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Does Active SETI Put Earth in Danger?
Ponca City, We Love You writes "There is an interesting story in Seed Magazine on active SETI — sending out signals to try to contact other civilizations in nearby star systems. Alexander Zaitsev, Chief Scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, has access to one of the most powerful radio transmitters on Earth and has already sent several messages to nearby, sun-like stars. But some scientists think that Zaitsev is not only acting out of turn by independently speaking for everyone on the entire planet but believe there are possible dangers we may unleash by announcing ourselves to the unknown darkness. This ground has been explored before in countless works of science fiction most notably "The Killing Star," a 1995 novel that paints a frightening picture of interstellar civilizations exterminating their neighbors with relativistic bombardments, not from malice, but simply because it is the most logical action."
Taking the Bush administration's stance to it's logical conclusion, the aliens would be stupid NOT to bombard us back to the stone age. I mean, as Cheney paints it, if there's a 1% chance that we MIGHT attack them, they should pre-emptively destroy us for their own safety! We've certainly given them enough information to reach that conclusion, their intelligence on us is certainly a "slam-dunk".... Furthermore we continue to resist demands from their United Federation of Planets to disarm and to be open ourselves to ongoing weapons inspections.
Any resistance to their attacks and/or bombardment, would of course, be carried out only by the "dead-enders" and they would ofcourse be appropriately labeled "insurgents."
I for one welcome our invading/bombarding forces. Perhaps we could make a deal and install myself as "Puppet Dictator" or earth!
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