The Different Types Of Alien Invasion You Should Know About

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00:00Humankind has an insatiable curiosity, and our species has long looked up to the stars,

00:06wondering if we're truly alone among them.

00:08We've told countless stories involving claimed encounters with extraterrestrials,

00:12some friendly and many terrifying.

00:15We've created whole pop culture genres around the idea of mixing with other beings not of this world.

00:21But so far, for all our estimating, guesstimating, and fantasizing,

00:26we still haven't actually seen aliens en masse on Earth.

00:29So, what if that were to change?

00:31What if, somewhere beyond our atmosphere, there are various severe threats lurking, waiting to strike?

00:37This is Unveiled, and today we're taking a closer look at the different types of alien invasion you should know about.

00:44Do you need the big questions answered? Are you constantly curious?

00:48Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one?

00:51And ring the bell for more thought-provoking content!

00:54We'll get the ball rolling with what's possibly the most obvious scenario of all…

00:58a full-scale military invasion.

01:00This would involve a massive, planet-wide, aggressive invasion,

01:04where our alien forces use advanced weaponry and technology to conquer our planet.

01:08Suffice to say, it's inescapably endless bad news for us.

01:12Cities get destroyed. Our own human military forces get annihilated.

01:17An alien rule is eventually imposed upon us all, if indeed, any of us survive.

01:22It all makes for a pretty terrifying and hefty dose of some serious existential dread.

01:27But the truth is, it's more than just a made-up story.

01:30Many believe that if alien contact does ever happen on Earth,

01:34then a brutal takeover is probably the most likely way in which it'll unfold.

01:38Stephen Hawking famously warned that alien contact could or would be a terrible idea,

01:44explaining why by drawing comparisons with what the Europeans did to the Native Americans upon their discovery of the New World.

01:51For Hawking, an alien presence here could quickly spell our downfall,

01:55either through fighting, enslavement, the spread of new disease, or through any number of other disturbing upheavals.

02:02The unprecedented volatility of such a situation would leave us vulnerable,

02:06pitted against an arriving force with far superior knowledge and tech.

02:10But still, even if this were the most probable type of invasion, what's the motivation behind it?

02:15Some claim that there isn't one, which is reason enough why actually it's likely never to happen in the first place.

02:22However, that may only be wishful thinking.

02:25Instead, scarcity of resources could reasonably be a major and urgent motivator for any alien group that's come so far as to come here.

02:33Earth is a cornucopia for certain natural resources, such as water, minerals, and metals.

02:38And while it's impossible to truly know how alien life would work,

02:42it's a good bet that much of what our world has would be of use,

02:45which leaves us, the lowly humans, as little more than a nuisance that happens to be in their way.

02:51Like ants on an otherwise perfectly edible, enjoyable, and lucrative cake.

02:56Here, though, the possible strategy does split into two.

02:59On the one hand, we have the potential for aggressive mining operations,

03:03destroying nature without mercy, and with blatantly zero care or compassion for us.

03:09On the other hand, the same hypothetical alien group might prefer a more sophisticated approach,

03:14employing unknown tech to extract Earth's resources secretly.

03:18Either way, it's clearly bad news for us if something were to just up and steal our oxygen or siphon away the water.

03:25And after doing so, the invading aliens might not even deem it necessary to hang around for long afterwards.

03:32Once satisfied, they may just as well fly back off into the stars,

03:36leaving behind a devastated planet, entirely void of the life it once had.

03:41Then again, another alien type might prefer to not just abandon this world as a used-up husk.

03:47Here, we're imagining more long-term settlers, who do at least deem this planet worthy of their presence,

03:53although the outlook is still rather bleak for we, the humans.

03:57In the case of an alien group seeking to put down roots and live here,

04:01the environment may well need to be drastically altered to suit their requirements.

04:06This could involve changing the atmosphere, climate, or even the geographical layout.

04:11Wholesale terraforming, which, depending on scale, could very quickly render Earth uninhabitable

04:16for anyone or thing that had lived here pre-invasion.

04:20Still, though, for the most part, we might assume that the likes of Stephen Hawking

04:24weren't only worried about incoming aliens ripping the physicality of our current world to shreds.

04:30More often than not, the more pessimistic views are really concerned with what could happen in a social sense.

04:36Because, for our freshly-arrived alien superiors, another motivator could of course be colonial expansion.

04:43The starting, maintaining, or expanding of an empire, but on an enormous, galactic scale.

04:49From the beginning, this type of invasion should at least be most organized.

04:53The implication being that Earth is unlikely to be the first other world to have fallen to our alien foe.

05:00Nor, based on all statistical approximations, are we likely to be the first other civilization that our ET overthrowers will have encountered.

05:08Again, this could then go one of two ways.

05:11On the one hand, an efficient alien race would just do away with us within moments,

05:16with zero chance of us surviving to even say hello.

05:19On the other hand, an efficient alien race may well have come to realize that cooperation is key

05:25whenever you have a new planet ready to add to your portfolio.

05:28Here, seeing as we're not instantly dead, things would get interesting,

05:32with the incoming aliens seeking to establish their own governance,

05:36bringing Earth in line with all of the other worlds it has conquered beforehand.

05:40Ultimately, though, it's only interesting or tolerable for us if the best-case scenario does happen,

05:46and the new arrivals wish to cooperate.

05:48If they don't, but they also don't kill us straight away, then humans could become second-class citizens very quickly.

05:55Most likely, we'd all be enslaved, destined and doomed to live out the rest of our lives

06:00as insignificant, barely-recognized cogs in the alien machine.

06:05Finally, though, and while so far we've dealt with invasions that you very much do know are happening,

06:10there is an alternative, covert infiltration.

06:13This is when our alien aggressors breach society by disguising themselves as humans

06:18or by in some way controlling influential individuals,

06:21Just as much as with the guns and hellfire of a military battle,

06:25it's a scenario that's also proven popular in science fiction.

06:28Now the goal for any alien with eyes set on Earth is to carefully and secretly gain power,

06:33influence affairs and gather intelligence.

06:36In the stories, we might see world leaders, famous faces,

06:40and anyone in a position of authority be unknowingly transformed into extraterrestrial puppets.

06:45Or even, eventually, they might reveal themselves as aliens directly.

06:50The showdown comes when they finally reveal themselves from the shadows,

06:54perhaps after a long period of time,

06:56and their subtle invasion is thereby confirmed.

06:59It's probably just as disconcerting as the idea of an alien war,

07:03but in a much different way.

07:05And for those who favor it as a more likely route toward alien domination,

07:09then it could also double up to explain the Fermi Paradox.

07:12The paradox famously says that alien life has a high likelihood to exist,

07:16but we have a contradictory lack of evidence for it.

07:19We believe they should exist, so why have we never encountered them?

07:23But now, if covert infiltration really is their way forward,

07:27and if they really are already controlling us,

07:30then that's why we don't know they're there.

07:32It's all by elaborate and brilliant design.

07:35Something called the Zoo Hypothesis takes this idea a level or two further.

07:39First formulated by the MIT radio astronomer John Ball in 1973,

07:45it says that intelligent enough aliens probably know we're here already,

07:49but they're purposely keeping their distance.

07:51He suggested similarities to Star Trek's Prime Directive,

07:54which doesn't allow space-faring societies to interact with less advanced civilizations.

07:59The Zoo Hypothesis says that the same thing could be happening in real life,

08:03so that we're being watched from afar, as though we're animals in the enclosure of a zoo.

08:08As to why an alien group might opt for this strategy?

08:11The optimistic idea is that it's for them to ensure that humanity develops organically

08:16to one day become sufficiently advanced and mature enough to explore space for itself.

08:21Perhaps our zookeepers believe that we have problems to overcome,

08:24such as war and climate change,

08:26and so they're busy controlling us in secret until such a point as we solve those issues.

08:31A more pessimistic interpretation, however, is generally known alternatively as the Lab Hypothesis.

08:38In this version of events, again proposed by Ball,

08:41it's said that humanity is nothing more than the subject of an alien experiment.

08:45No matter the end goal, our world is their petri dish, and there's nothing we can do about it.

08:51Somewhat thankfully, both the Zoo and Lab Hypothesis can likely be checked by scientists within the next century.

08:58With how far advancements have come,

09:00some believe that we'll soon be able to detect if we've been isolated in this way.

09:05Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or METI,

09:08is an organisation created to test hypotheses such as these,

09:12although it isn't without its critics, either.

09:14For those against METI, actively seeking contact with ETs could in itself be dangerous.

09:20In the context of Earth being either a zoo or a lab,

09:23any attempt by us to break out of our confines could, it's thought,

09:27result in the zoo or lab being shut down… and that's certainly no good for us.

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