It is my hope that with this blog, we have been able to prepare you for a myriad of potential emergencies, some more likely than others, and I promise we will continue to do this. However, while I am not necessarily walking around with a tin-foil hat on my head to block the alien radio waves, I do think the whole idea of an alien encounter is a pretty interesting subject to explore, and Molly and Sara can attest to that after watching me sit down and read up on the possibilities of life elsewhere in the universe for the past hour or so.
First, let me say that the inspiration for this came from NPR's 13.7 blog's article by Marcelo Gleiser, "Should We Be Afraid of Aliens?" published this morning. I love sifting through NPR in the mornings for material to relate back to our emergency and disaster preparedness postings, and this was simply irresistable. While the conclusion of this article is that we have many more pressing issues on our own planet with which we need to deal, that is what the rest of this blog is for, and I decided to go a little further to explore the possibilities for our interactions with extraterrestrial life, and their implications.
What I found next was this journal article published last year in Risk Management by Mark Neal at the University of London. In this journal piece, Neal explores five possibilities for our relationship to extraterrestrial life, namely that:
- We are alone in the universe.
- There is life out there, but it is non-intelligent.
- There is intelligent life on other planets, but it is technologically no more advanced than us.
- There is intelligent life on other planets, which is technologically more advanced than us.
- Extraterrestrial life is here, or has already been here.
Neal explores each of these and analyzes what gaps in preparedness actions exist. For example, if there is intelligent life with a chance of contacting us, or if intelligent life has already contacted us or is even living among us, we are already wildly behind in our preparations. That said, if we are indeed alone in the universe or have little to no chance of making any contact with life light years away, the latter of which Gleiser supports in the aforementioned NPR piece from this morning, then we really should devote our whole efforts to the problems we face on this wonderful planet.
And then we have some exciting worst-case scenarios. This one, from National Geographic's program Alien Invasion, gives an example of how an alien attack, if aliens were indeed able to reach Earth and were filled with malicious intent rather than the happy peaceful loving benevolent aliens I like to imagine, and how we really don't have any sort of plan in place to deal with the endless possibilities for the development of their technology and intelligence. While this example is pretty bleak and ultimately results in mass casualty and the collapse of civilization, National Geographic does raise one very important point: our home team advantage. Any resources brought to our planet would hypothetically be non-renewable, so whatever we would be able to sabotage would be lost. At the very least, it gave me hope.
Further, Scott Hillis offers up some additional points about the argument for alien attack preparations in his piece from Reuters (admittedly from eight years ago at this point, but if the universe has existed for 13.7 billion years, what is eight years in the long run?!), and Hillis offers up the practical implications for what to expect in the case of technologically and intellectually capable malicious alien attack. Apparently guerrilla warfare may be our best bet.
Of course, statistically, as Gleiser mentioned, our chances of dealing with intellectually and technologically developed civilizations from other planets many light years away are quite low. But as you all may have noticed if you've made it through a fair bit of this blog, we like to get wacky, and while I promise you I'm not totally an extraterrestrial preparedness nut, some days it's nice to explore the unknown and muse over the possibilities of other lifeforms, possibly even wholly benevolent ones who would love to come here to visit, enjoy the beaches, and munch on an avocado. But I digress. Think I need to be more worried? E-mail me at rob@handsoncharlotte.org. Tell me all the things. I've never found a topic too ludicrous to explore in this subject, because at the end of the day, we really just can't be too prepared.
And speaking of wacky inspirations, here's some David Bowie. It's too appropriate to pass up, given the subject matter. As always, stay safe, y'all, and love life and live large!
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