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Book Concept: A Realistic Alien Invasion
Topic Started: Feb 14 2012, 04:12 PM (1,439 Views)
dialforthedevil
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I am so bored of the cliche alien Invasion and I hope to present one which makes some sort of sense.

1. Thousands of vessels turn up in the atmosphere above Earth across the globe. Immediately vast amounts of drones pour out of drop ships but they seem to only attack Africa and the Middle East. Meanwhile they constantly harass the Air Forces of all nations, it seems that in terms of Air Power a modern combat jet can actually match an alien craft. Africa and the Middle East are hit incredibly hard, thousands of alien ground drones pour into the nations and begin a program of extermination. Oddly no viral nor large scale bombs are really used unless they are on large civilian groups.

2. After two months of fighting Africa and the Middle East are left absolutely devastated, more so from human weapons rather than alien ones. Although strange bombs were dropped on nearly all the cities in these nations, but only after all military targets had been wiped out. In the two months countries such as the USA suddenly find that their oil supplies had been cut off, the jets which had once protected these countries now lay dormant as thousands of alien dropships begin descending and start what happened in the Middle East. Low on supplies these nations crumble. Militia learn that the aliens only bomb the cities, but in the countryside the sheer speed of the drones and their firepower tear apart human tanks and infantry.

3. An emergency UN meeting is called, nearly all of the human militaries lie in ruin. Operation Tartarus is put into play. If mankind cannot have the Earth Nobody will. Every single missile mankind has is launched at the alien ships in orbit. Entire nuclear salvos are unleashed. THe last remaining humans retreat into bunkers. After a week mankind emerges, finding that alot of the bombs did not explode being old duds from the cold war. But the vast alien fleet was gone, the whole Earth covered in the carcasses of the ships. The skies were scorched red and, much of Earth was left devastated. But the drones no longer worked...

4. The great fight back began. Humanity rallied its forces and discovered the drones masters, which came to be known as 'squiddies'. No where near as resilient as their drone warriors the squiddies could not withstand such an assault. Used to living cooped up in their spacecraft the tanks and guns of mankind quickly slaughtered them. The great fight back though took 6 years of fighting across the irradiated wastes of Earth.

5. As mankind celebrated the Phyrric Victory briefly the skies once again burst with activity. A new vast fleet of different design appears in the skies. A message is sent to mankind. It is a simple choice, fight for us and we will fix your world, or we shall exterminate you. Humanity has no choice. The species which has made contact is known as the Fathers. The fathers sent the Squiddies as a test to mankind, the fathers need soldiers for the eternal war against something they simply call the foe. The fathers are godlike beings which go on these recruitment drives to find races which can fight in these wars. Mankind passed with flying colours, Operation Tartarus was not expected by anyone, at all.

6. If you guys like the sound of this I shall explain what happens when mankind joins the thousands of other sophonts which 'passed the test' ....
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dialforthedevil
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Ah okay then, perhaps back to the idea of a Kashmir conflict then?
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T.Neo
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Yes but I assumed they would be more advanced, which would give them a massive edge. We see it time and time again in the small wars though the 20th and 21st century when a major power gets involved against someone with only decent technology. Ten years behind and you're in trouble. Twenty and you're doomed. Thirty and you've already lost.


Depends on exactly how advanced they are. Even with more advanced technology, you're never going to have a 100% success rate- even though you may have a success rate close to 100%,

Also, I guess it depends how you fight. Guerilla forces can give militaries like those of the USSR or USA a hard time while not possessing much mechanised assets beyond toyota pickup trucks.

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I think having a fair sized war going on before the invasion might help give the humans more of a chance. Perhaps Venezuela/the Bolivarian Alliance, Iran and the DPRK are all all fighting the USA and allies at once (World War 2.5?) meaning the great powers are mobilized for war and producing.


Modern Worldwar? :lol:

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The ships of the squiddies were brought here by a father jump gate, but their space craft are equivalent to a slightly more advanced Apollo spacecraft which has been weaponised.


Apollo-type spacecraft tech? They'd be sitting ducks! We could slaughter them by detonating nukes 10 kilometers away.
Edited by T.Neo, Apr 7 2012, 10:05 AM.
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dialforthedevil
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Exactly just imagine they kitted out whatever space capabilities they had and tried to fight with them. When the fathers meet an already interstellar species they absolutely annihilate their fleets and eradicate them. Only when their homeworld is left do they initiate the test. The squiddies were just on their way to developing space-craft. Their world was doomed, thus they were rushing to develop and perfect spacecraft when they were discovered.
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Zerraspace
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But the marines who participate in this begin to doubt the wisdom of the fathers...


Given that they were nearly exterminated and threatened with extermination if they fail, I don't see that mankind would think any good of them.

The Fathers' philosophy seems self-defeatist. If they intend to harvest intelligent races for use as warriors, what is the point of bringing about their near annihilation? It may weaken them into submission, but the more power they can salvage from that race, the better equipped they are to fight, and the less work they have to do in the long run. A slave is no good to you dead, and they will need millions if not billions of able-bodied soldiers to wage war across several worlds. Given that the world's remaining population could all be fit in bunkers, their number is probably far short of that - perhaps centuries of recovery are required before they could make a sizable fighting force. Contrary to what popular culture would have you believe, genocide is hard.

Then there is the matter of exterminating failing races. Is this to say that the Fathers exterminate only those individuals sent to the planet to fight, or do they wipe out all members of the species? If the latter, I can't see how they will keep any group for more than one or two battles; no matter how skilled, some enemy will gain an edge on them, through probability if nothing else, and some members of the species will be better equipped for fighting than others. It seems better to me for them to leave their warriors on those worlds without spaceships (at least ones capable of leaving the system) - unless the warriors defeat their opponents, they will never make it home.

For that matter, what do they need these warriors for? The squiddies had drones; if the Fathers did not originally have some equivalent they could have constructed one to fight their battles for them. Given their possible level of technology, there are likely several techniques open to them that wouldn't involve firing a shot.

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The brother which is sent off is deployed in it's first battle. Grouped in with other Oxygen breathing life forms humanity is put in balls deep. As the dropships containing mankind land, they quickly discover that nearly all human tactics are worthless. Its just a mass charge alongside millions of other sophonts, sheer chaos.


Wouldn't the squiddies have been placed in the same facilities, in which case they would have taken on a similar fighting style and no "human tactic" would be any good against them either?
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lamna
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They could do it for vague ideological reasons. Perhaps some corruption of "It is well that war is so terrible, lest we should grow too fond of it" Someone has to die so that it means something.
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Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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T.Neo
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To be fair there's not much reason to utilise sapient species in your armies when you can just build armies of self-replicating robots (or whatever). Unless there was some arcane rule or edict that demanded it.
Edited by T.Neo, Apr 7 2012, 04:47 PM.
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lamna
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There are some SF stories about similar things. There is some sort of law that prevents guilds using advanced technology on low tech worlds, so some aliens take a Roman legion to use, giving them near immortality and to beat them another guild captures an English army from the Hundred Years War.

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Russwallac
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I remember that series... I read the original short story.

Anyway, maybe the use of sapient races as soldiers began as a sport? It would make sense; most people (it's true; admit it) would rather see blood than shrapnel, if you catch my drift. Perhaps the Fathers initially used other races for sport, and it became a tradition in their society.
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lamna
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Maybe it's like sending forth a champion, a way to possibly avoid any real fighting.
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whachamacallit2
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Maybe you could go with the idea that the Fathers originally just destroyed any civilization they encountered, but as time went on, some of the Father species thought that the action was too ruthless and proposed that they could simply enslave species (or in their eyes, assimilate). In this way, the Fathers would secure discovered areas from threats but also saving the species in the progress. Of course, this is how they could see it in their eyes. We would beg to differ.
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dialforthedevil
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I like all your speculations but I did not want to give the ending away but here is the explanation.

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