Plan Earth's Defense! [3 Body Problem]

[The Grim Squeaker]

I'm stealing this from Cixiun Liu's "Three Body problem" and "The Dark Forest".
For those who've read the books: You're appointed a Wallfacer, at the start of the second book. What would your plan be?
(You have no special in-universe knowledge.)


For those who haven't read the books:

[SPOILERS for the "Three Body problem" and the first half of "The Dark Forest" follow!]






Background (for those who haven't read the books): Modern Day Earth. Aliens from Alpha Centauri discover the Earth. Their home system is highly unstable, and they decide on a mass exodus to Earth, with plans on wiping out humanity once they arrive. Their invasion fleet of 1,000 ships will take 400 years to arrive, with a number of automated probes arriving within 200 years.
They announce their plans to humanity, and the entire planet knows that this is happening and is not a hoax.
Their level of technology is not known beyond the following:

• * The speed of their fleet/invasion force is limited to a few percentage points of C.
  * Their rate of technological development is slow and static, while humanity's accelerated. Given humanity's present rate of technological advancement, Humanity 4 centuries from now would be able to effortlessly crush the invading fleet.
  * To prevent the above, they completely lock down humanity's ability to advance in fundamental physics and science using Sophons.
  * Sophons are subatomic AI built using 1.5D photons. They can travel at the speed of light, allow instantaneous FTL transmission of information between Earth and the alien homeworld via entanglement, and can alter the effects of any reactions of experiment on the submolecular level. This can't be used for offensive purposes, but it does means that they can sabotage the result of any experiment on the submolecular/subatomic level. That means that humanity cannot advance in fundamental physics, quantum physics (that means no jump beyond Moore's law or quantum computing), no fundamental improvements in basic science, and puts a massive glass cieling on human technology.
  An analogy for why this is so limiting: "You have the shinyest tanks, jet aircraft and brand new maxim machine guns. Good luck fighting an enemy with atomic bombs".
  * The Sophons also allow for near perfect information gathering about humanity. They can cover the whole planet and can't be blocked, and transmit information back instantly (they can also read electronic media to some degree). They allow bidirectional communication. (The aliens understand English and can communicate with us).
  * The Sophons serve to let humanity know about the aliens plan, once they're discovered, by inscribing a message on the retina of every human on earth "You're Bugs".

All humanity bands together to prepare for the invasion, with massive global militarization efforts.
Due to the Sophon's spying on all military activity on Earth, a plan is devised to appoint a number of "Wallfacers". The Sophons cannot extract information from human brains or thoughts, so the idea behind the wallfacers is to create hidden long term 'alternative' plans to prepare for the invasion, in addition to conventional efforts. You have extreme freedom, and do not need to explain the reasons behind your activities and instructions to anyone, though you will need to face oversight by a UN committee. The idea is to use subterfuge and trickery, and to hide your real plan until it's in effect.
You are one of the Wallfacers. You must devise a long term strategem for ensuring the survival of humanity/defeat of the invasion force.
You have access to extreme resources (assume on the order of 1-2 % of global GDP in a fully militarized, integrated global economy, with a level of mobilization sufficient to push back global standards of living by 1-2 centuries). You have access to hibernation technology capable of putting you into stasis as many times as needed, and letting you manage your plan over the centuries.


Added complications:

• *The aliens have almost no concept of trickery, lying or deception. Thus, they are very bad at guessing tricks, schemes, lies and deception (They did not realize that there could be a difference between "knowing something" and "saying it" until Humans described it to them).
  * The Aliens have a number of fanatical human sympathizers on Earth. These are a few thousand people drawn from the Intelligentsia, all fanatically devoted to the destruction of humanity and it's replacement by a superior species. These people also appoint a "WallBreaker" whose role is to constantly study you (with the aid of the Sophons), and to figure out your plan. Thus, your plan should be able to hold up to scrutiny by another human with access to your every activity.
  * Humanity can be assumed to be slightly "Lawful Good" retarded in its adherence to moral rights. If your plan is discovered/guessed and obviously in violation of these rights, you will lose.

What's your plan?

[NecronLord]

I build O'neill cylinders for everyone and let them have Earth. Victory is not possible.

[The Grim Squeaker]

I build O'neill cylinders for everyone and let them have Earth. Victory is not possible.

"Escapism" is also considered a crime against humanity, and how would you do it openly?
PS: Humanity's technology is deadlocked up to a point. It's still got a large area to advance. The rate of progress in the book includes ~ 18,000x improvement in supercomputers within the first 12 years, although it's noted that this is still considered a supercomputer a century later. Multiple space elevators are also built in the first 60 years, with a corresponding space fleet.

The biggest trick is to come up with a plan that has a chance of working, and a way to carry it out that doesn't result in the human wallbreakers guessing it.


EDIT: Oh, and the Aliens make it clear that they will send probes after fleeing ships. The idea of "Escapism" is mentioned prominently in the books. It's infeasible on a large scale if only due to the human element: Who stays, who goes? And if you have a fleet capable of transporting 10 billion people and fighting off the invaders in space, then why would you flee - you might as well defend Earth, where you'll have 400 years worth of built up defenses and ships.

DOUBLE EDIT: Improvements in human technology is still possible. The limitations are for fundamental breakthroughs: Engineering improvements are possible, as are technical and incremental improvements over 400 years. Fusion technology is possible for example, in the form of working reactors and the like.

[NecronLord]

No such plan is conceivable. Anything that does work will do so via author fiat.

You don't defend - you suicide. You build thousands of O'Neill cylinders, move everyone, and signal to the aliens that if they board your cylinders they will self destruct; the aliens have generation ships already and gain nothing by occupying them. Engineer the situation such that the aliens cannot gain anything but satisfaction by harming humans.

[The Grim Squeaker]

No such plan is conceivable. Anything that does work will do so via author fiat.

Why do you think so?
A fleet travelling at ~0.05% the speed of light, with outstanding information implies a set level of technological advancement. But it's not the culture, and you have 400 years of militarized advancement to count on.

Heck, how long would it take, say, the American forces in the second Iraq war to take over the Civil war era USA, if the former had 300 years to dig in, build bunkers, lay mines, and build better iron clads? That's a more extreme technology gap than what's mentioned here

[The Grim Squeaker]

No such plan is conceivable. Anything that does work will do so via author fiat.

You don't defend - you suicide. You build thousands of O'Neill cylinders, move everyone, and signal to the aliens that if they board your cylinders they will self destruct; the aliens have generation ships already and gain nothing by occupying them. Engineer the situation such that the aliens cannot gain anything but satisfaction by harming humans.

That's more of a plan .
(It's still problematic in that the aliens are likely to send probes after you, and there's no politically feasible way to do this in an intentionally declared, out and out way - as said, no political or social entity on earth would agree to be left behind to die).

[NecronLord]

No one will be. Read O'Neill, you can make colony habitats for everyone inside 400 years with resource to spare with only a few advances.

If you want to be live dangerously and annoy the aliens you can also turn the garden planet Earth into a nuclear minefield with comparative ease or make it uninhabitable with asteroids. But you're at their mercy no matter what.

[The Grim Squeaker]

You don't defend - you suicide.

2 Plans from the books (that were guessed by the Wallbreakers and failed):
[SPOILERS!] Spoiler

1) Build a large fleet of tiny autonomously controlled drone ships, each armed with multi megaton bombs (as opposed to large space warships constructed by the mainstream defense plans). Stated plan: "mosquito" suicide bombers.
Actual plan: When the aliens arrive, attack and decimate the rest of the human fleet, and then beg the aliens to join them. As the aliens arrive after their long voyage, offer large supplies of gathered H20 from the rest of the solar system to their ships, as an additional 'gift'. Hide a large number of additional bombs in the ice and ships, then once your ships are close enough, detonate them and the hidden bombs right against the enemy fleet.

Plan 1's guessing in the book resulted in it's condemnation and trial of it's author for "planned crimes against humanity". (A bit like failing a civilization game).

2) Plan 2 (My personal favorite):
Stated plan: Construction of many giant bombs. (200-500 megaton bombs, with enhanced blast radii in interstellar space. Due to their effects, they need to be tested outside of Earth's atmosphere. [Based on the description of effects, I think the translation ought to have been more than ~200 Megatons, given that one in Earth's atmosphere was judged capable of disrupting global communications as a side-effect of the EM pulse).
Due to these restrictions, the bombs need to be tested on Mercury. Demand construction of tens of thousands of such bombs.
Actual plan: Bombs are indeed a crappy weapon for interstellar warfare. The real plan is to build such a huge amount of bombs, and detonate them carefully on mercury and some moons. [The next part is stated to have been unlikely due to the number of bombs needed, but possible]. The bomb-making potential would have been enough to start a chain reaction that ends with jarring solar planetary bodies/moon of course into the sun, with the resulting solar ejecta being enough to kill all life on Earth. Wire all the bombs to a dead man switch, and Use this as a threat to force the invading aliens to peace.
In book (due to authorial fiat): the plan's inference results in the lynching of it's author for his "Evil evil plan to hold the life of everyone on the planet hostage".
I.E authorial fiat and stupidity.

A variant of Plan 2 would have been my approach, except for the part where: Spoiler

Humanity in book and real life, not being happy with "kill everyone on earth with giant bombs" as a long term strategy

[Vendetta]

Terraform Mars.

Collect as much asteroid ice as possible and drop it on Mars to add water and raise the temperature. Make a second planetary habitat which, even if it takes more effort to sustain due to the lack of magnetic field, will allow Earth and Trisolaris to coexist.
Spoiler

(secretly engage in Dark Forest deterrence in order to have the sophon block removed, then figure out how to reduce the speed of light and envelop the solar system in a slow light zone)

[K. A. Pital]

Aha, interesting thread.

Given that the author already gave Trisolaris quite some wanktech, I assume that it is not totally inconceivable that escapism will win (in the end, the books do depict social struggle and sometimes an outcome could be different compared to what happened). I mean, after all, one of the wallfacers pretty much had the idea ingrained into the fleet using a brainwashing machine.

I would build crude, but efficient hugely huge nuclear pulse propulsion ships, which would then become a weapon in their own right, and make sure these ships are then manned by people who are ready to abandon Earth for good. Concealing the plan should not be terribly difficult, as Earth already built similar ships in the books for their space navy, and if I feel escapism is not popular in this decade, or that Trisolaris is somehow getting close to my plan, I just randomly time-jump and distract. I think at some point the ETO got wiped out.

After all, in the author's world that's the only way of winning, because everyone in the Galaxy, including Kardashev II and III civilizations, are busy slaughtering each other or looking for whom to slaughter. A bit unrealistic.

In a more sane universe, civilizations higher up on the Kardashev scale would be covertly overseeing the lower civilization without immediate destruction. Exposing yourself as an aggressive attacker at some point has to have negative returns (something which never does happen in Three Body verse, although it is casually mentioned that even observation can lead to exposure and being discovered in book 3). So I would not need to do much, they'd wipe out Trisolaris or help them resettle as they please. My desires and plans would be irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

[Vendetta]

After all, in the author's world that's the only way of winning, because everyone in the Galaxy, including Kardashev II and III civilizations, are busy slaughtering each other or looking for whom to slaughter. A bit unrealistic.

The books are amazingly nihilistic. Death's End most of all. I don't know about unrealistic, they're a musing on human nature and the way we can be self destructive, but they're certainly pessimistic.

I'd kinda like to be able to read them in chinese to understand how much of that was Cixin Liu and how much was Ken Liu (translator for 3 Body and Death's End), because as far as I've read of The Grace of Kings human misunderstanding is a fairly large element of his fiction too. Albeit I think he was a better translator and a great writer in his own right, and the percieved weakness in The Dark Forest was because of a change in translation.

[K. A. Pital]

After all, in the author's world that's the only way of winning, because everyone in the Galaxy, including Kardashev II and III civilizations, are busy slaughtering each other or looking for whom to slaughter. A bit unrealistic.

The books are amazingly nihilistic. Death's End most of all. I don't know about unrealistic, they're a musing on human nature and the way we can be self destructive, but they're certainly pessimistic.

I'd kinda like to be able to read them in chinese to understand how much of that was Cixin Liu and how much was Ken Liu (translator for 3 Body and Death's End), because as far as I've read of The Grace of Kings human misunderstanding is a fairly large element of his fiction too. Albeit I think he was a better translator and a great writer in his own right, and the percieved weakness in The Dark Forest was because of a change in translation.

I wouldn't say the books were nihilistic. They were overtly concerned first and foremost with depicting the upper classes and intellectuals as traitors to humanity. Distrust of these classes is a deeply ingrained quality in the East. I think it was a very Chinese story in its own way, which ended right where it started and in a morbid way confirming the hostile attitude to intellectuals coming from the Cultural Revolution. The rest is just a backdrop and human relations, concepts and qualities are still massively projected on alien civilizations. There is an idea behind it, though, and that's not "nothing matters".

[vengence]

Plan and fund a colonization of mars effort. focusing on certain aspects. Robotics: mining and industrial resources to be able to make the colony be bale to build its infrastructure from local resources. Also advanced probes sent to locate ideal landing sites based on resources available at each site. All with the ability to be automated. Genetics: Collect 4000 embryos of the greatest of the current human population to be raised at the mars colony, along with DNA samples from large portions of the population. Information: create a database with the collective sum of human knowledge to be sent along. Create 2 A.I. to be sent.

Two ships will be built and sent each with everything needed to set up a colony. Redundancy is important. The ships will be armed and all systems will be run by the A.I. Crews and colonists will be selected and trained. A few weeks before the planned Launch date the ships will be launched with only the wall builder on it. 12 hours after launch a broadcast will be sent back to Earth Stating that Mars will be Claimed by The wall builder and any attempt to approach the planet will be considered in league with the Aliens and the craft will be destroyed this includes automated probes as well.

The duration of the journey to Mars will be used by the wall builder to plan the earth defense with the 2 A.I. which will be the primary directors of the future colony. Once on mars The Wall Builder will go into Hibernation and the A.I.s will build the colony the embryos will be grown into colonists and instilled with a deep hatred for the Aliens. and they will plan and coordinate earths defense without any wall breakers being able to intervene.

[Vendetta]

I wouldn't say the books were nihilistic. They were overtly concerned first and foremost with depicting the upper classes and intellectuals as traitors to humanity. Distrust of these classes is a deeply ingrained quality in the East. I think it was a very Chinese story in its own way, which ended right where it started and in a morbid way confirming the hostile attitude to intellectuals coming from the Cultural Revolution. The rest is just a backdrop and human relations, concepts and qualities are still massively projected on alien civilizations. There is an idea behind it, though, and that's not "nothing matters".

I dunno. A central element of Death's End was Spoiler

all the apparently momentous decisions and mistakes that Cheng Xin makes throughout are irrelevant in the end, and the whole universe is actually the blasted wreckage of a far grander and stranger thing and there is actually nothing anyone can do but hope it's better next Big Bang.

[Swindle1984]

Assuming Valkyrie antimatter rockets are feasible within this universe, build a fleet of them controlled by AI's and launch them to meet the enemy in deep space. They don't need to slow down from a relativistic speed or anything, just continue accelerating until the optimal moment, and then they all detonate and create a cloud of relativistic buckshot the aliens have to fly through. Rinse and repeat as often as possible. Program them to detonate before the alien fleet or their probes get within range to attack them; the aliens are flying at relativistic speeds straight at a cloud of metallic debris, sand, etc. also traveling at relativistic speeds: good luck dodging that shit. Good luck making it through multiple waves of that shit.

Meanwhile, turn the solar system into a fortress. Lasers, nukes, Casaba-Howitzers, mass drivers, etc. everywhere. Move as much of Earth's population into space as possible; Luna, Mars, Ceres, O'Neill Island 3 cylinders, etc. to spread out our population to make it difficult to wipe us out in one fell swoop. The Japanese considered invading America to be impossible because "there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass". Same strategy, have a ship or automated defense system on every moon, planet, asteroid, comet, etc. that we could weaponize. Leave enough automated weaponry and boobytraps that even if humanity is exterminated, the aliens will spend centuries having to clean up the solar system or risk getting a nuke to the face when they go to mine a particular asteroid. I doubt this would discourage the aliens from attacking since they're committed at this point and it's all-or-nothing, but when the entire solar system is one big death trap, it certainly doesn't help their morale.

As an additional gambit, Earth is mined with a shitload of nukes, and there are asteroids and comets ready to be nudged onto collision courses with Earth; in the event that the aliens defeat us, a deadman switch/AI will render Earth uninhabitable.

A secret final plan: more Valkyrie rockets, given enough room to accelerate to relativistic speed, some aimed at Earth to fuck it up as much as possible, and some aimed at the sun to create massive solar flares and explosions that irradiate the solar system, hopefully fucking any electronics the aliens have.

[Vendetta]

Assuming Valkyrie antimatter rockets are feasible within this universe, build a fleet of them controlled by AI's and launch them to meet the enemy in deep space. They don't need to slow down from a relativistic speed or anything, just continue accelerating until the optimal moment, and then they all detonate and create a cloud of relativistic buckshot the aliens have to fly through. Rinse and repeat as often as possible. Program them to detonate before the alien fleet or their probes get within range to attack them; the aliens are flying at relativistic speeds straight at a cloud of metallic debris, sand, etc. also traveling at relativistic speeds: good luck dodging that shit. Good luck making it through multiple waves of that shit.

You can't use antimatter. You can't make it, the Sophons can interfere in realtime with the operation of supercolliders (making any interactions occuring in them essentially random so you can't learn anything about atomic physics either.)

As for all the nukes and railguns you build, "The Lord does not care".

[vengence]

So after some research. The enemy fleet would only be traveling .1c which means that earth can find the fleet fairly easily and quickly. Also this means the fleet will have to take time to decelerate when it comes into the solar system. This makes defending a lot easier becausr you know what path they will take into the solar system and can focus of fortifying that route as opposed to not knowing and having to defend from any direction.

The Sophons have the ability to see and communicate back home. It is said there are enough to cover the planet. But can they cover the whole solar system? If so how effectively and thoroughly?

Build an A.I. send it to the asteroid belt. Have it build billions more networked together then build a defense. The A.I. network becomes infinitely more complex and intelligent than the human mind. And will be able solve the problem figure out how to do it without the sophons being able to learn enough to do anything about it.

Also study the sophons and learn how to reverse engineer the technologyand apply it to the A.I. network. Now you have a network spread out over a vast area able to communicate instantaniously.

[Swindle1984]

Assuming Valkyrie antimatter rockets are feasible within this universe, build a fleet of them controlled by AI's and launch them to meet the enemy in deep space. They don't need to slow down from a relativistic speed or anything, just continue accelerating until the optimal moment, and then they all detonate and create a cloud of relativistic buckshot the aliens have to fly through. Rinse and repeat as often as possible. Program them to detonate before the alien fleet or their probes get within range to attack them; the aliens are flying at relativistic speeds straight at a cloud of metallic debris, sand, etc. also traveling at relativistic speeds: good luck dodging that shit. Good luck making it through multiple waves of that shit.

You can't use antimatter. You can't make it, the Sophons can interfere in realtime with the operation of supercolliders (making any interactions occuring in them essentially random so you can't learn anything about atomic physics either.)

As for all the nukes and railguns you build, "The Lord does not care".

But it's naturally occurring and is gathered by the magnetic fields of the gas giants; hell, even Earth's magnetic field has captured measurable quantities of antimatter. Can't we harvest that?

[Imperial Overlord]

But it's naturally occurring and is gathered by the magnetic fields of the gas giants; hell, even Earth's magnetic field has captured measurable quantities of antimatter. Can't we harvest that?

Not in the quantities that Valkyrie would require.

[Simon_Jester]

Not enough to fuel antimatter rockets. Remember that "detectable amounts" of exotic particles can mean "a few individual particles that happened to smack into our detector." That's not the same as "tons of the stuff to fuel a big rocket."

No such plan is conceivable. Anything that does work will do so via author fiat.

Why do you think so?
A fleet travelling at ~0.05% the speed of light, with outstanding information implies a set level of technological advancement. But it's not the culture, and you have 400 years of militarized advancement to count on.

No, we don't, because anything we invent, these author fiat information-hacking "Sophon" entities will be sabotaging. Or briefing the aliens about.

Heck, how long would it take, say, the American forces in the second Iraq war to take over the Civil war era USA, if the former had 300 years to dig in, build bunkers, lay mines, and build better iron clads? That's a more extreme technology gap than what's mentioned here

It wouldn't be possible to maintain that level of war mobilization for hundreds of years. I mean seriously, the idea that you could keep building military forces for four hundred years, in the face of this godlike hacking ability that disrupts communication and makes it pathetically easy to create (or fake) anti-mobilization political movements... It's laughable.

Building weapons is what you do with four years to prepare, not four hundred. What you do with four hundred years to change things around is fundamentally alter the basis on which your civilization operates... but in this scenario we can't do that. Because of author-wank god-tier alien hacking abilities that can and will sabotage anything we do.
_______________________________________

Also, Squeaker, your spoiler tags didn't work, but:

Even without guesses in advance, plan (1) fails because the aliens have human sympathizers. Some of them will have heard of a "Trojan Horse."

Plan (2) reveals the fundamental problem here that in addition to being massively hamstrung by our inability to develop significantly better technology or discuss plans electronically, we are also hamstrung by not being allowed to actually make meaningful use of the advantage of duplicity and sneakiness.

This is not an interesting challenge, because too much of the difficulty comes from author fiat.
_______________________________________

[K. A. Pital]

The Sophon cannot bio-hack. Human thoughts are impenetrable.

I actually was a bit disappointed that Liu did not make humans pursue the bio-engineering route (create gigantic brains biocomputers that could calculate better than humans and devise devilish plans which spell doom on the pathetic Trisolaran losers)...

[Swindle1984]

Then the scenario is pointless because author fiat makes it impossible to do anything.

[Vendetta]

The scale of the difference between Earth and Trisolaris, plus the Sophon block, makes it impossible to win militarily, yes.
Spoiler

The Trisolaran probes, which arrive two centuries before their actual fleet, are comprised of material similar to Larry Niven's Scrith, exotic matter bound by the strong nuclear force, almost indestructible and powered by an inertialess drive which makes them capable of describing sharp right angles in space at 30km/s with no change in speed. No weapon buildable by modern physics, which is all you have to work with, will damage them. They are perfect mirrors to all energy and capable of withstanding any impactor you can reasonably accelerate.

The possible alternatives are either dark forest deterrence (broadcast the location of Trisolaris to the watchful and destructive higher beings, even knowing that they will figure out the location of the broadcast and destroy Sol as well) or psychological warfare, by the time deterrence fails and the Trisolarans arrive they have decided to keep humanity alive (albeit they shove everyone into Australia without enough food so a vast majority of the population will die anyway), so global alterations in apparent culture intended to change their opinion about humanity in certain ways plus wider colonisation of the solar system to support the combined populations could have changed how that coexistence went.

[K. A. Pital]

Well, inside the books there's only Dark Forest deterrence and, much later, Spoiler

lightspeed travel as alternatives (the latter is shown to be superior and the only reasonable survival strategy despite all the odds).

Outside the books I could imagine various forms of bioengineering and nanoengineering to be viable alternatives. Humanity might change, but not perish, under such circumstances.

[vengence]

Step one: create bio supercomputers. They wont be able ro hack them.

Step two : develop telepathy. We will then be able to communicate without them being able to listen.

Step three: build relativistic cannons and staet shooting at the fleet. Then see how long it takes them to realize we weren't aiming at the fleet but the planet/system behind it.