Poll: How will first contact go down?

[joystickjunki3]

I have a feeling that both races will put up defenses and might even be hostile toward each other. But I'm confident that we can reach an understanding.

 

[Overlord Moo]

I don't get why anyone thinks we will go to war with them. I think our government understands that if a species is capable of traveling through space to reach us, they are capable of easily eradicating us.

Yeahhh.. The government never over-reacts. *coughcoughSWINEFLUcough*

The media is not the government.

But the government listens to the media( F.Y.I. Egypt order that all 300,000 of their countries pigs to be slaughtered even though A)it an't spread by pigs and B) swine flu cases in Egypt at time=0

Egypt had to listen to the media. They had no other way of knowing how dangerous the virus actually was.

Governments that actually had access to the proper information didn't do this.

Like The World Health Organization? Yeah, Swine Flu hit Almost Pandemic (lvl.5) on their chart and they're run by the government(or I think U.N, but same thing)

 

[Rigs83]

If we find them we might inadvertently kill them because the microorganisms we have on and in us is are literally alien to them and could kill or devastate their population. See the plight of Native Americans for an example. Though the same can be said for their microorganisms affect on us. That's why NASA has to build all it's Mars bound spacecraft in a clean environment to prevent us contaminating Mars with Earth Rabies and why all the Apollo astronauts were put in quarantine when they got back, you know because of Moon Rabies.

If they find us it is only logical to destroy us so we don't endanger them at a future date. Otherwise known as preemption. See Bush and America for the last 8 years.

 

[Rigs83]

The odds of an alien race having a similar culture or language to us are remote in the EXTREME. This isn't Star Trek, where aliens are just people with funny ears. A real "alien" encounter would probably go down something like in the book (not the crapy film) Solaris - in other words, an alien lifeform would be so different, so bizarre to us that we couldn't understand each other. We'd probably just stare at each other and go our separate ways.

If we ever find each other at all - space is so mind-bogglingly big that the odds of intelligent species coming into contact with each other is also remote in the extreme. Although I'm fairly sure intelligent alien life exists elsewhere in the universe, the sheer distance would make contact almost impossible. For all intents and purposes we are alone. There are billions of galaxies, containing billions of stars, and who knows how many planets. Even if faster-than-light travel was possible, finding an intelligent alien species would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack - and the haystack is as big as the SUN. Odds of us coming into contact with alien life? Close to bloody zero. I'd say it would be 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% likely

Not very likely to happen. Life in the universe would be rare - probably 1 in a million planets would have "some" type of life. And maybe 1 in a trillion planets would have an intelligent life of some sort. Given the huge, vast, enormous distances between planets, we're not going to come into contact with each other. It's 4 LIGHT YEARS to the NEAREST star! That's FOUR YEARS travelling AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT! Even if you could go faster than the speed of light, you'd need to go at least a MILLION TIMES faster than the speed of light to get anywhere. And even if you could...... 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of all planets you visit would be DEAD, COLD, ROCKY (or gaseous) BALLS OF NOTHING.

I don't think many people who think about aliens TRULY comprehend how incredibly vast space is. It's just too big. Just way, way, way, way, way too big.

By your numbers there is a shitload of planets with intelligent life. And you are right about the vastness of space. It is literally larger than your imagination. If aliens do arrive they will most likely be from from an alternate dimension (think The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and I am sorry I made you vomit over your keyboard) because I think it easier to travel between dimensions separated by mere millimeters (theoretically) than billions of light years(literally).

 

[Twilight_guy]

Exactly like in Star Trek: First Contact... EXACTLY!!

 

[traceur_]

It will involve aliens landing and me running really really fast in the opposite direction.

 

[Vrex360]

I think Mass effect has a good general idea on how it could go... but then again, Alien nations scenario is plausible too.

What was alien nation's scenario?


In response to the topic I would like to say that hopefully humans won't do anything stupid that screws up foreign diplomacy.

 

[Ishnuvalok]

I don't think we can even comprehend what extraterrestrial life forms would look like. We know how life originated here on earth, but it could have just as well originated in some other form elsewhere in the universe. Life mustn't be DNA based with cells building up an organism. That may just as well apply to this planet. Who knows how life is built up on other worlds.

 

[flare09]

They'll probably find us since the space programs on this planet kind of suck...

 

[Inco]

Well we can only hope it won't bear resemblance to Halo's depiction of it.

Yes, you mean this? ( this is for the people who don't know and don't like halo)

Spoiler

We are in fact the ancestors/chosen ones to their gods which proves their religion to be false and the power hungry leaders will lose all power, so they cover it up with an attempted mass genocide. (example) Like if the church found out that a newly discovered alien race was in fact the creators of the universe and god didn't exist, they would declare war on them saying that they are the spawn of satan and must be eradicated to eradicate the proof.

I say that we will find some guys, and hopefully try to settle it out... then we find out that they are as crazy and paranoid as us and blows the first contact vehicle outta the sky fearing an invasion on their soil. Or we do the same back to them.

 

[xxnightlawxx]

they are goin to find us and when they do we are goin to find out how to talk to them and when we do we will be nice until we find out that they have stuff that looks pretty and then that is when we hit there planet with 500 interstellar A-Bombs
P.S. first we will find out what drugs they have

 

[neuromasser]

The aliens will be so different from what we expected that we will either:
a) stomp them
b) get stomped

 

[The Antagonist]

They will foolishly land in texas, be mistaken for "Them Queerosexuals", and their entire species will be systematically rounded up and hung. seriously though, i just hope that our first aliens are not anything like the following aliens/species
JENOVA-Final Fantasy 7
The Reapers-Mass Effect
The X-Nauts-Paper Mario 2
Furons-Destroy All Humans
Any of the Covenant Species-Halo
The Combine-Half-life
The Koopa Troop-Mario (not technicaly "aliens" per se, but we would still be fucked if we encountered them. demand for plumbers would go up though.)
The Borg-Star Trek
The Zerg-Star Craft
The Shroobs-Mario and luigi partners in time

 

[Romaru]

They are out there, but they have more sense than to some here.

Reactions of first contact:
Cults spring up to worship them
Suicides go through the roof as people fear enslavement
Militant groups spring up in response to the menace, even if they come in peace.
America's president would act as spokesperson for the world, which in turn would piss China and Russia and everyone else off.
First probable reaction would be to nuke a spaceship before it arrives, and the whole thing be kept secret to prevent the above

Edit: And some asshole would try to sell them the Statue of Liberty

 

[nova18]

First contact will basically go through the following stages:

Paranoia: Both races will be unwilling to fight until they are aware of the oppositions capabilities.

Peace: Aliens and humans decide to co-exist and further their colonisation of the universe, trade routes are established.

Co-colonisation: Eventually, humans and aliens live together on colonized planets.

Alien civil rights: Groups will be established to stop the racism from humans towards aliens, laws will be passed.

Reality TV: The first alien appears on Britains Got Talent/ X Factor USA.

Controversy: A racist term is used against an alien Big Brother contestant. Humans apologise but the damage is done.

Apocalypse: Advances in weaponry cause both sides to completely wipe out the other, resulting in the complete obliteration of both races.

 

[The Antagonist]

Exactly like in Star Trek: First Contact... EXACTLY!!

Borg included?

 

[Time Sync]

We are still deciding whether or not to contact your species. Hopefully it will go quite nicely since we mastered your language sixty of your years ago. *Goes off to his spaceship*

 

[gatorthepinkelephant]

With something like this there really is no way to predict what will happen. The portion of of what we know about the universe is immeasurably small. In essence we truly have no idea what could be out there. We could already have made first contact and not even known it, due to the true nature of any aliens being truly incomprehensible to us. Any aliens that do try and contact us may exist on a totally different plane of existence to us, one that we don't even know about.

Or theres the even worse possibilty. That we as life forms are utterly alone in this universe.
Life may be an anomaly restricted to a insignificant portion of the universe.

Or the may be life closer than we know it.

Imagine though if we were the most advanced life in the universe. Imagine if we were superior. The era we live through may be just the dawn of a time of truly epic proportions. It may take time. A long time, but at the rate we're advancing (Think of where we were even 100 years ago, who knows what could happen in another 100) first contact could come far sooner than we think. I just put faith in our greatest minds to pave a future for us so bright that we can look back on today and think, "Jeez things were different back then, look how far we've come, who would've guessed"

Feel free to dismiss this post, i'm pretty drunk and probably just talking awhole bunch of shit

 

[gatorthepinkelephant]

They will foolishly land in texas, be mistaken for "Them Queerosexuals", and their entire species will be systematically rounded up and hung. seriously though, i just hope that our first aliens are not anything like the following aliens/species
JENOVA-Final Fantasy 7
The Reapers-Mass Effect
The X-Nauts-Paper Mario 2
Furons-Destroy All Humans
Any of the Covenant Species-Halo
The Combine-Half-life
The Koopa Troop-Mario (not technicaly "aliens" per se, but we would still be fucked if we encountered them. demand for plumbers would go up though.)
The Borg-Star Trek
The Zerg-Star Craft
The Shroobs-Mario and luigi partners in time

Sorry for the double post but OMG imagine the possibilities.

We'd be pretty fucked. Also I think that if they make first contact, they would probably be so much more advanced then us and would probably have the technology to kick our asses.

 

[fix-the-spade]

We will meet them, violence will ensue when they are not what we expected. More violence will ensue when they do not wish to be subjugated and exploited by us.