"Human Shield": An idea for a revolutionary alien invasion story

This past weekend I finished reading Macrowikinomics by Dan Tapscott and Rework (authors unimportant). I also went to the theater and saw Battle LA. It was the most fun I've had at a movie in a while and I highly recommend this hilarious review of the film to all readers at SBPDL.

If you were part of an alien civilization, where would you attack?

What I learned from Macrowikinomics (a sequel to Wikinomics) is that we live in a age of collaboration, thanks to the glories of technology. What I learned from Battle LA (and all alien invasion films) is that advanced civilizations from other worlds invading our planet is a frightening concept.

In every alien invasion film -- Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, War of the Worlds, Independence Day, Mars Attacks, Signs, etc. -- why is it that technologically advanced aliens travel billions of light years yet engage in such poor military reconnaissance and strategic planning?

This is why Stuff Black People Don't Like would like to announce a revolutionary idea for readers worldwide: the opportunity to engage in the first collaborative work of fiction in Internet history.


We already have a title for the book; Human Shield. In this story aliens decide to use the ultimate weapon against the world's most advanced civilization, incapacitating the United States military without actually engaging them in combat.

The idea is simple: Having mastered interstellar travel, aliens would be prepared for a psy-ops style engagement, utilizing our ultimate weakness to ensure maximum effectiveness in their campaign and minimal casualties for their side.

All they want is resources, and to be burdened with a fight would consume precious time for securing what they came for in the first place. Using white guilt to their advantage, the aliens keep us at a safe distance.

The aliens would have studied our ultimate weakness and realized that attacking Washington D.C., New York, Los Angeles, Denver or Chicago would be unnecessary. After all, they are after resources not in creating jaw-dropping visuals for movie viewers.

That ultimate weakness is of course white guilt. Knowing this fact, aliens invade the continent of Africa where opposition to their colonization for acquisition of resources would be... minimal at best. Instead of engaging the indigenous people of Africa's many nations, the aliens would use them as a human shield knowing that white guilt would keep Western military powers from ever engaging these extraterrestrials with any military force.

Mining the continent for resources, something the indigenous people of that continent failed to do for thousands upon thousands of years, the aliens would find almost no resistance from the African people. Taking many Africans hostage and placing them in large cells around their mining operations would ensure that Western interference for the excavation of minerals would go unimpeded.

No need to attack the United States, the European Union nations or Russia. Invading Africa would give the aliens cover from military intervention by the world's top military powers. Disingenuous White Liberals (DWLs) in America would never, ever allow such a thing to transpire, even if inaction meant the destruction of their civilization.

You can only imagine the howls of protest from actors in Hollywood and musical groups in Europe at the slightest pretense of engaging the aliens.

Though the resources in Africa are finite (and many with unknown applications to us at this stage of our technological evolution, but known to aliens) we will not engage because of the human shield surrounding them as they work.

Like I said, I've never understood why alien invasion films also leave out The Dark Continent. Thus the need for Human Shield.

What do you think? As stated, this is an attempt at mass collaboration on a revolutionary alien invasion idea.

Help us come up with ideas for this story.