Defence of the species (semi serious)

[DirtyMartini]

We clearly need some sort of defensive perimeter to keep out any alien nanobots. Realistically it would have be completely impenetrable and completely surround the planet -- a Galactic Border Wall if you will. Maybe we can even get the aliens to pay for it...some, I assume, are good people.

[Jon Miller]

You don't include in your calculation the chance of having your weapons end up turned against you (relatively high, I would argue) and the interplay with the possibility that there are no intelligent neighbours (for any reasonable definition of neighbors).

JM

[pchang]

KH - Galactic criminal to be pursued by Ships of the Law. Sentence = death.

[KrazyHorse]

Greg Bear has already worked this all out in his books "The Forge of God" and "Anvil of Stars".

Not quite, they used macro ships and did not have the MAD aspect

[KrazyHorse]

He was also way too optimistic about the ability to assign blame and the coordination of vengeance.

My view is way darker and more realistic...

[KrazyHorse]

That sounds really out there.

Which part? I would say 100 years with ~30% probability and 500 years with 90% (the other 10% involves global collapse or a version of this very thing happening to us)

[KrazyHorse]

KH - Galactic criminal to be pursued by Ships of the Law. Sentence = death.

There is no law; there is only survival.

[KrazyHorse]

First generation planet killers: Oort cloud comet mining and bombardment. Second generation: gas giant mining, orbital disruption. Third generation: mining followed by induced solar nova or other exotic physics

[KrazyHorse]

How big a black hole do you need to lead to a star or planet to collapse in on impact? Those Vulcans and their moral code are dangerous.

Creation of stable black holes is likely harder than some sort of high energy nucleon bombardment of a sun leading to nova (though this is a low confidence guess)

[KrazyHorse]

Other suggestion from folks at work on first gen killers are nanobot disease killers (infect host, destroy cells)

I do worry that they might be able to defend against that, would want to combine with cometary bombardment

[pchang]

Nanobot disease requires infiltrating the biome and analyzing DNA of all creatures found. Sounds a lot more time consuming than cometary bombardment. The more time it takes, the more chance for detection and countermeasures. Have they been watching re-runs of Crusade?

[Dinner]

I don't think we need to jump to the offense here. The technology of laser propelled nano space ships is cool though.

[Dinner]

KH - Galactic criminal to be pursued by Ships of the Law. Sentence = death.

That reminds me of the old Trade Wars video game played on BBSes back in the pre-internet era. Ahh, that ASCII2 art and that text based game interface... It really brings back memories.

[Elok]

The difference is that there are no police to credibly deter our alien neighbors from doing it to us, and much less experience with their moral frameworks.

I wouldn't be stopped by fear of the police. I'd be stopped by "why the hell would I bother wasting some d-bag I'll never meet?" And blowing through a great deal of money to do it. Couldn't I, like, spend the money on other stuff? Hookers, blow, maybe just a lot of good meals? At this point, you're not talking about evil so much as utterly irrational.

[Aeson]

Give them easy credit and then buy up all assets on the cheap when the bubble bursts. It's what the lizard men bankers did to us