US Government: Alien Procedure- Its Happened And On-Going

Despite the tendency of Hollywood films and sci-fi novels to depict malevolent encounters between evenly matched space adversaries, Shostak says the size of the universe and the rarity of life makes it extremely unlikely that two races of roughly equal intelligence will encounter one another in the cosmos. That said, reports of UFO sightings led some scholars to develop theories about this scenario. They asked: what would we do if we were aliens discovering us? [Science Fact or Fiction: ET Will Look Like Us]

According to Robert Freitas, author of several books outlining possible alien contact scenarios, in 1950 the U.S. military developed a procedure called "Seven Steps to Contact," laying out the logical steps we would take upon discovering creatures with roughly human-level sentience. According to the steps, we would begin with remote surveillance and data gathering, and would eventually move on to covert visitations with the goal of gauging the performance characteristics of the aliens' vehicles and weaponry.

If we judged our technological capabilities to be superior to those of the other race, we would attempt near approaches to the planet to determine whether the alien beings were hostile, and if so, by what means. If all went well, we would then make brief touchdowns in isolated areas, securing specimens of plants, animals, and of the intelligent beings themselves. In other words, this phase would involve non-harmful abductions similar to those reported by some Americans. (Interestingly, the "Seven Steps to Contact" plan predated the first reported alien abduction incident in 1957, suggesting the theory could have influenced such reports.) [Alien Abductions May Be Vivid Dreams, Study Finds]

Next, we would make our presence known, making low-level approaches where our craft and its operators could be seen, but not reached. We would try to be witnessed by the greatest possible number of inhabitants, and would demonstrate our existence and our nonhostile nature. Lastly, if all went well and there was no reason to think that contact would be disastrous for the two races involved, we would land and attempt to communicate face-to-alien-face.

Half a century since that military report was penned, we'd still follow much the same procedure. "Let's say that a near-future mission to Europa reveals indisputable evidence of intelligent beings/civilization," Haqq-Misra said. "Continued remote exploration would probably be the most likely progression, with attempts at remote communication with the subterranean intelligent beings included as part of the missions. Eventually humans would want to land and make contact (wearing astro-scuba suits?), but a 'precautionary principle' might delay human exploration until robotic exploration has confirmed that Europa's inhabitants are safe. What if, as in the second scenario proposed by Haqq-Misra, we happened upon a race of aliens who were orders of magnitude smarter than us — beings capable of interstellar spaceflight who had established a base somewhere in our solar system? Just as ants can't make sense of human behavior, it's difficult or impossible for us to understand how this advanced race would react to us. "[The renowned astronomer] Carl Sagan figured any aliens that might be able to travel between the stars would be so advanced that they would be beyond all this business of aggression and war and so forth," Shostak said. "But that may just be a projection of what he hopes humans would do eventually."

Shostak tends to think differently. Aggression, he says, evolved as a trait among Earthlings because it helps us obtain and protect resources. Though aliens would probably have evolved under totally different conditions, pressure to secure finite resources would probably have molded their behavior, too. "I suspect resources would be finite anywhere in the universe."

If Sagan is right, then the wise race we encountered would treat us with immense consideration and respect, while having the technology to ensure that we treat them similarly. If Shostak is right, and the incredibly advanced aliens we stumbled upon were also as aggressive as we are, we'd probably be toast.

Well, not toast exactly. In Haqq-Misra's opinion, "A society capable of interstellar travel should have solved their development issues such that they do not need humans for food."