starship-design: On ET's again

["L. Clayton Parker" <lparker@cacaphony.net>]

More about ET's

likely say, "These
> > creatures are highly unstable and have nuclear weapons! Let's
> go somewhere
> > else for a while." ===

If you happen upon a child sitting in the middle of the street with a
bazooka, do you go somewhere else to play for awhile, or do you call the
authorities (after going somewhere else of course)?

Pelegrino's reasoning is that no matter how strange alien life may be, one
law remains the same - evolution. They are at the top of their food chain
wherever they are from and didn't get there by ignoring potential predators
or competition. Even if we suppose that they had managed to evolve beyond
the fear of others, it still wouldn't make sense to leave _dangerous_ little
tykes like us laying around...

> That's not how dangerous ants, or other life forms, are treated by
> us now.  For
> example in Houston when I was there, there was a new species of ants, Fire
> Ants.  They could be lethal, and had killed several people.
> Mosquitoes also
> have a long history of causing human death.  Far from a live and let live
> attitude, we've preferred a preemptive strike attitude.  Destroying and
> suppressing them to the limits of our abilities, within any areas we go
in.

Which is precisely how Pelegrino's aliens reacted. "So sorry, nothing
personal you understand, you are just too aggressive and dangerous for us to
permit you to live..." so they send out the galactic pesticide ships.

Lee Parker

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