What If? so you've accidentally murdered all the martians - a guide for bereaved earthlings

Bassoe

Well-known member
Scenario: In an alternate universe, there was a martian civilization along the general lines theorized by Percival Lowell, Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc, technologically comparable to eighties humanity and divided into multiple power blocs who hated each other, but were prevented from outright conflict by MAD deterrence. This status quo continued until 1976, at which point ICBM detection radar grids in the Kingdom of Helium* picked up an unknown object on a suborbital trajectory toward a contrasted canal network hub/unidentified, potentially artificial structures photographed by the earlier mariner flybys and launched a retaliation strike at the Kingdom of Zodanga*. The viking lander proceeded to send back around a minute of video depicting lots of martians panickedly running around, an air raid siren and the last two frames before the probe was vaporized consisting of a motion blur in the sky, followed by a mushroom cloud. The remaining lightshow lasted approximately an hour and was visible to the naked eye from earth.

Consequences?

* The names were later assigned by earthlings, on account of the shortage of actual martians to ask.
 

IceWing_mk1

Well-known member
Call in the astronomy departments from NASA, all the major universities and pretty much everybody else who owned a telescope and ask how they managed to miss an entire civilization, with electricity and we'll assume radio technology for over a hundred years, when they were a couple of light minutes from us?
 

lordhen

Well-known member
Scenario: In an alternate universe, there was a martian civilization along the general lines theorized by Percival Lowell, Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc, technologically comparable to eighties humanity and divided into multiple power blocs who hated each other, but were prevented from outright conflict by MAD deterrence. This status quo continued until 1976, at which point ICBM detection radar grids in the Kingdom of Helium* picked up an unknown object on a suborbital trajectory toward a contrasted canal network hub/unidentified, potentially artificial structures photographed by the earlier mariner flybys and launched a retaliation strike at the Kingdom of Zodanga*. The viking lander proceeded to send back around a minute of video depicting lots of martians panickedly running around, an air raid siren and the last two frames before the probe was vaporized consisting of a motion blur in the sky, followed by a mushroom cloud. The remaining lightshow lasted approximately an hour and was visible to the naked eye from earth.

Consequences?

* The names were later assigned by earthlings, on account of the shortage of actual martians to ask.
So if these two kingdoms where technology advance to have rockets, why did they never send a probe our way ore did their governments cover up the fact there where people living on a planet that was full of water.
 

BlackDragon98

Freikorps Kommandant
Banned - Politics
So if these two kingdoms where technology advance to have rockets, why did they never send a probe our way ore did their governments cover up the fact there where people living on a planet that was full of water.
Because they sent a ship to earth in 1947 and it crashed in Roswell (the strange magnetic fields on earth screwed up their navigation systems).
Comms were destroyed in the crash and the US gov. quickly covered up the incident.
 

ATP

Well-known member
i remember some polish short novel about russian mad scientist who in the end oh 19th century mad big railgun capable of reaching Mars, hit it few times,and as a result our bacteria killed entire ecosystem there.
Nobody knew,becouse he was mad and did everything he could to hide his project.
 

BlackDragon98

Freikorps Kommandant
Banned - Politics
i remember some polish short novel about russian mad scientist who in the end oh 19th century mad big railgun capable of reaching Mars, hit it few times,and as a result our bacteria killed entire ecosystem there.
Nobody knew,becouse he was mad and did everything he could to hide his project.
The plotline of War of the Worlds in a nutshell.
The bacteria in our ecosystem annihilated the Martian invaders.
 

ATP

Well-known member
The plotline of War of the Worlds in a nutshell.
The bacteria in our ecosystem annihilated the Martian invaders.

I remember author - it is Andrzej Pilipiuk,author of many interesting novels.And mad russian scientist used kind of V3 gun,not railgun,becouse building V3 was at least theorically possible before WW1,when building railgun was not.
 

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