Question pertaining to aliens because of an argument in an independence day thread. If an alien invasion happened and there was a giant mothership that landed on earth, why wouldnt we just nuke it?
Would a nuke even do anything? What about multiple? I know there could be materials that we wouldn't have on earth and probably couldn't understand, but with a modern day nuke and how powerful they are and the sheer heat produced by them, wouldnt a nuke just be the best option? Even if it was over a city if it could stop an invasion of the entire earth it seems like it'd be worth it and the only viable option.
Thoughts/opinions on it and what would happen? Just looking for some insight
Yay we stopped the alium invasion, but now the fallout has left the world a radioactive wasteland and we're all going to die anyway. Hip hip hooray God bless America!
Samuel Clark
If there was an actual alien invasion, then instead of floating down to were they're easy to hit or attacking with small ships, they would just drop large chunks of heavy material from high orbit, like dragging asteroids over from the asteroid belt or lead slag. There's no reason for them to get within range of our nukes.
Andrew Powell
What if the goal was to just hit the mothership over the area of about a single state?
What if they wanted to make contact first and then became hostile? if you wanted the earth for resources it seems like slinging giant asteroids at it would ruin it
Also wouldnt a nuke be able to reach pretty far into the atmosphere if needed?
Bentley Evans
It's a shitty movie, the only reason it exists is to celebrate and suck America's dick, not for its scientific accuracy. Nukes wouldn't work because muh force fields or whatever shitty shields the ayys were using. They could just engineer a pathogen and spread it to the aliens and be done with them or halt the invasion, but w/e.
Logan Ward
in ww2 german tanks fighted against polish riders. generous advantage through technology of about 100 years. try to imagine a 1000 years advantage (from now on). nuking would be pointless.
Brody Morgan
I didn't ask about the movie specifically I know the scientific accuracy isnt there. Didn't think of a force field aspect though.
That's the best explanation I've seen so far, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for explaining it in that way.
Chase Ward
If you aren't talking about the movie specifically, then is right on. If aliens were to invade, however implausible that is, they would be so advanced and more intelligent that we wouldn't stand a chance. We would be squashed like bugs if they wanted to destroy us. Think the difference between a monkey and a human. Now the difference between a human and an equally more advanced alien. Aliens are an existential threat to us, it's just extremely improbable that they will ever visit or that we will contact intelligent life.
James Reyes
>They could just engineer a pathogen and spread it to the aliens and be done with them or halt the invasion, but w/e.
Not if they get us first, god dammit.
Benjamin Rodriguez
That was a matter of unsuitable weapons rather than inferior technology, though. Even the most modern high tech combat knifes couldn't do shit against the flimsiest WWI tank. And conversely, even WWI tech artillery with a large enough caliber could destroy or incapacitate modern main battle tanks.
Jonathan Johnson
One of the main activities of UFOs is to shut down entire nuclear bases so if they really were aliens and they decided to attack, our nuclear arsenals would be swiftly disabled. Even contemplating a war against an intergalactic species is beyond preposterous
Levi Harris
How is that not inferior technology? Horseback vs tank is two types of technology from 2 different points in time. Just like WWI tank today vs. a fighter jet is two types of technology from different points in time with 100 years difference essentially
Cameron Edwards
What resources on Earth could they possibly want? There's nothing here that can't be found in abundance on uninhabited asteroids and planets. Why would a civilization that's mastered interstellar travel even bother sending something like a mothership just to make contact. This to them would be the equivalent of a backwater shithole, send a retarded ambassador that you don't mind losing. If they decided to become hostile they could use something like a relativistic bomb with no risk to themselves. Even if we were somehow able to detect something like that there would be nothing we could do to stop it, and in all likelihood would be dead without even knowing it was coming.
Kevin Lee
Everyone STFU and read this.
Jose Carter
The tank is obviously more powerful and durable but it lacks mobility of a horse.
Luke Bennett
>How is that not inferior technology? Because even if those cavalrymen had been armed with 21st century weapons, they still wouldn't have been able to do shit against tanks. Even a modern elite soldier couldn't to shit against an armored vehicle with just a flimsy assault rifle. They didn't lose because their weapons were primitive, but because cavalry is inherently unsuited to fight against tanks. Besides, cavalry and tanks aren't exactly from different points of time, since cavalry was still in use for many years after the first tanks appeared on the battlefields.
Leo Hall
This is not Veeky Forums. It has literally nothing to do with science. Hide/report.
Oliver Hughes
"Maybe the alien spaceships will be worse in some way than our own, and the aliens will somehow fail to understand this before we're able to exploit it", the thread.
Wyatt Hall
>One of the main activities of UFOs is to shut down entire nuclear bases You are literally prescribing objective and intent to a fictitious species.
is over there.
Zachary Gonzalez
>Aliens >Fictitious
Aiden Hughes
Edward Teller wanted to build and design a Gigaton nuclear weapon for outer space threats (asteroids really) but faggots wouldn't fund it.
>>> radioactive wasteland Nuclear wasteland and winter shit are lies. Japanese rebuilt Hiroshima and Nagasaki right atop nuclear ground zeroes. Between 1945 and 1963 over 500 atmospheric nuclear weapons were exploded and it pretty much did nothing else than increase average radiation dose by couple dozens of mikrosieverts - equaling to eating couple hundred bananas a year. Unless, of course, some idiot decided that making the bomb cases out of cobalt 59.
Wyatt Price
>shut down entire nuclear bases That's only part of the picture.
SW. of Minot ND. An MP. got a call to one of the missile silos. The Sergeant on duty took two other men with him. He told me that they had come over to see a UFO over the silo. The guards at the silo were like statues. The locks on the gates were open, and gates open. The sergeant had contact with the officers down in the silo. They were very upset, it seems that the missile had been armed and unlocked in launch mode, and that the warhead was armed.
There are many such reports ranging from the shutting down of ICBM flights to remotely changing the target coordinates and in one reported case (Byelokoroviche, Ukraine, October 4, 1982) the activating of the launch sequence.
>Japanese rebuilt Hiroshima and Nagasaki right atop nuclear ground zeroes. Those were very small nukes by modern standards, 15 and 21 kilotons, while modern strategic nukes range from 100 kilotons to 1.2 megatons.
>atmospheric nuclear weapons Air bursts (including Hiroshima and Nagasaki) cause far less fallout than hitting something like OP's hypothetical mothership.
>>shut down entire nuclear bases >That's only part of the picture. The most complex, sophisticated, cutting-edge, semi-experimental, small-batch-deployment equipment on Earth doesn't work exactly right 100% of the time? Must be aliens!
