h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It always amuses me that in reports of alien encounters, witnesses always ask where they come from as if they could get in a taxi and pop over at the weekend (week-end is right). It is like kids asking adults something totally banal and meaningless for someone there age, so are humoured with a totally meaningless reply because it doesn't make a blind bit of difference to anybody - hence fairy stories.

Having said that there are numerous reports of aliens inviting humans onboard their flying saucers for joy rides or inviting them to live on their planet instead (beats going to Blackpool I suppose). We must not forget of course that not aliens are friendly and some like nothing better than a buttered finger roll or toe roll instead. While we experiment on helpless animals, they experiment on helpless humans and of course humans take pot shots at them as they take pot shots at us (All the fun of the (un)fair).

Some humans wave their towels madly in the air and are shown around the alien craft or habitation and if scientifically curious, given enough technical advice to end up getting kidnapped by the CIA ("You didn't see anything. You don't know anything!"). As well as some people having their curiosity fed, others are fed to the curious aliens and there are even claims of miracle cures, leading to them being kidnapped by the Federal Drug Administration ("You didn't get better. You weren't ill in the first place. You don't know anything!").

Strange old world, strange old universe. Now why did I say that? Where was I for the last five days? Why are my ham sandwiches covered in mold and intent on strangling me?

Not all aliens are friendly? Would we be friendly if we visited other inhabited planets?

Ask the Dodo or the Passenger Pigeon or the Caribbean Monk Seal or any of the other species we've hunted to extinction.


Why would any alien civilization with interstellar travel technology consider us more than food stock or pests?

If they've read H.G. Wells "War Of The Worlds", they'll probably consider us a plague spot to be avoided.

I just learned of the Zoo Hypothesis as a possible answer to the Fermi Paradox.


Maybe intelligent alien civilizations are aware of us and are intentionally keeping us isolated.

i wouldn't mind having them continue that policy. Without real aliens to worry about, we would happily continue imagining them.

It turns it into a Truman Show, doesn't it. As does religion.

There are cute, cuddly aliens that come here to take Sequoia samples (E.T.), weird TV stuffed-animal aliens (ALF), Musically gifted aliens (Close encounters), weird aliens who want to kidnap Santa Claus (Santa Claus conquers the Martians), downright stupid aliens (Morons from outer space), awkward three-legged aliens (War of the worlds).

Take your pick.

More than food stock or pests? How about trained monkeys for the alien equivalent of a barrel organ or is that too much of a Dent in our egos?

On the nature of the xenobiological hazard, no history of evolutionary exposure, no reason to suppose even a capacity for immune response, hence, mortality 100%.

Space traveling civilizations that have no sense of this have very poor prospects of long term survival.

Their first xenobiological accident may be their last.

One of the many models under the Fermi paradox that makes technological civilization self limiting.

YOu're a bundle of laughs today!

(Not that I'm disagreeing with your analysis. )

I had a thought regarding the biology of space travel.


We're just recently really discovering how vital our microbiome is to our survival. Most of the cells in our bodies are not human. If we are ever going to go on truly long distance space travel and colonization, even as near as Mars, we're going to need to protect not only the humans, but all the microbes that we depend on as well. Too sterile an environment and we're doomed.

WW II era findings on that from the Dahlgren studies.

Only coprophagous animals live longer in germ free environments.

ITIWBS, it may interest you to know that there are some encounters where aliens put out welcome mats for visitors, then sprayed them with DDT or similar. There are also Big Foot encounters, where the danger of infection seems to have been on the human's side as they apparently left a definite pong in the air, even before they became visible. Of course those aliens traveling here on a regular basis would probably been inoculated against us and with all those alien life forms in our body already, who says this isn't proof the invasion has already begun? Microbe? No it's your crobe!

On another point about alien encounters and evidence, consider the following. Jacques Vallee and another investigator whose name I cannot bring to mind, claim that alien contact changes with time, indicating it took on the characteristics of the culture observing it (gods, fairies, clunky seventies electronics).

I would dispute this as I think people used terms that were familiar to them, analogies that others around them would recognise, not literal descriptions of what they were actually witnessing. Words can only describe the past. Hindu soul travellers apparently have this problem, using gestures as words are too limited to describe what is outside consensus reality. Films and photographs show what people see and don’t need analogies to describe what was experienced. Therefore they are not open to misinterpretation as words are.

It's an interesting question whether life on Earth arrived from another planet. If so, then maybe we would share some biology with aliens if they come from the same place that our life came from.