STOCKING up on loo roll is recommended in the event of contact with aliens – if one scenario of how humans would act is anything to go by.
It comes in a new programme looking at contact with extra-terrestrial beings and how we’ll react in what would be be the most significant event on human history.
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The BBC’s First Contact: An Alien Encounter looks at how we would react when we finally pick up a message from another lifeform.
Experts believe we need only to look at what happened when we went into lockdown for clues.
As soon as the first news filters out humans do what they do best – take to social media to devise hilarious memes.
But over the course of the next 12 days the world goes into meltdown as possibility of contact with a terrifying alien lifeform becomes a possibility.
Scenes show people taking to the streets and beginning to strip supermarket shelves bare as panic begins to set in.
According to Dr Beth Singler, we can expect similar behaviour to the early days of the pandemic when desperate shoppers stocked up on loo paper and pasta.
“With such an unclear signal without an obvious intent and message, I think there would be a lot of uncertainty – and uncertainty breeds anxiety,” said the Cambridge University anthropologist.
“We do see disturbance in people’s day to day routines when big events happen.
“We saw this with the global pandemic when people rushed out because they foresaw circumstances in which supplies would be limited.
“I think you will see an increase in the feeling that there has to be something I can do so what can I do to prepare and I will go out and I will buy tinned food, I will buy toilet paper, I will stock up on water just in case.
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“And that’s a way of reassuring yourself that you still have control over the situation.”
After the first garbled message is picked up, the drama begins to unfold on day six when a 200km long object travelling a three million kilometres an hour is spotted by a scientist at an observatory.
The news filters out and the American military, which looks out for UFOs, admits to being “clueless” before confirming it’s an “unidentified aerial phenomenon”.
Riots then begin to break out as Americans begin to arm themselves with gun sales doubling across the country amid fear of impending invasion.
Others begin to buy telescopes and begin looking out to the sky in a bid to catch sight of the object.
Meanwhile, people on earth begin to work out what their message would be to aliens.
Professor Michael Garrett, director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, said it might be wise to ” gather as much information together before we transmit” a message back.
“We have got this thing in our head that is limited by the physical scale of it but there might be other things out there that have a capacity that is completely beyond what we can even imagine.
“It’s a bit like ants trying to communicate with humans.”
Others though are more clear about what we should send back.
“You heard the sound they sent us? I would send them an equally annoying message back,” says one man.
“First Contact: An Alien Encounter” airs on November 2 on BBC Two at 9pm.
