The ideas of extraterrestrial life and an alien invasion of the planet earth have been the subject of many science fiction novels and movies for years. From H.G. Wells’ popular War of the Worlds novel, to the 1938 radio skit of the same name which left many believing that an actual martian invasion was taking place. But now it appears as though the concept of an alien invasion is even being used in government and military procedures. The Israel Defense Forces are among those using the concept, with a recent training exercise centered around the idea of unwanted alien spacecraft invading earth.
The training exercise was constructed for the Israeli Air Force’s programming unit but, according to the commander of the operation, the “alien invasion” part was nothing more than a framing story. “The goal was to make them understand the importance developing [cyber] defense. We adapted the exercise to Generation Y, which loves challenges. So we prepared the framing story of an alien invasion,” he told the Jersusalem Post.
For the exercise, a system was constructed which the participating soldiers had to hack. They were instructed to find out all of the information the possibly could about the fake alien spacecraft in order to build up a strong cyber defense system.
The IDF may just be using an alien invasion as a fun back-story for a more serious training exercise but there are some people who take the idea much more seriously. In fact, it was recently reported that the island of Hawaii has its own UFO landing pad, which natives claim is to promote peaceful relations with extraterrestrials.
