Adorable

Adorable

@Drefsab  
Have you been watching Doctor Who again?
 
 
@AlsoSprachOdin  
Commence protocol 69
 
 
@Background Pony #E2DE  
The Daleks had that idea with the cybermen.
 
 
@Drefsab  
Moon was too haunted.

@Cirrus Light  
oh god WHAT HAVE I DONE!?!?

@Cirrus Light  
These are all interesting points.
 
In regards to the primitive army of the other world, whilst they only wield fairly simple tools, it doesn’t mean that they’re grossly incompetent, knights and soldiers of certain classes and orders have a high capability to maintain discipline and order. Not to mention their forces aren’t going through the portal to attack Earth just for the sake of sowing chaos, they’re going through to conquer and gather resources.
 
The Empire in question attacking Earth is a mixture of the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire, having survived and flourished, not to mention studied magic and actually adopted a great deal of knowledge, and expanded over great distances. Though they’re still led by imperialistic and hierarchical systems, and their level of education is what you’d expect for medieval level of development, but with new elements.
 
Another factor to keep in mind about is that the army attacking isn’t standalone in being all human, they do have trolls, ogres, orcs and goblins as well as being able to field dragons.  
Orcs are more or less mercenaries for hire, same with Trolls, and Goblins though Goblins field unstable explosives, and they don’t care if they die.
 
Dragons are another issue entirely, their bodies are made of a strange compound which makes their hide about as durable as shooting a wall made out of tungsten, so there’d be some issue with trying to deal with them, also they breathe fire. Also dragons of these size aren’t small, they’re the same size as F-18 fighter jets.
 
For the sake of the scenario, let’s say the army launches and attack with a force over over a 120,000 in total, 100,000 humans with the rest being auxiliary, mercenaries and whatnot. And a force of some 500 dragons.
 
XXXXX
 
Okay, moving on, for the sake of the scenario, the nations on Earth agree to not go all out with demanding access to the portal and concede control, but still want access. The US agrees, but only after a set period of time, and only after the UN sends an observation group to see what the situation is like on the other side of the portal and determine whether or not to pressure the US.
 
Also, the scientific community is put into a position of power, having access to a great deal of material, how much would it share with the rest of the world in terms of discoveries?
 
XXXXX
 
For the Portal’s world itself, the New Frontier, is not a small place, let’s say that the total area of the planet has 40% land mass, and 60% water, though the oceans are much deeper than that of Earth, and fresh water is more abundant. The territory the US find itself in is a region which resembles Europe, though a bit more isolated, and there are a series of mountains blocking off the eastern parts of Europe from Russia.
 
The Middle East is located further south eastwards with a great deal more ocean space between, Africa is a little more interconnected sort of with Spain, which happens to be a large island connected to the west of Europe, with small islands covering the ocean between it and Africa. England is massive, having taken up additional territory which was Greenland, which is all now habitable as England is.
 
The Portal is located between Germany and Italy in terms of Geography, in a valley somewhat isolated, having only two points of entry, making defense easier. And one area leading out to a large river which snakes out to the ocean down south.
 
The US is in a rather strategic location, with only two points to defend, actually three if you’re counting potential aerial attack. But the region is safe from most dangers, and there’s little in the way of any communities. So contact has to be made via exploration.
 
Which branch of the military would under take the job of exploring another world? The US Marine Corps or the US Army? I never quite figured that one out, but I suspect the US Army would send the Rangers in to scout out territory, while having the rest of the Army build up a base. Or this might result in a joint task force of military branches, excluding the Navy, seeing as they’d need to build a naval installation and move tons of ships to make any significant contribution.
 
XXXXX
 
Censorship, is limited, the US government acts like the way it did in Vietnam, but censors any negative imagery and hopes that the general public doesn’t learn too much, media control is also limited to whatever the US military feels is the most relevant.
 
Public support for the war is good for the most part, as they want to kick the crap out of whoever attacked their soil, and there’s a surge of recruitment, and money trickles down into spending again. Though there is a question as to what is supposed to be deployed, as they don’t want valuable amounts of material being lost, like expensive jets and tanks.
 
Reusing older equipment might be seen as a viable option, as their enemy isn’t highly advanced or capable of fielding firearms, but caution is taken in the sense that US hardware and equipment is to be destroyed in the event of capture.

@Evident Disaster  
UTC - 6, US & Canada Central Time.
 
But, yeah, sorry about that… Just kinda put it off. Kept this tab open so I wouldn’t forget, but still did, lol.
 
@Evident Disaster  
>Accessable to multiple entities
 
If it’s in Central Park, there’s little question as to who it belongs to.
 
Or rather, at least in the eyes of the U.S. Lots of foreign powers might try to argue that it should be open to the world, and some might try to take it by force.
 
Probably the U.S. would allow foreigners access, but only through a process that controls who goes through. This way if anyone tries to take the portal by force, they appear to be the bad guys, and it’s very difficult for anyone to paint the U.S. as the bad guys since they let others through.
 
Trying to punch through has a lot of issues. Firstly, doing so requires planning and equipment, both of which will catch the CIA’s attention. Secondly, U.S. airspace is heavily defended, and taking ships isn’t much better against the most powerful navy on Earth. Nuclear attack submarines can kill the most important ships and B-52 formations outfitted with more cruise missiles than you can count can kill the rest long before they ever see the shore - and if they wait until the ships cross the 12 mile limit, then it will be a clear act of aggression on the attacking party (and then land-launched cruise missiles can join the fray. In terms of antiship cruise missiles, the U.S. has two main options: TASM - Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles have a range of 250 miles +, though they cruise slow and are relatively easy to shoot down, a large enough salvo could still penetrate any navy’s defenses. Harpoons only have 50 mile range and a smaller warhead (1-2 TASM’s will sink about any cruiser/destroyer, though it’ll take 2-4 harpoons), but they can be air-launched, and they’re also sea-skimming, which means they attempt to fly below the radar of the ships they’re attacking. The effectiveness of this tactic varies from moderate to extremely effective - harsher weather, bigger waves make it more effective since they blend easier, though a few missiles may disappear to hitting waves(?).
 
Even if the CIA can’t stop it before it gets off the ground, it’s pretty likely they’ll provide warning for #2.
 

 
As for the backwards threats in the portal - urban warfare is a huge mess, but not having guns is still going to put the invaders way behind. This could be spun in a positive way - instead of “the world’s coming to an end!” it’s “join the army and save New York!”.
 
If there’s endless hordes of them, then the military would probably get involved. Army, Marines. If there’s only a medieval army, though, then the National Guard might be able to put them down enough, though I’m not sure at this point if the other branches would get involved.
 
You definitely don’t want to bomb skyscrapers, though. But you maybe could drop a laser-guided bomb in Central Park if it’s an enemy HQ. For the most part, though, gunships will be a massive advantage if their armies mass together. If they hide in buildings, though, then it could get a lot more messy as it gets up close and personal. Kevlar and modern body armor will actually do an excellent job - better than plate possibly even - against primitive weapons, but of course don’t cover some areas. But being able to drop them from 500 yards, or even across the room, with hollow-point rounds will make all the difference to arrows that can’t penetrate body armor or even a helmet.
 
Night vision might also be an advantage. And while some cases of urban warfare are really messy and hard, having the entire nation on your side and against the invaders will help tremendously. The bad guys can hide in buildings, but so can citizens and your guys.
 
It’s kind of awesome to imagine how much it might unify the States, though.
 

 
As for manipulating the elements - this can make it hard in some ways - but in others, not so much. You can launch an attack in a monsoon/hurricane - it’s a bit messier but can be done. You don’t want to have to put up with those crosswinds in a helicopter, though, but C-130s are so all-weather that NOAA uses them to fly through hurricanes. And then there’s the coast guard, of course, that flies in terrible weather all the time.
 
Even if you can shoot lightning from a rod - that’s not really much better than carrying a high-caliber rifle, except that it’s easier to make a lightning rod than armor that can stop a high caliber bullet. And you can’t zap something that you can’t see. Wizards would be prime sniper targets.
 

 
 
@Evident Disaster  
>Crisis
 
I kind of mentioned how it might unify the country. A portal is pretty terrifying and alien, seems way beyond our ability, so would incur panic - but them wielding swords would make them seem like easy prey. It might sort of cancel each other out? You’d probably have a lot of people split on it. I wonder if we’d see government control of the media again like propaganda in WWII. That’s a huge change of pace since Vietnam, but a real home threat like this just might do it.
 
All that scientist rush I mentioned in the earlier comment would certainly still happen, so blowing it up is a very bad idea when you could learn a tremendous amount from it. Just secure it.
 
I just read your next paragraphs about media, heh. In WWII, there was some real media restrictions. They might return - probably - when looking at such an amazing threat that just popped in like this. If ABC and CNN turned it in a bad way, or even said there’s no way we could win - they probably would go off air.
 
Not quite martial law, but a lot of wartime policies like WWII.
 
But on the topic of Martial Law:
 
This happened in the Boston Bombings
 
And earlier in Katrina
 
So I’d definitely expect martial law, at least locally, though.
 

 
Here’s another thought, though - what’s going through the heads of the invaders? Sure they have magic and they knew they were invading a place - probably - but our world might absolutely blow them away. Our Skyscrapers massively dwarf even the greatest pyramids. The greatest cities ever imagined in ancient civilizations are small villages compared to New York. To say our civilization would blow the minds of any medieval people is a MASSIVE understatement. Our sheer population and accomplishments - ones we consider for granted - would make us seem like gods to them.
 
Airplanes flying so high the sky is almost black? Roaring into the sky on rockets into the actual heavens where the sky is black? (back then, they didn’t even know the sky would get darker if you go higher!) Imagine the greatest wonder you’ve ever heard of in your life is the great pyramid of Giza or the Colossus of Rhodes , and then you see the Statue of Liberty, which is 50% taller, and the entire skyline is made of buildings ten times taller.
 
Seriously, each and every building on Manhatten Island more than fifteen stories is more than tall enough to be considered a great wonder of the ancient world, never mind the ones over a thousand feet tall like the Empire State Building (which is more than twice as tall as the Great Pyramid of Giza), which are now absolutely dwarfed and lost in the midst of all the countless buildings far larger than it.
 

 
Heck, an invading fantasy-setting army would probably surrender as soon as they see the majesty/might of our cities, thinking we must be gods for having built such wonders. To them, we might as well be the Forerunners who built the Halos.
 
Heck, we make the ancient wonders of the Sphinx as a light-hearted and cheap joke  

First thing I wanted to go into was the social impact in the United States and the rest of the world if the portal was opened and all hell breaks loose, now I know that there’s a whole bunch of predictions in regards to first contact scenarios. But I’d like to think that not everyone is that stupid enough to start tearing down everything that’s been built so readily, just because of a first contact scenario, unless it’s an alien invasion.
 
The further away you are from an event or a situation, the less likely it seems to impact upon you. That’s what I’d imagine, the Eastern Seaboard having a panic, but the West wondering what to do, and the rest of the US uncertain on the issue, they’re not faced with an imminent threat. So the issue could be less significant.
 
However NY and the surrounding states would be in a rush to go and deal with the immediate crisis, or at least try to. There’s also the fact that a faction that attacks the city would no doubt be used to justify the US deploying the military, and probably rousing the US population into demanding a full scale military retaliation. Cause, you know American lives have been lost, and a foreign army attacked US soil, that’s a lot more alarming than just a terrorist attack. Seeing as thousands more people had been killed and serious damage had been done to parts of the city.
 
On a smaller note, how would Congress deal with this? I mean there’s a giant portal sitting smack dab in US soil which raises a potential risk to the country as a whole, and I seriously doubt that the government would risk just pouring concrete over the portal and pretending it doesn’t exist, seeing as some race or empire on the other side could dig it open again and attack. And blowing up the portal is next to impossible.
 
Media coverage is one thing I’m very intrigued about, I’m a little confused as to how the US media would go about dealing with this, unless the US government goes and immediately blacks everything out. But once things have subsided, they’d probably help in supporting the military intervention, well some would. I’m not sure about CNN or ABC, but others definitely would.
 
(GLOBAL)  
The global impact is certainly something I sincerely doubt anyone can predict, well besides China stamping down on information and only allowing so much to pass through. Russia doing whatever Russia does, though they might posture about the portal.
 
The European Union, I haven’t done as much research, so I can’t say for certain what they’d do. Maybe Britain might have some cause for alarm, but they might offer assistance to the US to help deal with the portal. I mean the US and Great Britain has had good relations after all.
 
Australia, will do as it usually does and sit on its ass watching things unfold.  
Japan, I dunno, but if demi-humans (monster girls), it’ll be a riot there.
 
I think most people would be genuinely curious more than they’re scared about the whole thing. I know I would, it’d be fascinating to hear about, and I’d want to go and see for myself, but then again, I don’t want to risk getting killed so, I’d wait this one out.

@Cirrus Light  
Oh that’s fine mate, seriously I can wait for a response. I’m not that impatient, I waited two years for a single commission piece to finally get completed, I can wait an extra day or so to receive replies. In any case, I might right some stuff up in advance because I do sleep at different times. It’s 6:10PM.
 
What timezone are you operating on?

@Evident Disaster  
I need to sleep and get back to this later, but I started pulling something up, so I thought I’d go ahead and link it now, and I’ll get back to a full reply later when it’s not 3:30 am :q

@Evident Disaster  
You know I would love to join the conversation. But honestly because the length of time that I require to write and then check the misspell and broken grammar (because I am not a native English Speaker) is going be long and plus I aren’t know about the subject I think I am just going to read any future comments that going be posted here.

@CyanLightning  
I’m a new addition, I think I can get a pass for adding more, it’s been a couple of months.  
And to be perfectly honest, this does have a reason, something I wanted to get some insight.

This Comment section is contain 8,597 words or 49,012 characters (excluding this comment) good jobs guys this comments section does deserve a medal because i learned a lot from here. While although for most people it Going be TL;DR. but for me.
 

@Cirrus Light  
Thankfully in this circumstance I can safely say that magical nukes won’t be a problem, but revolutionary innovations are, such as the ability to create artificial gravity for a certain type of material, or a counter magnetic one, either case a serious breakthrough as it would require little energy and only refinement to make use of.
 
Another matter is that the portal is actually located within reach of multiple entities, one of which launches an attack through the gate and into the US, keep in mind that the portal isn’t small, its big. Like 100 feet high and 200 wide. And it’s located in Central Park, a very public place where tons of people come and go. I just wanted to make it a little more specific, just as a scenario.
 
In this case, a full scale attack by some backwards civilization, like Romans or Vikings, and on a very large scale, thousands of men with beasts and whatnot, hell dragons, make containment, difficult to say the least. And civilian casualties are pretty hard to ignore. Not to mention every news and radio station in the entire region would be broadcasting it.
 
How would the US government handle a crisis situation if a foreign power attacks like that on its soil? I mean does the National Guard move ASAP or does jurisdiction fall on the military to mobilize and counter it.
 
This also raises another thing I wanted to touch on, which was the possibility for other races getting involved, I mean a bunch of barbaric throwbacks aren’t going to topple the might of the US, I know that. But the possibility for more powerful races do exist, and those who wield magic, or lets say the ability to manipulate the elements, just to keep it simple. Would prove a heck of a lot harder to deal with, in the long run.
 
My other suggestion is about peaceful races, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on this first. Thanks for the reply, this is all so fascinating.

This is relevant enough since it’s “Equestria IRL”, like the picture above…
 
@Evident Disaster  
I don’t know how much would change, really. Lots of scientists would hate it, but I hope most would love it and we’d very quickly learn a tremendous amount from it, vastly improving technology.
 
Something like this would be extremely hard to contain, though, and a lot of the initial findings would probably leak to other countries.
 

 
Here’s a terrifying thing the CIA must consider; what if one of the technologies that can come from this are a first-strike capability? Something like a nuclear bomb, but easily manufactured? Magic-bomb proliferation, if you will, but without all the technical challenges of nuclear technology that help keep it from proliferating into the hands of terrorist organizations.
 
For that reason, it’d be in their interest to cover it up as much as possible - but at a certain level, you just can’t.
 
But hey, there are events where entire cities have seen UFO’s hovering over them, and despite this, they still remain pretty much not-known-of, and by some brilliant social nudges, anyone who reports them is immediately dismissed as crazy and silenced. With a system like that, you could have a massive portal open in the middle of New York, get covered up by the CIA, and anyone who says it was anything crazy would be branded as crazy.
 
But would it work if the portal persists? It’s one thing when you can truck it out, or it’s gone in a few hours - it’s quite another when you still have a massive tent built around the thing for days. Maybe people would start to catch on.
 
Even some of these UFO sightings noted earlier, though, caused people to start committing crimes, believing it was the end of the world. Breaking some huge news to people causes them to freak out and do really stupid things. There might be riots in response if the portal isn’t revealed slowly enough.
 

 
Sorry I’m somewhat typing as I think - but this just occurred to me: if the portal is only a few feet by a few feet, then they could simply block off a few roads, set up a structure around it, throw a tarp over it, and say; “Road work, use detour”. Who the heck would believe a few dozen people saying; “Hey, you know that road work area? IT’S ACTUALLY THE GOVERNMENT HIDING A PORTAL TO OTHER UNIVERSES.”
 
Anyways, if they manage to keep it under wraps, then they develop super advanced technology the rest of the world can’t even touch, and keep it in secret in various facilities like Area 51 before Area 51 became so widely known. If I were a high-ranking Air Force member looking to hide a base, I’d put it in Alaska, just sayin’. Freakishly huge wilderness with nobody around to see anything, and plenty of military activity left over from cold war defenses.
 
One example is the PAVE PAWS air force stations;
 
Just look how remote Clear, and especially Thule are!  
 
Article
 
Thule Air Base  
 
Article
 
Clear Air Base  
 
Article
 

 
Mining the place for resources is tempting, but if you do much of it, then you’ll begin to jeapordize the secrecy of your find, and the intellectual information from it are far more valuable than a mountain of gems. Just imagine if the Soviets and the world at large had never discovered the Manhatten Project, and the U.S. was the only nation on Earth to possess WMD’s? Imagine what that would do for people working for the U.S. DoD. The Cold War would’ve been wildly different. Intellectually, the development of the nuclear weapon was a complete failure for how badly it got out.
 
So mining isn’t that important, if it’s under wraps…
 

 
But, if it does get out somehow, if it’s a giant 10km-wide portal that nobody can cover up figuratively or literally, then they might try to dismiss it for a few hours… Maybe a day or two… Then they’d finally have to admit something’s up. There would probably be a mad dash for getting technology from it, and a tremendous intellectual war over it. Example: false reports to throw off foreign researchers (like Iran) from studying it properly. Russia claiming it’s built a super-weapon with the tech when it really hasn’t (reasons: make other countries think you have so they don’t try a first strike if they develop a super-weapon. Seem stronger to hold negotiating power.) False reports that it has closed so that other countries might doubt information they’re still getting from it. China might even claim a portal has opened in their country, too, for the same reasons Russia did, and to try to distract other researchers from the original one, trying to lead them away to a fake one.
 
Every player in the world who has any shot at it will try to take a shot at getting as much tech from it as they can. They all have varying motives, levels of commitment, levels of honesty, and ability to keep secrets. Scientists would probably be given secret service protection while they work on it. Secret facilities might house the real research on trying to derive technology from it, while public facades act as decoys. The U.S. would probably have a military research department declare that they’ve been studying it for a long time, and have seen it before in secret, and that no useful technology can be derived from it - a lie to try to get foreign powers less interested in researching it.
 
Heck, some people might even try to claim it’s a hoax.
 
That’s to say nothing of the riots that might break out because people might think it’s the end of the world.
 
I don’t think civilization would collapse, but I think things would get very chaotic for awhile.
 

 
As for the natural resources - departments in charge of intelligence would be busy with all that stuff above, while departments in charge of other things would probably start a mad dash of staking claims. The U.S. would even have reason to claim all of it. I can’t help but think that even with it being in New York, other countries would never give up such resources - they might make arguments that it’s a portal to somewhere off Earth, thus it’s under the space treaty and is nobody’s. China might just try to claim it as theirs - but probably not, since the portal itself is on U.S. soil the U.S. could control access to it (though undoubtably other nations would try to argue that they’re obligated to let anyone through. I can see the movements already; “Other dimensions belong to everyone! Not just one greedy country!”).
 
So, yeah, quite the mad dash there, as well.

@Cirrus Light  
I’ve been following your discussion for quite a while and I;m intrigued.
 
Hey I’ve been meaning to ask this for a long time, but what would happen if one day, a portal opened up in New York or some other major city in the US, and the US finds itself faced with a realm of magic and strangeness the likes of which it has never seen.
 
Now in this scenario, there’s few advanced enough civilizations, but most are isolated or oppressive, and there are many different races/species of sentient beings. And the world is very much like earth barrings a few physics breaking aspects.
 
But most importantly, it is a world rich in minerals and resources which could grant any nation great amounts of prosperity. How would the US for example handle this sort of scenario? Also to note, there are Empires and nations which don’t know a damn thing about modern weapons and will act openly hostile.

Might I say I don’t think I’ve typed the amount of text in this discussion in the entire time I’ve been on this site. OK, continue.

Is the idea of not trying to murder each other out of fear of the other trying to murder you so hard to grasp? I really don’t want to imagine what you might do in an apocalyptic scenario.
 
The “apes or angels” dilemma doesn’t only apply to us. It applies to any species. Forced to conflict, the more advanced will always win. Or more nuanced, the more advanced will be able to stop the other from becoming a civilization at all.
 
But, this remains: they have to acquire untold power, and not kill themselves off for millions of years if they’re still around. All those empires you mentioned were aggressive, but also have this in common: they’re dead now. They didn’t last a few thousand years, never mind a few million.
 
We’d find ruins of such a civilization, but not a living one. If they lived by “kill before you can be killed,” they’d wipe themselves out pretty quickly.
 

 
And it’s not like untold destructive power is new. If people actually thought how you suggest, then why didn’t the U.S. Nuke the Soviet Union into oblivion at the close of ww2? Or even as soon as the secret of the nuke went out - bomb them before they can build any (takes months).
 
With your thinking, we should have. We didn’t know about long-term fallout or nuclear winter, for all we knew, we could’ve done it.
 
But we didn’t. Nor do we nuke smaller countries - ones that don’t have nuclear weapons for MAD.
 
Rather than make a first strike bloodbath like you predict, this kind of thing has created an unprecedented era of peace.
 
Saying “can we afford to not strike” is a twisted way of using fear to spur mass genocide on an untold scale.
 
We have weapons of mass destruction that can wipe out a civilization, not with a few months of warning, but with only 30 minutes. But even then, what we can’t afford is to discover that they’re going to retaliate.
 
You said yourself, that any interstellar ship could be used for such a weapon. This means they will, without question, be able to retaliate.
 
And ffs, why is this even a thought? “Hey, look, a peaceful alien colony - LET’S MURDER THEM ALL BEFORE THEY EVEN THINK OF DOING IT TO US.” Can you really not see what’s wrong with this? How this might reflect poorly on our species that we think this way?
 
Especially considering that if there are any out there, they’ve undoubtedly known about us for maybe thousands of years. Our very mutual existence displays some level of trust that should be enough to cure the xenophobia of any reasonable mind.
 
The reasonable course for them is to watch and see if we can be trusted with the technology we acquire, maybe even help us mature, and contain us if we prove too violent.

@Cirrus Light  
The problem is that you assume intelligence means they MUST be nice.  
But this is not the case in human history.  
Prey species aren’t automatically nice either. Hippo’s kill more people in Africa every year than crocodiles, lions and the other large predators put together.  
Just because they don’t eat each other don’t mean their going to be nice.
 
Take your assumption that nonhuman civilisations must all be nice and pacifistic. But wouldn’t the first civilisation that had to fight over resources regularly then, just start wiping out everyone else before the rest could fight back?  
In short, assuming all else is equal, if a group of nice guys meets a group of competitive pricks and the two have to compete for resources, the nice guys are going to get slaughtered. Every time.  
That only leaves the option that someone older will “put them in their place” and stop those pricks. But this assumes the “angels” are inherently nice. But they must have survived this kind of competition for millions of years. Competing with others and against themselves for the resources of their galaxy. How can we safely assume that they are going to be nice, if they got to where they are by beating everyone else for millions of years?
 
This crops up in human history too. Not a lot of nice and peaceful civilisations went on to make empires, but a lot of violent assholes who where really good at killing their neighbours in new and more efficient ways went on to make empires. Romans, Aztecs, Zulu’s, Mongol’s, Alexander the Great and so on. Empire building and unifying peoples who don’t get along is not a peaceful business, and it would be foolish to assume that anything build on this kind of competition would be pacifistic, nor would put anything else ahead of insuring its own survival.
 
This isn’t about the capabilities either. Insuring that we “get them all” would be as simple as to send a fleet of warships to clean up stragglers after the relativistic missiles have done their work, or using another specific means of wiping out the target civilisation. If you want to be creative, just introduce grey goo nanites to their homeworld turn it all into a sludge without those big interstellar kabooms that would give it away to other civilisations. Or you could just manufacture some rapidly reproducing microbes into their atmosphere that will eat up its vital elements, like oxygen for humans. Just tailor those fuckers to the targets environments and sneak em into their atmosphere.  
The point isn’t “can they kill us all”, as any civilisation that can travel the stars can most certainly do it, its “is there any chance that they will”? Because if there’s a chance, you are going to have to prepare for it in some way. And the real kicker to the “will they” problem is that their opinion may change over time. What they wouldn’t find conscionable this year they may consider 50 years from now. But by then it might be too late to save the human species.
 
That Punnet square with the strike or don’t options? That’s what I was talking about when I mentioned how the questions was like the prisoners dilemma.  
If you strike and they don’t, they die or are crippled so badly they can’t threaten you. You win.  
If you strike and they do to, you both die or cripple eachother, though the chance you both survive in some form is greater since neither will be fighting at full strength with the damage they will be sustaining in the fight.  
If you don’t strike but they do, its game over, you loose.  
If you don’t strike and they don’t either, you both get to live, actively competing for the same room and resources. And ideal situation.  
The problem is that in that ideal situation, either side might change their opinion about the other at any time and decide they’d rather not have to compete over limited resources when they could just have them all instead, and then first strike the other guys, bringing us right back to where we started.  
As such, the main problem with the ideal solution, is that it isn’t actually a solution, just postponing the inevitable question. As such, the idea solution isn’t a solution at all, but just give the other guys more time to kill you. It becomes less a question of “if they will strike” but more one of “when is it going to happen? A year from now? A hundred?”  
War isn’t some grand and insidious ultimate evil. Its competition where the stakes are high enough to kill over. And if the competitors are entire species and the stakes are for their future survival, you had best believe that anyone who has survived long enough to build an interstellar empire will be willing to compete.
 
Also, try reading the part of the project Rho article on Peter Watts and why technological capability alone is likely a reason why they may not be nice, all on its own.
 
>As for natives – if the native Americans fought like the Sentinese, then the first colonists would’ve probably just been thorough in their extermination.  
No, they’d have been a few hundred dudes fighting tens of thousands of angry and violent locals with nothing to show for it on the far side of the planet from every single political and economic interest that was relevant at the time. The colonies where established because it was possible to get a lot of valuable shit over there that could be sent back to spain. If Spain instead was faced with facing a land war across the atlantic with no economic enticements, the entire wave of european colonisations would never have gotten off the ground.
 
>At least first world nations don’t – genocide, any more.  
That has more to do with the threat of nuclear retaliation from other first world nations than it does inherent enlightenment. Its not that wars are suddenly not fought any more. The US has been in several in the last decade. Russia is more or less involved in several wars.

@Background Pony #EA9D  
Well I sidestepped the issue because the prisoner’s dilemma is no longer a factor. Your strike probably will not kill the other contestant if they’ve spread across their system, never mind multiple systems. That’s if your strike even works in the first place.
 
Furthermore, you can “read their minds”, so to speak. You can see how they behave as a species before they reach that point.
 
Can we survive being proved wrong? But this means declaring xenocidal war without a declaration, making some very powerful enemies. Each time you do that, you risk your own end. A species that constantly risks itself going to war with others will not live long. Can you risk that?
 
Can you risk your friend not being a murderer planning to kill you?
 
You see, likelihood plays a huge role, it’s not just about what’s at stake. Especially when being wrong (making mortal enemies) makes your action almost as dangerous not taking it in the other possibility.
 
Two possibilities: either this is the case (with all its nuance of the strike actually working and not them intercepting it with ease with super advanced technology. Advanced enough and they could land on the rocket and push it away the same day they discover it), or it isn’t.
 
Two actions: strike, or not.
 
Arrange this in a Punnet square. The “good” action in one possibility is the bad action in the other (though morally reprehensible, or questionable at best in either case).
 
Given my counter-arguments, and especially that guesses are wrong until proven otherwise - we can’t perfectly foresee all the nuances and complexities of a situation - I would wager that not mass murdering any billions or trillions of intelligent beings we see is probably the better course.
 

 
Furthermore, different though they may think, it won’t be too different - it will stem from biology. Look at how animals act. Your statements, for example, about self preservation and the natural course being murder, are that of a predator. Humans hunt. We’re a predatory species. Feeling strong, or like we can, we choose “fight” over “flight” - or many of us do.
 
An intelligent prey animal would probably think differently. They hide or run. Chickens, horses, zebras, pigeons, fish - they don’t naturally fight their predators - more often their first response is to run. So valuing their own life doesn’t even necessarily imply they would kill, to save them the convenience of running.
 
And some prey animals - was it Buffalo? - will form a phalanx and stand their ground, even.
 
Given the angels and apes deal
 

 
As for natives - if the native Americans fought like the Sentinese, then the first colonists would’ve probably just been thorough in their extermination.
 
Fortunately, we do seem to progress as a species. We tell stories to humanize different people, warn against dehumanization, and generate sympathy for them. As a result, we don’t - At least first world nations don’t - genocide, any more.
 
And I think that first world nations don’t, and third world nation dirt holes do, is very indicative of what we can expect on a galactic scale, and more or less proves my assertion on advanced species being peaceful.
 

 
Consider this: how is it that every person can, in a few months, do the work to get a car - where if he tried to mine, refine, design, machine, and build it himself, would probably take a life time?
 
Civilization exists because of cooperation.
 
Consider a game: each team has any number of players. The players can either make 1 coin and keep it, or make three coins, but give them all away to teammates.
 
Although the best individual decision is to make 1 coin and keep it, since then you get 1 instead of zero, the best team decision is to make 3.
 
If everyone on a team makes 3, on average, there will be 3 per member, so people will be way better off.
 
If everyone on a team makes 1, although the individual better choice, each person will have 1 instead of 3.
 
Add a “85% chance to steal 2 but make none” option, and it gets even more dramatic.
 
Note which team wins. Note what that says about the players.
 
But does this apply to real life? Absolutely. But not just about crime, either, but other less obvious choices.
 
Let’s look at two countries; Henry Ford believed in paying his employees enough that they could buy a Model T. He could be considered as making 3 coins. Other business owners might not want to dish out that much money, and pay less.
 
In country A, every business owner is a Ford. People can buy cars, the company does well.
 
In country B, they don’t pay them that much. Nobody can buy the cars, then, and all the companies go under, and it’s a poor country.
 
There are countless other examples.
 
Simply put, good will is magic and makes your species super :q

@Cirrus Light  
Its all nice and well thought out. But you never solved the prisoners dilemma in a manner that guarantees your own safety or at least makes non violence more safe.  
While angels vs apes is a real concern, we don’t know that we aren’t the angels in this situation. Nor if the aliens in the situation if they are the angels, will necessarily be nice.  
Nor do we know why our galaxy is so unnervingly quiet. Are we in the galactic equivalent of the sticks where nothing civilised would waste its time? Are we an exhibit in an intergalactic wildlife preserve? In the wake of a galactic war that left half the galaxy dead? Is it something else?  
There’s millions of reason why the aliens haven’t made contact, but that doesn’t mean its because we still fight each other. More likely it will be for some alien reason we will have no hope of understanding until we learn how aliens think.  
About the only things we can be sure of is that they will value their own lives over ours, and won’t be shy of fighting for their own interests, since if they did neither, they would never have survived competition with those that do.  
And you are still missing the point. For all the optimistic hopes and dreams of how nice and peaceful the galactic community surely must be, can you survive being proved wrong? Remember, all these civilisations you are going to meet will have the capability to wipe us out, can we really afford to wait for them to find their own reasons and take the shot?
 
As for the Sentinelese, if the natives who met Columbus and Cortes has followed their example, the modern world would not look the same. For one thing, there’d be a lot more Native Americans around…

@Background Pony #EA9D  
I still hate this kind of thinking because I very much doubt it bears any resemblance to reality, and it is horribly violent and more or less, broadcasts to the universe that we’re a horrible, threatening species.
 
It is literally, “I’d better kill everyone so nobody can kill me!” Can’t you see what a horrible, horrible philosophy that is?
 
Now here’s why it’s wrong - the person who came up with it even conceded it was wrong, for one;
 

 
But there’s a few things else I would like to add; you’re assuming that these two civilizations are within a few hundred years of tech. But with astronomical time-scales, you’re looking more at “angels or monkeys” sort of scenarios. One civilization is going to be spread among countless stars and will have technology that is magic to the other. The other won’t be able to kill it no matter how hard they try.
 
But most of all, the other will see it coming. It’s taken ~12,000 years from our huts to our moon landing. When they see a primitive civilization in huts, they know to watch. And if it’s really “kill or be killed why let them ever smelt copper? Even at sub-light speeds, and taking plenty of time, it takes maybe 10 mil. years to colonize the galaxy. The universe is 14 billion years old, and could presumably support life for as much as the last half of it if not much longer.
 
If there’s life in our galaxy, it’s aware we exist, already, and probably was several thousand years ago. If we humans carefully explore and study everything on our planet. Why wouldn’t they explore and study the stars in their galaxy? I know we would. We study Chimp, Dolphin, crow, cat, mouse, dog, and many other animals’ intelligence. If we saw one species building huts, we sure as heck would be studying them!
 
If that species comes out of their huts, thinking they’re super advanced because they have amazing atlatl technology, and immediately come out thinking it’s “kill or be killed” throwing sharpened sticks at us, how do you think we’d respond? There’s some precedent, though notably, unlike us, the Sentinelese are trapped to their own island - but compared to their ability to travel in-between stars, our early interstellar tech might well be considered “trapped.”
 

 
I mean, let’s look at this - do we treat the Sentinelese with “kill or be killed” philosophy? Do we carpet bomb their island to oblivion out of fear of them? I can assure you, our interstellar situation is little different.
 
And I hold that Pellegrino’s assertion that the “optimist’s non sequitor” is not, in fact, non sequitor. I think species lines makes little difference. In the exact same examples he gives to disprove it, he proves it - the various primitive natives that Europeans came across.
 
How so? Consider this; if a species is capable of “Dehumanizing” other intelligent life, then it is capable of finding the smallest difference to dehumanize members of its own species (they live on a different island) and going to war with itself. Thus, they will war against themselves.
 
And no - I’m actually rather convinced that war doesn’t advance science like we think it does. Normally there’s a gap in-between what technology does, and what science knows.
 
Look, I’ve spent many years obsessed with WWII era tech, and I’m studying (and have spent many years studying) to become a physicist, so I feel like I know a bit about this one particular topic; I very much don’t think war is really as important for tech as we think it is. It helps in the short run, but does little that wouldn’t happen, anyways.
 
Before WWII, there was a scientific paper that mentioned the idea of using nuclear processes in a bomb. It didn’t take WWII to think of that, neither is WWII even partially responsible for the science (the science, in question, actually came about in the 1910’s - special relativity and basic quantum principles). Technology always lags behind science by some degree - you can never have more tech than science. In the rare event of accidentally discovering some tech, you advance science as well. So it looks a bit like this;
 

 
The competition bumps it up. But Galileo didn’t study the stars because of a war. Newton didn’t wonder about gravity and mechanics because of war. Nicola Tesla didn’t experiment for weapons. Maxwell didn’t pen his equations to kill people. Einstein was a pacifist, actually. Neither do I think Hawking is much one for war. Certainly Schrodigner and Bohr weren’t thinking of how to blow up cities when they started probing quantum mechanics. No, I’m a scientist, and we’re not driven by a desire for violence, we’re driven by curiosity. Technology follows because people like things that make their lives better (like air conditioning and refrigeration), and people like making money, so someone invents it, someone buys the patent, markets it, and sells it.
 
A lesser evil of massacring millions of people was wholly unnecessary, and did little but create a painful atmosphere, threaten the continuation of our species, focus scientific pursuits into less useful directions, and take millions of man-hours, and end countless lives, that could’ve been spent advancing our species, and most notably, like the fall of the Mayans, Rome, ancient Greece, or the tyranny of feudalism, stagnate mankind’s progression.
 
If we didn’t have the potential for such violence, and Rome never fell - if we could push back our renaissance 1,400 years, then where would we be now?
 
We don’t carpet-bomb the Sentinelese, and even we may be too violent to make it as an interstellar civilization, and we have definitely hurt our own progress many times. What does that say about the ones who did make it?
 

 
Anyways, back to kinetic killers: this also holds the assumption that slower-than-light is the only way to go. I’m not so convinced. It’s true in flat spacetime, but spacetime curves, as it happens, and going non-locally faster than light isn’t anything new. Light actually goes slower in a gravitational well, as in the asymptotically flat Schwarzchild coordinates. When you get up and walk around your room, you’re travelling faster than some light ray sinking into the horizon of a distant black hole. You’re actually going non-locally faster than light.
 
Okay, you can go faster than light non-locally, cool, but a gravity well isn’t going to let you get to a distant star any sooner. So can you curve spacetime in such a way as to allow for propulsive advantage? That’s the real question, and it’s far from a closed case in any way (it’s actually my favorite area of research, too, so I’ve studied it a good deal). And to put a cherry on top, we have Clarke’s third law.

@Cirrus Light  
It’s an old thread but sure I’ll play along, it was a neat discussion.  

 
That’s just it. You don’t know the circumstances that lead up TO that shot unless you happened to be there. You don’t know if it was a mugger who wanted a wallet or a guy defending himself against the mugger. All you know, is that he has a gun and that he will use it if threatened.  
Then comes the catch 22 of space travel. Anyone who can travel from one star to another, let alone one that isn’t in their immediate neighbourhood, must have the ability to accelerate a craft to relativistic speeds. And any craft that can reach relativistic speeds has everything needed to be a relativistic missile that can sterilise an entire planet. Therefore, anyone who can travel from one system to another will have the capability to kill all life in one shot, where they are going, or they will soon have this capability.  
So logically, everyone in that park would be heavily armed. Its not a matter of IF he has a gun, everyone will have them.  
Nor do you have to shoot first to make yourself a target. All the radio chatter earth is sending out, TV signals and such, is an obvious clue to anyone nearby that we’re here. In order to be in danger, we don’t have to shoot first, we just have to have a neighbour with a paranoid streak, who’s worried about others shooting them and is willing to kill to protect themselves.  
So coming back to that question, can you afford to not shoot first, when you meet someone who may shoot you, out of fear that you might shoot them if they don’t?  
Its a classic case of the prisoners dilemma. If you both shoot eachother, everyone dies, but if you can shoot them before they can shoot you, you can be certain they won’t threaten you. If you don’t shoot them, they might shoot you out of fear of you anyway. Then you die.  
So CAN you really afford to take that chance?
 

 
Its already straining their technological limits when the US defence department tries to shoot down nuclear missiles moving as suborbital velocities, with other missiles, and you want them to hit a projectile going so fast you can’t even see where it is? I mean, by the time the light reflected off the missile as it was fired at you gets to earth, it would only have been travelling marginally faster than the projectile. That means when the best physically possible telescopes can see the shot fired at us from Alpha Centauri, the projectile itself might well be passing through the Oort cloud. Intercepting something like that isn’t going to be easy.  
Nor would anyone willing to use such weapons be likely to limit themselves to only firing one. As you said, it might miss. Might aswell fire a hundred, the future of the species is at risk after all.

@Drefsab  
Eh, only because the thread was bumped in the last 10 hours :q

@Cirrus Light  
You’re replying to a year-old bunch of posts.

@AlsoSprachOdin  
There was actually a book an astronaut wrote about stuff he’d been asked. He was asked once if astronauts kept a gun on the shuttle in case of alien attack. Of course not (seriously, you thought shooting a gun in an airplane was dangerous!? Discharging a normal firearm in a spacecraft might as well be called suicide), but he did answer, “what would we do if an alien knocked on the hatch?” I think the answer was, “call Houston and ask for advice,” lol.
 
 
@Antonyourknee  
The thing is, space is big. We’ve only hopped on the moon, a mere 250,000 miles from our own little blue speck of dust floating in an endless void. First contact probably wouldn’t happen to one of our spacecraft, not even on the Moon missions. It simply isn’t far enough to really make any difference. It’s like sitting in your house in the middle of the U.S.A. and thinking you might encounter some Chinese men if you take a step out on your porch.  
(Middle of house to porch: ~ 10 feet. House to China from central USA: ~ 35,000,000 feet. 3,500,000:1 ratio. Distance from Earth to Moon: %%~300,000 km. Distance from Earth to Alpha Centauri: ~4.2e13 km. 142,000,000:1 ratio.)
 
Driving to a nearby town might be like visiting the solar system, but still, little chance you’ll find anyone from China just by being closer to China. And that’s just Alpha Centauri - there are 400 billion stars in the galaxy - even if the galaxy is teeming with 400 intelligent species, that’s still 1 in a billion chance any particular star has intelligent life on a planet around it.
 
I was going to write more, but then saw I’ve already been here and I was surprisingly similar a year ago to how I am now :p
 
I’m going to keep this much, though, because it’s a neat comparison.
 

 
@Background Pony #EA9D  
I’m in Central Park, everyone has a gun and it’s night, can I risk not shooting at the guy next to me? I can tell you darn well you can. It would be stupid to shoot. You’d reveal that you’re a violent killer to everyone in the park - that you shot first, that you’re a danger, and it might not even hit your “target.” What happens if your “target” has developed enormous photon sail - pushing laser arrays? Even an advanced peaceful technology could make a cloud of vapor out of your kinetic weapon, so your shot did nothing except tell everyone you’re horrible and need to be contained.
 
Heck, even routine interplanetary technology (say, our tech in 30 years even - or heck, even 70’s space probes) could put a remote-controlled craft in the path of your kinetic killer - your kinetic killer rams it and blasts itself into a rapidly growing cloud of plasma. Effect on “target”: they might have a few more auroras at their poles, at most. But probably not, since that would require astronomical amounts of plasma.