We Will Destroy Your Planet Read online

  Biological warfare would be a much better option, especially if the goal is merely to wipe out humanity and leave the rest of the biosphere intact for use and exploitation. A biological pathogen could be engineered to be inimical to the human species, and other species you want rid of, without harming yourself. Pathogens that would affect humanity are unlikely to affect any invading species, and vice-versa. Humanity has, of course, made it easier to spread a suitably lethal pandemic globally, by instituting a global transport network of pressurized aerial vehicles.

  There would undoubtedly be survivors in isolated areas – even with a long-lasting airborne pathogen, the weather patterns of the winds could allow areas of the planet to remain uncontaminated – so you would then have to hunt down and eliminate them, by whatever means.

  It is theoretically possible that a virus genetically engineered to be inimical to all carbon-based life forms could eventually accomplish the task, but the likelihood of those pockets of life existing out of contact with each other make it unlikely that true 100% infection could ever be achieved.

  The extent of life remaining might well be reduced to something as simple as single-celled organisms, or non-sentient creatures existing in the depths of the oceans, but they would still be there as a symbol of your failure, and may have the potential to evolve into something more threatening later. They would also, of course, be far harder to track down, and detect and eliminate, than groups of large mammals. That being said, it would still be your best way of trying for the complete extinction of life.

  DESTROY ALL HUMANS!

  If wiping out the dominant species, humanity, will suffice for your purposes, then matters become far more practicable. There are many good reasons for taking out the dominant species on Earth before you invade, but the most important one is to prevent the danger of active resistance. There is a simple way of almost certainly wiping out humanity and so guaranteeing total lack of resistance while you carry out your chosen operations on the planet.

  That way has already been touched upon in earlier sections: the use of large natural impactors against the planetary surface. Or, to put it another way, asteroid bombardment. The use of asteroid bombardment will guarantee not just large-scale elimination of population centres, but also changes to the climate of the planet, rendering it uninhabitable by humans. Changing the atmosphere and climate can also be achieved by planetary engineering, or terraforming, as it’s called on Earth, but that is a technique more useful for long-term planning than as warfare, and will be addressed in the chapter on ‘Living On Earth’.

  METEOR BOMBARDMENT

  Having mentioned asteroid impacts, it’s time to look at meteor bombardment as a general tactic in assaulting the planet. Bear in mind that even if you don’t intend to destroy the Earth or to wipe out humanity, it is still necessary to eliminate local surface defences prior to invasion, and meteor bombardment is an excellent tactic for this.

  The golden rule with this form of warfare is to make sure not to use unnecessary excess energy in delivering these natural warheads to their targets. Such adaptation of natural weaponry has been used in a few dramas over the years.

  Where the forces depicted in these dramas have tended to go wrong is in using technology such as mass drivers – using arrays of magnetic linear accelerators to accelerate a metallic mass such as an iron-dense asteroid – to launch chunks of space rock at target planets. For example, in the TV series Babylon 5, the Centauri use mass drivers built into their capital warships to pummel the planet Narn with meteors, turning the whole globe into a ruined dustbowl.

  This proved three things: 1) space superiority is effective in besieging a planet from orbit; 2) bombardment with meteors really will do plenty of damage to a planet’s biosphere, and 3) the Centauri are idiots with more money (or resources) than sense.

  Why are they idiots? Because they had no need to build ships that use a (probably quite high) percentage of their power to accelerate lumps of rock, so long as the target planet has a gravity well. As all planets do.

  The mass driver isn’t that new an idea; they were first thought of as a weapon by Robert A. Heinlein in his 1966 novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. In the book, the population of a Lunar mining colony wants to secede from being ruled by the authorities on Earth, and, as part of their campaign, use a linear accelerate built in the vicinity of the Mare Undarum to launch rocks at cities on Earth.

  What seems to have been forgotten by later thinkers on the matter of meteoric bombardment is that the Loonies (as the rebels are referred to in the book) need to accelerate their rocky payloads to the Moon’s escape velocity (5,400 miles per hour) in order to get them off the Moon and heading towards Earth. A rock already placed into the gravity well may need a nudge to get it on course to impact with a particular point on the surface, but it won’t need anything like the amount of energy required to impart an escape velocity from a decent-sized body.

  From the Centauri point of view in Babylon 5, conducting a general bombardment of the surface as a whole, giving the rock a good shove out the airlock, would have done the job.

  Also, because of the simple fact of Newtonian physics – every reaction has an equal but opposite reaction – a spacecraft-mounted mass driver would actually function better as an engine than as a weapon. It is, after all, exactly how rockets work. There’s a gorgeous visual image used in the title sequences of the later Babylon 5 seasons showing one of the main characters standing at a window, in which is reflected the image of rocks being launched from his ship’s mass drivers. Sadly, it does not show the ship suddenly tumbling backwards away from us, which is what should actually have happened next.

  In short, do not try using ship-mounted mass drivers to launch your asteroid bombardment. Let gravity do the work; it’s cheaper, easier, and more effective.

  This approach is more rarely seen in drama and literature, but is not entirely unknown. Oddly, one of the best examples is in the otherwise comedic film Iron Sky, which is about a group of escaped Nazis who have been hiding out in a Lunar base for decades, who then return to try conquering the Earth. At one point their flying saucers are seen to tow big rocks to release into the Earth’s gravity well while the ships themselves peel away. This is, in fact, the far more sensible and energy-efficient way to do it.

  If merely thinning out the surviving populace will suffice for your purposes, you should take note that disease will be rife among most of the animal species after the asteroid bombardment, whether you help it along by introducing suitable pathogens or not.

  The large numbers of unburied dead and lack of food and clean water resulting after such a disaster will mean harmful bacteria will spread like wildfire through the surviving population. This is well worth exploiting, so long as you have no need of strong captives, as it will further lessen the likelihood and ability of any resistance to your arrival and your plans. Alternatively, you can always pose as benefactors, curing the pandemic, in the hope of gaining human trust. This may be a worthwhile tactic if you are relatively few in number and require an amount of goodwill and help from the population.

  It goes without saying, of course, that if you are coming to Earth by means other than starships, then asteroid bombardment will not be an available option. Also, if you are coming from a parallel Earth or from a different period in the planet’s history, and are human yourself, then using a global pandemic as an option is definitely not a wise course of action, due to the risk of some of your forces carrying the pathogen back to your time/dimension and wiping out that population also. At the very least, you will have to make sure all your own populace is inoculated against the chosen disease.

  In that instance, your best option for wiping out the native population may simply be to gain access to the Earth’s national nuclear launch codes, and trigger a global nuclear war. You will have to wait some considerable time afterwards, however, for the radiation levels to settle to a point at which you can safely move in and begin full operations or settlement.
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br />   THE [INSERT YOUR NAME HERE] INVASION OF EARTH

  Most hostile extraterrestrial interest in the Earth will be in the form of planned invasion and takeover, though the base motive behind that intention will, of course, vary. Whether it’s a desire for living space, the planet’s chemical resources, strategic position, livestock, or just because it’s fun to conquer a planet and gives your military something to do, there are a number of things you must do correctly.

  DO YOUR RESEARCH

  Before embarking on any military campaign, you must gather information. The successful interplanetary conqueror will always be the one who has gathered every possible piece of knowledge and calculated every possible eventuality. Conquests are made in the research and planning stage, not in the running around screaming ‘it’s game over, man,’ stage. It’s admittedly a truism that no battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy, but this is why you must be prepared with alternate plans in advance.

  Even on Earth, the wisdom holds true that the warrior who knows both the enemy and themselves will always win; the warrior who knows themselves but not the enemy will win and lose equally; and the warrior who knows neither really ought to give up and get a civilian day job.

  So, knowing your enemy – in this case human society – is an absolute must. If you are coming from a parallel world, you may already know much of what you need, but not everything; there will always be differences, and even if not, you’ll still be dealing with other nations, whose strategy and tactics are secret to you even in your own identical world. If you’re coming from the past, you will have records and histories, but these are written by the victors, and usually with a political slant, so may be unreliable. It will always be better to infiltrate and investigate yourself – and at least you will have the advantage of being able to pass for a local with authority.

  If you’re an extraterrestrial coming by a means – such as a wormhole or matter-transmission beam – that will have you arrive directly on the surface, you will also have to do your research by means of either electronic intelligence gathering (tapping data and communications) or infiltration. If you are unable to infiltrate by stealth, you can always try controlling authorized humans by means of telepathy or even simple bribery. Use of robots and drones is also advised, especially if they can be camouflaged as humans or as other acceptable Earth species that will not arouse suspicion.

  Starship crews, however, have the best possible view. Literally. The Earth can be sampled in total from orbit, by all possible kinds of scanners and cameras and sensors. It is a simple matter to map the entire surface, both in the visual spectrum of light for your species, and internally by mass spectrometry, radar, gravitometry, and so on. Using the appropriate sensors from orbit will give you a total picture of the Earth from core to outer atmosphere, as well as showing you where humanity has its military strongpoints, where resource deposits are, and the distribution of life forms. You will also be able to track vehicle movement, and eavesdrop on all electronic communications and broadcasts. Be aware, though, that the Earth has hundreds of languages, and you will need to be able to decode them. (Despite this, you will find from the broadcasts that humans seem to think that all other planets share one single language.)

  A warning: Do do your research, but be aware of the limitations of your information. Military secrets, generally, are considered to be the shortest-lived as well as the most valuable, but it’s less often recognized that simple information is also extremely short-lived in a military context.

  As with any commander, you must make sure that your information is as precise and up to date as possible. It must be accurate, and it must be correct for the time of your attack. This brings a bit of a paradox, because, on the one hand you will want to be prepared well in advance with all of the information you need, but that information must also be current at the latest possible moment before conquest. There’s no point in knowing where all the defences are before you take off, if they’ve moved by the time you arrive.

  As you can imagine, this is especially problematic for those of you crossing the void in normal space, or even at relativistic speed. If it takes you years to reach the Earth, then the information you have gathered absolutely will be out of date by the time you arrive, unless you have some kind of time travel capability that allows you to move back through time as you cross space, in order to arrive at a point at which your information is current and correct.

  It would make more sense, therefore, to conduct your reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering from a forward base – perhaps on the Moon or Mars, or at one of the LaGrange points in the Earth-Sun or Earth-Moon system – so that you can prepare to launch your attack from there.

  PREPARE THE GROUNDWORK

  There are several stages to an invasion of a territory, regardless of the scale or purpose of the conflict. Broadly speaking, defences and warning systems must be rendered ineffective – or at least disrupted – before the following sequence can occur: entering the target territory, establishing secure beachheads which can be linked together to form a stable controlled area for the later reception of reinforcements and supplies, eliminating military resistance in surrounding territory, and consolidating control of suppressed territory.

  In Earth’s history, invasions have been conducted both by crossing land borders, by landing troops at the coast from maritime ships, and by airborne transport of parachute troops. The most effective landing method for you will depend on your means of transport, and how you arrive at Earth. There is no defensive shielding, so, in order of importance, you will need to deal with the following layers of national defences across most of the planet:

  First off, you will need to be sure to neutralize defensive forces on the ground, and eliminate air defences that may intercept your re-entry vehicles. Depending upon how much of the planetary society you want to preserve for whatever reason, your means of dealing with native forces will differ.

  If your intent is to preserve and exploit humanity (as slaves, food, or whatever), you will need to be precise in your opening bombardment. Laser strikes from orbit, precision-guided missiles with conventional or antimatter warheads, or low-yield tactical nuclear weapons are all viable options for taking out military bases, command and control centres, and so on.

  If you have no interest in preserving the native population, and simply want the planet for its mineral resources or as a strategic garrison, then 20 or so mile-wide asteroids directed to impact on low-lying plains and population centres will eliminate all practical resistance in advance, and save you a lot of time, effort, and logistics in holding the planet later.

  COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS

  It will greatly reduce local forces’ ability to organize and coordinate their resistance if you can shut down as close to all terrestrial communications as possible. Doing so will prevent commanders from issuing orders, field units from making situation reports, governments from executing policy, military units from being directed to where your forces are, and so much more besides.

  The silence between the authorities and their populations will also have the effect of leaving the populations confused and frightened. They will therefore be more concerned with panicking over their lack of knowledge than resisting your invasion. Similarly, the authorities, especially in urban areas and near political control centres, will have to divert manpower to police their own populations, thus reducing their numbers available to be deployed to the front lines and bridgehead areas where you will be landing.

  Fortunately, advances in technology on Earth have actually made this task simpler, rather than more difficult. A couple of decades ago, bringing down the human communications networks would require eliminating exchange buildings filled with electromechanical technology across the globe. Every country and alliance would have to be targeted separately, as they all have separate technical setups and political systems, as well as different chains of command.

  Currently, however, Earth has digital communications enabled by mic
rowave transmissions, along with wireless frequencies, and almost all communications devices use microelectronic technology. All of which is vulnerable to the whims of electromagnetism. A strong enough electromagnetic pulse in or near the Earth’s atmosphere will render all such devices over a wide area completely useless, preventing any signal transmission. In the local parlance, the technology would be ‘bricked’ – in other words as electronically active as a baked lump of clay.

  A sufficiently strong EMP might well be able to completely inhibit all such devices across the planet, rendering it radio-dark, and thus preventing any signal communication before your landings. The means to produce such a large EMP are varied, both in natural and artificial means.

  The largest and most devastating form of EMP would be a naturally generated gamma-ray burst, either from a stellar event such as a supernova, or from a suitable large solar flare event. Solar weather would have the best chance of blanketing the entire planet with charged protons and electrons capable of taking out vital transformers, satellites, and so on. The US and UK governments, two nations which you will certainly come into contact and conflict with, have both recently produced reports acknowledging that a serious Solar energy event could knock out much of the planet’s power and communications systems for weeks, and possibly up to a year.