A Playbook for Disclosure ( Addressing Fear )

Fear is not necessarily the concept of "aliens". Fear is the unknown. The uncertainty of what this means for us.

Therefore the only viable pathway to disclosure needs to address this uncertainty right out the gate. Aliens can then be an after thought.

The number one thing you have to address for people off the bat is this.

"How can I feel safe?"

No one can guarantee your safety, even without aliens, but people need to have a certain minimum threshold of probability that they will be safe in order to cope and function. Or at least tell them what measures they can take to improve their level of safety.

The problem with Aliens is it completely eliminates our mental "framework" of safety.

Personal:

Can they fly over my house?

Can they bypass security?

If discovered , can I fend them off? Can the police?

National:

Can they bypass military security?

Can they violate airspace?

Do they have any fear whatsoever of retaliation?

Do we have anyway to at least slow an advance?

Do we have any social/political/other strategic negotiation mechanism to disincentivize an attack?

And even if the answer to all of those is that there is nothing we can do, we can at least then try to establish a motivational framework for security.

"Will they fly over my house?" Why would they? Can I disincentivize that?

"Will they bypass military enforced boundaries? Can we disincentivize that?"

If we can state how we know that they will not attack or invade, then we can lean on that until we can reach a point where we would be capable to check such a threat if it did exist.

Also what are the new laws of physics? Is there any kind of attack that we are vulnerable to now that we didn't know we were vulnerable to before? Again anyway to check or mitigate that?

I'm not even sure that you need to tell the people that they are even remotely as safe as they thought they were.

I think all you have to do is let people know all they can do to ensure they are as safe as they can possibly be. I think most people will accept risk as long as they know they have done all they can in the now, and that they are doing all they can to do more in the future.

I think the opening to any kind of disclosure needs to be something like: ...

Okay, I tried to write some kind of example speech here that just lays everything out but then informs people that there is a plan, there is support, nothing is changing, business as usual..etc, . "Here's what you need to know to ensure you and your loved ones are safe and secure".

We may have to start slower. I think we are going to have to fake a polite first contact event or something like that. Slow cook it, but in a more direct way.

"Our scientists have discovered something that is going to take us decades to get to the bottom of. We believe we've received communication from another world. We want you to know that this communication was not hostile. Their world is very far away and we don't expect this to have any kind of significant impact on our society in the near future. More to come over the next few months and years".

Vague, relative, arbitrary descriptions, no specifics, not entirely untrue ( e.g. just because their world is far away doesn't mean they are, but that's not clarified).

Let that sink into society for a while.

Then "Over the last 100 years, we have occasionally met with them" . Oh did we not mention they were already here? Our bad. Yes they have stopped by, but honestly it's not anything new.

Let that sink in for while.

"Over the last 100 years, we've actually managed to recover some of our tech, and we've been informed they have a few permanent or semi-permanent bases in our oceans. They may have just arrived in the relatively recent past, or it's possible they've been here as long as we have, if not longer"

Let that sink in for while.

Also in the mean time, we make sure and brag about our new anti grav tech, and new and improved and very capable defense capabilities. Beef up the ole confidence a bit.

"There have been, on occasion, miscommunications or encounters with our neighbors that did not go well. Again we are stressing that they have no direct hostile intent toward , but there have been miscommunications. We have since resolved these issues".

Let that sink in

At that point we are pretty well disclosed I'd say. But now we can let the final ball drop.

"Here's what they look like. It's a bit disconcerting" .

I'm curious if any one else can put a "rip the bandaid off" day one, full disclosure speech. I tried writing one but I couldn't put my self in the shoes of someone who has no prior exposure and not imagine a degree of panic.

I think we need to start with safe, distant, soft, far removed "we received first radio contact".