How would/could a government supress news of alien invasion

[irocfan]

Yes - it's a slow day!

Imagine that Marvin Martian has decided to invade earth... would (Indeed could) a government cover it up?

Landing in the Outer Hebrides it could possibly be done, Oxford Street though....

[Krikkit]

No chance, everyone carries an HD video device which broadcasts onto uncontrolled social media these days...

Like you say, perhaps in the remotest bits of the UK if they caught it in time, but in a town? Nah.

[coldel]

Trump/Putin would declare it fake news and that would be that, job done.

[gareth_r]

By claiming it was actually multiple sightings of a drone and arresting some random bloke who once said he'd quite like to buy one of them drone thingies.

[Speed addicted]

I don’t know if they would need to suppress it, every piece of footage online is assumed to be fake news now anyway!
People would assume it was a publicity stunt until they’d actually been abducted themselves.

Edited by Speed addicted on Thursday 3rd January 11:07

[Puggit]

The only way to suppress it is to take down the internet and mobile network.

[SpudLink]

If they landed in a rural part of China, the government there could probably shutdown news and social media before the world knows about it.
However if a War of the World style battle ensues, spy satalites will pick it up pretty quick. It will then be up to other governments to keep the secret, or not.

[Roger Irrelevant]

I like the idea that an alien civilisation with technology far in advance of our own, capable of crossing the vast expanses of deep space to get here, would land the one spaceship they bought in any old place and then get out and start shooting. It would be more likely that they'd be the ones mucking about with communications networks far in advance of their arrival en masse. Having visited rural Lincolnshire over the festive period I'd believe you if you told me an advance party was already here.

[valiant]

Are we talking an ET or an Independence Day type affair?

Single alien probably not a problem to explain it away as a hoax or fake news.

Alien invasion? No point in hiding it as we’d be fked anyway and it would be hard to explain why Wolverhampton has suddenly disappeared.

[Dr Jekyll]

Simple. Pretend the news reports were actually a radio play based on a science fiction story. The fact that all the action seemed to take place decades later and thousands of miles away from what happened in the story could be glossed over somehow.

[AW111]

Aliens land in the US.
"Take me to your leader"

What do you do?

[2Btoo]

AW111 said:

Aliens land in the US.
"Take me to your leader"

What do you do?

If they have big guns and look like they mean business then it'd be straight off to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Not because we would wish any ill of Mr DJTrump (esq) but more because the ensuing shoot-out would make for an awesome spectacle ....

[Zetec-S]

Dear OP,

They already have arrived.

Yours sincerely,
Agent K

PS. Look into this light

[citizensm1th]

remember that "transformer fire" in america that turned the night sky blue over christmas? link that with a major airport being closed in the uk due to "drones"


Just saying

i for one welcome our new lizard overlords (Meet the new lizards same as the old lizards )

[paua]

AW111 said:

Aliens land in the US.
"Take me to your leader"

What do you do?

Change word order - lead me to your taker - leave them at inland revenue. Stuck on hold half of forever.

[J4CKO]

2Btoo said:

AW111 said:

Aliens land in the US.
"Take me to your leader"

What do you do?

If they have big guns and look like they mean business then it'd be straight off to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Not because we would wish any ill of Mr DJTrump (esq) but more because the ensuing shoot-out would make for an awesome spectacle ....

Shoot out, they would go to meet Trump and embrace warmly being from the same planet and everything.

Well, how else do you explain it ?

Actually, I am just a random consciousness, a Boltzmann brain that popped into being due to a freak set of circumstances and all this is just part of what I have imagined to fill the nothingness.

[Rude-boy]

Krikkit said:

No chance, everyone carries an HD video device which broadcasts onto uncontrolled social media these days...

Like you say, perhaps in the remotest bits of the UK if they caught it in time, but in a town? Nah.

There is not a hope in hell of them suppressing it for very long, if at all.

Today the World is so utterly different to 2000, let alone 1960, in terms of what can be swept under the carpet. They say that the only way to ensure that a secret known by only 2 people never gets out is to kill one of them. Now extrapolate to the number of personnel required to contain and deal with such an issue and you have no chance. Can you imagine the value of a scoop like that to the press? Someone will see greenbacks, and that is before they have warned their wife, who tells her mother, who tells the Widows Luncheon Club....

The only hope of temporary respite is to cause confusion a la Ruskies "No, no Aliens landing in Chrimea, no sire, and absolutely those are not Russian Aliens fighting n East Ukraine, nor was it Russian Aliens who tried to kill those people in Salisbury. By the way, nice church."

[djcube]

Ever watched the UK TV series "UFO"? Its true I tell you, true.



Just been watching it on Forces TV.

[P5BNij]

No need to worry OP, it was all sorted c.1970 when nobody was looking. A top secret shadowy underground organisation was formed with the HQ cunningly disguised as a film studio, aided by some half hearted outer defences on the moon consisting of three single manned craft, each armed with a single missile to keep the alien chummies at bay. The odd one did get through mind, but they usually landed in a small forest just outside Slough, only to be met by life sized Dinky toys armed with slightly smaller missiles...



ETA : posted in slow motion, above poster beat me to it

[Clockwork Cupcake]

Rude-boy said:

They say that the only way to ensure that a secret known by only 2 people never gets out is to kill one of them.

Indeed. And yet the Conspiracy Theorists think that of the thousands of people involved in the Moon Landings, and Russia watching it all like hawks, that the secret of alleged fakery has been successfully kept for 50 years.

The trouble with Common Sense, as they say, is that it isn't very common.

Anyway, back on topic, I think it would be very difficult to keep secret unless there was prior communication and collusion, and the ETs landed in secret somewhere remote. And even then it would get leaked to WikiLeaks or something.