How To Survive An Alien Invasion.
We see this about ten times in movies: A spaceship hanging mid-air above the White House, or another place that is easy to identify.
Then we see aliens descend, either announcing their intentions, or simply beginning their destruction with no words spoken. Alien invasions are the kind of throwaway plots that have sustained contemporary sci-fi fiction for a century. The idea dates back to gems like The War of the Worlds (1938 radio play, which was adapted from H.G.Wells novel) and cult favourite The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai through the Eighth Dimension. . The film, Independence Day, is a contemporary classic in its genre. If you are a survivalist by mentality, then the fun parts of the Independence Day stories start from the very end of the first film.
We left our heroes standing triumphantly on a world in which every city and piece of the Earths infrastructure has been completely destroyed, with hundreds of millions having just been killed. Their problems are only beginning to surface.
But in order to reach this clean-cut, survivable scenario, they must first defeat an alien.
The part that is unpredictable is what the aliens want to do to us when they arrive. The idea of eating humans comes to mind, but in reality, we are not cheap cattle. We take at least 15 years to grow up to anything resembling full size, and during that time, we consume thousands of times our ultimate bodyweight in quality feed. Compare this with the pig, which goes from birth to 250 pounds in 6 months, eating around 750 pounds of food. And this does not even begin to address whether or not any form of extraterrestrial life can digest even terrestrial-born organisms.
So, if they donat want to eat us, it leaves two other options, and the first is the possibility of the aliens wanting slaves. Again, this is kind of stretching it. Think of it: You get the technology to go all the way around the galaxy to come visit Earth. What, exactly, would you want with a group of starving, miserable, wayward slaves, that you could not do anyway?The likeliest scenario is that aliens simply would want us gone, so that they could strip-mine the planet, using our house as a source material. Just to get here, they would need to be far more technologically sophisticated than we are, so they would probably look at us like we would look at the ant colony that lives on the patch where we decided to build our new backyard shed: Nothing there is worth paying attention to.
In this scenario, we have really got a challenge on our hands. At least under a slave or cattle-based scenario, they would like to keep a few, or a lot, of us alive — for some time, anyway. In the strip-mine scenarios, we will just have to hope that their weapons and defenses are not too advanced. In case of any sort of alien attack, the further away you are from the main population centers, the better chance you will have to survive in order to someday repopulate Earth. We are going to split the skills for survival into two phases: survive an invasion, and survive the fallout.
To survive the war against much more technologically-advanced enemies, you are better off running away and running. If you decide to stay put and fight, you are almost alone. For most of us, it is time to get down on the ground, get bugged out, get under cover, and maintain a low profile while it lasts.
A single person does not represent much of a target difference from any other similarly-sized animal, and an extraterrestrial is not likely to spend any time searching for individuals hiding out in a mountain. Remember, going low involves keeping your presence a secret from the other humans, who are probably desperately seeking the very resources you are using. Do not assume that in a crisis, we are all on the same team.
So, in this stage, put all of your outdoors skills at work. Work to stay out of sight, remembering to keep heat signatures down. You might need to survive for some time in the wild, possibly during the winter, so make sure you know how to stay warm, locate food and water, and keep yourself in good health. To survive, you will need the same equipment that you would need to survive human warfare, including weapons, shelter, stored food, medicines, tools, and clothes that are suitable for a wide range of weather conditions. You will have to hunt or protect yourself, so make guns and ammo your first priorities, but they are more silent if you can use a bow to do some or all of it.
The best scenario is a well-hidden, off-grid cabin well off civilization, ideally up a difficult trail. In this cabin, you will need your firearms and well-equipped bow, an emergency stock of food, a clean source of water not dependent on electric pumps, a few woods stored, warm clothes, and a full tool kit. If you are staying long term, tools might be some of the most important things. You will need saws and an ax or two, as well as splitting mauls, wedges, and a large club if you need to supplement the wood supplies. You will need hammers and nails, garden tools, and all of the tools of a hunter-gatherer.
Potentially, there will be plenty of unpleasantness, depending on how long you need to fend off the aggressor. We cannot count on our benign homegrown germs killing the invaders like we did in the movie War of the Worlds, and in fact, the idea that we can figure out how to hack an aliens computer systems and deliver the virus into their networks was never a real possibility. This is going to be a long, hard war.
But staying alive as long as the aliens are not leaving, or dying, should be very possible, provided that you are well equipped and you have the skills to go along with that gear. The real catastrophe of an alien invasion is actually just like most other human-made or natural disasters: Assuming that we win. If we lose, well, you have observed that humans are delicious with tomato sauce and french fries.
So, imagine standing out there, looking at wreckage from an invading naval vessel, amongst the smoldering rubble of your town or city. How would you fare in the days following Independence Day.
First, you might want to consider that, if your city was destroyed, then probably every other city that is the size of or larger, all over the world, was treated similarly. Washington, New York, London, Moscow, Beijing — they are all left in smoldering ruin. In that context, the smaller a city you live in, the better off you are. It is not unreasonable to expect all infrastructure, including electricity, water, and communications, to be destroyed, as that is the first thing that any technically sophisticated aggressor would take out.
So here you are, standing on top of the flying saucers rubble, giving this dead alien a head bump. Or, at any rate, the bit that looks kinda like the head. It might have been a little difficult to say.
But the fact is, you survived an invasion, and you survived Battlefield Earth. Now, it is time for you to go back to business. There is a planet out there that needs rebuilding.
The scenario for survival has shifted drastically right now. Where previously, others were the threat, now, good teams and communities are the best shot at jumping-starting a world. There is a reason why almost anything in the world that you can possibly think of was built by teams of people working together.
A big group will have individuals with specialized skills — doctors, engineers, mechanics, etc. All of the skills needed to make sure that utilities are working again, assess hazards, and maintain your safety when working. People with useful skills are going to be very sought after during this recovery stage, so it helps if you have something of value to offer beyond your hungry stomach. This might seem paradoxical: The lone individual survived war, and the team player survived its aftermath, but these two characteristics are both parts of being a resourceful survivalist. To prosper, be prepared to jump in and help out wherever possible, and capable of learning new skills that will enhance your value to your community.
The most famous cases of extraterrestrial contact involve a famous incident that is said to have occurred near Roswell, New Mexico. Artifacts, and possibly even bodies or survivors from extraterrestrial impact landings, are believed to be stored at a protected facility in Nevada known as Area 51. If this is an extraterrestrial invasion, there is not a lot to go on, since aliens have died off, or been captured and held captive by government forces using 1947 technology.
But, if you look even farther back, there are plenty of accounts of mysterious flying ships dating all the way to Biblical times. People described what they saw the best way they knew how, using terms that were familiar to them. That is why, when people read of flaming wagons that swing down to take people off into Heaven, they wondered whether this might be the description of an alien encounter.
In the 1290s, William of Newburgh wrote of an odd UFO appearing above a monastery: “The abbot and the monks were eating their dinner, when an flat, circular, shining, silvery object flew above the abbey, and caused the greatest horror”. . It was about the length and breadth of a half-moon; it hovered motionless about a quarter-hour, plainly visible, and then it suddenly twisted, turned, and rose up to the sky”. . Then, in 1479, a great “comet” was observed above the Arabian Peninsula.
These stories are not difficult to come by, and similar sightings were reported regularly until today. As difficult as this is to believe, there are actual historical records of invasions like this. Before you scoff, it is not flying saucers: In those cases, aliens came in sailing ships, some of which were under the command of Christopher Columbus, others under Captain James Cook. But for the humans they encountered, these weird, white-skinned men, with their guns and iron tools, were just as weird and advanced to them as galactic-traveling space aliens are to us.
The first case was the Arawak tribesmen of the island of Hispaniola, which is today the homeland of both the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Christopher Columbus arrived in 1493, using his superior technology to subjugate the island. He took the slaves and plundered a world known as the Arawaks. He brought European diseases, which the Arawaks had no historic immunity against — but Arawaks are also thought to have transmitted syphilis to Europeans. On repeated trips to the Caribbean, Columbus demanded gold in tribute, looting islands in order to pay his Spanish financial backers.
