We Will Destroy Your Planet Page 5

  The best way to engineer a solar coronal mass ejection, which would send a storm of particles out towards the Earth, would be to generate two massive electromagnetic fields over a sunspot – a darker area in the Sun’s upper atmosphere – and let the protons and electrons build up into a loop of plasma between the fields, which would then rise in temperature well beyond the Sun’s coronal temperature. When the protons and electrons in this plasma reach a terminal velocity of 900,000 mph they join the solar wind. If the particles in the plasma reach the Sun’s escape velocity of 1,390,500 mph or above, they can burst into a solar flare or even a full coronal mass ejection – a blast of plasma shot into space like some kind of weapon.

  When this plasma hits the Earth’s magnetosphere, it actually deforms the Earth’s magnetic field, even changing the reactions of compass needles. It also can induce large electrical ground currents in the conductive iron of the Earth itself. This sort of magnetic storm causes aurorae in the atmosphere, damages satellites – or, indeed, visiting and unshielded starships, so be careful about trying this – in orbit, and, if strong enough, will disrupt global communications and wreck electrical and electronic equipment on the surface or in the atmosphere.

  However, if your ship is capable of travelling across interstellar distances, and/or travelling faster than light or through hyperspace, it should be capable of generating a suitable orbital EMP pulse. After all, even humanity can do that, which is handy if you’re arriving by wormhole, time travel or dimensional rift, and want to use an EMP to knock out planetary communications. All you will need are some nuclear weapons.

  It is well known on Earth that nuclear weapons cause an electromagnetic pulse as a first side effect of the detonation of a fission device. For the widest of coverage of the EMP effect, a detonation at an altitude of 250 miles above sea level is recommended. The area affected by the EMP effect will be a roughly U-shaped area, with 60–70% of the effect being on the equatorial side of the detonation. (That is to say, EMPs triggered in the northern hemisphere will mostly affect areas southward of the detonation area, and those triggered in the southern hemisphere will more affect areas northward of the detonation point.)

  The amount of energy radiated will vary according to both the altitude of the detonation and the geographical location. The Earth’s magnetic field is stronger over land masses and closer to the poles. If identical EMP devices were detonated over both the equatorial Pacific Ocean and the cities of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, the EMP over those American cities would be at least five times stronger.

  Use of nuclear warheads to knock out communications over large areas of land is, therefore, not an impractical solution to the planetary communications network. That said, if you’re going to use nuclear warheads you may as well use them strategically to destroy military centres, population centres, and so on while you’re at it, and leave the EMP effect just as a side effect.

  Humanity has known about the dangers and effects of EMP for decades, however, and some military infrastructures have their electrical and electronic devices shielded against the effect. Interestingly, as the local geopolitical situation on Earth has drifted away from the threat of an exchange of nuclear warheads, and towards lower-key guerrilla actions, the habit of shielding new equipment against EMP has slipped in many of Earth’s militaries. Not only that, but more modern technology is more fragile, and microcircuits are less robust than the thick copper wiring and cables of the past, so, with these two changes in circumstance combined, much of the Earth’s technology today is actually more vulnerable to EMP than it was at earlier stages of development.

  This, of course, is entirely to your advantage.

  COMMAND AND CONTROL CENTRES

  As the Earth is still not yet a unified society, each of its nation-states has its own militaries with their own command and control centres. These centres are, however, devoted to running operations concerned with other terrestrial nation-states, rather than with planetary defence.

  Nevertheless, they will be used to co-ordinate any defence against an assault on the planet as a whole, though it is unlikely that – at least in the early stages of such a campaign – the militaries of rival nations would share their command structures against the common foe.

  Many of the main command and control centres belonging to the major military powers are well sheltered, safely ensconced in environs – natural or artificial – proofed against nuclear warheads. In some cases these are specially designed and constructed to be proofed against nuclear strikes, while others are built under natural defences such as mountains, which were already strong enough to withstand such attacks.

  Most notably, NORAD and the US Air Force’s Space Command (the clue as to why this base is important is in the latter’s name) are settled beneath Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. This is where, in the Stargate series of media, the Stargate itself is housed, and the location from which units of Earth soldiers make their forays to other planets. As far as is known, this is still fiction, but you will probably have detected the transmissions on the way to Earth and so be wary of this facility.

  Meteor bombardment is, again, going to be the best way to deal with such fortified control centres. Anything over a hundred yards or so across should deal with any underground facility, mountains above them notwithstanding.

  Attacks not from space will have to use other means, and this will be tricky for those time travellers and dimension-jumpers relying on the Earth’s own weapons to do the job, since, as stated, these facilities tend to be hardened against nuclear blasts. Infiltration and sabotage will be the best options for such invaders.

  Those of you with the use of wormholes or teleportation, on the other hand, can have fun with materializing tactical nuclear warheads inside the nuke-proof fortifications and the inevitable devastating results.

  MISSILE LAUNCH SITES

  This category of target is probably the most obvious one. Since the Earth only has rockets and missiles as weapons usable against spaceborne enemies, removing them must be a priority for any spaceborne assault.

  Although there are large launch sites for manned space missions, in both the Western and Eastern hemispheres, most military missile sites are much smaller, more likely to be hidden, and, indeed, often mobile. This means that asteroid bombardment is less likely to be effective. A suitable EMP burst, as already discussed, will render launch protocols ineffective. While the missile launch systems are down, it is recommended that you use your own missiles with tactical nuclear warheads (if you have them), energy weapons, or atmospheric attack craft to strafe or bomb such sites as they are detected.

  Non-spaceborne attackers may not need to specifically target these sites, as the missiles will be less of a threat to materialization or reintegration from a wormhole, or to ground troops. Nevertheless, it’s still a wise move to plan for dealing with them, so that they can’t be used to launch strikes against you on the surface, or to launch satellites that would help the native population with their global campaign against you. To that end, sabotage, or outright commando raids are all on the table as options.

  AIRCRAFT CARRIERS

  The most important – and dangerous, even to an assault from offworld or from other dimensions or eras – element of Earth’s current defensive capability is the capital warship known as the aircraft carrier.

  This, obviously, is a large vessel capable of transporting, launching and recovering warplanes. These leviathans are therefore the vital backbone of the ability of Earth’s larger militaries to project their force and effectiveness to any part of the planet. In essence the aircraft carrier is a mobile military base, which is therefore slightly harder to target and remove than a structure on land. It is vital, however, that you do, as the aircraft carrier can manoeuvre closer to your landing zones or wormhole exits, and deploy warplanes quickly to intercept landing craft during their descent through the atmosphere, or to attack your forces on the surface.

  Currently, despite some of the visual foo
tage you may have intercepted that has been broadcast from the planet, all such carriers are in fact surface-based ships, confined to the 70% of the Earth’s surface that is ocean. There are, as yet, no aerial carrier vessels. This has not always been the case, oddly enough. Some 80 years ago, nations such as the United States and Germany did toy with the idea of mounting deployable and recoverable interceptor aircraft aboard dirigible airships. Such a carrier would be able to move anywhere in the Earth’s atmosphere in attempts to evade detection and approach enemy targets.

  In reality, however, it turned out that such dirigible motherships were in fact slow, difficult to mount defensive weapons aboard, and prone to exploding and crashing on their own. As better military aircraft, aircraft carriers, and in-flight refuelling techniques were developed, the aerial carrier idea was allowed to fade.

  AIRBASES

  With mobile carrier ships eliminated, you would be best advised to deal with airbases on land surfaces.

  Obviously these bases are fixed installations, and so cannot move in order to escape detection and destruction, but any installation capable of launching atmospheric craft that can attack your landing vessels or ground forces is a priority threat that must be dealt with.

  Depending on your available resources and intentions for the local life forms and surrounding environs, you can use any method you like for the destruction of such bases, up to and including the use of nuclear warheads, meteor bombardment, or antimatter warheads. It’s worth noting, however, that humanity as yet has no antigravity technology available for their warplanes. This means that, with a few exceptions, their interceptors must accelerate down a paved runway in order to take off. Such runways are easily disabled by blasting craters into them, or blocking them with wreckage, which leaves the interceptors useless, and negates the necessity to waste heavier weapons on trying to break through to more heavily fortified hangars and storage areas.

  The exception to this rule is Changchu’an-ni Airbase, in North Korea. This is the world’s only (known) entirely underground airbase, runways included. This suggests that either a) the North Koreans have some form of advanced technology that allows their planes to phase through solid matter, making them the most dangerous interceptors the Earth has to offer, or b) the North Koreans have a really strange attitude to military architecture, but in any case this is one airbase you’ll probably have to drop a meteor on, if you want to make a clean sweep of the airfields.

  OTHER MILITARY BASES

  Other types of military bases – frontline firebases, barracks, training grounds, fuel depots, etc – can be dealt with as you see fit. The important thing, however, is to be certain not to leave any resistance operational within your landing areas or bridgeheads, or behind the front lines of your expansion.

  Any bases within your sphere of influence will have to be rendered harmless, by being destroyed or taken over. Otherwise, they risk being centres for organized resistance within your area, and able to attack the flanks of your expansion. This would be highly problematic, and endanger your consolidation of captured ground. Do not allow this.

  YOU MAY START YOUR LANDING

  Clearly, if you are invading from starships, your strategy will be most similar to the 20th century’s use of airborne troops. The advantage to landing your forces from above – as opposed to on coastline or across land borders – is that you are not restricted to those areas on which defences are strongest. Obviously any civilization will put its strongest defences on the borders and the coasts, but from above you can land your troops absolutely anywhere. Obviously you have brought enough troops to hold at least a couple of waves in reserve after you commit your first wave. Never, ever, commit your entire force to a single operation, or even the invasion of a single planet.

  The freedom to choose your landing sites at will is doubly advantageous if you have been able to destroy or otherwise negate the target’s military power and infrastructure in advance. If you haven’t managed this, then your strategy must include picking suitable landing zones that will meet the balance of allowing you to establish bridgeheads in vital areas quickly, while maximizing the response time from local forces.

  Pro-tip: since you can monitor transmissions around the Earth from orbit, you should be able to determine which types of signals and media are used by humans, which are even known to humans, and by extension, which are unknown. You should therefore make sure to keep any communications between your forces to those signals and frequencies, which will not be detected or interpreted on Earth.

  If you are operating to a particular time schedule, make sure to synchronize your timekeeping devices before you reach the Earth, and work to a plan, rather than openly transmitting obvious countdowns or navigational signals to each other. Repeated sequences of signals between vessels prior to an attack should be avoided at all costs, because even if your code is incomprehensible, the fact that it is a slightly changing repeated sequence will give the game away.

  Maintain communications silence, at least as far as Earth’s ears are concerned, and your actions will be far more of a successful surprise.

  When it comes to actually landing on the physical surface of the planet, it is tempting to choose landing zones that are hidden or camouflaged. Warfare, after all, is so often a matter of deception; appear to want to land in one place, but do so in another, look weak when you’re strong, and so on. This is a mistake when landing from orbit, partly due to the velocities involved in picking a precise location, and partly because – unless your landing vehicles are fitted with cloaking devices, or some other form of stealth technology – the landing craft will be visible and detected by radar on their descent.

  The important factors for choosing a landing site, therefore – and especially for a major landing of troops in force – are:

  1) That the landing area should be physically safe and stable enough to support the type of vessels you’re landing

  2) That the landing field be over a large enough area to take many troopships and support vessels

  3) That there be enough room for ships that overshoot to still arrive within a defensive perimeter

  4) That the landing zone be defensible from counterattack by terrestrial forces.

  Taking these requirements in order, the first priority is that your landing area be safe. This means that you ought to be looking for a wide-open space which has solid enough ground to support the weight of your landing craft. If you’re using craft which can land, debark troops, and then take off again, you will probably want bedrock as close to the surface as possible.

  This means you need a flat surface. Not a steep slope, not a place strewn with boulders higher than your undercarriage, and definitely not the middle of a forest. It may look cool to see transport ships descend directly into forest and jungle, but this would in reality lead to their hulls being crumpled and punctured in a most harmful way. Trees may be made of wood, but old trees, full-grown, are surprisingly strong, especially along their long vertical axis. In fact, when an object from space exploded in the skies of Tunguska in 1908, flattening hundreds of square miles of Siberian forest, the trees directly underneath the airburst were the ones still standing (albeit stripped of branches).

  You do not want your landing craft to end up impaled on a tree trunk like a cocktail sausage.

  This is assuming you wish to land properly at all, of course. If you intend to bring your transports down to almost the surface, and have your troops rappel down, or use some form of personal jetpack to descend, or just jump, then you can land them anywhere, regardless of the terrain in the immediate vicinity. However, you will need to establish transport hubs where individuals and materiel can be embarked – troops finishing their tour, injured troops being evacuated for treatment, prisoners, materiel you’ve captured – you will certainly have to land those vessels in order to embark for ascent.

  You may also, for convenience, use disposable capsules designed only for atmospheric entry and impact with the surface. In this case you ma
y prefer to look for regions with relatively deep layers of soil and sand which can absorb the impact, or even look for landing zones in marshy areas or in the oceans.

  Be aware, if you are landing at sea, that you will need support craft already on station to recover the incoming troops or materiel, or else will require your incomers to be amphibious. It would also, of course, be possible to deliver submersible amphibious vehicles into the oceans in this way, which would largely avoid the problem of having your landing craft exposed to counterattack from terrestrial military forces after reaching the surface – though they would subsequently be so exposed when reaching land, and coastal regions are more likely to be defended against incursion anyway.

  If you are invading through teleportation or wormholes, or from an alternate Earth either in a parallel dimension or a different time zone, by a means involving some form of materialization or physical reintegration at your destination, you will have to be aware of the range of physical variation in the surface of the Earth. Materializing, for example, inside the solid rock of a mountain will put a sudden stop to your invasion plans.

  It is acceptable to pick a transference area, which will be concealed from the native forces, though it must still be large enough for your troops and equipment to be mustered for their advance, and also defensible.

  It would also advisable to pick a transition region capable of aiding aviation, so that you can bring aircraft through, either on the ground – in which case you’ll want a bridgehead site large enough to have a runway built – or in the air, so that aircraft can be flown through.

  Once your forces have established a suitable forward base from which to be resupplied and launch missions, you will need to defend that base.