Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

Christopher G. Nuttall

Author’s Note: This is a small essay on the effects on Earth and the Human Race of the ID4 invasion. The ID4 canon I’ve used here is the movie itself, the novelisation, Independence Day: Silent Zone and Independence Day: War in the Desert. I have also used a list of destroyed cities complied by someone on the Alternate History.com discussion board. Tempting as it is, I have not used the three fanfics that I know about.

About a year ago, I became involved with an attempt to plot out the future after the ID4 invasion. After I worked out the environmental effects, I pretty much gave up the timeline attempt. However, here is a summery of my contemplations.

Summery: The inevitable event of the outcome of events on the scale of Independence Day would be the rendering of Earth uninhabitable and the extinction of the human race, along with many secondary species. This is inevitable because of the destruction of the alien mothership in low Earth orbit.

A great deal depends on how the mothership was powered. A bussard ramscoop type arrangement or a matter/antimatter reaction drive does not fit in with the picture of the mothership, which was large enough (one-forth the size of the moon) to require truly stupendous power to propel it and to slow it down and push it gently into Earth orbit. Given the capabilities of the city destroyers, I suspect that the aliens have perfected a limited method of gravity drive, which would require huge sources of power.

Just what those sources are is unknown. Nuclear power, at least the human form of it, should not be able to generate enough power, while canon indicates that the city destroyers, at least, did not carry antimatter with them. Had they done so, the destruction of the one above area 51 would have resulted in a blast that would have destroyed area 51, swatted the president’s air fleet out of the sky and contaminated that whole area for generations to come. The standard effects of a nuclear blast would probably also have occurred. For the mothership, there are three possible fates.

The first one is that the mothership did indeed carry antimatter and the nuclear blast set by our two intrepid heroes did manage to disrupt the containment. In which case the mothership would have been vaporised. However, even assuming this did happen, the effects of the blast might have a) blasted the Earth out of orbit, b) blasted some of the Earth’s atmosphere off the planet and c) sterilised the section of Earth over which the mothership was orbiting.

As should be obvious, possibility A leads to an extinction event very rapidly. Earthquakes, tidal waves, and so forth would torment the survivors of the invasion, while the Earth would slowly die as it progressed on its new course. Depending on the force of the blast, the Earth might start falling towards the sun, which would destroy the human race when the heat overcame them, or it might head away from the sun and become a rouge planet. Given a start choice, heading away from the sun might seem better, but it is extremely unlikely that the shattered political systems could have mustered the resources to allow the human race to survive such a fate and hop the gap to Mars or Titan (one of Saturn’s moons). In such an event, most of the human race will die out.

Possibility B leads to most of the human race suffocating. Lack of oxygen, in the proper balance, can cause madness and loss of control. The effects on the plant and animal world would be even worse, probably some kind of balance would eventually appear, but by then, the human race would be near extinction.

Possibility C depends largely on where the mothership was orbiting at the time of the explosion. Imagine the complete destruction of a large part of the world – bit difficult, eh? – And you might get an inkling of the sheer scope of the disaster. For example, if the mothership was over China, a large percentage of the human race – everyone there - might be wiped out in China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, Russia and so forth by gamma rays. The radiation from the irradiated surface would slowly exterminate the plant life there, which would have disastrous effects on the oxygen balance.

On a slightly more optimistic basis, if the only agent in the mothership explosion was Will Smith’s nuclear bomb – “did I not promise you fireworks?” - the total destruction of the mothership becomes extremely unlikely. The destruction of a city is impressive – and terrifying – in human terms, but on an object one-fourth the size of a moon, it will barely be noticed. This means that there is a large amount of debris floating around in Earth orbit. This debris has to go somewhere and the path of least resistance is down. This means that large parts of the alien mothership will be impacting on Earth within minutes of the nuclear blast. To add insult to injury, those parts may well be radioactive from the nuclear blast.

On first glimpse, the most likely parts of the alien ship to impart are city destroyers that became detached from the mothership in the blast and the two ‘teeth’ on the undersize of the craft. These are big enough to survive the journey though the atmosphere and impact. The effects of asteroid impacts have been studied extensively and this will be similar, although there will be most likely be hundreds of full-scale impacts. Depending upon where they land, the effects will be extremely bad to “oh s*** we’re going to die” level. For example, if a large part were to come down near New York, on the eastern seaboard of the US, the devastation would make September 11^th look like a child’s tea party, as waves washed over New York and sweep away whatever remains after the attack on it. If a large piece was to impact off Ireland, the waves might completely sweep over both Britain and Ireland, destroying both completely. Every island nation, such as Japan, New Zealand and Britain, would be wiped out. I would not lay money on the survival of Belgium, France or India either.

The impacts on the land, such as one coming down in the middle of Russia, would have less overall effect at first, but in the long run they would be extremely disastrous as well. The impact would blow tons of dust into the atmosphere, which would block out the sun’s light, with severe consequences for the atmosphere. The odds may favour sea impact, (three-fourths of the Earth’s surface) but impacts almost anywhere would be disastrous. The result would be the ‘nuclear-winter’ type environment, but without the human causes of the disaster.

Could NASA not attempt to shoot down (?) or deflect the pieces somehow? The answer, sadly, is probably not. Planning would need to begin well before the invasion began, and it is unlikely the aliens will allow a human space shuttle to travel to orbit after the invasion begins. Even without the force shield, an alien attacker has an advantage over a F-15; a space shuttle is going to be an easy target. The use of American and Russian ICBMs to shoot down pieces would need to be co-ordinated – again there is not enough time to arrange this – and this would have the side effect of rendering whatever pieces were hit radioactive. It might be better just to let them impact.

If we assume that the alien mothership was reduced completely to dust and small pieces, its not all gravy for humanity. Much of that dust will settle in Earth orbit, which will threaten to block out the sun, as discussed above. Even if that does not happen, the presence of small bits of debris in low Earth orbit will but a stop to safe space flight for hundreds of years. This may be the best outcome, from human perspective, but this will prevent humanity from being able to launch a counter-attack, replace the lost satellites and rebuild the parts of the economy that depended upon them.

Even if we assume that the mothership was completely vaporised, which is unlikely and contradicted by canon (the bit where the captured attacker is hit by debris), what about the other city destroyers? It always struck me as odd that they were not simply nuked by the human air forces. A 15-mile wide ship is not going to be brought down by a few dozen air-to-air missiles. Some of them would have been brought down by nukes, with all the radiation and blast involved.

The last point I wish to make is that it is extremely unlikely that the alien attack force was wiped out. They may have managed to free a city destroyer or two from the mothership before parts of it started to impact or they may well have placed one on the moon before landing. It does seem rather stupid to have placed all their eggs in one basket. With the advantage of the ultimate high ground, they could drop asteroids on Earth to finish the job that the crashing mothership pieces started. Attackers could use their advantages to wipe out the remaining air forces, especially if they get their force shields repaired.

There are a few final points that could also spell doom for humanity, but not on such a spectacular scale. Crashed city destroyers could spill alien biological matter into the atmosphere, contaminating it. Dust and ash from the cities that were blasted will be drifting in the atmosphere.

Worst of all is the complete collapse of governmental structures. A nation as big as America is bound to split into a semi-fascist state as Whitmore will be forced to use the army to bring order into chaos. Separatists, die-hard southerners, racists, and other factions will attempt to use the chaos to separate themselves from the rest of the USA. Disease will spread rapidly as public health services break down, every conflict that the UN and US peacekeepers kept the lid on will explode (goodbye Israel) and we could expect a worldwide spread of fundamentalist religion. Every priest of every religion will see the invasion as a punishment from God. In dire straights, there are people who will believe anything.

To conclude, the outcome of Independence Day will lead to the human race being at best marginalized and at worst wiped out. That does not leave much room for a sequel, sadly. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Independence Day. Great movie, but any resemblance to reality is due to the laxity of the producers. But that’s Hollywood for you, I suppose.

A Note on Canon: War in the Desert, the only canon that gives us a glimpse of the post-ID4 world, is very quiet on the subject of ecological collapse and asteroid impacts. If we take that literarily, we must assume that the mothership wreckage remains in Earth orbit, waiting to crash. This is an extremely unlikely situation.

Extermination Day