'Terrorism' is used here to refer to small-scale groups attempting to achieve some political ends through the use of terror attacks, which are attacks designed not necessarily to cause great destruction, but to induce terror in a significant part of the population of a target region, which will then bow to the political demands of the terrorist group. Technological determinism says that technology dominates social change, and it may also dominate terrorism, one facet of a civilization.
In the early eras of technology, where knives and poisons were the only available weapons, assassination was the only type of terrorism that could occur. Directed against leading members of the alien civilization's government or economic structure, a terrorist group could hope that concessions might be made to their cause if the leadership felt unable to protect themselves. Infiltration of the ranks of those with guardian capability might be one of the social tools such a group might use, and suicide attacks might inspire the terror they needed to accomplish their ends.
The invention of controlled combustion might lead to projectile weapons, but these simply make assassination easier. Bombs, however, open up a new avenue for terrorism, and that is attacks on infrastructure or on the public themselves. These weapons have the most effect in crowded places, and the obvious countermeasure is control of those entering these places, with some sort of measures designed to detect such explosive packages, along with the ability to carefully search the areas, arenas or whatever places a particular alien civilization likes to attend in large numbers, to eliminate such weapons from being installed and hidden prior to the crowd's arrival, for places with sporadic use. Continuously used places would have continuous checking in place or lockdowns during non-used times of the day.
The advent to nuclear technology, in the middle of the industrial era, does not change much for terrorism. Nuclear weapons are very difficult to design and assemble, requiring specialists of many varieties, and terrorist groups are unlikely to be able to obtain such a quorum. They also require multiple unique materials, some very difficult to make from other, more easily available ones. Since nuclear weapons contaminate great areas of any planet where they are used, all regions on any exo-planet with an advanced alien civilization would be motivated to cooperate in restricting access to these end-materials. The costs of a nuclear weapon program are great, and if terrorism is something small groups would use, they would neither have such resources nor be able to deploy them, if they found a donor. The weapons are also large and hard to move and hide, and they give off telltale radiation, which can serve as another means of detection. Thus, the advent of nuclear technology into the collection of useful technology does not make terrorism any more powerful or easy to apply, just the opposite.
The beginnings of biology, specifically the biology of infectious organisms, may be a different story. The ability to capture an existing infectious organism, and mutate it, requires little money or expertise. Even a single talented individual alien might do this as the technology is not complicated to understand or utilize, once society gets some basic knowledge into its storehouse of scientific understandings. Recall that psychology and neurology come later on, so that the ability of the society to detect some mentally disturbed alien, having such a capability, is limited. This means that an alien society in this particular phase of its industrial era can be victimized by individuals or small groups who concentrate on contagious organisms.
This capability exists even below the level of a terrorist group. Curiosity or some sociopathic desires could motive individual aliens to explore what they could do in this area, as there may not be any knowledge yet about how to train young aliens to prevent their involving themselves and others in dangerous activities when they grow older and more informed and educated. Neither would politics be a solved science by this time, so there may be personal or political disputes that could motivate such talented individuals. They might develop some organism, protect themselves and those they care about, and release it to see what happens. If it was based on an infectious organisms, the mutated version might be contagious as well.
If amateur biologists can create mutated viruses, what could a terrorist group do? They might be able to operate in two stages, one: where they try all types of viruses in different locations to see which ones might serve as a terror weapon, and two:, bioweapon where they induce some cases of their chosen infectious organism into some locale that they have access to.
A bioweapon attack, even on a small scale such as a terrorist group could manage, requires social controls to be put in place, rapidly and severely, if the contagion is to be controlled at a very low level. Those regions which can do this might be relatively immune to bioterrorism, but those which are not, for any of several reasons, could be held at risk by a bioterrorist group. After one or several bioterrorism attacks, it might be clear to all regions that they need to prepare themselves against such attacks. One way might be to scour the whole exo-planet for biology laboratories that bioterrorists might exploit, but since they can be quite small and do not need exotic unique materials, finding them all might be difficult. The other way, if the region has the resources and the governmental excellence to do this, is to organize a reaction to any attempts at bioterrorism, all the while reducing the locales at which it could be done.
If these countermeasures against bioterrorism, in attacks or in threats of attacks, are quite expensive to a region, it might try to negotiate its way out of them with one or more bioterrorist groups, but since they can form easily, this might not be a long-term solution, and the expensive countermeasures are the only solution. If the costs are so large that the alien civilization suffers a reduction in affluence, in living standards, and in the means of survival, then perhaps the civilization will begin a slow collapse.
The other solution that might be taken is technological suicide, where the alien civilization as a whole seeks to ban biological knowledge from being gathered, collected, or disseminated. This means that asymptotic technology will never be reached, the ability to diffuse bioterrorism will never be accomplished, and the civilization will go into stasis and collapse. A solution near to that is to strongly limit the knowledge of biology to tiny numbers of aliens, in the hope that this knowledge will not diffuse out to potential bioterrorist groups. This would seem to be a more rational solution, as it allows work on automatic generation of antidotes and antigens to continue. Thus, bioterrorism might certainly slow down the progress of an alien civilization, but it is unlikely to destroy it, and would therefore not be the method by which aliens are prevented from reaching Earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment