The government has to plan for every contingency: disease, famine, political instability, drought, weather, aliens, the plot of Armageddon coming true and protecting super-evolved man from his primitive cousins. There are actual plans for every one of those scenarios. There are entire real government programs devoted solely to thinking up ways to counter weather-themed supervillains and other outlandish threats normally relegated to the realm of science fiction. Like these:

5 Talking to -- or Covering Up -- Extraterrestrials

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Are we alone? If not, what will happen when we finally meet creatures from another planet? Will they be peaceful? Hostile? Will we be able to mate with them, Captain-Kirk style? If not, why not?



Seriously. Why not? One reason.

These are questions movies and television shows have been asking for decades. And, somewhat inexplicably, the government has been as well. It's not so far-fetched: After all, while the chance of finding life out there other than ourselves is infinitesimal, we have been trying it for years. We've been sending radio waves into space with SETI, Voyager 1 has reached the edge of our solar system and is still moving out into deep space, and we pretty much call all alien life forms pussies in countless movies that we then beam out in every direction. It's practically inevitable that they're coming.



This film will be the blackface of the 24th century.

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So what is the government doing about it?

Way back in 1960, when Americans were first getting a boner for all things to do with space (hereby shortened to "the Space-Boner era"), Congress commissioned an official report on what sorts of things could happen once we launched ourselves out of Earth's atmosphere. This was called "Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs," or the Brookings Report (because PSIPSAHA is kind of a sucky acronym).