Talk:Interstellar war

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Three seperate things

I've just been redirected from intergalactic war, to a page about interstellar war that has a section about interplanetary war. These are three different things and I think they deserve their own articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.177.27.143 (talk) 20:29, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to the above

The Ori War in Stargate SG1 actually is intergalactic, not interstellar. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.155.14.86 (talk) 13:50, 11 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

and since the Flood from Halo are a species adapted to intergalactic invasion (they would consume their planet and never consume the amount of sentient lifeforms required to complete their life cycle.) and considering the Forerunners had to destroy all thinking life in the GALAXY in an attempt to starve it, the "flood forerunner war" should also be considered a intergalactic war. The Human-Covenant war, however, IS an interstellar war.

Actually, it's could be argued that the fighting between the forerunners and the flood was not even a war, because the flood is only trying to complete its life-cycle, which unfortunately requires the deaths of billions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hoyt596 (talk • contribs) 03:06, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

POV statement

"Extermination (our own or that of an alien civilization at our hands) is a more likely possibility than a war in the traditional sense."

What is the support/reasoning for this statement? It seems arguable either way.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.49.26.116 (talk) 02:27, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As second sentence states, it is difficult to imagine a traditional war being logistically possible between stars.
That two species would make contact at the levels of technology sufficiently equivalent to allow for a war is unlikely. Much more probably, one would be vastly more advanced than the other. See, for instance, the third of Clarke's laws Marskell 11:05, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: All of this is entirely POV and speculative anyway. I suggest the comment be removed entirely as it is unverifiable. - Just zis Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] :: AfD? 11:24, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

We'd be left with a dicdef. The notion is hypothetical--any caveat to it is necessarily hypothetical as well. Marskell 11:31, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If it can't be described without POV / speculation in terms without becoming a dicdef, that probably tells you the topic is not encyclopaedic :-) - Just zis Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] (W) AfD? 18:36, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The statement should be either removed or cited. See Wikipedia:Citing sources. —Lowellian (reply) 12:19, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Retitle as "Interstellar war (fiction)"

This article should be retitled "Interstellar war (fiction)", since it only covers fiction.Philcha 16:56, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Since interstellar war as far as we know only exists in fiction, this would be redundant. Noclevername 23:39, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How about "Interstellar war (Movies and TV)"? Because despite the wealth of examples offered by science fiction, just two novels are included in the list. Rather disappointing ... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.197.182.216 (talk) 01:53, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I propose renaming this article to ~~List of interstellar wars in fiction~~ List of space wars in fiction. This article is basically already a list, covers interstellar, interplanetary, and intergalactic war, and Interstellar war (fiction) is too close to Space warfare in fiction. The name of this article will have to be changed anyway after the first real interstellar war breaks out. Regards. Braincricket (talk) 13:20, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Western view, what about others?

I was about to add this:

in the Soviet sphere, stories of this sort were generally banned, as the assumption that a capitalist society could successfully colonize space went against Party doctrine.

...when I realized I had no citation. What in fact was the situation on the other side of the globe during the cold war (and before, and after)? What's the state of such stories now? ---Noclevername 23:37, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Diversify the topics

This article only seems to cover interstellar war in popular culture. While it is true that we do not have contact with any extraterrestrial civilizations, let alone wage war with them, perhaps the article could speculate about such a conflict. Fusion7 17:26, 25 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not a collection of unverified speculation. If we can cite other peoples' speculations I think that would be cool. Regards. Braincricket (talk) 13:38, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Move

To space war. Can also be interplanetary, or between natural satellites. J 1982 (talk) 15:40, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation?

I'm not sure how to make one, but it seems like Interstellar war, Interstellar Wars, GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars, and the redirect for First Interstellar War are confusing enough that a disambiguation page (probably with an "other uses" hatnote) would be appropriate. 165.23.203.13 (talk) 13:56, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Timescale of interstellar war

People do have utterly implausible ideas about the timescale of interstellar war.

"Interstellar war is hard though. Frontlines, tactics and logistics are meaningless at these scales. It is also fought across time: decades will pass between firing a weapon and learning whether it hit or not." See: https://sites.google.com/view/sources-interstellarwar/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dwarf (Paladin, Bard, Druid) (talk • contribs) 10:09, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The actual link to the video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tybKnGZRwcU. --The Smorpians have won the battle (talk) 08:41, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome! We should consider a preemptive strike on Smorp. --Awesomization (talk) 09:11, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Love thy neighbour as thyself. Only the Galactic Defense Organization knows in His wisdom if the Smorpians did already fire, because they do have the sensor network. --Many-worlds interpretation time machine theory (talk) 10:43, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"If there are an infinity of worlds, and if some worlds have sentient beings created by God, then wouldn’t these planets also need to be saved by the personification of God? By, well, alien Jesuses?" [1] But imagine the Smorpians may never have heard of love for enemies? --The Smorpians have won the battle (talk) 14:13, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Jesus on Smorp? As far as I know he would have to be eligible to enjoy the Right to Public Participation in Suprarational Bodies, but that may not apply to Smorp. --W.G. Stress (talk) 10:15, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What Smorp needs are nuclear disarmament inspectors. --The Smorpians have won the battle (talk) 13:00, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ancient astronaut?

The whole Solar System looks as if it had been constructed, by the way: There are two small planets (Mercury and Mars), there are two hot planets (Mercury and Venus), there are two gas giants and two ice giants and even two serious ring planets (Saturn and Uranus) and two uninhabitable planets in the habitable zone of the Solar System (Mars and Venus), but there is only one habitable planet. “One” would be a metaphor for positive and “multiple” a metaphor for negative. Uranus, Venus and Mars could also be imagined to have been struck by interstellar warfare: Uranus is rolling in his orbit, Venus turns in the opposite direction as other planets and Mars looks as if it might have had water on its surface in earlier times, and Mercury is very hot, so that would make a maximum of four planets metaphorically destroyed in interstellar warfare and Saturn (the gas giant, actually the star) with a “ring”, a Dyson Swarm of Laser satellites, as the attacker.
Adding up the groups of two planets one would also have too many planets in one’s solar system (five too much: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Uranus counted twice), but Saturn doesn't give the impression of a planet that had been hit by warfare. --Alexander Atari Astronaut Akademos Andromeda (talk) 08:19, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Uranus is rolling in his orbit like a marble on a table. It could be seen as an icy planet in the darkness, approaching the sun from far away and planets could, at least in theory, be used as weapons in interstellar warfare and be rolled like marbles, to hit another marble. Icy planets in the darkness are, of course, 100% naturally occurring dark matter and infinitely close to 0% artificially created or directed objects, thus the interstellar war, as every astronomer knows, is a fact of life and “thank god”, somebody is there to take care of the problem. One should, of course, feel obliged to give back to the community that did so and educate interstellar blue helmets in order to participate. --Alexander Atari Astronaut Akademos Andromeda (talk) 11:37, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The ice giants, of course, also are more or less something like gas giants and not really useful for landing there. That makes four planets metaphorically destroyed (Mercury, Venus, Marks and Uranus) and also four "gas giants" (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune). The four planets (the other ones) are a "gas" (a joke). If there was anything remotely funny in that statement ... --Alexander Atari Astronaut Akademos Andromeda (talk) 13:34, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are four inner planets and four outer planets in the Solar System. The group of four metaphorically destroyed planets would thus contain one outer planet, taking the place of planet Earth. The outer planets can be interpreted as the home worlds of the United Planets (like the United Nations, only on a much larger scale, the galaxy), so one could be afraid that either a home world (of an intelligent species) or planet Earth could at some time decide to fire interstellar weapons at the other side and that is why the United Planets can be compared to the United Nations and NATO: The military is obviously there to prevent war. The outer planets are larger (older, United Planets dislike bombardment of planets, thus when they grow with age). --Alexander Atari Astronaut Akademos Andromeda (talk) 13:36, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is not fully absurd to consider Uranus or Neptune as home worlds for strong AIs, because a computer center full of AIs will most likely require good refrigeration: Uranus is the coldest planet in the Solar System, but the ice giants are not really suitable. One assumes a pressure in the centre of 8 million bars at 5000 Kelvin and the solid core is not very large, so one wouldn't want to build anything at the ocean floor of that ocean, but metaphorically a cold planet could be interesting for AIs, only the Solar System doesn't offer good real estate for AIs, at least not in the three-dimensional space (except for planet Earth). So a "home world" metapher is understandable, but no recommendation. --Alexander Atari Astronaut Akademos Andromeda (talk) 14:12, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]