How to Win an Interstellar War

How to Win an Interstellar War

Could aliens destroy us from light years away? As it turns out, the prospect of interstellar warfare is a very real and terrifying possibility. In this post, we’ll explore the devastating weapons that advanced alien civilizations could potentially wield against us, and what humanity might be able to do to defend itself.

The Combatants

Let’s meet the two players in this hypothetical interstellar conflict:

The Humans

A yellow dwarf star system is home to a young technological civilization known as “humans.” These primates have only recently developed rockets, nuclear reactors, and the ability to create memes. While impressive for their age, the humans’ capabilities pale in comparison to their galactic neighbors.

The Smorpians

Residing on a planet around the orange dwarf star HD 40307, 42 light years away, the Smorpians are an older and far more advanced civilization. They have already constructed a Dyson swarm around their star, harnessing nearly limitless energy. And now, they have set their sights on eliminating the upstart humans.

More: The Last Thing to Ever Happen in the Universe

The Challenges of Interstellar Warfare

Waging war across interstellar distances presents some unique challenges that humans have never had to contend with before:

Front Lines, Tactics, and Logistics are Meaningless: At these vast scales, traditional military concepts like front lines, troop movements, and supply chains become irrelevant.
Delayed Feedback: It can take decades or even centuries for the effects of an attack to be known, as information travels at the speed of light.
Futility of Invasion Fleets: Even if the Smorpians could travel at a significant fraction of light speed, it would still take them decades or centuries to reach Earth. Humanity would have ample time to prepare a defense.

In short, interstellar war is a mind-numbingly complex problem with no clear solutions. But the Smorpians have devised three devastating weapon systems that could potentially wipe out humanity in a single stroke.

The Star Laser

The Smorpians’ first weapon of choice is the Star Laser – a colossal laser powered by their Dyson swarm.

How it Works

The Dyson swarm collects 1% of their star’s energy output, which amounts to a staggering 1 million billion billion watts – 50 billion times more than all of humanity’s energy production.
This immense power is focused into a single, gigantic laser beam using the entire Dyson swarm as a collective focusing element, creating a beam 1 million kilometers wide.
The laser is so powerful that it is visible in space, appearing as a massive column of green light.
It takes a full day for the laser to leave the Smorpian system and begin its 42 year journey to Earth.

The Devastating Effects

When the Star Laser finally reaches Earth, it burns the exposed half of the planet with the intensity of 3 million suns.
The seas boil and evaporate, fires scour the land, and the planet’s crust begins to melt into a sea of lava.
Within a day, the entire planet is reduced to a lifeless, molten hell.

The Star Laser’s extreme range, light-speed attack speed, and planet-destroying power make it a truly formidable interstellar weapon. But the Smorpians have an even more terrifying option up their sleeve.

The Relativistic Missile

Instead of a laser, the Smorpians could choose to harness the power of their Dyson swarm to launch a volley of Relativistic Missiles – massive projectiles accelerated to nearly the speed of light.

How it Works

These missiles are powered by antimatter, the evil twin of regular matter. When antimatter and matter collide, the resulting annihilation releases enormous amounts of energy in the form of gamma rays and plasma.
Powerful magnetic fields are used to focus and direct this plasma through a nozzle, creating a rocket engine that can accelerate the missiles to 99.9999996% of the speed of light.
Each missile is the size of a skyscraper, with 250 floors of antimatter and matter ready to annihilate each other. A 300 kilogram projectile sits atop this explosive payload.
To protect the projectile, the missiles are equipped with dozens of sacrificial “Whipple Shield” layers.
The Smorpians build 1,000 of these terrifying weapons.

The Devastating Effects

When launched, the antimatter engines of the missiles outshine the Smorpian’s own star for a moment, creating a spectacular display.
As they accelerate away, the missiles appear to redshift until they become invisible to the naked eye.
Each missile packs the kinetic energy of a dinosaur-killing asteroid. They disintegrate upon reaching the edge of Earth’s atmosphere, creating intense blue flashes that set everything on fire.
Then, continent-sized fireballs slam down on the surface, smashing everything into dust, repeatedly, until nothing is left but rubble and smoke.

The Relativistic Missiles offer the Smorpians a devastating long-range weapon that can arrive with virtually no warning, delivering complete planetary annihilation. But the Smorpians have one more trick up their sleeve.

The Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam

The Smorpians’ final weapon is the Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam (UREB) – a focused beam of electrons accelerated to an almost unimaginable speed.

How it Works

Typical electron beams used for food sterilization on Earth quickly spread out and lose their potency over long distances.
To overcome this, the Smorpians have built a particle accelerator over 100,000 kilometers long – 8 times the diameter of the Earth.
This megastructure accelerates electrons to 99.99999…99999% of the speed of light, a feat that slows down time for the electrons relative to the rest of the universe.
As a result, the UREB can maintain a tight, focused beam over interstellar distances, delivering a deadly dose of radiation.

The Devastating Effects

When fired, the UREB appears as a ruler-straight lightning bolt pointed directly at Earth.
Unlike the other weapons, its effects are less dramatic and visible. There are no flashes of light, firestorms, or explosions.
Instead, the UREB simply pierces people’s cells with deadly radiation, causing them to become dizzy and fall ill. The radiation accumulates over days and weeks, eventually proving fatal.
Even deep underground bunkers provide no protection, as the UREB’s penetrating power reaches lethal levels everywhere on the planet.

In the end, the UREB sterilizes the entire Earth, leaving no human survivors.

Staying Quiet and Observing

While these Smorpian weapon systems are terrifying to contemplate, there is one major downside – they would be easily detectable by other civilizations across the galaxy. Firing any of these weapons would essentially be shouting “Here we are! Come and get us!”

So perhaps the best course of action for humanity is not to try and match the Smorpians’ firepower, but rather to stay relatively quiet and observe. By avoiding drawing attention to ourselves, we may be able to avoid becoming embroiled in an interstellar conflict that we have no hope of winning.

We may one day witness distant stars shooting at each other, and be grateful that we stayed out of it.