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Scotty

NP: Monday March 27, 2017

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http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=595

Susan and Charlotte certainly look human to me, so Grace must be the android after all.

Sounds like the plot for the game Nier: Automata, where Earth has been overrun by alien machines and humans had fled to the moon and are trying to fight back using android warriors. Will know for sure when we see Grace if she has a little robot companion and a big arse sword or something.

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40 minutes ago, Scotty said:

http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=595

Susan and Charlotte certainly look human to me, so Grace must be the android after all.

And the question of HOW can one of them be android in alternate universe is clearly answered: it's not CLOSE alternate universe, it's 100 years in future (the comic is happening in year 20XY, isn't it?)

41 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Sounds like the plot for the game Nier: Automata, where Earth has been overrun by alien machines and humans had fled to the moon and are trying to fight back using android warriors. Will know for sure when we see Grace if she has a little robot companion and a big arse sword or something.

How did they answered the question why the robots are on earth there? Because that "natural resources" doesn't seem so likely to me, it seems we will deplete those far sooner.

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49 minutes ago, partner555 said:

Is it me, or does the robot look like Bender?

It's totally Bender. The other two, on the other hand... Any ideas? I know the left one isn't R2-D2; the head isn't domed enough, but other than that, I got nothing.

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Perhaps they could use a new hype man.  But it does illustrate a persistent conundrum commonly found in the backstories for many tales of extraterrestrial invasion.

For a society with interstellar travel capabilities, there is very little on Earth that could not be obtained or synthesized from sources elsewhere in space.  That would sidestep the need for conflict with those troublesome humans in the first place.

But Hollywood doesn't want to open movies with a week hype man telling the audience, "Aliens are invading Earth for reasons that don't matter to the plot of this story."

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Have Susan and Charlotte met in canon?  Thinking about it, Susan, Charlotte, and Grace would make a good team.  Susan and Charlotte for sciences bits, Grace for brawn.  Which is not to say Grace isn't intelligent, just, well, she is mondo overpowered.

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59 minutes ago, mlooney said:

Have Susan and Charlotte met in canon? 

Nope, and Charlotte went to South so there was no chance of passing each other in school. I guess if Charlotte rented movies they could have met at the video store, but there's likely more than one video store so even those chances aren't great.

7 hours ago, hkmaly said:

How did they answered the question why the robots are on earth there? Because that "natural resources" doesn't seem so likely to me, it seems we will deplete those far sooner.

The whole backstory seems convoluted really, and maybe best explained by video:

 

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7 hours ago, Zorua said:

It's totally Bender. The other two, on the other hand... Any ideas? I know the left one isn't R2-D2; the head isn't domed enough, but other than that, I got nothing.

The left one might be a Dalek. I am not sure. I have no idea about the right one.

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1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

The left one might be a Dalek. I am not sure. I have no idea about the right one.

It looks a bit like a cylon from the 1978 version of Battlestar Galactica. The eye slit and the "mohawk " is about right, but I think the chin is to round, though there might be some model of cylon, or some angle where it would look like that...

YHkgzk6.png




 

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3 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

The left one might be a Dalek. I am not sure. I have no idea about the right one.

the left one looks like an R2 unit to me. 

Agreed on Bender as the center one.

And agreeing with Capt Obvious ,right-side one is likely a stylized Cylon.

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13 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

For a society with interstellar travel capabilities, there is very little on Earth that could not be obtained or synthesized from sources elsewhere in space.  That would sidestep the need for conflict with those troublesome humans in the first place.

Right. Just about any inorganic material and most simple organic molecules (such as hydrocarbons) can be readily acquired from a lifeless planet, moon, comet, or asteroid. It's only if you want organic stuff (or if you want the organisms themselves--e.g. if you're capable of eating the native life and want a new food supply, or maybe their hides make for nice clothing), or if you want to subjugate the local sapient race (or kill them because you don't like them), that you need to invade an inhabited world.

You want metals or minerals? Go mine some asteroids. You want water? Most of the large moons of the gas giants in our solar system are covered in water ice. You want fuel? Titan has literal seas of hydrocarbons--although if you have fusion power then you probably want deuterium, which is literally the third-most-common substance in the whole freaking universe and can be extracted in parts-per-million concentrations from any source of hydrogen (i.e. gas planets or the aforementioned water ice).

In short, if aliens invade, it's either because they want to steal our crops and livestock, or because they are after us humans.

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9 hours ago, Scotty said:
17 hours ago, hkmaly said:

How did they answered the question why the robots are on earth there? Because that "natural resources" doesn't seem so likely to me, it seems we will deplete those far sooner.

The whole backstory seems convoluted really, and maybe best explained by video:

If THIS is the BEST explanation, it's not worth trying to find out WTF.

41 minutes ago, ijuin said:
14 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

For a society with interstellar travel capabilities, there is very little on Earth that could not be obtained or synthesized from sources elsewhere in space.  That would sidestep the need for conflict with those troublesome humans in the first place.

Right. Just about any inorganic material and most simple organic molecules (such as hydrocarbons) can be readily acquired from a lifeless planet, moon, comet, or asteroid.

Lifeless, unarmed and with MUCH shallower gravitation well.

41 minutes ago, ijuin said:

It's only if you want organic stuff (or if you want the organisms themselves--e.g. if you're capable of eating the native life and want a new food supply

It's extremely unlikely anything more complicated that the organic molecules from comets would be useful for you. Of course, you may be able to process simple stuff like sugar (with 50% probability actually) or alcohol, but those ARE on comets. Proteins? Fats? No. And sugar will NOT be worth it if you need to get it from gravity well of Earth.

Of course, in most sci-fi, aliens are not only able to process each other food, they can actually like the taste (making luxury food possibility); they can also have sex and children with humans.

44 minutes ago, ijuin said:

or maybe their hides make for nice clothing

... ok, that may work. However, you need to be VERY careful about decontamination. Local microbes PROBABLY wouldn't be able to infect you, but ... there will be lot of them. One might be lucky.

45 minutes ago, ijuin said:

or if you want to subjugate the local sapient race (or kill them because you don't like them), that you need to invade an inhabited world.

And the reason to subjugate is probably to boost your ego, because you likely have robotics advanced enough you don't need them as slave workers.

50 minutes ago, ijuin said:

In short, if aliens invade, it's either because they want to steal our crops and livestock, or because they are after us humans.

There is another option: research. Aliens might be interested in our biosphere because comparing it to their own will help them understand both.

... considering they invaded inhabited planet for that, the goal for that research is likely biological weapon.

Actually, maybe they are attacking us just because they want to test their strategy and weapons before attacking that other species which they really hate.

Alternatively, as you already mentioned, they may actually hate us. Perhaps something we broadcasted was insulting to them. Like ... Jar Jar? :)

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32 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Alternatively, as you already mentioned, they may actually hate us. Perhaps something we broadcasted was insulting to them. Like ... Jar Jar? :)

There are plenty of other things being broadcast that may make extra terrestrials want to exterminate us, I'd say more, but the politics thread is locked at the moment. ;)

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36 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Local microbes PROBABLY wouldn't be able to infect you, but ... there will be lot of them. One might be lucky.

Viruses basically-certainly would not be able to, being so reliant on the intricacies of cell function and the genome, hence e.g. bacteriophages cannot directly harm eukaryotes.  So we're thinking bacteria, fungi, amoebae… which would not (initially) be adapted to parasitising the extraterrestrial life, but the extraterrestrial life would not be adapted or immunised against them [the microorganisms] colonising them [the extraterrestrials] and potentially causing harm either.

Edited by HarJIT
clarify

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3 hours ago, Scotty said:
3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Alternatively, as you already mentioned, they may actually hate us. Perhaps something we broadcasted was insulting to them. Like ... Jar Jar? :)

There are plenty of other things being broadcast that may make extra terrestrials want to exterminate us, I'd say more, but the politics thread is locked at the moment. ;)

Extra terrestrials would probably not understand our politics anyway. Or they may fail to distinguish between real politics, Galactic Senate on Coruscant, Imperial Court of Padishah Emperors and Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.

3 hours ago, HarJIT said:
3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Local microbes PROBABLY wouldn't be able to infect you, but ... there will be lot of them. One might be lucky.

Viruses basically-certainly would not be able to, being so reliant on the intricacies of cell function and the genome, hence e.g. bacteriophages cannot directly harm eukaryotes.  So we're thinking bacteria, fungi, … which would not (initially) be adapted to parasitising the extraterrestrial life, but the extraterrestrial life would not be adapted or immunised against them [the microorganisms] colonising them [the extraterrestrials] and potentially causing harm either.

Yes: the more specifically something is adapted, the less dangerous it will likely be - but some bacteria are rather generic. Something generally harmless for us can be deadly for them. Putrefying bacteria comes to mind.

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And the chance that you will coincidentally happen to have a natural resistance to the rare alien bacterium that coincidentally happens to be able to find a place to live in your body... pretty low.

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1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Extra terrestrials would probably not understand our politics anyway. Or they may fail to distinguish between real politics, Galactic Senate on Coruscant, Imperial Court of Padishah Emperors and Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.

I would expect they would be able to recognize the fact that there are hostilities between several countries and even civil unrest, and if they've been watching us for some time, they should have a decent idea about the geopolitical landscape.

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If their biochemistry is similar enough for them to eat our food, then their more-generalist microbes should likewise be able to eat us, though as HarJIT pointed out, some pathogens are so closely adapted to their preferred hosts that they can not infect anything else (for example, there are several dozen infections that are known to attack ONLY humans and no other species on Earth--and if they can not infect something that has 98% similarity to us such as gorillas, then there's no way that they can infect something that probably isn't even a mammal).

As for reasons for aliens to want to dominate us, perhaps they have an ideology of Manifest Destiny, whereby they see themselves as the rightful current or future rulers of this region of space (or the whole galaxy, or the whole cosmos). They may also have a paternalistic view that they are "enlightening" us or "helping" us by taking control (similar to European attempts to Christianize and "civilize" the rest of the world), and not merely glorifying their own empire.

As for killing us, we may simply disgust them (we're ugly or have some organic functions or secretions that they find repulsive), or something about our culture or religions are regarded as an abomination unto their own culture or religion (e.g. "You ritually consume the flesh and blood of the Incarnation of the Most Holy and Untouchable Supreme Being?! Monstrous!"). Alternatively, they may simply be pre-emptively eradicating us before we learn how to attack their own worlds, or they might think that Earth is a nice piece of real estate that they would like to own for themselves.

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6 hours ago, ijuin said:

 or they might think that Earth is a nice piece of real estate that they would like to own for themselves.

In one sci fi book I read, the alien conquerors didn't even bother to exterminate us. They figured that once they had finished planetforming Earth to their own preferred environment, we would die off on our own.

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1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

In one sci fi book I read, the alien conquerors didn't even bother to exterminate us. They figured that once they had finished planetforming Earth to their own preferred environment, we would die off on our own.

That was a running plotline in the Showtime revival of The Outer Limits. The aliens had to take IVs of some chemical so that they could exist in our environment. Meanwhile, they secretly assumed positions of power and did everything they could to change our environment to match their homeworld's.

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2 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

In one sci fi book I read, the alien conquerors didn't even bother to exterminate us. They figured that once they had finished planetforming Earth to their own preferred environment, we would die off on our own.

That works if they prefer an environment that is unlivable for us (hot enough for heatstroke or contains stuff poisonous to us, or a huge difference in air pressure).

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2 minutes ago, ijuin said:

That works if they prefer an environment that is unlivable for us (hot enough for heatstroke or contains stuff poisonous to us, or a huge difference in air pressure).

They had the problem that in order to survive on Earth they either needed pressurised vehicles, breathing masks or habitation domes. They figured that by destroying Earth industry so we couldn't efficiently counterattack, they could solve the rest of the problem by altering the atmosphere to suit them. Since humans couldn't survive longer than a few minutes in their atmosphere, they were fairly sure it would have worked. (I cannot remember for certain but they also preferred a temperature of around 40 degrees Celsius/100 degrees Fahrenheit.) Though in theory the surviving humans could have created habitats of their own as well as breathing masks that worked the other way, so the aliens might have been overconfident. Instead they lost the war by being overconfident in a different area.

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