The Science Behind Planetary Invasions

Dear Spacetravellers,

Sci-fi loves the dramatic version of invasion: ships appear, lasers fire, cities explode, heroes run.

But if you strip away the movie magic and ask a doctor’s favourite question — “OK… but biologically and logistically, what would really happen?” — planetary war looks very different.

And honestly?

Much quieter.Much slower.Much more terrifying.

Because real invasions aren’t about explosions.

They’re about physics and supply chains.

First: forget landing troops immediately.

If you control orbit, you control the planet.

Anything in orbit moves at roughly 28,000 km/h. At those speeds, even a metal rod becomes a kinetic bomb. You don’t need futuristic lasers — just gravity and velocity.

Drop a tungsten projectile from orbit and you get the energy of a small nuclear weapon… without radiation.

This means the first phase wouldn’t be soldiers.

It would be orbital denial.

Satellites destroyed.GPS gone.Internet gone.Weather forecasting gone.

Within hours, modern civilisation starts to wobble.

Within days, it panics.

Second: attackers wouldn’t target cities first.

They’d target boring things.

Power plants.Ports.Fuel depots.Bridges.Hospitals.

Not because they’re dramatic — but because they’re fragile.

As a doctor, I see this clearly: hospitals run on just-in-time deliveries. Oxygen, insulin, antibiotics, dialysis supplies. Most places have only days of stock.

No transport?

Patients don’t “fight heroically.”

They quietly deteriorate.

Civilisation doesn’t explode.

It runs out of medication.

Third: the invaders have their own problem.

Space is brutally expensive.

Every soldier, every meal, every bullet must be launched against gravity.

So a full ground occupation makes little sense.

Much cheaper strategy?

Blockade.

Sit in orbit.Control trade.Wait.

Planets starve faster than they surrender.

It’s less “Independence Day” and more “siege warfare… scaled to a world.”

So what would humans actually do?

We’d go underground.

Literally.

Subways.Basements.Tunnels.Distributed micro-grids.Local food production.

Not heroic charges — but community survival.

History shows this clearly: resilience isn’t about weapons.

It’s about neighbours sharing water and insulin.

And that’s why stories like Planet Falrus resonate with me.

Because the real drama of invasion isn’t laser fire.

It’s ordinary people asking:

How do we protect each otherwhen the systems collapse?

How do we stay humanwhen the sky is hostile?

That’s where the true science — and the true courage — lives.

Until next transmission,stay curiousand keep looking up ✨

For more on Planet Falrus and african folktales, do check out Storyplanet Youtube

All my love,

Joanna