Earth is one of the planets belonging to the star known as Sol, which the planet’s natives usually refer to simply as ‘the Sun’. This Solar system is located about 14 light years above the equatorial symmetry plane, and orbits the centre of the Milky Way galaxy at a distance of about 27,000 light years (a journey that takes a quarter of a billion years to complete one orbit), at a speed of around 140 miles per second. The Solar system is currently in the Orion Spur against the Perseus arm.
The Solar system itself is, locally, generally considered to consist of nine planets, although the outermost, Pluto, has recently been downgraded to the status of ‘dwarf planet’, leaving an official total of eight. There are also thought to be around 180 moons in the system, of which 19 have sufficiently stable orbits and sufficient mass to be considered dwarf planets if they were orbiting the Sun on their own, rather than around a parent planet.
To be sure you have the right system, you can compare distances to other star systems. The Sun is 4.24 light years from Proxima Centauri (and almost directly above it at that distance), 5.93 light years from Barnard’s Star, 8.58 light years from the binary star system Sirius, and 10.92 light years from Ross 128, which is pretty much on the same equatorial plane as the Solar system.
The Earth itself is the third planet out from the Sun. The planet travels in an elliptical orbit at 67,000 miles per hour that takes it from a closest approach of 91.94 million miles to a maximum distance of 95 million miles. The mean distance is generally considered to be 93 million miles, or about eight light minutes. In other words it takes the light from the Sun eight minutes to reach the Earth. The Earth’s orbit is tilted, compared to the Sun’s equator, by 7.11 degrees.
The Earth should be simple enough to distinguish from the other solid (i.e. not gas giants, of which there are four) planets in the system, as it is the largest, densest, and fastest rotating of the rocky planets. It also has the highest gravity and strongest magnetic field of the solid planets.
Before arriving, it would be wise to familiarize yourself with the basic data on the planet, as well as making the requisite military intelligence and assessment surveys.
Like all rotating bodies formed under their own gravity, the Earth is not a true sphere. Rather it is an oblate spheroid with an equatorial diameter of 7,972.6 miles, a pole-to-pole diameter of 7,932 miles, and an equatorial circumference of 25,046.88 miles.
Its mass is currently around 5,877,681,383,000,000,000,000 Imperial tons, though it acquires anything up to 1,000 tons a day from meteors and the accretion of particles in space. Normally the amount of extra mass so gathered, however, is just a few tens of tons. If the Earth was able to gather sufficient extra mass it would move slightly closer to the Sun; however, even if the planet accreted the maximum 1,000 tons a day for a million years, it would still have increased in mass by 0.00000000001%, and would only move out of its current orbit and closer to the Sun by the same 0.00000000001%. There is, therefore, no cause for concern about the accretion gained between your initial survey and your actual arrival. The planet’s orbit will not have moved, unless another advanced species has caused such a move by technological means.
There is one primary natural moon, generally referred to by the Earth’s inhabitants simply as the Moon, or, sometimes, Luna. Of all the natural moons in the Solar system, this moon is the largest in relation to its parent body, and is the fifth largest moon in the system overall. It is also the second densest moon in the system, after Io, a moon of the system’s largest gas giant planet, Jupiter.
The Moon’s diameter is 27% of the radius of the Earth, and it has 60% of the density. It has no atmosphere, but has a stable surface, which can be landed and built upon. Curiously, due to their relative sizes and positions, the Sun and Moon appear the same size when viewed from Earth. This will not last forever, though, as the Moon’s orbit is in fact retreating from the Earth very gradually, at a rate of about an inch and a half per year, according to laser rangefinding using mirrors left on the Lunar surface by visiting astronauts.
The Moon’s orbit around the Earth is synchronous with the Earth’s rotation period, and so always presents the same hemisphere to the parent planet. The hemisphere facing away from the planet is more heavily cratered from ancient comet and asteroid impacts, but may also harbour water ice. The concealed position and potential availability of water on the far side of the Moon make it a sensible choice for a staging area or observation base, which can remain hidden from the Earth.
Be aware, however, that the Earth’s dominant life form, humanity, has the capacity to leave the homeworld and travel to the Moon, and several expeditions have done so, as have many automated probes. Remaining undetected in Lunar orbit, or on the surface, is therefore not guaranteed.
There are no other known true natural moons orbiting the Earth, although there are some smaller bodies which orbit the Sun at the same distance as the Earth, and which spend part of their orbit around the Earth. These include the asteroidal body called 3753 Cruithne, which some terrestrial natives consider to be Earth’s second moon, though it does not truly orbit the Earth, but instead orbits the sun in a 1:1 orbital resonance with the Earth.
The number of artificial satellites placed in orbit by humanity varies. At the time of writing there are around three thousand, actually down from an operational peak of eight thousand in 2001. This number is obviously far below the number of pieces of debris from completed space missions that remain in orbit.
The total land surface area of the Earth is 93,087,500 square miles, which is actually just over 29% of the total surface area of the globe. The remaining 71% – all 225,707,500 square miles – is water, in the form of oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, and ice sheet. There is plenty of room for colonies or occupation forces, as the dominant life form, humanity, lives only on the land areas and, despite a population of eight billion or so, still leaves the vast majority of the land surface unoccupied, by being concentrated into urban centres which are easily visible from orbit due to their light pollution.
Continuing with physical data, however, the planetary volume is 0.677x632.2 cubic miles, and its density is 0.288lbs per cubic inch. Surface gravity, though, usually referred to by the natives as ‘1G’, is actually 0.997G at the equator, which equates to a falling acceleration of 32 fps2. The planetary escape velocity, for when you want to leave, is 23,500mph.
The Earth rotates at 1,040mph, resulting in a terrestrial day of 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds. These divisions are based upon the amount of arc of sky travelled by the Sun, subdivided. The native humans round this period up to 24 hours, with periodic adjustments. Likewise, the terrestrial year – the period taken for the Earth to complete an orbit of the Sun, is 365.25 days, usually rounded down to 365 days, with an extra day added every fourth year.
The Earth’s atmosphere is 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, and 0.039% carbon dioxide, with an average pressure of 101.325 kilopascals – or ‘one atmosphere’, as the somewhat parochial natives unimaginatively term it – at the mean sea level. On average, about 1% of the total atmosphere is bound in the form of water vapour – clouds – at any given time.
The planetary structure is relatively rich in potentially useful elements and compounds, though not uniquely so in the Solar system.
The largest element of the planet’s physical composition is iron, which makes up over 32% of its mass. Oxygen (30%), silicon (15%), and magnesium (13.9%) are the next most common elements. Because metallic elements are denser and more massive than the others, the Earth has developed as a series of layers, with the heavier elements at the centre. This means that it has essentially ended up as a crust of lighter elements sheathed around a core of iron, which also is blended with nickel and sulphur.
In fact, almost 90% of the core is iron, with just under 6% nickel, then sulphur, then traces of other elements. The crust, on the other hand, is 47% oxygen, as many of the materials making up the rocky crust are in fact oxides, in which an oxygen atom (usually one, but sometimes more) is bound to the structure of another element.
Silicon dioxide is the most common material containing oxygen atoms, and makes up some 60% of the continental structures, and 48% of the ocean floor.
As you can see from the details of the Earth’s composition, there are plenty of important and useful materials both on, and within the makeup of, the planet.
Metallic elements are fairly obvious. The Earth is, obviously, especially rich in iron. It also contains a good supply of gold, an important material in space travel, even by humanity’s limited standards, due to its insulation properties and non-corrodibility.
Aside from actual elements, there are many chemical compounds that have been formed by the heat and pressures of the Earth’s formation and by circumstances since then. Liquid water is generally considered (by the native population at least) to be probably the most important, as all life on the planet depends upon it in some way or another.
Over 70% of the planet’s surface conditions are in fact made up of liquid water, which makes it a very rich source of a very valuable commodity, especially for vessels travelling long distances.
Despite these impressive statistics, it should be made clear to you at this point that most of the bodies in the Solar system have basically the same chemical and elemental composition, but do not have a sentient native species, or, indeed, any known life forms. Likewise, the various comets and asteroids in the system are also very rich in iron and other metallic elements, and these would be far easier to acquire, mine and process, than an entire populated planet.
Water is also available in reasonable quantities on the Moon, Mars, Europa, and in comets. It is true that the amount of water in these other locations is far less than on Earth, but the amount of it on Earth is so great that removing it would be somewhat problematic, due to its bulk and mass. You could fill thousands of mile-wide ships and still not have made a noticeable difference to the Earth’s sea level. Always assuming, that is, that you can get such a large ship with such a large mass on the surface in the first place.
The Earth is teeming with life in many forms, however all, as far as is known, are made from organic structures based around the element carbon. There are many different types of life form, from single-celled organisms, through microscopic virii, plants, lichens, fungi, insects, fish, reptiles, mammals, birds… As of 2011, it was estimated that there are around 9 million species on Earth.
The greatest number of animal – i.e. ambulatory and able to move around under their own power – species is in the insect kingdom. Most of them are so small you won’t notice them, but there are over a million different species of insects. Mammals, although the dominant species on the planet in terms of size and intelligence, are the smallest group, with just over 5,000 species.
The number of true sentient species on the planet is somewhat open to debate, partly because of differences of opinion over what constitutes sentience, and partly because the dominant life form – humanity, a bipedal upright type of largely hairless ape – is extremely parochial and has a very self-centred view of their world. It is becoming increasingly acknowledged among educated humans, however, that there are other sentient species sharing the planet with them.
As well as other species of ape, some of which have been taught sophisticated forms of communication, it is considered that some cetacean (ocean-based mammals) species, and dolphins in particular, are at least as intelligent as humans.
Space is as big as they say, and it’s very important to decide upon the means of traversing such huge distances that will best suit your species and your battle plans.
If you hope to establish a system of being able to provide regular supplies and reinforcements, and to transport prisoners or resources back to your home, you will definitely need some form of faster-than-light travel, be it by warping space or using wormholes, so that there is effectively a shorter distance between your home and Earth, or by hyperspatial drive that allows you to slip outside the usual rules of the universe and move more quickly than light could under the physical laws of normal space.
Even Earth’s scientists have established the existence of tiny wormholes, connecting the Earth to the Sun, in one case, but none large enough to travel through. However, if you have developed a technology that allows for the transmission of matter across space – or, better still, that breaks down matter into a data stream that can be reassembled somehow at the destination – you may find it worth trying to combine that technology with wormholes, in order to transmit your forces directly from your planet to Earth, without having to worry about building or navigating ships in between.
If you have not yet achieved a level of technology that allows for such molecular reintegration, it would also be worth looking into transmitting data in the guise of signals to be decrypted, which would include the schematics for autonomous AIs and the programming to operate them. Humanity could then construct such machines, which would follow your programming. This is also a good way to prepare the planet for your arrival after a longer relativistic journey, if you do not have faster-than-light travel.
Such slower forms of approach by starship would require – unless you are a race of very long-lived individuals – either some form of suspended animation for your forces, so that they don’t age and die during the years, potentially even centuries or millennia, that it would take to get there, or a generational starship, in which the occupants breed under controlled conditions, and each new generation is trained for its part in the mission.
These are perhaps the most easily practicable types of travel to Earth, especially for those of relatively limited technological development, but they have the disadvantage of requiring you to bring along everything you could possibly ever need – which means a very large ship or fleet in the first place. This approach is perhaps best used by those who have lost their homeworld and are looking for a new one, or by those who are nomadic, and so, again, have no home to require backup from.
It is also possible that you are a naturally spaceborne species, which requires no separate artificial means of space travel. In this instance, it would seem unlikely that you would actually need to visit a planetary surface at all – and, indeed, may not be physically able to – but if you do have an ability or requirement to visit the Earth, then it’s best to proceed at your own natural pace.
Whatever your specific type of space travel, if you’re coming by starship or natural spaceborne ability, your initial approach to the Earth before landing would best be made from inside the Earth’s orbit, which means cutting across the planet’s orbital from the far side of the Sun. You should then approach the planet from the southern side of the planet’s equator, with the Sun behind you. Your target area should be a region on the surface just on the sunward side of the day/night terminator, where the Sun is just rising.
If you have already, through reconnaissance, chosen a particular landing area, you will have to time the approach correctly to descend just after sunrise. If you have agents or sensors on the surface ahead of your force’s arrival, you should have them direct you to approach on west-south-west course as seen from the surface.
This will minimize your chances of being detected on approach, even by infrared telescopes and other of the Earth’s most sophisticated scanning equipment. A recent asteroid explosion in the Earth’s atmosphere took the inhabitants completely by surprise by approaching from this very angle.
Depending on how many ships you have brought, and their size and mass, it may be necessary to station some of them offworld, either as a relay point, command and control centre, observation post, or simply because they are too large to land safely. The best locations in which to station such vessels out of the line of fire from Earth are either on the dark side of the Moon – which has the advantage of allowing a surface landing – or at one of the Lagrange points in either the Solar-Earth or Earth-Moon orbital relationships.
The Lagrange points are five points around the orbits of a related pair of astronomical bodies, one of which orbits the other. In these five locations, a small body can maintain a stable position relative to both. In the case of the Earth, there are two relevant relationships to consider: The Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and the Moon’s orbit around the Earth. Each of these orbital relationships has its own set of Lagrange points.
Three of the points require effort to maintain that stable position. The L1 point is close to the orbiting body (the Earth in the Sun-Earth relationship, and the Moon in the Earth-Moon one), where its gravitational field balances out the gravitational pull of the larger body. Here the orbiting body’s gravity increases the orbital period of a smaller body – such as a ship – to the point where said ship will have the same orbital period as that body. Where the Sun-Earth relationship is concerned, this point is about one million miles sunwards of the Earth.
The L2 point is directly opposite L1 but on the other side of the orbiting body – or a million miles outward from the Earth. L3 is in the same position as the orbiting body, but directly opposite on the far side of the parent body – i.e. 93 million miles from the opposite side of the Sun.
Of these three Sun-Earth points, L3 is particularly unstable, partly because the Earth’s orbit is elliptical rather than circular, and partly because the gravitational effects of the other planets, especially Venus, affect it. Before these facts were confirmed, human storytellers liked to imagine there could be some kind of alternate Earth at the Sun-Earth L3 position, however this is neither the case nor even possible. The L1, 2 and 3 points in the Earth-Moon system are unstable and move around, as the Moon is also in an elliptical orbit. Your navigators should be able to work out the relevant positions.
Anything parked in the Earth-Moon L1 or L3 points would be highly detectable from Earth, and neither are strategically wise choices, for that reason. There is also usually a space observatory maintained by humanity at the Lunar L1 position, whose absence or damage would be noticed, as would a neighbour. The Lunar L2 position is a better option, as it is on the far side of the Moon, but simply landing on the dark side of the Moon would be more energy efficient.
The best positions, however, in which to park your ships are the two so-called Trojan points, at L4 and L5: 60 degrees of arc ahead of and behind the Earth’s orbit, and the same position in the Moon’s orbit around the Earth. Small bodies can maintain stable position at either of these positions, and the positions are far more fixed and stable than any of the other three.
Obviously, positioning ships at the Earth-Moon L4 and L5 positions, with a base on the Moon itself, gives a good range of coverage relatively close to the Earth, with low energy requirements for station-keeping. These positions may, however, be within missile range of Earth’s defences. The Sun-Earth L4 and L5 positions would certainly be safer, but have the disadvantage of being much further away.
Ultimately, the choice is yours.
If you are coming from a parallel universe or dimension, it is unlikely that you will need to consider planetary defences, as you will be able to materialize on the surface, in the ocean, or within the atmosphere. Depending on your type of species, you will need to establish by testing with scouts or reconnaissance drones exactly where and in what environment you will arrive. You may have to cross from a specific area or set of circumstances in your home dimension, or you may not.
If your species is not human, but either a different terrestrial species that gained dominant sentience ahead of humans, or some form of supernatural entity, you will have to be extra careful about being detected upon arrival, lest you alert human security forces, or, indeed, find yourself a subject for study and experimentation.
In particular, if your species relies on innate abilities that humans could take for supernatural powers, you may not need traditional technology to move between dimensions, though it is always possible that establishing some form of mental link with humans on the target side of a dimensional bridge may help form a bridgehead. If nothing else, playing the part of a deity or similar entity will help smooth the process of intelligence gathering about your target area.
It is possible for time travel to result in the creation of parallel worlds, or at least the branching off of parallel timelines. If this is the case between your home dimension and the current Earth, you may be able to effect a transition from one timeline to the other by travelling in time and undoing the event that created the parallel timeline.
This is a dangerous route to take, however, due to the risk of paradox, potentially resulting in either you never having existed, or creating a closed loop in which your actions are what created the timeline you originated from. This has especially been seen to happen when time travellers from the future attempt to change a past or present effect, where the unpleasant timeline is the result of violence in the target time zone.
This is possibly the simplest journey, unless you actually want to make a return trip after acquiring modern or future resources. Simply wait. Or, if you won’t live long enough, build a suspended animation facility and ensure that you and your armed forces are preserved in a safe location – ideally in sealed caves, an underwater city, or an orbiting or Lunar facility – to be awakened at the appropriate time.
You can either set some kind of timing mechanism to awaken you after a set geological age, or program your computers to awaken you when a specific set of circumstances has been achieved. Please be aware that if you are from the far distant past of the Earth, the climate will certainly have changed, and possibly the actual biosphere as a whole. In particular, the levels of oxygen are presently very different today than in the past, with the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere having peaked 300 million years ago at 36%, almost double its present concentration.
Therefore, just because you are also native to the Earth at a point in its history, this does not mean that you will not necessarily need life-support apparatus, or a plan to re-engineer the atmosphere.
Alternatively, and if you are not an Earth native species, you could skip ahead through time on your journey by skimming close enough to the event horizon of a black hole. As all spacefaring races know, black holes are created when supermassive stars, hundreds of times the size and mass of Earth’s parent star, collapse under their own gravity. Such a star collapses so far, in fact, that it is compressed into a singularity, a mathematical point with infinite mass and no physical dimensions to speak of. This mass also curves space-time infinitely, basically punching a hole in the fabric of space-time itself, with a deep gravity well surrounding it.
Gravity wells curve time as well as space. Basically, gravity makes time slow down. If the crew of a ship outside a black hole’s gravity well could see into a ship that was falling into the hole, they would see everything in that other ship slowing down. By the time it passed over the event horizon, and reached the singularity, time would have stopped for the crew of that ship.
To the crew of the falling ship, everything would have seemed normal, with the outside universe suddenly speeding up and winking out. Assuming, that is, that they weren’t killed by the extreme radiation, and the tidal forces even at the subatomic level.
If you hope to return to your native time in the past afterwards, then simply consult the following section on travelling from the future. Do bear in mind, though, that if you succeed in travelling both ways, you may well find that the future you travelled into now won’t actually happen.
If you are attempting to invade the Earth from the future, whether it be from a future Earth or some other planet, you will find that your best chance of moving to the 21st century (or any other point in Earth’s history) will be by utilizing the effects of dense mass to bend space. Since space-time is curved, bending space also bends time.
In order to bend space-time far enough to carry vessels safely through time into the past (the future is less of a problem, as everything is already travelling that way), you will require astronomically massive objects to exploit. Black holes and singularities are often considered popular choices, especially if they are rotating, but you really would be better off with a Kerr Ring – this would be a super-dense ring made from a neutron star – the size of an asteroid, but with the mass of a star. It is possible that a sufficiently fast-rotating object of this nature would be unable to form a true singularity, but instead become a ring, due to centrifugal force counteracting just enough of the gravity. In theory, this could then be flown through, and some believe that you could come out in the past or future. As yet no Kerr Rings are known, but please feel free to supply appropriate navigational charts if you find one on your journey.
The same effect is more likely to occur with a rotating black hole. Since pretty much all astronomical bodies rotate, it is reasonable to expect that the objects they might collapse into will continue to do so.
Another option is the creation of a Tipler Cylinder, or sometimes called a Kerr-Tipler mechanism. For this you will need a cylinder of infinite length, made of something very dense and massive, such as material from a neutron star, whose gravity well would curve space-time along its axis, essentially making a road back through time. Since an infinite length is impractical for construction, it has been suggested that when the cylinder is spun around its longitudinal axis fast enough, it should generate a closed timelike curve within the cylinder’s gravity well, enabling a vessel to travel back in time along the curve.
Wormholes are also a potential means of time travel, since if they connect two regions of space-time together, then that may well be two times as well as, or instead of, two spatial regions. In essence this would form a time tunnel, or a time corridor, and in fact is the closest approximation to what some with a vested interest in time travel call the time vortex.
It’s entirely likely, however, that you have your own technological means of travelling through time; the important thing is the destination, and to that end, this guide is geared towards Earth in the early 21st century, by the standard calendar (one of many) used on the planet.
The most important thing to remember is to make sure not to encounter your own selves, especially if you are only travelling within your own lifetime, or have made the time journey more than once. This can be a big problem, not just for the creation of paradoxes, and potentially alternate timelines, but also because of the danger of shorting out the kinetic energy stored in temporal distances between yourselves.
Or, to put it the Australian way, zap.
None. Zero. Zip. Nada.
Yes, you read that right. Amazingly, the planet has no energy shielding, no starships, no minefield, and no detection or early warning grid for vessels entering the system. What little – and it is very little – planetary early warning and defence planning programmes the Earth has are geared solely to the problem of near-Earth asteroids, which could easily prove a danger to cities, nations, and ultimately native life itself.
This is another reason why the Earth makes such a tempting target; Although the dominant species is known to be aggressive and stubborn, they have no defences against incursion either from other spatial locations, alternate dimensions, or different eras. The doctrinal requirement for surprise is therefore a relatively easy one to fulfil.
It is true that humanity has missiles capable of being fired at targets in space, and these missiles are the limit of Earth’s technology in this regard. While it is certainly true that Earth’s forces have quite perfected the reliability of missiles for use against land, sea, and atmospheric vehicles, and have expanded into the matter of orbital rockets and even anti-satellite weapons, their missiles are all powered by chemical motors of one kind or another.
Whether liquid fuelled or solid fuelled, rockets all depend upon burning chemical compounds to institute a Newtonian reaction, forcing exhaust out the back in order to propel the missile forward. Although ion engines have been built on Earth, they are used only for manoeuvring of satellites, and not for main propulsion, because they simply are not fast enough. Even the rockets, however, do not have sufficient speed and manoeuvrability to be a significant threat to navigable spacecraft. Any rockets or missiles thus launched at your ships or landing craft will be seen coming, if you’re paying attention, and easily destroyed or avoided.
Experiments with energy weapons, such as X-ray lasers, are currently at a very early stage of development, and very much confined to static installations. They are not manoeuvrable, and are of no threat to your forces.
All that said, the Earth does in fact have one effective, if entirely accidental and coincidental, defensive barrier that your starship navigators must be aware of: space junk.
The planet is surrounded, in bands at various heights and orbits, by clouds of debris left by previous space missions and satellite collisions, which have formed into belts of dangerous metal, plastic, and ceramics. The Earth’s spaceflight authorities admit that there may be tens of millions of pieces of debris in orbit, ranging from dead satellites and rocket fuel tanks weighing several tons, down to fragments of solar panels and foil insulation, and even paint flecks, just millimetres across. Even human space travellers have discovered that all these fragments, regardless of size, are dangerous. A couple of decades ago, human space vessels could simply move out of the way of approaching debris, but now there is so much of it, in some orbits, that this is not always possible, and the occupants of manned ships and stations sometimes have to literally take shelter and just hope and pray that nothing that is about to hit them kills them.
A fleck of paint smaller than the size of the word ‘paint’ on this page, travelling at 24,750 miles per hour, has been known to take out a vessel’s window panel that was designed to withstand the heat and stresses of re-entry through the atmosphere from orbit. These bands of debris are potentially dangerous, and must be taken into account if you are going to attempt any form of landing from space.
Invading and subduing or destroying Earth and its people will not be a matter of fighting your way to the homeworld of the civilization, and then trying to establish a foothold there. There is no resistance to any approach to the planet, and so any operation to capture or destroy it will only be a matter of consolidating a successful arrival.
That said, there are some military groups and organizations who will certainly be the first ones to take an interest in your arrival. There are few, if any, terrestrial military or intelligence organizations devoted to protecting the Earth from assault from offworld, although rumours and stories of such secret units have persisted for several decades at least. However, there are some militaries and governments whose mandate does – or at least may – specifically cover eventualities such as alien invasion.
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the most advanced military aviation service on the planet, though not the largest, which is the Chinese Air Force. The USAF is tied very closely with America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) which has mounted the most successful space missions from the Earth to other planets in the Solar system. For many years, most of NASA’s space travellers and test pilots were assigned from the USAF, though this policy has been relaxed, with people from other services and even civilians allowed to participate in offworld missions.
The USAF was instrumental in developing air-launched anti-satellite weapons, which could be adapted to attack descending ships on attack missions, or even spacecraft in close orbit of the planet. Along with the US Navy, they have tested laser weapons, though these have so far been clumsy and not suited to tracking manoeuvrable vessels.
Some decades ago, the USAF conducted Project Blue Book, a study into UFO sightings and reports of alien incursions.
The USAF is also the parent organization of the US Space Command. As the name implies, this group deals with both military applications in space, and threats from space. Ordinarily this means natural bodies such as asteroids and meteors, and ballistic projectiles launched into orbit from other terrestrial nations. Nevertheless, this means they are the military service most likely to detect and attempt to intervene with your approach.
This is especially the case if you attempt to visit Earth by means of a pre-existing network of wormholes.
Although Britain is a small island whose empire has fallen, and whose power has waned, the British Army has extensive experience in successful defences against invasion by the rest of the planet, and in conducting its own successful colonizations.
Since the 1950s, the Army has been shown to have been involved in dealing with several possible extraterrestrial incursions, from defending the historic Westminster Cathedral to the notorious Hobbs Lane incident.
Although it is not strictly a military organization, the UN does sometimes provide an umbrella banner for military peacekeeping operations in various nations. These forces are drawn from different national militaries across the globe. It is therefore quite possible that, in response to your campaign of conquest, the UN could arrange for the alliances of multiple national militaries against you.
Between 1968 and the early 2000s there were several TV reports broadcast on Earth, and books written on the subject, which suggested that the UN did have intelligence-gathering taskforce and response units, based across several of the world’s regions, which was in fact instrumental in both investigating and dealing with both extraterrestrial and other scientific threats over many years.
In the past decade or so, however, the UN has denied the veracity of any and all such stories and vehemently objected to being referred to as a facilitator for such a taskforce. Officially, all such reports are considered fabrications.
Despite propaganda to the contrary, there is no single agency which has as its operatives a force who wear black suits and drive old black sedans while investigating alien incursions. However, most of the world’s intelligence and counterespionage agencies have at some point had a department or office which covered this subject, and many of their operatives did wear black suits, etc.
Such agencies include, but are not limited to, the following groups:
The Federal Bureau of Intelligence – the FBI – is the United States’ national crime fighting and counterespionage organization, which has spent a long time working against what it calls enemy aliens – though this most likely refers simply to humans from other areas (the word ‘alien’ itself comes from the ancient Latin language, and means ‘other’).
Their two most famous modern-day agents, however, are a pair of unusual characters who devoted their service almost entirely to investigating reports of extraterrestrial activity. The Agency also, along with local law enforcement, receives many reports of alien activity from conscientious citizens every year.
The Central Intelligence Agency is the United States’ main overseas intelligence service, and one of their analysts will often turn up in any area where potential alien threats are being reported. Such agents may be put in charge of small military units of four to six troops, but these should pose little threat, as the troops will probably be more distrustful of the agent than alert to your activities.
If you or your forces are equipped with adaptive camouflage, such units are no threat whatsoever.
Along with the Russian Air Force, the KGB has a long history of receiving and investigating reports of alien activity, especially around secret missile bases and launch sites.
Now that they have been renamed the FSB, in the post-Communist version of Russia, they maintain the same old smiling service in both their investigations of crime, terrorism and espionage, as well as in being a repository for reports of alien activity.
Those of you with telepathic or psychokinetic ability might be interested to know that, some decades ago, the then-KGB used to have a lab devoted to such abilities on the seventh floor of their headquarters at Dzerzhinsky Square in Moscow. If the lab is still active, you may find it useful, or a threat to be eliminated first, depending on the context.
In Britain, reports of alien activity were traditionally handled not by spy agencies like MI5 or MI6, but by DI55, a branch of the Royal Air Force’s Air Technical Investigation Branch, which otherwise was more commonly used by the Ministry of Defence for investigating accidents and crashes of their planes.
The Ministry had a UFO office in London, while DI55 itself investigated reports made by the military, and radar detections of alien activity, through their radar base at Rudloe Manor.
The alien investigation branch has, of course, been shut down as part of an economic austerity programme, and should therefore pose no threat.
Many people on Earth believe that the prevalence of fictional artworks involving alien invasions of Earth is a possible sign that the corporations creating these works know that the Earth is about to be invaded – or at least make contact with extraterrestrial life – and are using a sort of psychological programming to prepare the human population for the revelation of this fact.
If this is true, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch from there to the idea that a studio corporation might itself be a cover for monitoring alien activity, so that the populace could be further educated or warned. This would at first make such studios a logical target, but see also the section on ‘Controlling Humans’.
For all that there are various militaries, intelligence services, and law enforcement organizations who may all take an interest in your activities, you must not forget that not all resistance groups or threats to your operations will be governmental or official – or even professional.
There will always be those – often younger humans who have yet to have the blinkers installed that will blind them to the universe around them and make them focus on what their leaders want them to do to maintain the status quo – who will take it upon themselves to notice and interfere in your activities.
Some may do it because they wish to exploit your arrival to leave the planet themselves, while others are acting as some kind of vigilantes. Nevertheless, whether they are a group of friends travelling around in a van with their dog, or former government employees with nothing better to do because they live in Wales, these will be the most unpredictable attempts at defence.