All Right – You’re The First Human to Make Contact With Alien Life….

I was watching “Contact” (one of my favorite films) not long ago, and was taken with the whole idea yet again – ‘what if?’ Yeah, it’s heady stuff – with implications not only scientifically, but culturally as well. I thought, ‘What would I do if I were, for some odd reason, the one who found ‘em first?’

That, of course, led me to thinking, ‘What if someone I know were the first? What would I want ‘em to say?’

Losing Your Religion….

Yep. You knew I was gonna say that, didn't you?  Yet, this is the first thing you don't want to do – start blathering on about ‘god’. Chances are, they won’t know the first thing about our religions. Expecting them to catch the nuances of Buddha vs. Jesus vs. Mohammed is meaningless - if they have a religion at all, it's going to bear no resemblance to anything we've got - and if you start gibbering-on about your favorite Imaginary Friend, it's going to leave them wondering if we’re worth our weight in compost. Best to forget about this – and hope that, if you’re nodding your head, it’s you they find, and not Osama BinLaden, Ken Ham, or someone similar.

Remain Calm….

That’s right. Creatures which operate on blind instinct are usually thrashing around with exaggerated limb-movements and pronounced vocalizations in situations like this. Now, unless you’re a hip-hop artist or possessed of St. Vitus’ Dance, you don’t do this on a regular basis, anyway, so you ought to be in relatively good shape here. If you do, they’ll assume you’re something akin to a fish or other non self-aware creature which has been placed in a threatening environment. Act accordingly, take a deep breath, and keep your head.  Try not to vomit.


The fact that you're still alive tells you something, right there - if they were interstellar pirates or other nogoodniks, they'd've 'done' you right where you stood.


Any intelligence capable of this sort of travel isn't likely to send trigger-happy throttle-jockeys; they're likely to have more in common with Jean-Luc Picard than the Will Smith character in "Independence Day".  Chances are they didn't spend the resources to travel several thousand light-years just to blow us away - we're doing a pretty good job of that ourselves, and it really would be like going out of our way to kill a few microbes on an anthill in Africa (to use a quote from "Contact").

Think on your Feet….

Language is likely going to be useless – if they communicate with sound, yours is going to be unintelligible. Fortunately, there’s a universal language – mathematics.

They’re not going to know who Pythagoras was – but they’re sure as hell to know his theorem by another name. They won’t know who Darwin was – but they’ll be familiar with natural-selection. They won’t know any of our history – but they’ll want to know that we’re intelligent and self-aware enough to know our own.

Knowing our own place in the universe – at least, to the extent we’ve been able to do so – will be a plus. Showing them that you know orbits are elliptical and that the earth revolves around the sun will be a big plus toward convincing them that we’re more than useful animals which still haven’t figured out that shitting in our own food supply is a bad idea.

Whatever you do, don’t do what the average redneck American would do, and break out the shotgun to ‘defend what’s yours’ – leave the firearms in the closet. Any intelligence capable of genuine interstellar travel is probably going to be at least 1,000 years ahead of us. Just imagine the First Marine Division conducting the First Crusade – that’s how lopsided any fight would be. Bad move. Very Bad Move. Trust me on this – they don’t want your television set.

Communicate - -Fast….

Chances are, however you communicate, it’s going to be different. You might wind up drawing sand-pictures and using rocks. If you’ve a pen in your pocket, the chances are it’ll be useless to you and them – while we’ve evolved with opposable-digits, the chances they did the same thing are practically nil. Alien life is likely to be pretty – well; alien.

At best, you want them to know that we’ve got a basic grasp of things like geometry, science (the study of things in a systematic manner), our own selves and our history, and that we want to see them again.

If you’re worried that they’ll hurt you, don’t. All of the ‘alien abduction’ crap to the contrary, if they were going to do something, chances are they’d have done it immediately. The fact that you’re still alive and not in a giant jug of formalin is proof of their intentions. 

Leave the internal stuff for later. They’re not going to understand that you come from the United States, or anywhere else, for that matter (although if Ann Coulter is our first representative, she’ll make some statement like “We need to convert you to Christianity and level your cities”, which will result in the entire planet being turned to iridescent glass inside of a minute or two.)

They’re not going to understand our politics, our social-structures, or anything else. Comments like, “I’m an oppressed minority and I could sure use your help to kick ass on ________” is going to be met with puzzlement, if not a sense of “why are we here, and why are we letting these creatures pollute the universe, exactly?”

In fact, the notion of factions fighting each other is likely not going to go over very well – these critters probably gave that up thousands of years ago; the fact that they survived their own early stages, built faster-than-light craft and made it here is mute proof of that. 

Growing a little humility all of a sudden would be a good thing. Remember – while they appear to be willing to leave us alone, likely they’ve brought enough firepower with them to sort us out for good if they change their minds.  Behave.

Afterward, Involve the Media….

Yep. You’re going to be a celebrity. Get used to it.

What you do with this is up to you – but I’d strongly advise involving the best and brightest minds. Stephen Hawking over Larry King. NPR over Bill O’Reilly. You get the point. Every nutball group in the world is going to want a piece of your time, by way of either picking a fight or proving their point. Best to avoid the whole lot, and preach as much tolerance as you can.

Of course, you can use the event to concoct a 'get rich quick' scheme - but sooner or later we have to consider how history and our fellow man will view us, not just now, but hundreds or thousands of years from now.   If you want to be the guy or gal who spawned a billion t-shirts and plastic crap-gizmos; fine - but you've a greater responsibility to the rest of humanity.  Leaders are made; not born - at least try to behave like one.

You’re going to upset a lot of applecarts, all at once, simply by virtue of being in the right (or wrong, depending on your perspective) place at the right (wrong) time. Politics will all of a sudden become puny. Wars will become irrelevant – to most of us; there will always be some folks who will use this as a reason to fight someone over something. Religions will be upended, and a lot of people who have a vested interest in keeping this knowledge under wraps will want you dead.

Yes - at some point, the Head Nutball of one group or another is going to try to have you killed, so arrange some protection with the government if you can.

Good Luck….

You’re going to need it. There are a lot of human institutions which have a stock-in-trade of denying that this possibility even exists – and chances are, they’ve made a lot of money from that position, as well as kept a lot of people in ignorance. They will not be happy with you.

However, if you pull this off, you’ll be remembered forever – and you’ll probably get laid as much as you want.

There are perks to everything.