Planetary Invasion: If They Can Reach Us, We’re Done

If a civilization can cross interstellar space, the war is already decided.

In this episode of Entropy Rising, we examine planetary invasion through the lens of real physics. No cinematic dogfights. No convenient alien weaknesses. Just propulsion energy, orbital mechanics, and strategic reality.

Any ship capable of traveling between stars already carries extinction-level energy. Once an invading force controls orbit, they don’t need to land troops. They can freeze a planet with solar shades, redirect stellar energy to overheat it, scatter relativistic debris, or enforce a blockade. Gravity favors whoever owns space.

We also explore the rare equal-footing scenario. What if two interstellar civilizations are technologically comparable? That leads to layered defenses, weaponized megastructures, and deeply entrenched planetary infrastructure.

Finally, we ask the deeper question: why invade at all? With abundant resources in space, planetary conquest may be the least efficient option.

Planetary invasion sounds dramatic. Under real physics, it becomes colder, faster, and far more decisive.

Transcript

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Yeah. That's exactly what happens here is they, they show up and they immediately eliminate one sixth of the, the population as like, a, we're here. This is a demo of what we can do. You really want to go at us? And, uh, the people in the spending go, no, we're good. We'll surrender. Yeah. I mean, it's just, yeah. I mean, what, what, what would you, I think like, I'd be like, I'm excited to see what you guys do with the place. I mean, yeah, up, they're like, uh. shows up and immediately just makes Australia not exist. Are you really gonna say, nah, I think we can take you. Hello and welcome to Entropy Rising, a podcast all about discussing science and futurism and where humanity might be down the road. I'm your host, Jacob, and I'm joined with my wonderful co-host Lucas. Lucas, how are you doing today? Doing great, Jake. Thank you for asking. How are you Doing well, we survived that, uh, supposedly horrid, uh, winter storm that we were talking about last episode, so yes. Happy that with a terrible two inches. Oh, yes, yes. Although I know many of my friends up in the Northeast, they did get hammered pretty hard, so I think we got off Lucky. Yes. Yes, we absolutely dead. So today we are going to be exploring what I think is gonna be a fun concept. We're gonna be talking all about planetary invasion. We're gonna be covering all kinds of different scenarios, whether you have mixed matched forces, so like aliens coming to attack Earth today uh, more on even footing foes, so perhaps two interstellar civilizations fighting over a planet and everything in between. So I think it'll be a fun episode. I think it's gonna be, uh, good for discussion. But, uh, before we dive into that, Lucas, if you don't mind, I do just wanna take a quick moment to say thank you to all of our Patreon supporters. we've recently picked up a few. You are all helping to show grow and expand and helping us achieve our ultimate end goal of releasing episodes more frequently. So just a quick moment to say thank you. We appreciate it, and also you help keep the show ad free. Something, uh, Lucas and I want to keep, going for, and want to keep achieving. So It is, thanks to all the people who. Very graciously donate to us on a monthly basis. So thank you so much for that. Yeah, you guys supporting us is incredibly generous and, it's amazing to see that from our community. So thank you and a bit surreal to think that people enjoy the show that much. So yeah. Thank you So much. Yeah, thank you so without further ado though, let's dive into what the people are here for, which is talking about planetary invasion. How's that sound? Yeah. that sounds, you know, of course scary. Yeah. But, uh, but pretty crazy to think about all the different scenarios that can happen in an actual invasion From a species that could be equal to us, or a species that could be super advanced. Yeah, absolutely. Granted, I don't think we'd ever be invaded from a species equal to us today because we're not capable of interstellar travel. So there's just no way for that to happen, but equal to us maybe in the future. Yes, it would definitely be us matching them, not them matching us. Uh, first let's talk about I think one of the most common scenarios we see in tons of science fiction, right? This is like your world of the world scenario, your enders game scenario. all kinds of different ones. Which is a alien species traveling to earth. then attacking us. And then typically, right. In science fiction, we find some way to fend them off, you know, rather it's some weakness that they, didn't anticipate for. Right. which is they're always really stupid in a lot of these series. Like, have you ever noticed that? Yeah. You know, it's, it's something that slips their mind, but it, it makes for good movies. Yeah. Right. Like, the invasion on Mars where they just don't realize, or is it Independence Day? I think the whole gimmick is where they uh. They're actually allergic to a virus on Earth. No, that's war of the world. That's war of the worlds. Yeah. So they're, yeah, that's, a lot of these rely on the aliens being incredibly stupid, which is why humanity's able to win. And as far as realism goes, unsurprisingly, that's probably not the case. Yeah, I mean, you'd have to think that a civilization that advanced would've gone through several cycles of dealing with viruses on their own. And would've then known that while they were branching out on their own planet, That there are unknown viruses that could kill you very quickly. So they would account for that at least in some kind of way. Yeah. And you're gonna do some scouting on the planet. You're gonna attack, you're not just gonna show up with your entire army Just to find out that they actually have some of virus you're deathly allergic to, that's not realistic. you would do a ton of scouting even if you were coming in from an interstellar. distance, you would send ships ahead to do some scouting and prepare your fleet. I mean, even in modern warfare, that's a pretty common thing. That is very true. Even though they did try to address that in the New War of the World, it's not the old one, but you know, where they had the all seeing eye over it and they planted their vessels on the planet millions of years ago. but. New viruses formed and they didn't account for that. Yes. Which is even, silly on its own. Yeah. It's like the, you address the main issue, but not in a way that was really helpful. Uh, but that's also, even that oversight is not the main issue I have with these types of stories. Mm-hmm. And the main issue is just that any species that can travel interstellar distances to reach Earth are going to have so much energy at their fingertips that we aren't going to stand a chance. There is. Literally no chance humanity is gonna be able to put up any type of fight against such a foe. No. I mean, uh, think about all the episodes that we've talked about, the way that you can travel, inters, stellarly, and how much energy that takes. And if they didn't want Earth to be there, then all that they would have to do is. You know, send one of those energy forming things that they use to travel inters, stellarly, and just send it directly at earth. Whether that's, a solar lane or it's, uh, some kind of ship moving at almost the speed of light. we've talked about this before. It's just obliteration. So if they are. coming to our planet and they're wanting to communicate with us in a way that isn't just obliterating us, then it would be something more like trying to take us over than it would be just trying to kill us all. No, I fully agree. The issue is, is that it takes so much energy to move across interstellar distances. That once they get here, they can just completely annihilate us. A ship that's capable of, accelerating up to a reasonable fraction, the speed of light can on its own, very easily eliminate our entire planet. I mean, just by simply turning around and aiming its thrusters at earth as it does its deceleration, burn, would probably fake us in all forms of gamma radiation, strip our atmosphere and completely destroy the planet. There's no such thing as an unarmed spaceship because anything that carries that type of kinetic energy or nuclear energy or whatever type of power source they have, is gonna completely be able to annihilate our planet with where we are in technology right now. Mm-hmm. Now there's also the possibility that they have unlock some other form of physics we don't know about. You know, we typically assume that. FTL travel is not possible, but let's say that your FO does have FTL travel, then sure, maybe they can get around with less energy than we anticipate on, but they have access to new forms of physics that might as well be science fiction to us. That literally is science fiction to us. So even if they aren't using vast amounts of energy to move around, they have a low energy way to move, maybe even faster than light, then that just unlocks a whole other Pandora's box of issues you're running into as your faux has access to, the keys to the universe. And you, you're not, you're not gonna stand a chance to that. Yeah. I mean, you're, you're talking about beings that are now seeing in another dimension, you know, like they, like they're bending space time to their will. They're literally breaking what we consider the laws of failure. Yeah. So if, if those guys are there, then uh, I honestly, I'd rather take the thrusters Yeah. Than be collapsed into whatever kind of form of matter they would provide or want us to be. It reminds me actually when, you've read the Expanse books, and I'm sure many of our viewers has too. There's this great scene where, PBU moves. and they do the math and to see if there's like energy associated with it, Because while yes, running across an alien species, they can move such a large piece of mass so quickly is terrifying. At least they generated some waste heat, so they're following the laws of physics because if they're not following the laws of physics, that's infinitely more terrifying Yeah, In our mind these would be beings coming from like a parallel universe where laws of physics are different or our universe and they just understand physics in a way that we fundamentally do not, I mean, yeah, but then it would be less mind breaking just to think of it in that way. like, like think of them just coming from a totally different place.'cause they're, they're warping stuff and it just breaks the fabric of what we know our universe is structured on that's terrifying in its own right. I don't know. I think it's terrifying just to know that they have such mastery over our own universe that they figured out. All of this physics that we just don't even understand and can just fundamentally do things we thought were impossible. The issue is you don't have any playbook for, that. You don't know what is possible at that point. They're so advanced that there's no point in even trying to guess what they can do. the I mean that's, uh, I guess that's all part of the fun. Yeah. on and that's terrifying in its How will we die today? Yeah, exactly. You just, you have no idea. That's not to mention that they don't even need advanced technology to eliminate us. I mean, we talked about how they could point their thrusters at us and strip our atmosphere if they have FTL. They can do some magic stuff we're not prepared for, but they don't even need to do that. Just just to put in context, how utterly screwed we would be if these being showed up is if they just showed up to our planet and put a huge solar shade up between earth and the sun. Maybe in the LaGrange point, something we've talked about doing for cooling our planet. Well, If they just showed up and put one up right now, there's really nothing we could do to stop that. I mean, don't get me wrong, we could probably field a rocket or two and try to get it up there to, you know, knock out the solar shade, maybe put a nuke up there. But if they have the power to travel interstellar distances, they could just knock anything we send out of the sky and freeze us out of our own planet. Yeah, I mean it's, uh, it, like you said, we, we could go and attempt to, to stop it. but if they're a civilization that has the power to do that, I don't know why they're. Killing us in such a slow way. But if they wanted to just freeze our planet. over for some reason, they could take us out that way easily. Yeah. Without us being able to do really anything. Even if we got to that point, they just put up the solar shade and left like, oh, we'll come back once they're all frozen. What are we gonna do? You know, it's, it's already done. The damage, the crops are dead. Um, most of the civilization is covered in ice. It's, yeah, maybe in that one we would have a chance to get some, you know, launch something up to knock a hole in it and, uh, start warming up the planet. But yeah, like you said, you're gonna have mass famine, even if that's up for a short period of time, all the crops are gonna fail. And why they would do it. it could be a fairly non-destructive way to strip a lot of the life off of the planet. Just wait for us to die out and then move the solar shade, let it warm back up and now they have a nice fresh start. Some species would probably survive, But uh, by and large, a lot of biodiversity would be lost and they could essentially seed the planet with what they want. Maybe do a little mopping up afterwards and now they have a nice planet. Offer them. Absolutely. I mean, it's just like the way that we, you know, throw meat in the freezer to preserve it. There's killing a bacteria culture. Yeah. That's living on there. We don't think twice about it. I feel like it would be the same thing for a super advanced alien civilization. I mean, that's how we sterilize some food, fish like, sushimi gr and sushi GR fish. Mm-hmm. We literally That's true. Just freeze it to kill all the parasites. They might look at earth the same way. Come on, throw up a deep freeze. Let that knock out the indigenous life and then come in and make it what you want. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. They could also do the opposite too, and direct more light onto the planet and, you know, cook us off. So. A lot, a lot of little fun things they could do there. Would you rather be frozen or burn to death? I, that's how we sterilize some food, fish like, I think I would choose neither. That sounds Just all around horrible. But it's, uh, I think it's a good way to illustrate that. When we think about planetary invasion, we think about. Aliens coming and taking over our planet. They don't have to have super advanced, amazing technology. Just the fact that they have space supremacy over us and they can travel in space is enough. They, that alone, they have so many options for what they can do. Yeah. I mean, let's, let's talk for a second. Hypothetically. They didn't use their energy to take us out but they still had that ability to. Come back and forth through space and we don't, we're stuck on this rock while they have infinite possibility to retreat return, retreat, return, you know, they even if they lost the first battle, They, could come back with more. And, but we have nowhere to go. So it, even if we were on even ground in that case, you know, in fighting, it still would be futile. so that's a good transition. I actually don't fully agree. If you are an even ground, it might sound like it is at a loss to be on a planet, but a planet while yes, you do have to fight up a gravity well, so naturally your attackers will have a bit of an advantage because anything they send down is gonna have the aid of gravity. But if you're talking about interstellar species, like a humanity that's able to travel interstellar distances, and now we're trying to fight and defend our planet against another foe that's evenly matched. Yes, the gravity well plays a role. Mm-hmm. And we will be fighting up that gravity well, but the energy needed to get outta Earth orbit at that point, I would argue, is fairly minuscule. You already have the energy and the technology to travel interstellar distances. the energy needed to get out of Earth's gravity, well, isn't that big in comparison. And also, let's not forget. Yes, you make a point. They can come and go as they please. However, when they are here, we kind of have the home field advantage. Having the ability to bear yourself under literal kilometers or miles of rock and mountain to defend yourself against potential space-based attacks is a pretty decent advantage. Meanwhile, they have to carry all of their armor with them for anything we log back up toward them. So there are some genuine advantages and disadvantages to being on the ground or being on a situation where you're defending yourself. Alright, well I definitely agree with you that, planets do offer you a, some potential benefits. there are some But let's talk more about like how that fighting in orbit would be Okay. Yeah.'cause as I pointed out, there are some advantages to fighting on the ground. If you have your planet, you have a bunch of places you can hide. Mm-hmm. But you're not going to just sit on your planet and wait for interstellar attack to happen. If you are a space bearing civilization, you're obviously going to have a lot of defenses set up. In orbit and a lot of that defense is going to start happening well before they reach your planet. Yeah. Uh, you have to assume that if we're on common footing, we've been doing this for a while as well, so it's going to be like empires going back and forth and we've had. This set up in time just for this specific scenario because we have the resources for that now. Absolutely. Um, so if we're traveling in our salary, you have to think, we already have mega structures built, which means we probably have defense platforms built around those as well. that house, like you said, large weapons meant to fend off either invaders. Or as we've talked in other episodes about like conflict within, uh, humanity itself, fighting in space. That's very possible. These don't have to be aliens. This could be a human civilization that's gone out colonized a galaxy, and now our long lost children are coming back to Return the favor, right? no good deed goes unpunished as they say. That's right. Yeah. I mean, it could be a, a colony that was sent out long ago and they're, they're coming back. Hopefully it's not that, hopefully we can, we can all be cool, you know, as, as humanity, especially if there are alien aliens. out there that, uh, you know, have a desire to come and take us over. But, we definitely would have that, infrastructure set up to defend ourselves. if that attack were to happen and we weren't even expecting it Yeah. I mean, naturally you're gonna have some type of early warning system if you expect that, hostile activity is possible. Of course, you're gonna have satellites that are out and scanning interstellar space and looking for anything out there Even if your, uh, adversary has something like. Relativistic kill missiles, you're gonna be looking for the potential light that would be released ahead of that being fired to try to get yourself some type of early warning system. Yeah, I mean, you have to think of humanity as being a civilization that has, reached this ability to create, you know, these, these structures and be able to reach out and match the technology of a civilization that can travel across our own galaxy. So if we are matching them on that, we have, you know, that, that ability to just be able to survey everything. And although we've talked about these weapons that, civilizations would use to destroy each other as being very hard to detect. Perhaps we've developed, technologies are better. ways of seeing like the light show up on planets that could be launching weapons at us, things like that. Yeah, so like I was saying, you can try to develop early warning systems for relativistic kill missiles, because typically you release a lot of energy when you fire one of these. You have to accelerate them up to the speed of light. So there is a very real possibility. You might get a glimpse of that light reaching before the missile, especially because these do travel slightly slower than light, and that might give you time to defend yourself. That's really gonna depend how far away your adversary is. Beyond that, if you were preparing for a potential invasion fleet, just like with any type of warfare, you're probably gonna take a multi-layered defense to your home planet, or whatever planet you're defending. Doesn't necessarily have to be your home planet. Mm-hmm. This could be world 2 5 8 in your Interstellar Empire. Right. Uh, but you probably are gonna take a bit of a, like an onion approach. Right. So you're gonna have of course, sensors that are looking for any type of interstellar fleet coming your way if you have an interstellar pusher laser, right? We talked about weaponizing stars. That could be a great early formative fence. You can basically take that, aim it at the, a fleet that's coming at you, and that could potentially, one, uh, either slow them down faster and that could really mess up their orbital logistics. Or two, if they don't have the shielding for it, that could vaporize them. Mm-hmm. Uh, but it's very possible that they would have shielding for that. Right. Because. Chances are they used an interstellar pushing leads to get their fleet there in the first place. But that is nice that if they do try to put up shields against that, then that's gonna slow them down. And that could change the orbital dynamics and potentially make them arrive late or even stop halfway in interstellar space. And, uh, that could be a death sentence for ships like these. Oh yeah. I mean, that would be that's just, you're just starving out their fleets as they run out of resources. Exactly. we could also think about, what if we were on even ground with technology, but they were like more of the physics spending and we would use more of like. The physics that we know right now. Like what if, a fleet was able to just spawn within our solar system? you die basically. just starving at their fleets as they run And we're not on even footing if they aren't following the laws of physics that we think are the laws of physics. Yeah. So that, that one is definitely still, still scary Yeah. To think about. But again, that's just, uh, this assumption would be even footing, this would be even ground.'cause if, if we're not on even ground, they win and we die. Uh, and if they've been physics, then yeah, we die. uh, but other things that you would probably do too, right? If you see ships coming at you, relativistic speed coming at you, like an invasion fleet, some of the most early warning things you would probably do, you could just try to send. would be Basically matter in their direction. rubble, take some asteroids, grind them up into a good chunk size rubble, and see if you can't put it in their path to do some destruction on the way in. Very unlikely that it would hit any of their ships, but it could be a form of early warning and just that way you're doing something right? and you never know, one of their ships may intersect one of these, pieces of rubble. And that at those speeds would absolutely be devastating. Yeah. Just have them destroy themselves. Yeah. Essentially running, running into a massive wall. Yeah. Or I mean, chunk yeah. I mean, gravel at these speeds would be insane. So if you could just pulverize asteroid after asteroid and just launch it in their general direction, it's a good way to at least be doing something on the early end before they reach your solar system. And I'm imagining you're doing this while shining your interstellar pusher laser at them. One, to accelerate that matter up to them so it's more destructive. And two, to try to do some thermal damage on them as they're coming in. Yeah. And this is all before they Even reach your solar system, Yeah, I mean that, that's definitely true. If you can burn up their fuel, their supplies, by the time that they reach you, and then you also have a force that's even theirs when they get there, then their ability to maneuver, their ability to. even feed troops and try and do like blockades and things like that on different planets would be reduced just by slowing them down and taking those resources from 'em initially. Yeah, absolutely. Now, once they actually reach your solar system, you know, we would transition to more of the, and you know, Space Warfare we did an episode all about space warfare, the tactics that might be at play at that. Mm-hmm. And so that might play out, but let's assume that you didn't do too well in space now you have the fleet showing up to your planet, right? The actual planetary invasion portion of this. Right. As I said earlier, you might think all is lost. they have space supremacy, so you know you're gonna lose. They've got a gravity wall on their side. That inherently isn't necessarily true because if you're uneven footing, you could still have very powerful weapons on your planet. And yes, you have to launch those against a gravity well, but. when we're talking about the energies to send something to interstellar space, hitting it off, the planet's, not that crazy. And yes, they do have space supremacy and that does come with some advantages, but you have literal mountains of armor between you and them And You know, if you know this is coming and it's very likely you would know an interstellar invasion was coming, you know, maybe lifetimes in advance, you might see this fleet coming hundreds of years in advance. You have time to build some pretty good fortifications on your planet. Yeah, that's, that's very true. And although Planetary Shield generators like we've thought about them, you know, and, uh, and other things probably wouldn't exist. it's cool to think about the things that we could have existing, like we talked about Ring Worlds before, those could be set up to be defensive, and, you know, create like a, a essentially a, a portion that can't be blockaded, um, because, earth of course, or again, not Earth, it could be, uh, any other planet in the galaxy. We might be relying on other planets around it. But this would be able to essentially create like a safe checkpoint that could defend itself and still receive supplies to send down to the planet. and then bus building defenses on the planet itself. If we know, that they're coming in, you can create some really, really incredible weapons that are just launching. You know, insane amounts of mass or they're launching, you know, missiles that are, dedicated to killing these specific ships that we've been observing coming towards us for the last a hundred years. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you can't underestimate what would happen if you just had a rail gun that was able to accelerate things up to almost orbital velocity and then have a rocket motor on that to take over. You could really start putting some nuclear based weapons or any type of munitions into your orbit. And I actually, I like the point that you mentioned, You talked about armoring our ring worlds and our O'Neill cylinders, and that's absolutely true. I mean, realistically, if you're a space-based. civilization, you've got a lot of assets already in space and you're not just gonna do nothing with those. You're gonna armor them all as much as you can. You're gonna make sure they all have weapons. You're probably gonna acknowledge that you're gonna lose a lot of them. But at the bare minimum, you know, taking a an O'Neill cylinder that's essentially a 10 can, getting all the people off of it and filling it with guns is not a bad approach. And you've probably got tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of these in your solar system. And If You take 10, 20% of 'em and hide high power munitions in them, trying to find those. 10 or 20% could be like a minefield to the enemy. Oh yeah. you gotta think it's that that's like the perfect thing to do if you don't have a lot of time. Like, like if we know that they're coming and we only have like 25 years, uh, you just, create this, confusion. And some of them are safe, but some of them just turn when they get too close and annihilate them. the same way that war is now. You just reduce morale and cause, you know, mental stress, psychological stress on them. Yeah. I imagine in a real situation you have an interstellar empire, you see an invasion fleet coming, you're probably gonna move most of your population off of those cylinders, right? You're space-based assets that. Aren't militarized that you think are gonna be destroyed by the invasion fleet, you're probably going to either ship those outta solar system, right? Like, take your needle cylinder, put a big thruster on it, move it to a safer solar system, or take the people off those structures and move them onto the planet and just dig in And then any of those abandoned structures, like I said, put munitions on as many of 'em as you can and have that. now be a, a thing your enemy has to deal with. Might take out some of their ships and at the bare minimum, . Slow them down and give you some extra assets and space. Yeah. and I mean the, the O'Neill cylinders or, or even, you know, our larger mega structures, putting weapons on them definitely makes them a lot more formidable than a separated fleet.'cause they're, they're one strong, cohesive structure that can take a lot more of punishment than, you know, a separated ship scan. Yeah. I mean, even some of these structures, like when you're talking about the large, large mega structures like. McKendry cylinders, right? Or, or banks orbitals. These things have so much, uh, just rotational inertia in them and just rotational energy stored in them that even just triggering them to fly apart in the middle of your enemy's fleet. just the speed that these large structures would do flying apart at you. Could take out a couple of ships, although I don't think you would want to get that close to them. Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, just space minds at that point. Just gigantic space minds, which also it is worth pointing out. Most of these are going to have weapons on them anyways, even not in a wartime setting to deal with any type of. Orbital debris that's flying around, right? They're gonna need point defense to eliminate spare asteroids or meteors or just space junk. So, oh yeah, there's, they're all gonna be armored to some extent, especially assuming that we've built around asteroid belts, things like that, you're going to have these ships that have different types of weapons for eliminating debris. There's no reason why those can't be turned on. warships, uh, to destroy them. It's, it's a weapon of destruction either way. Yeah. And then being an invader, right. And trying to. Take over a whole planet is not gonna be a fun task. I mean, assuming that you can't just destroy it for whatever reason. like we, we were talking about the hypothetical situation where humanity's fractured, and this is some who knows, colony coming back trying to take over maybe their home world. Uh, and they don't wanna just destroy it outright.'cause if they wanna destroy it outright, obviously the dynamics change. But if they do want to preserve the planet for whatever reason, then trying to. get that entrenched population and actually get boots on the ground and take them out is just such a huge undertaking. I mean, you're talking about worlds that potentially have hundreds of billions of people. The, this is not a small amount of people that you're gonna have to try to get boots on the ground and dig them out, and they could be dug in kilometers under the surface. And it's a whole planet. It's not like you can starve out a planet. Right. This isn't like a, a medieval castle where you can structure yourself around it. Wait for them to starve. They have a planet's worth of resources. Yes. That's so, and they potentially have had centuries to prepare and, and get farming going underground and be ready. So you, you very much could be there for the long haul and actually trying to realistically. get in there and take out, the population in and of itself could just be such a huge undertaking. Even if you win in terms of having orbital superiority and you, you have the ability to destroy their planet. If you just choose not to do that, uh, you still might have a very long road ahead of you before victory and, and still might settle and, uh, sue for peace just because of the undertaking that would be Yeah. I mean, and it definitely makes you think about like in, in the future, let's say if we were to meet alien civilizations that are similar to us. it's just like a diplomacy would really prevail, I feel like, in, in that sense, because war would be such an undertaking. like the lot loss of life and, then just like the amount of time that it would take to uproot civilizations on planets entrenched like that would be absolutely insane. I don't even know how you would, you would go about it without absolutely destroying the planet if you wanted to preserve it. Yeah. That kind of ties into something else I did wanna touch on while we were on this episode, which is, why would you wanna take over a planet and invade a planet? and it kind of ties into what you're saying, it's. and then just like Probably not worth it. And this is another flaw I have with a lot of those science fiction books and movies we see. I mean, don't get me wrong, I enjoy the stories. I'm not gonna harp on 'em and be like, ah, it's a terrible movie, because they didn't have good reasons. I enjoyed watching the White House get destroyed in Independence Day. Yeah, it's a good scene. Um, but realistically, there's not much of a reason to try to take over a planet right? there's this, I think, in independence today. The idea is that a life supporting planet? is so incredibly rare. That's why they want to come and, knock humans off. We haven't been treating it well. The issue is that the energy it takes travel interstellar distances and then carefully remove a species from a planet and take it over is usually gonna be less energy than just terraforming another planet. And you might think, okay, but maybe if the life supporting planets are so incredibly rare, that energy cost could be worth it. But it's really an inverse relationship because the more rare. A life supporting planet is the further you're gonna have to travel to get to one, the more it makes sense to just terraform a closer planet to you energy wise. Oh yeah. Yeah. And so that's a big issue I have with these is like the rare earth answer to that doesn't, I think, make sense to me. Yeah. I mean, some of that, that it definitely doesn't make sense to want to come here for the planet, but, we could, like the, the war of the world's, uh, angle was, they kind of came here for us. we were almost like acting as a, as cattle for them to raise. the type of life system that they wanted on their planet with the blood roots, that they use our blood to essentially spread. which I think, is an interesting concept, but that, well, that that, that's much more terrifying though, isn't it? It's terrifying. it also, I guess I, I'm not gonna say it makes any more sense. It relies on humanity being, uh, rare or uncommon for some reason, which I'm kind of fine with. I could definitely see an alien species wanting to see another intelligent life form. It's very possible that intelligent life is incredibly rare and you would want to come and observe and study, uh, a rare anomaly of intelligent, uh, life that, can build a civilization. But why would you wanna destroy it? In that point? You probably wanna study it more than destroy. And the idea of our blood being, special that doesn't really No, I know. I mean, but, but it ties into that, that thought of like a devouring swarm, which we've seen in a lot of different science fiction novels. Like, like they've adapted over time to just sort of like either eating or using, populations to sustain themselves. The flood from Halo comes to mind for me. Yes, yes. The flood from Halo is a great, um, example. It's just getting to that point? just seems so incredibly insane to me. Because you're talking about a population that has built itself up from eating multiple different civilizations. Like how do you get to that point? Yeah. And that also relies on all of life in the universe being connected in some way.'cause you need to be able to actually, get and use that biological material. And we talked about this I think a bit with some of our alien episodes. It's very unlikely that the biology would be anywhere near similar. I mean, it could be crazy different. It could be using entirely different forms of, of life, Like uh, instead of being carbon based, being silicon based or mm-hmm. Uh, the methane based life form instead of water based. But even if it is carbon based life the central points of life, the proteins we use even the, the genetic information, the way we store genetic information can be wildly different. And then the odds of. Some swarm like entity, like the flood, being able to then come in and, and utilize all of that and actually be compatible with it, is like impossible. And I think the flood in Halo, that does work because all life is connected in Halo, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. Uh, which is why that works. That makes more sense, but realistically, probably not in our, in our universe. Yeah. you know, it's, uh, maybe, yeah. Who knows? maybe, yeah. But, uh, because, you know, we're, we're very ignorant still to what's out there because we've never seen anything that's out there. But, it just seems very unlikely that there would be a, an actual devouring swarm type of, or like, like an assimilation type of civilization. Yeah. So I, that would form, I think it just ties back into the issue. There's just not a lot of reason to invade a planet. Yeah. I mean, unless it's like some holy ground. Like maybe in the situation where a human colony has built a religion around their holy land being Earth, and now they want to come take it back. I guess I could see that. Maybe that's a, reasonable reason that you might actually wanna conquer a planet instead of destroying it. but other than that, like relatively niche example, resources don't make sense. No. You could get those anywhere. You can get those anywhere. Humanity. Sure. You know, we might be unique and special, but why would you then destroy us? I doubt you're gonna harvest us for cattle or for bioequivalency. Mm-hmm. Or regions be able to use us for anything else. So, uh, yeah, I just don't think there's a lot of realistic situations where you invade a planet. Yeah. So don't worry people, I think we're safe. Um, well, it doesn't mean we're safe, it just means they would destroy us. Yeah. I mean, so it, it is just the only likely situation, which is, you know, we, we've seen a lot of movies is if they, they came and we weren't, even with each other. yeah. I mean, if we, if we're already advanced to a point where we're traveling. I just don't think that civilizations would really want each other's planets, especially if we're spaced out enough to have not seen each other by now. Yeah. Um, so it would be different if we were seeing alien civilizations like on every star and they were fighting to expand, but obviously that's not the case in our galaxy. Yeah, no. At least it doesn't seem to be the case. There's always the possibility that they're communicating in ways we don't know, but I personally don't buy into that. Yeah. No, I I I don't think that that, that would be the case at all. And it's also, uh, one last point I definitely wanna mention is that, the whole latter half this episode was presuming being on equal footing. Mm-hmm. and I could definitely see that in a, in a. You have a colony returning to conquer their own, uh, world situation because that colony basically split out from you. You're, you, you should be reasonably within the same footing. Uh, but realistically the odds of running into another alien species that has the same technological level as you is crazy. Yeah. I think, actually think that you make a great point there because if, let's say it was a long colony from a long time ago. how long would it have to be that we separate and diverge from them in our evolution that they're considered alien, right? And then they come back and we're on equal footing. I feel like that would actually be probably the most likely scenario for an alien invasion. It might not be for, for, yeah. Like an actual alien invasion of, of the planet. But I, I definitely still don't, don't see them being like, okay. We're finally settled. We're uneven ground. let's go take the planet back. Yeah, let's let go. It's like the first rule of warfare, right? The holy land. Yeah. It's like the first rule of warfare, right? You don't fight on even ground. You wanna make sure you have an advantage. Only suckers go for fair fights. That's right. So no alien species is gonna be like, oh, they're about the same as us. We can take'em. No. They're gonna be looking for people that are much more advanced than, and like I said, I just think realistically, the odds of you being on equal footing with a completely alien. Species is so slim because on geological timescales a million years here or there is a rounding error. But on technological timescales, that's huge. So that's why I'm saying that just what are the odds that you both happen to be on the same level at the same time? Unless there was some universal constant, like uh, all species happen to start right at the same time. But again, I think that's unlikely.'cause that, again, what I just said, a million years would be a rounding air for. geological time sales, even if life only became possible in the universe at a certain time, you would still expect some variance of a couple million years at the minimum. Yeah, no, I mean, and like assuming that technological advancements are still exponential in the way that they've been, you know, with us, then, just 150 years, uh, at that point could really turn the tide of whatever that that war is, even if both can travel and see each other at that point. it would really just be like a quick surrender from whichever side had, uh, less technology than the other. no, absolutely. I agree. So realistically, probably not something that's gonna happen. Uh, but still fun to think about. Oh yeah. And it makes for great books and movies. It does, it does. I'm not saying all books should just be, uh, the aliens showed up and, and they won though. There are some great books like that. I don't wanna say the title 'cause I feel like it's a bit of a spoiler though. It's earlier in the, in the book. But there is a great book and there is a, an alien eva scene like this. And I think there's a great quote. It's basically like, yeah, the war for this planet took 53 minutes. Oh, gonna happen. glad you're being considerate of everybody. Yes, yes. It's, it's a relatively new book, so I would hate to spoil it, but I, I definitely feel like that would be the case. Like, like they, they show up, they're like so surrender or die. Yeah. That's exactly what happens here is they, they show up and they immediately eliminate one sixth of the, the population as like, a, we're here. This is a demo of what we can do. You really want to go at us? And, uh, the people in the spending go, no, we're good. We'll surrender. Yeah. I mean, it's just, yeah. I mean, what, what, what would you, I think like, I'd be like, I'm excited to see what you guys do with the place. I mean, yeah, up, they're like, uh. shows up and immediately just makes Australia not exist. Are you really gonna say, nah, I think we can take you. eliminate one sixth of the population as but yeah, no, I mean that, that's definitely cool to think about. I. to go at us? the only other thing that I could think about as far as like invasion would be like, microscopic. Organisms invading and just like essentially causing disease and taking over the planet. I don't know if you even wanna dive into that or not Well, I mean with any type of invasion, that's just another tool you have at your disposal and that's a very plausible strategy that a species would use if they wanted to take over our planet, just show up, make a custom design virus, release it on the planet, and it could eliminate humans. And there they go. I mean, that would be a great way to take off, uh, our species. and leave the biosphere untouched. That would probably mostly apply for an unmatched situation, which like I said, most situations would be. Yeah. But yeah, you could 100% do that. Yeah. I mean, well I was, I was thinking like, like, what if there's just the aliens were just like a virus that just wandered space, sort of like how the, the flood is, but without any intelligence at all. They just crashed in the planets. Sort of like how tar degrades can. The only reason why I bring that up is because it technically would be like an invasion, just not from an intelligent life. It would be like a, a microscopic one. yeah, I, I would argue that this would still tie into the point of life not being compatible from like, what are the odds that a virus, like viruses especially, are very dependent on hijacking our cellular machinery. And so they're like, they're very, very dependent on. Being compatible with that machinery to the point. Mm-hmm. That's why viruses typically don't jump species. Very common. It's very rare that a virus is able to go from one species to another because it, it needs that exact machinery and something being slightly different makes the virus incompatible. So the odds of a, a virus randomly without being intelligently designed. Just bumping into our planet and randomly being compatible seems very unlikely to me. Yeah. I mean, it, it definitely is, and you bring up great points there. that's why when you have a cold, your cat doesn't also start sneezing. Yeah. Thank God for, because it, it needs that but yeah, I just wanted to throw that out there because it No, it's a great point. And I, I definitely could see alien species or invaders tailoring engineering viruses or, or microbes in some way to, uh, knock off the. Whatever population they didn't want. But I, I do think the odds of, you know, just a random one being out there, an alien virus infecting us is, is slim to none. Yeah, and I was gonna say, that just seems like a cruel way to, to, kill us off, but. I guess Andrew Jackson used that way as well. Oh God. When he came to the US so, um, not, not, not funny what he did, but, if they, if they were in the same mindset as us, they, they could definitely use that as a tool. Well, we've done it to ourselves, so it doesn't seem that farfetched that an alien species would come and do it to us. And yeah. And I, maybe we deserve it way to, to, on that nice and cheerful note. I think that's all that I have to say about planetary invasion. Yeah, that, that's, that's all that I have to say about it too. It's a really fun topic to think about and speculate, but I don't think that we have to worry about being drafted into the war anytime soon. Thankfully not. And we did end by talking about alien virus, which is a good segue into what we're gonna be talking about next week, uh, when we're gonna be talking about hive mines, how a hive mine might function, how one might expand and grow, and if they're actually possible. Yeah, it should be a fun topic, thinking about just y consciousness and how that might work as well, and what that society would look like. Yeah, should be great. So if that sounds interesting, join us for that. Bye guys. Take care. the