DeSantis hasn’t started burning astronomers yet.

He’s still working through our microbiologists and librarians.

My youngest son is named Rigel, after the brightest star in Orion.

In spite of learning the original Arabic meaning, he seems to have forgiven me for naming him Foot.

Perhaps we should start with the first Chinese use of solid propellant rockets against their Mongol invaders, in 1232 AD.

Well I say we go out and find them first.

I saw an interview with some professor who agreed with you on the futility of speculating about our response to the arrival of an interstellar civilization. He compared it to iguanas discussing how to greet the first human explorers in the Galapagos:

“Of course they like to eat flies, right? Should we offer them live flies or dead flies? Should we line the flies up?”

We’ve had a good run. It was fun while it lasted, with the ice cream and reggae and football and belly dancing and shit.

Ima go pour myself a stiff one now.

You scared, bro?

You sound scared.

Never heard of Sociology?

I’m thinking we can and should game our own reactions to multiple scenarios better than the granular details on said scenarios themselves.

Gotta start somewhere, bro. Besides NOT knowing all the Nuclear War variables, on the First Contact scenario we do have some data already. In the last decade space telescopes have cracked open the galaxy and exoplanets are pouring out like piñata candy. We know a lot about the evolution of life on Earth, and the snowballing speed of technological development. If we went from Kitty Hawk to the Sea of Tranquility in just sixty-six (count ‘em, 66) years, what could another civilization accomplish with a million year head start?

Potential alien contact is possible just as nuclear war is possible. We should try to model and game both scenarios instead of sticking our heads in our shallow terrestrial sand out of fear, no matter how well justified.

Anyone with a minimal understanding of biology and astronomy should take both subjects seriously. I mean, just look up and do the math…

That was sarcasm. We need to both get our own human act together as a functional global society and become a technologically competent space-faring species as fast as possible.

Because they would be coming from Outer Space. And you can model that the same way we run models for thermonuclear war.

Yeah, you just paddle your little dugout canoe out to that aircraft carrier and sink it with your big bad flint-tipped bamboo arrows, tough guy.

We’re right behind you lol

Sounds nasty enough to be sarcasm, but stupid enough to be real Mormon racism.

Well, obviously from Emergence Holes, DUH