Just imagine, for a moment, that an alien race finds its way to earth. For the sake of this experiment, we'll say it's a few thousand years in the future, and for whatever reason (war, asteroid, global warming, global cooling, zombies) we're gone. Dead. There's nothing about humanity left. All that remains is a single video game box for Sid Meier's Civilization V. These aliens know our language, from intercepted dictionaries, but they know nothing about us. Nothing about our... civilization. They find this box, and they look at it, assuming that it's a representation of what a typical human civilization is.

They would have to think that humanity was nothing but chaos. We were flying in space while being flooded and fighting in wars. Weird pyramids made of stone and sand seem to be involved, and, for whatever reason, we're attacking each other with bows and catapults from point-blank. And, while all of this is taking place, there's a single factory. They don't know what it's making, but from what they know about us there's only one possibility: war. It's making war.

It's because of this that I ask Mr. Meier to add something on the box that prevents this misconception from becoming a problem of intergalactic proportions. Seriously, how can we expect the Aliens to resurrect our kingdom and cure the zombie disease that destroyed us if they think we're just going to act like fools and blow ourselves up again? Come on, man, think about it.