one of the most dramatic issues of the modern day? Immigration. Not only are many
countries concerned with keeping their borders secure, but many people don’t even like the idea
of immigrants coming in legally. There have been calls for reducing the number of visas given for
work and visitation, as well as some demanding to eliminate birthright citizenship that grants
citizenship to any child born in the country to a foreign parent. And that’s just other humans - so
what happens when the sky parts and aliens make clear that even our atmospheric border might
be open to new visitors? While most people would likely respond with curiosity, a good number will
respond with fear and even anger. Is there even a way to secure ourselves from a visit - or invasion
- like that? Do we hear someone chanting “Build an atmospheric wall and make the aliens pay for it”?
But those are all extremists, and at least the governments should have things in order…right?
The governments of Earth have been planning for alien first contact for a while,
and while they’re not always in sync, there is an international plan to follow. But that doesn’t
mean things will go smoothly. For one thing, any alien visitor will be bringing with them
technology that would be far beyond anything we’ve ever seen - and the temptation will be high for
governments to try to get their hands on it and weaponize it. There have been persistent rumors
that the government already has some alien technology- thanks to supposed UFO crashes
in the post-World War II years. While there is no proof that Area 51 is actually alien-related,
it’s likely that an alien visit would kick off a massive intelligence race to get the details
of their ships and other technology. This could not only increase tensions between nations here
on Earth, but could get all of Earth in hot water if the aliens discover a spy.
Okay, let’s say we sidestep all those problems. Now what?
Once humanity makes first contact with aliens, the focus will likely turn to what they can do
for us. If humanity can gain their trust, we’ll likely want to know about their medical system,
their technology, and anything else that may enhance human life on Earth.
The aliens may be willing to share this - but the odds are they will be a lot more
hesitant to let us in on the details of their homeworld. And there’s a very good reason for
that - humans visiting “New Worlds” for the first time rarely results in anything good.
We’ve talked about aliens colonizing us - but what happens if we’re the colonists?
The thing is, Earth isn’t doing so great. We’ve got climate change, we’ve got diseases,
and we’ve got a lot of humans who don’t always have where to live. So many people
have been looking for a place to expand to. The most popular opportunity is Mars colonies,
where humans would live in bunkers and only be able to exit while wearing spacesuits.
So the presence of a planet with a potentially breathable atmosphere,
inhabited by a species we’ve already befriended, is very tempting as a potential new home.
So would history repeat itself?
The difference between the colonialism of the past and this one would be that the aliens likely would
be far better-armed than the humans. Most native societies did have robust self-defenses - and
many took the colonists by surprise with how fiercely they fought for their independence.
But few societies could ultimately resist the superior navies and the resources of the crown,
especially combined with the impact of disease wrecking the society. Attempting to colonize an
alien planet would have a much higher likelihood of the humans being routed quickly, but if we
took a peaceful alien society by surprise, they could soon find themselves as a colony of Earth.
And that would raise a lot of questions about expansion.
The human instinct to expand has always been with us, with explorations for new
societies having been part of cultures for thousands of years. But that rarely
ends in a shaking of hands and trading of wisdom. More often than not it ends
with two societies trading their best shots and one eventually coming to an end. Would
that happen again if we made first contact with aliens? There are many scenarios where
first contact is the worst thing to happen to humans, to aliens - or in some cases, to both!
Well, this is depressing. What’s the best-case scenario for first contact?
It’s probably one where humanity’s worst instincts are kept in check, and the aliens are inherently
benevolent. If governments are restrained enough to not run over each other to be the first to meet
the aliens, and religion and politics stay out of it, the most likely scenario is that humans
are fascinated with aliens. After all, this is the biggest discovery in human history,
proof of a society out in the cosmos that has taken many of the same evolutionary steps as us
but followed a very different path. And what’s the first thing we’d probably do in that case?
Why, put them on TV, of course!
Ironically, the saving grace of the aliens who make first contact might be that capitalism
has a very big vested interest in keeping them safe. As soon as they step out of that spaceship,
the aliens will be the biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. And while governments
and religions are concerned with what this means for the future,
Hollywood will want to get the most out of them now. The reporter who gets the first interview
with an alien representative will become a historical icon. And how long before an
enterprising producer decides to try to cast the first alien on Dancing with the Stars?
But with increased visibility comes increased risk.
Alien discourse has been filled with conspiracy theories for decades already,
and media representation often has a big impact on how we view other people. So will
our demonization of aliens in media impact how we act to our new acquaintances? Well,
at least there is Alf and ET to balance things out. Plus, Star Trek has been
showing us a future where humans and aliens co-exist in the cosmos since the 1960s.
So basically, first contact with aliens could work out - if humanity brings their best of the
best to the negotiating table, the aliens are come with our best interests in mind,
religion and politics don’t get in the way, and Hollywood behaves responsibly
and sensibly. And above all, everyone needs to listen to the advice the scientists give us
about a monumental moment in human history with plenty of risks and opportunities.
Yeah, that should be fine. We can trust everyone to act reasonably. Send out the signal!
For a look at how this could play out, check out “First 72 Hours After Aliens
Make Contact (Hour By Hour)”, or watch this video instead!