8 Things That Would Happen If We Made Alien Contact

6. The Seven Steps To Contact

Back in the 1950s, the US military reportedly created a document entitled "Seven Steps to Contact," outlining a recommended procedure for contact with intelligent alien life forms. The seven steps cover the scenario in which we discover aliens on their own planet, as opposed to them dropping out of our earthly skies. The first step we would take would be to commence remote surveillance, just to check that they aren't super-into stuff like "roasting human corpses" or "rampant nuclear warfare". The next few steps would be to make flybys and near approaches, occasionally touching down in isolated spots to get the lay of the land. We would take samples of the local wildlife for analysis and perhaps even taking a closer look at the intelligent beings too. After this, we would begin to make our presence known by approaching in ships and demonstrating as effectively as possible that we mean no harm, whilst at the same time staying out of harm's way. Finally, if they haven't tried to shoot us down after all of that faffing around in their atmosphere, we'd reach out to make some kind of diplomatic contact. It might not have escaped your notice that this all sounds remarkably like the reports of alien encounters here on Earth. The document, however, was actually written before the first reported abduction and it is thought that it actually served as an inspiration for many descriptions of alien abductions in a weird sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Either that, or the aliens have drawn up a document that is spookily similar to ours.