如果外星人入侵地球，我们会反击吗，还是只会乞求他们的怜悯?
If aliens invade Earth, would we fight back, or would we only beg them for mercy?
译文简介
在华盛顿特区的一栋五边形建筑里，我想不起它的名字(虽然它真的很有名)，一些严肃的人实际上为这种场景制定了一个计划。
正文翻译
If aliens invade Earth, would we fight back, or would we only beg them for mercy?
如果外星人入侵地球，我们会反击吗，还是只会乞求他们的怜悯?
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Serious people in a pentagonal building in Washington D.C. whose name eludes me (it’s really famous though) actually made a plan for this very scenario. Their plan was to surrender immediately and hope for the best. See, all this talk about defending ourselves and indominable will prevailing over weapons and whatnot is fine and great and everything. However the fact remains this alien civilization was able to cross the distance between the stars with a sufficient force to think they can subdue 8 billion sapients who spent the last quarter million years fighting each other in ever more fanciful ways.
在华盛顿特区的一栋五边形建筑里，我想不起它的名字(虽然它真的很有名)，一些严肃的人实际上为这种场景制定了一个计划。
他们的计划是立即投降，然后抱最好的希望。你看，所有这些关于保卫我们自己的言论以及战胜武器的、不可战胜的意志等等都是很好的，很伟大的。然而，事实仍然是，这个外星文明能够跨越恒星之间的距离以足够的力量认为他们可以制服80亿智人，这些智人在过去25万年里以更奇特的方式相互战斗。
Forget what they think of us, simply sending a small ship over, enough for a dozen people perhaps, requires you to have harnassed a sufficient energy output to boil our oceans, blow our atmosphere away, then bring over new water and new atmosphere from within the solar system and remake Earth in their own image. That’s what we would have done in their situation, if we were after the planet. It’s easier and a whole lot cheaper than war, occupation, casualties and whatnot.
The fact they have not done so implies we can provide something to our alien overlords, something other than a resource-rich planet in the habitable zone. It’s best to convince them that is true, because we’re a particularily badly burned toast if they just turn their engines towards us. We can then work on the inside to wipe them out and take over their domain later, when the military technology is at least as evenly matched as the Sentinel island is matched with US Armed forces.
忘记他们对我们的看法吧，仅仅是派出一艘容纳十几个外星人的小飞船来地球，就需要你拥有足够的能量——这样的能量足以煮沸我们的海洋、吹走我们的大气层，然后从太阳系内带来新的水和新的大气，按照他们自己的形象重塑地球。如果我们要找那颗星球，我们在他们的立场下也会这么做。这比战争、占领、伤亡等等更容易、更低廉。
他们没有这样做的事实意味着我们可以为我们的外星霸主提供一些东西，而非是一个资源丰富的宜居带星球。最好是让他们相信这是真的，因为如果他们把引擎转向我们，我们就是一块烤焦的烤面包了。然后我们可以在内部消灭他们，稍后重新接管地球，前提是当军事技术实力足以匹敌时。
Mining the Earth is actually an incredibly silly idea. You are sinking needlessly deeply into the Sun’s gravity well, when everything you might want is in the Kuiper belt.
The only valuable thing on Earth is the biospehere, so expeding energy to destroy it is counterproductive.
开采地球实际上是一个非常愚蠢的想法。当你想要的一切都在柯伊伯带时，你正在毫无必要地深入到太阳的引力井中。
地球上唯一有价值的东西是生物圈，所以消耗能量去破坏它是适得其反的。
It could also be a potentially habitable rock - large enough, close enough to an appropriate star - is incredibly valuable by itself.
Consider the scenario in which the aliens come on a one-way trip as a colony ship. They either build a colony, or die as their resources dwindle into nothingness. However, there is a rock they can use to survive, it’s just full of natives.
The colony ship serves as a seed of a larger spacefaring civilization. It doesn’t matter if that particular seed succeeds, most don’t anyway. But to the seed, survival is everything and the rock itself, even if common in the universe at large, means survival to them.
它也可能是一颗潜在的宜居岩石——足够大，足够接近一颗合适的恒星——本身就非常有价值。
考虑一下外星人作为殖民地船进行单程旅行的场景。它们要么建立一个殖民地，要么随着资源的减少而死亡。然而，有一块岩石可以让它们生存下来，而那里全是土著。
殖民飞船充当了一个更大的太空文明的种子。这颗种子是否成功并不重要，反正大多数都不会成功。但对种子来说，生存就是一切，而岩石本身，即使在整个宇宙中很普通，对它们来说也意味着生存。
This is definitely a good idea for sci-fi, but I have reservations:
If the colony ship can make the interstellar voyage, it can surely last for a few more centuries around the Sun. Then minerals from asteroids (fissiles for energy, everything else for construction) seems to be more cost-effcient than destroying Earth’s biosphere.
A space-faring species would most likely be curious and cooperative at least to an extent. Surely we can make an arrangemetn about them floating somewhere in the Solar system and we’ll share with them the wonders of Earth’s biosphere.
Then, they might actually intervene to preserve the biosphere from us, which was done in that movie with Keanu Reeves, if I’m not wrong.
这绝对是科幻小说的好主意，但我持保留意见：
如果殖民飞船能够完成星际航行，它肯定可以在太阳周围再运行几个世纪。届时，小行星上的矿物(裂变为能源，其他一切为建筑所需)似乎比破坏地球生物圈更划算。
一个在太空生活的物种很可能是好奇的，至少在一定程度上是合作的。当然，我们可以安排他们漂浮在太阳系的某个地方，我们将与他们分享地球生物圈的奇观。
然后，他们可能会进行干预，保护生物圈不被我们破坏，就像基努·里维斯在电影里做的那样，如果我没记错的话。
The point of the colony ship is to make a colony, as in a place where their folks can thrive. Taking humans as a template, that means they’re here to get a planet, for the gravity and everything else a planet provides.
There’s one more thing the planet allows them to do: survive without a whole lot of advanced technology. There’s a difference between “we know how to build this, we have the templates” and “we have the means to build this, at scale”. Just ask the Russians - and they already have all the base resources they need.
殖民船的目的是建立一个殖民地，在那里他们的同胞可以繁衍生息。以人类为模板，这意味着他们来到这里是为了获得一颗行星，因为它提供了引力和其他一切。
这样的星球还允许他们做一件事：在没有大量先进技术的情况下生存。“我们知道如何构建它，我们有模板”和“我们有方法大规模构建它”是有区别的。问问俄罗斯就知道了——他们已经拥有了所需的所有基础资源。
We do not know how they would be presented. All the depictions of aliens we have are regurgitations of our own fears: colonizers, predators, diseases, gods looking at us as vermin. While all this stuff is evolutionarily plausible, we have to admit our limitations.
Aliens coming here wanting for resource would come from extremely different environment, with different size and time frxs, and the only resource they would be interested in would likely be dysoning our Sun. Even likelier, they would come for something we do not know yet, and we would be perplexed like Sentinelese seeing an oil-rig near the horizon.
我们不知道它们将如何呈现。我们对外星人的所有描述都是我们自己恐惧的反刍：殖民者、掠食者、疾病、视我们为害虫的神。虽然所有这些东西在进化上都是合理的，但我们必须承认我们的局限性。
来这里寻求资源的外星人可能来自非常不同的环境，有着不同的体型和时间概念，而他们唯一感兴趣的资源可能就是太阳能。更有可能的是，他们会为了我们还不知道的东西而来，我们会像森蒂纳尔人（原始部落）看到地平线附近的石油钻塔一样困惑。
Well, the scenario is aliens are invading Earth. Presumably there is something they want from our biosphere and since they haven’t opened up by exterminating us, they want to keep us around. All of this is already assumed by the question.
If they come in some other fashion, then yes, other things apply.
假设外星人正在入侵地球。大概他们想从我们的生物圈里得到什么东西，既然他们没有通过消灭我们来打开我们的生物圈，他们想把我们留在身边。所有这些都已经在问题中被假设了。
如果它们以其他方式出现，那么是的，其他东西也适用。
Thinking like a negotiator, I wonder if they'd be interested in our entertainment industry. We've got millions of hours of movies and TV in the archives already, not to mention unknowable but vast amounts of less-professional content online. Millions of books, zillions of songs, even more photos both professionally produced and amateur. And we hu-mons are always making more content all the time. Also there's our immense trove of scientific research data and knowledge, even if most of it turns out to be obsolete or erroneous. It'd be a shame to vaporize all that content, especially if the interstellar rights are available for merely not destroying the planet.
我像一个谈判者一样思考，我想知道他们是否对我们的娱乐产业感兴趣。我们已经有数百万小时的电影和电视在档案中，更不用说未知的，但大量的不专业的在线内容。数以百万计的书，数不清的歌曲，甚至更多专业和业余的照片。
此外，我们还有巨大的科学研究数据和知识宝库，即使其中大部分被证明是过时或错误的。蒸发所有这些内容将是一种耻辱，特别是如果星际权利仅仅是为了不摧毁这个星球。
I mean, in the end only interesting thing about this planet is humans and potentially also rest of the fauna and flora. Everything else can be found all over the universe and it would probably be easier to extract elsewhere for aliens capable of any practical interstellar journeys.
Thing is, would they want to study us as a fascinating primitives or would they hunt us for sport because hunting space giraffes is no longer entertaining for them…
我的意思是，说到底，这个星球上唯一有趣的东西就是人类，可能还有其他动植物。除此之外其他的东西在宇宙各处都能找到，对于有能力进行任何实际星际旅行的外星人来说，在其他地方提取可能会更容易。
问题是，他们是想把我们作为一个迷人的原始人来研究呢，还是他们会把我们作为一种运动来猎杀我们，因为猎杀太空长颈鹿对他们来说已经不再是一种娱乐了……
You don’t actually know that. It might be there’s something on Earth that’s common but rare otherwise and that’s why we’re here in the first place.
We assume that’s not the case, because we have no reason to believe it. But it could be true.
你其实并不知道。也许地球上有些东西很常见但在宇宙中很罕见，这就是我们存在的原因。
我们假设事实并非如此，因为我们没有理由去相信它。但这可能是真的。
“Xenology is an unnatural mixture of science fiction and formal logic. At its core is a flawed assumption—that an alien race would be psychologically human.” ― Arkady Strugatsky
It’s a sci-fi quote, but I love it.
“Xenology是科幻小说和形式逻辑的非自然混合。其核心是一个有缺陷的假设：外星种族在心理上是人类。——阿卡迪·斯特鲁加茨基（Arkady Strugatsky
这是一句科幻名言，但我很喜欢。
Well, there is a point where I will have to disagree.
A civilization which might come from another solar system would certainly use vastly superior technology.
But our first attempts to the Moon were extremely fragile. So will be those rockets which will go to Mars in two or three decades, potentially starting a colony there too.
None of these will carry the arsenal of a nuclear aircraft carrier.
Which means, there might be differences who would visit us and what the intent would be.
Yes, against a USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) on a hostile mission we would have very little chance. Even less against a Death Star.
有一点我不同意。
一个可能来自另一个太阳系的文明肯定会使用非常先进的技术。但我们第一次登月的尝试极其脆弱。还有那些将在二、三十年后前往火星的火箭，也可能在那里建立殖民地。这些太空船都不会携带核动力航母的武器。
这就意味着，可能会有不同的人来拜访我们，目的是什么。是的，对执行敌对任务的外星飞船而言，我们几乎没有机会。更不用说对付死星了。
This is what humans might do in a few thousand years once the technology is ready.
Not to mention that most probable visitors we will send will be some robotic probes. Those will have the task to gather far more precise data about planets humans will intend to visit and send it back before we send first missions which would include humans too.
但我不认为第一批来客会带着全副武器来征服一个充满敌意的星球；它可能更像是建立一个可以存活几个世纪甚至更长时间的殖民地的设备。
这是人类在几千年后可能会做的事情，一旦技术准备就绪。更不用说我们最可能送去的访客将是一些机器人探测器。这些卫星的任务是收集有关人类打算访问的行星的更精确的数据，并在我们首次发射包括人类在内的任务之前将数据发回。
If aliens invade Earth, it means by necessity that they’ve reached Earth, which in turns means that they will have achieved a level of technological development far beyond us. We can barely reach our own moon, and we haven’t even done that for decades, and when we did do it the most effective thing we did was gather rocks. We are in the space-exploration version of the Stone Age. Our only real option would be to roll out the red carpet and hope that the aliens are benevolent.
Contrary to what science fiction or egotistical comments on the internet tell you, Earth would have no chance in a fight against actual extraterrestrials. If their technology is advanced enough to get them from their world to ours with an invasion force, then we’d be like a 3-year old toddler in a cage fight against Alexander Volkanovski (I just googled “#1 UFC fighter in the world right now”; I don’t really know who this person is). There is no fight here.
如果外星人入侵地球，就必然意味着他们已经到达了地球，这反过来又意味着他们将达到远远超过我们的技术发展水平。我们几乎无法到达我们自己的月球，甚至几十年来我们都没有这样做过，当我们这样做了，我们做的最有效的事情是收集岩石。我们正处于太空探索版的石器时代。我们唯一的选择就是铺上红地毯希望外星人是仁慈的。
与科幻小说或互联网上自负的评论告诉你的相反，地球在与真正的外星人战斗中是没有机会的。如果他们的技术足够先进可以用入侵部队把他们从他们的世界带到我们的世界，那么我们就会像一个3岁的幼儿在笼子里与Alexander Volkanovski战斗(我刚刚在谷歌上搜索了“UFC世界第一斗士”，我不知道这个人是谁)，这里不会有战斗的。
-”Aliens! We the people of earth demand you leave us alone, or we will unleash our nuclear weapons upon you!”
-”Your…what? Nuclear weapons? Tactical officer, scan the planet for these weapons…I see…really?…lol. Umm, people of earth or whatever, we recognize that you seem to have several thousand very primitive fission devices on your planet. If it makes you feel better, feel free to launch them at us. It won’t matter (frankly, they won’t penetrate our navigational shields let alone the main deflector), but they will make for some interesting explosions when they all go off at once and irradiate your planet. However, we’re trying to make a deadline here with this section of the hyperspace expressway, we’re a couple weeks behind and the boss is all over us, and your planet’s in the way…so, yeah…we’re gonna do this now…”
我想会是这样的:
“外星人！我们地球人要求你们离我们远点，否则我们将向你们发射我们的核武器!”
“你们的……什么？核武器？战术官，扫描一下这颗星球上的武器……我明白了，真的吗?嗯？地球上的人们，我们发现你们的星球上似乎有几千颗非常原始的裂变装置。如果能让你感觉好点，尽管向我们发射吧。没关系(坦率地说，它们不会穿透我们的导航护盾，更不用说主偏转板了)，但当它们全部爆炸并照射到你们的星球时，它们会引发一些有趣的爆炸。不过，我们正在努力把这段超空间高速公路的工期定到最后期限，我们已经落后了几周了，老板在盯着我们，你的星球又挡了路……所以，是的……我们现在就开始（炸掉地球）……”
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处
最终版：
朋友们，这个答案并不是对地外生命、物理等的严肃讨论。这是一个根据道格拉斯·亚当斯的《银河系漫游指南》改编的笑话，其中夹杂了一些《星际迷航》的内容，可能还间接提到了《星球大战》。然而，我受够了在我的信息提醒栏中不断收到一些太过严肃的人发来的相同信息。总是同样的评论，我已经厌倦了回复它，并且有同样愚蠢的互动，我关掉了跟评。说真的，去寻求帮助吧。你让谢尔顿·库珀看起来像个悠闲的人，和他一起玩会很有趣。
Fight back.
Mind you all warfare is about living will versus living will, not weapons versus weapons nor technology versus technology. Perhaps the best example of this has been the victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Humans would now fight for their homes and their very existence.
It is time to go guerrilla and strike where it hurts. Moreover, should an alien fleet invade Earth, its logistical problems would be simply horrendous. Striking the logistics would hurt the most. This is the reason why the Western powers lose all their wars against the Third World enemies. They simply fail to understand what war is about. They only stare at the numbers, the weapon systems and technology and fail to see war is about the struggle of human will versus human will.
反击。
请注意，所有的战争都是活的意志对活的意志，而不是武器对武器或技术对技术。也许最好的例子就是塔利班在阿富汗的胜利——人类现在会为自己的家园和生存而战。
是时候打游击战，打击它的痛处了。此外，如果一个外星舰队入侵地球，它的后勤问题将非常严峻。打击后勤部门会造成最大的伤害。
这就是为什么西方大国在对抗第三世界敌人的战争中全部失败的原因。他们根本不明白战争是什么。他们只盯着数字、武器系统和技术，没有看到战争是人类意志对人类意志的斗争。
“Mind you all warfare is about living will versus living will, not weapons versus weapons nor technology versus technology.”
the history of america strongly disagrees with the idea that weapon technology is irrelevant.
Ask the aztecs, the mayans, the various indian tribes of north america. Gun beats Bow. Iron beats wood.
“请注意，所有战争都是生前意志与生前意志的较量，而不是武器与武器的较量，也不是技术与技术的较量。”
美国的历史强烈反对“武器技术无关紧要”这种观点。
去问问阿兹特克人，玛雅人，北美的各种印第安部落。枪打败了弓，铁胜过木头。
The Spaniards won in Mesoamerica because both the Aztecs and the Incas were the most hated civilizations in the minds of the other Mesoamericans. The other guys hated the Aztecs even more than the Spaniards and preferred the Spanish rule.
Lesson to be learned: make yourself feared, not hated.
Weapon technology is pretty much irrelevant - it is merely a force multiplier. What matters is how you use that technology and what is your dao - what are you fighting for.
西班牙人赢得了中美洲的胜利，因为阿兹特克人和印加人是其他中美洲人心中最痛恨的文明。其他人甚至比西班牙人更讨厌阿兹特克人，更喜欢西班牙人的统治。
要吸取的教训是:让别人害怕你，而不是讨厌你。
武器技术几乎无关紧要——它只是一种力量倍增器。重要的是你如何使用这些技术，你的目标是什么——你在为什么奋斗。
A combination of diplomacy, taking advantage of other tribes’ fears and hatreds of their enemies, and unintentional biological warfare did far more than thundersticks.
外交手段，利用其他部落对敌人的恐惧和仇恨，以及无意的生物战争的结合，比雷棍的效果要大得多。
I love this type of question promoted from Hollywood type culture. It usually contains a dose of arrogance as if somehow we are special.
No, we are not. We are nothing special as humanity in 2022.
In 2500, the 21st century will be seen the same way we see the dark ages now. It will probably be known as the "fossil fuel" age or the "climate disaster" age or the "atomic bomb" age. All current events will be just a lesson in the history books, as the Peloponnesian War or the Hundred Years War are now. Some empires will cease to exist, as they always have in history, and the Moon landing will be no more than the Discovery of America was.
And if aliens do appear, then it will prove that we are not special either as a species or as a living planet.
And now back to the aliens and the year 2500. Just as no medi empire would stand a chance against our current military technology, so (or even more so...) we wouldn't stand a chance against the human civilization of the year 2500. .
我喜欢这种好莱坞式的问题，它通常隐含有一种傲慢，好像我们是特别的。
不，我们不是。2022年的人类没有什么特别的。
在2500年，21世纪将以我们现在看待黑暗时代的方式被看待。它可能会被称为“化石燃料”时代、“气候灾难”时代或“原子弹”时代。所有当前的事件都将成为历史书上的一课，就像现在的伯罗奔尼撒战争或百年战争一样。有些帝国将不复存在，就像它们在历史上一直存在的那样，而登月将不亚于发现美洲。
如果外星人真的出现了，那么这将证明我们无论是作为一个物种还是作为一个有生命的星球，都并不特别。现在回到外星人和2500年。就像中世纪帝国没有机会对抗我们现在的军事技术一样，我们也没有机会对抗2500年的人类文明。
So no. We wouldn't stand a chance against any alien civilization that could reach us. We probably wouldn't even know we were being attacked. If they want to destroy us, they will do it without the slightest danger to themselves. But I repeat: since we are not special, neither is the Earth. There are millions of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way. And since we can't endanger them, it's more interesting to follow us than to destroy us. The same way we watch wildlife in a sanctuary.
尽管500年在我们的日常理解中似乎是一段很长的时间，但在宇宙学的层面上，它只是一瞬。如果宇宙中存在多种文明，那么可以绝对肯定的是，它们之间的进化距离是数十万年或数百万年。无论是生物学上，社会上还是技术上。
所以，不。我们根本没有机会对抗任何可能接近我们的外星文明。我们可能都不知道自己被攻击了。如果他们想摧毁我们，他们会毫不犹豫地这么做。但我重复一遍：既然我们并不特别，地球也不特别。银河系中有数百万颗类地行星。既然我们不能危及他们，跟踪我们比毁灭我们更有趣。就像我们在保护区看野生动物一样。