Well i got done reading enders game a few months ago and it just now occured to me that if this high intelegence race known as the buggers where so smart wouldnt they have been able to beat our simple minds no matter how much will power we have to survive. I mean any race or person for that matter should either study their enemy before attacking and find a weakness or at least make a better plan of attack because they must have known what we where like if we knew we existed. So instead of making some stupid little fling to defeat earth, is what they should have done is become friends with us and say that oh so popular line that earth would be happy to hear if we ever had outside world visitors "We come in peace" then when were weak with the feeling of friendship blinding us from their true plan zap,pow,bam the human race is destroyed and the buggers have a new colony. I mean if they can make a null gravity area they sure in hell can defeat a couple pistol guns being shot at them.
Posted by Beren One Hand (Member # 3403) on :
Hi Ender 182, welcome to the forum.
It has been a long time since I read the Ender series, but I'm under the impression that Buggers don't know how to lie. Because the queen communicates philotically with the hive, the buggers have no concept of deception.
Don't forget, although the buggers were more technologically advanced than we are, we did have the little doctor. And of course, we had Ender.
Posted by ender_182 (Member # 6156) on :
thanx for the reply...but even though they might not have been capable of lieing they still could have caused a world war among us just by not attacking earth because before the invasions started world war was already brewing down here on earth so if we knew that the buggers existed and had no potential harm then there would be a world war among the nations as to who gets the buggers on their side or some would want to destroy the race and then some wouldnt (alot like our civil war with the slaves). because as of right now the warsaw pac was failing anyways so the world already was in the process of deafeting themselves and the buggers could have acted like a catalyst just by being there and knowing a race of a different species exists.
Posted by MidnightBlue (Member # 6146) on :
At first they didn't realize that we were intelligent though. It's like you finding a bunch of butterflies, and you go to shoo them away because you need the flowers they're on to make a bouquet. All of a sudden instead of flying away the butterflies start coming after you and pelting you with stuff. It wasn't until we started fighting back (or maybe when we found them on Eros) that they realized that we were intelligent. And even then they didn't know that we are individually intelligent, they assumed we are like them, with a queen and a bunch of drones. Plus, how could they say they come in peace when not only do they not have a language, they don't even understand the concept of a language? They don't need words to communicate.
Edit: And welcome to Hatrack ender_182!
[ January 28, 2004, 12:30 PM: Message edited by: MidnightBlue ]
Posted by Julian Delphiki Jr. (Member # 5882) on :
The Buggers wer never out to desrtoy us. They came to one of our colonys -- or something like that, I cannot remember -- and destroyrd it to let, what they thought would be our hive queen, know that they were there. Then we got all agressive with them.
However, you raise a good point with the why-did-they-not-study-us stance. If you read in the later boods, you will find out the answer to that question.
-W-
[ January 28, 2004, 12:57 PM: Message edited by: Julian Delphiki Jr. ]
Posted by ender_182 (Member # 6156) on :
haha i enjoyed your analogy of the butterfly thing but theres one flaw we know about butterflies you can find out whatever you want about them if you want and we know there harmless. It's like we dont go up to a pack of lions who just snatched a kill and try and take it because we know what will happen. We study things before we do. But that is a good point about different minds and them only having one but as jr. said ill learn about it in the later books why they werent anticipating our counterattack.
Posted by blacwolve (Member # 2972) on :
Also the buggers didn't want to kill us once they realized we were intelligent, they couldn't concieve of a monstrosity as great as killing a hive queen until we showed it to them by doing it. If they had realized we were individually intellignet they would never have attacked at all. Their goal wasn't to be brutal aggressors, just peaceful colonizers.
Posted by Camber (Member # 6154) on :
Do we really know that? The Hive Queen promotes this impression, but such things are easier to say after the Xenocide, when you don't have power and you need your neighbors to be complacent while you build your strength. To me it appears that the formics are neither bloodthirsty nor naive. Rather, they seem to follow strategy that forgives ignorant mistakes while defending itself as much as possible from aggressors. Until Mazer Rackam killed a queen, they did not realize we were capable of doing such an act. Their response seems to have been to let us alone. There were no fleets heading toward us when the events of Ender's Game began, so perhaps we could assume that they had decided upon a policy of non-engagement. But then our fleets showed up at their worlds, and they discovered that we were intent on destroying their capacity to return to our world. Given their superior numbers and technology (except for Dr.Device), it would seem likely to me that they would not have allowed us to dominate their territory if they had regained the upper hand in the war. Knowing that we are willing to kill queens, that we can hunt them at home, and that we are interested in completely annihilating their military strength, if not also their civilian populations, I expect that they would find it necessary to do the same to us. If the final battle had failed: if we had attempted to destroy the home world and lost, I am certain that their counterattack would have been overwhelming. We showed them very clearly in that war our rules of engagement. It would be naive of them not to not adjust theirs accordingly.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
With the first invasion by the buggers, they didn't even send a queen, so no doubt they more or less assumed some of the local fauna was feisty,
With the second invasion, they brought a larger force, with a queen, to both colonize and contain what they though were simply some advanced animals, but not truly intelligent, since intelligent to them was the hive mind. They had no concept of separate unattached intelligences, so they had a hard time recognizing it as intelligence.
After realizing their mistake, after the defeat of the second invasion, they knew enough about us that they respected us and knew they would never create a third invasion. Of course, we didn't know that. So we killed them (almost).
I think it is a fairly reasonable progression.
-Bok
Posted by SouljaKlipp (Member # 6092) on :
The first contact made with the tug on Eros came from a party sent out for exploration. They did not come with the intent to kill off anything, merely to "discover" new possible colony worlds. The Second "invasion" was basically the same colony ships we sent out after the war. We knew there would be no resistance with ours, as we had wiped out the buggers already. Once they realized we were intelligent, they decided to leave us be, but as Graff and Ender discussed, if you can't talk to someone you can't know if they're trying to kill you. I know it's been brought up before, but I can't imagine why they would have moved all of their queens to one planet. True, they had a larger force to defend with, but with all their eggs in one basket... BOOM klipp
Posted by TheClone (Member # 6141) on :
The buggers/formics don't understand humans. Read the next Ender books and it really sheds some light on it. We're just too complicated and unpredictable. Plus, if I recall my history correctly, Pearl Harbor was as devastating as it was because we had all ships bunched together. Mistakes are made when you don't understand your enemy.
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