Professor Stephen Hawking is probably the most intelligent man on the face of the Earth. He now occupies a chair that was once held by Sir Isaac Newton, one of the most influential people in human history. In a recent Discovery Channel series, he warns about making contact with aliens, claiming they could raid our planet for resources.
Come again....! This seems like a stretch of the imagination, even for my hippie era chemically altered synapses.
What resources are we talking about here..? Oil..? Unless they use kerosene lamps for ambiance aboard their spaceships, I don't think they need this kind of fuel to hop from one galaxy to another. I've yet to hear of a UFO sighting where an ET vehicle ascended rapidly leaving a trail of diesel black smoke.
Water..? Most of our drinking water is contaminated. And the one that's not smells like fish. So unless the extra terrestrials are more of a reptilian origin and like a little low tide stink with their drink...I think not.
Wood..? We still have a lot of that even though we're trying hard to deplete it. Maybe they're into making their own Ikea like furniture or just carvings and candle holders to sell at intergalactic craft fairs.
Very improbable.
Uranium also comes to mind. But since most observers report them as being gray, hairless and androgynous, I suspect that they already have their cosmic hands on ample supplies of the radioactive gold .
Actually, the only resource I envision the space travelers would contemplate plundering are Happy Meals from McDonald's and Nike sneakers. Those, we have in abundance and would gladly turn over... for a price, mind you.
As far as making hostile contact with us, somebody should warn the aliens. We could nuke them five times over. We're sitting on 23,300 (disclosed) nuclear warheads spread around the world. We'd destroy ourselves in the process. But as the great thespian Sylvester Stalone once said...'' Gotta do what I gotta do''.
Besides, we also possess a complete arsenal of bacteriological and viral goodies we could throw at the invaders. H1n1, swine flue, small pox, aids, Ebola and the ever popular anthrax to name just a few. We could conjure up a welcome cocktail that would make them wish they had never set foot on our lowly planet after bleeding from the eyes for days and turning inside out with diarrhea. This would come after our first line of defense will have set the tone for the confrontation. An army of drunken hillbillies wearing I'm with stupid t-shirts and carrying double barrel shotguns loaded with 6 inch nails and broken glass would no doubt repel even the foolhardiest of space conquerors.
So as you can see, I don't loose sleep over this. I'm more worried about what the harm that we humans can do rather than some alien predators taking over what's left of our dismal planet. Professor Hawking did however coin this phrase of wisdom which should remain etched in our collective conscience for future generations.
''We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet''.
Amen to that....!
Footnote: After raking my brain this week to find a suitable picture to illustrate this blog, I settled on the trailer for Mars Attacks! by Tim Burton. Burton produced this little gem to show how Ed Wood, the worst producer to ever come out of Hollywood, would've crafted another one of his scifi duds, with the movie technology available in 1996.
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