"War of the Worlds (2005): Use of Downed Tripods?" Topic

After the "Martians" died off, what do you think humans would have done with the downed tripods?

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CC

Movie props.

Probably every one they could load onto a truck or train would be shipped off to research labs, as soon as feasible.

The last few minutes, with the squad hunting the tripod through the city – wouldn't mind seeing a movie of that sort of thing.

> The last few minutes, with the squad hunting the tripod through the city – wouldn't mind seeing a movie of that sort of thing.

Wasn't there a series in "Heavy Metal" magazine (back in the 80's maybe), about a group of humans surviving and fighting against large robots in an urban environment.

Research.

I saw an interestng game once, based on the real story. It is set in 1920. The humans have studied the the various devices and made their own versions. The Martians learning from some who returned to treat the diseases, return. Now the sides are more equal.

Now THAT would have been a nice twist. Instead of using the technology to fight one another, use it in the eventuality of a return.

CC

I would alsway imagine these becoming monuments in town squares mounted on plinths with details of who knocked it out, etc

Apart from research and museums……some would no doubt end up at theme parks like Disneyland in Florida and Alton Towers in England.
And one in Vegas!

Shelf stacker at the worlds biggest Wallmart

One thing that always sorta 'bothered' me about the aliens 'dying off' from human bacteria…etc…is why it took so flipping 'long'…because their 'red weed' seemed to grow really fast with 'human chum' for fertilizer…and then 'suddenly'…PLOP! They all die, and their 'lettuce' too?

You'd have thought if they were THAT advanced…they would have had better 'quarantine' proceedures/screening…and conversely…IF they were truly 'alien'…how could OUR diseases have affected them or why didn't their 'common cold' wipe US out instead????

I mean…unless they were 'so advanced' they had NO viruses, germs or other 'lower life forms'…except for their 'weed'/salad?…(that required human beings to be reduced to either 'dust in the wind' or 'put thru a blender' to make 'grow'???)…how were they living all this time?

Unless they were ORIGINALLY from EARTH to begin with and off on a 'long vacation'? How would they know WHEN to return or that humanity would evolve to a point where they'd make 'useful fertilizer'…or that there would be 'enough' of us? AND what happens when they 'run out of people'??? They went thru a BILLION before they died out…(out of about 6 billion approximately on earth???)…or whatever the estimate is? that's 1/6th of the population and I doubt they could maintain that sort of 'chumming' with a 'slave population'/picking off 'stragglers' and survivalists…etc??

I know, it's only a 'movie'…and the aliens were very 'cool' as were their tripods…etc. But they seemed more 'childish' than even the STRANGELY similar aliens from ID4, (who also had this thing about WIPING out MOST of Humanity…for what reason, parking space????)

I mean…WHY were they invading us to begin with??? Those beam weapons they used on DC and LA etc…were like super FUSION bombs…that just kept spreading out….

Other than making earth look like the moon, think of all the resources they were 'WASTING'????

As for the tripods…of course, earth would 'fight' over who gets the 'most' of them….(not that there weren't enough laying all over the place…and the stink from the dying aliens wasn't bad enough…)…but if we didn't learn from their tech to build our 'own'…including improvements and counter-measures, etc…what if there was a SECOND wave???

Just like ID4??? If they tried ONCE and got their 'bunns kicked'…I'd think they'd either A: VAPORIZE the planet to 'send a message' to others who might 'resist'..

B. We got 'lucky' and that WAS the whole 'race' we took out so now we've committed interstellar GENOCIDE…which might get us NOTICED by 'bigger, badder dudes' or marked 'off limits' by the galactic community at large/quaranteened??

C. We were a 'beachhead' between one set of combatants and another…just a 'straticic point' on a starchart…and since race A didn't 'take the beach'…now race B will try to take the same 'hill'…learning from the mistakes of A????

If they decide to send in 'advisors' and let us help…it could be an Interplanetary 'Nam'…or…maybe they'll decide we're good 'allies' and 'adopt' us….and hope we won't kick THEIR 'bunns' too???

It takes a LOT of energy/technology to travel from star to star at anything approaching a reasonable travel time (in human terms)…and for ships as BIG as the ones from ID4 or whatever the 'aliens' in WOTW (2005) used…(ships were 'implied' I guess????)… you should have enough energy/tech to 'terraform' your own solar system/create new worlds/gather resources without 'flitting from star to star'???

Our own solar system…IF we had the tech, like cheap fusion power for spacecraft, power and matter furnaces…would supply humans for BILLIONS of years…

But then again…it's only a 'movie'…and I think the tripods would make great Christmas Ornaments…oh, that's right…they wiped out DC, New York, La…no trees left to hang them on…

*sigh*

Sgt DWW

We have kept one in my town because they landed here.
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Hi

?????????Dww

War of the Worlds ain't history, it is SF written within the scientific knowledge of the writer some 100 years ago.

If you want rationales. Well, the martians were suffering from global climate change. They had artifically maintained their warmth and water through extensive production of CO2 and Methane, but ran out of resources. Without a good substitute, they came to warm green earth!

As for why it took the microbes so long, but the red weed was so fast is pretty simple, basic biology. The red weed only needed dirt and sunlight and water. Teh microbes weren't really microbes, they evolve too slowly. Rather, our nasty viruses, especially the not yet extent N1 flu, hadn't broken out of its limited envrionment to kill the 25million people it would later kill in 1918. By coincidence, however, the martians came in contact with a sub variant of N1 that, by chance had evolved to thrive in martians. It is not unlikely that any alien would find some virus that by chance works for them. This is how "bird flu" periodically "jumps" to pigs or Humans!

So, it took a while for the N1 to come in contact. Probably needed an incubation period of a couple weeks or so, which means that the first martian would not have shown symptions before he had exposed his best friends. And his best friends explosed their friends and so on. Being an elevated race who had millennia before expunged all viruses and bacterian that could hurt them from Mars, the technology to deal with "flu" was long forgotten.

See., it all works!

Grin
R

The latest in high tech high rise living. With property prices around here, it makes sense…………

E-bay

Use 'em in new episodes of Celebrity Deathmatch or something.

Beachside Luxury Condos

"And one in Vegas!"

The one in Vegas would go on to become cool again, make a comeback, tour, then die on the toilet.

But not before it ate David Copperfield. Hoorah!

Pat

I'm still tempted to pick up some of the 'human tripods' from Eureka and do a War of the Worlds II: The Earthlings strike back! game.

-Will

I'm still tempted to pick up some of the 'human tripods' from Eureka and do a War of the Worlds II: The Earthlings strike back! game.

-Will

Hehehe Evil Minds think alike, doing a tens years on
(after the 1880s first attack) game planned for the
winter.

Don

Well, you could use them to repel Cthulhu:

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Not exactly Lovecraft, no. :)

NYAAARRLA!

I can just see Scientist types like these standing around thinking of how to salvage the tripods:

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CC

I believe in ID4 they made it clear that was the entire race, they move from planet to planet like locusts. But they could probably find more resources out on the other planets than on Earth, but then why not take Earth as well or I must possess all or I possess nothing.

WotW was back when it was thought life could exist on Mars, and with what we know now it was never made clear in the 2005 version where the Martians really came from. However for a second invasion I think they'd be better equipped to deal with any viruses next time, and might even prepare some new ones of their own.

"One thing that always sorta 'bothered' me about the aliens 'dying off' from human bacteria…etc…is why it took so flipping 'long'…"

Different diseases have different pathways of infection, different growth rates, different tactics in infecting the host, different efficacy of exotoxin production, etc., etc.

"You'd have thought if they were THAT advanced…they would have had better 'quarantine' procedures/screening…and conversely…….."

Not if they didn't have indigenous disease, which is what Wells said.

"IF they were truly 'alien'…how could OUR diseases have affected them……"

They couldn't. But I can cut Wells some slack given the information available. Some diseases have crossed the species barrier (such as AIDS), but that is within closely related species that co-developed on Earth. But aliens?

"However for a second invasion I think they'd be better equipped to deal with any viruses next time, and might even prepare some new ones of their own."

How would the Martians, back home, have learned that their colleagues died of diseases? They arrived by cannon shell. How did they communicate back to Mars? If your planet is devoid of microorganisms, why would you expect them to exist on Earth, and thereby affect your troops sent there?

Oh dear, I need a coffee.

Ralph

I had always thought the Martians were in contact with the home world. They did use the first landing sight as a guide in for more, which would require some kind of communications. And if they have communications they could report problems on the ground and the high command can come to some idea of what's wrong. Them getting microorganisms of their own would be the major problem, at the most they probably could alter their own DNA to create some. But that wouldn't help them much really.

Maybe with set back like this if a Martian force decided to attack again they'd just nuke the planet from orbit, I've heard it's the only way to be sure.

Doing a version of the story from the martian point of view only NOT might be neat.

Imagine political criminals being teleported to warmachines built by nano-constructer probes on a known one way suicide mission motivated by the possibility of protecting their families from retailation by the state. Heck the target species is awful looking, ignorant, primitive, and slimy and probably destroying themselves anyway.

The exalted council says they'll keep a couple million of them around as a client species anyway once we take the surface and quell resistance. It's not a total genocide, just enough to make the terraforming possible without interuption. Hell the traget species's offspring will thank us for uplifting them from their sad barely industrial condition.

So what's the big deal? Go fight some snails who can't even fight back for a month and the exalted council might not hang mom and dad for your sedition. Yeah you'll be dead in a month from delerium, toxic shock, or pulmiary failure but it's either that or stay in this brain washing prison camp hooked on citizen's mental-health formula 68-2 and beat to a pulp with work until they work up the pique to have me shot.

I say go for it.

Has anyone else scratch built their own tripod. I'm not
happy with any on the market. So I am thinking of doing so.

Kevin

Use 'em to fight with "Carzilla" at the Truck and Tractor Pulls.

That sounds like a potential pulp/VSF campiagn or game/book? title, 'Tentacles and Tripods: The Fight for Total supremecy in the Solar System!'

I think someone wrote a 'sequel' where Edison? and humanity went BACK to Mars to 'kick some cephalapod…explusion orifice?' Who's to say humans wouldn't have had similar 'problems' from MARTIAN environment/etc as Martians did here? Lots of interesting possibilities….or like the TV series 'V'…after the 'red dust' was distributed driving the 'VISITORS' off earth, they managed to come back to 'bands/temperature-areas' where red dust/antigen? didn't affect them???

Maybe Martians and humans would co-habitate/fight in 'bands' on each other's worlds where they could 'survive' best?…the lesser 'bacteria' areas of Polar regions on Earth and Humans could survive in equitatial? regions on mars in constant 'hot/cold/guriella? warfare?'…

why not? just enough 'fuzzy science' for 'pulp'??

*slish…slish*…now throw in a little 'MYTHOS' as part of it….and 'voila!'

Sgt DWW

"I would alsway imagine these becoming monuments in town squares mounted on plinths with details of who knocked it out, etc"

Yes, until little timmy goes and pushed the pretty big red "autonomous hunterkiller mode" button.

Silly humans!

link

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CC

Here's another image:

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CC

Giant ice cream cups !

Tripod attack caught on tape here:

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CC

I guess this qualifies as a tripod now:

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Dan

The WotW martians can't be any dumber than the ones from the movie Signs: "Let's go to a planet mostly made up of water (which kills us) and mess with a lifeform that is mostly water (which kills us)…."

LOL

Dan

If I remember right didn't they imply early in the move (2005) that the machines/tripods were already here and that it was only the troops so to speak they transported directly to the tripods. Which always bothered me why didn't they just kick our backside when we were still carrying clubs.

As to the subjuect:
The last couple of minutes that ended, up on the edit floor: Men in Black would all of a sudden start pulling up in vans with black tinted windows followed by flat bed trucks, exiting the vans and start motioning to the crowd and saying "Ok folks let just move along nothing to see here." "You Sir! Put that camera down! Men secure that man and take the camera!" " Ok folks it all over lets move on now, go on about your business, nothing to see here."

Doug

"Which always bothered me why didn't they just kick our backside when we were still carrying clubs."

And the other side of the equation. Why would they want to use machines that have been rotting in the ground all that time? Why would they assume they still worked? Or hadn't been discovered and moved/damaged/studied? Would they even still know how to use them? My kid, who is 12, recently asked me what a rotary phone was and how do you use it. That is something that is only, what, 15 years obsolete.

DWW, I too have thought that outside of a Victorian Era tale, that most of HG Wells' work was pretty naive and would not stand up to more modern scrutiny.

I was tremendously unhappy with Spielberg's version of the movie and the theme. Any Alien capable of traveling across the stars after having planted ship underground (in places where they would probably have long ago been discovered by seismic surveys) would be well aware of the Theory of Evolution, which would let them know that there could be both macroscopic as well as microscopic life evolved that could make them very sick.

You'd think they'd send in surveyors first to check out the wildlife and gather specimens before trying to use us as fertilizer…

All other points taken above amount to a poorly exercised use of Morgan Freeman's voice.

The whole thing is just a summary of Victorian Fears of the unknown. It does not stand up beyond that…

And the other side of the equation. Why would they want to use machines that have been rotting in the ground all that time? Why would they assume they still worked? Or hadn't been discovered and moved/damaged/studied? Would they even still know how to use them?

That's what bothered me about the whole thing. Would it have been better to use them then, then to take the chance that we would have found them or that over time they would have just rusted away, or after so much time no one would know how to use them.

Doug

War Monkey raises questions I too have pondered.

With all of the Seismic Surveying that has gone on around the globe, looking for oil, doing archeological surveys, geologic surveys studying the upper crust (where I assume the walkers were stored, otherwise, how the HELL did they get out of the ground so fast), and so forth would have revealed them pretty quickly.

I've seen seismic studies done in Central America for both mining and archeological surveys before mining that show up structures like they were drawn in by hand… You see a bunch of wavy lines indicating the layers of the earth, then suddenly a BUNCH of perfectly straight lines of earthworks and architecture of a mine shaft or Mayan Building complex. I imagine that a high tech metal structure like a walker would show up like it was on a Polaroid photo.

Something like that would have been dug up and taken apart in no time by various scientific and military labs around the world (probably mostly in the USA, or China depending upon where it was found).

I don't think they would have rusted away, as they were probably not made of materials prone to oxidation. Advanced composites are very resistant to decay and impervious to rust. But, there may have been bit or data degredation due to cosmic rays that could have rendered their software and hardware inoperable, especially if it had a lot of nanotech that didn't have a large power supply to keep up maintenance of the walkers.

Their higher tech would give them greater reliability over the large time frames discussed (over 20,000 years at the very least, possibly hundreds of thousands or millions of years)…

You gotta wonder though, how the hell would they know that food for their red weeds would have evolved in that time, if it was hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago, and why didn't they just start harvesting the planet then. There was ample life that was similar to modern humans, and in much higher biodensity (megafauna were all over the place and represent a much larger mass that all of modern humanity)… Why did they go to the trouble to bury all of those machines, go away for so long, and then come back later to simply destroy a massive infrastructure (which they could have used) all to just grow some weeds?

Ok the only thing that could make scene out of the whole thing is that these were the drug gang Martians and that they were waiting for the weeds to become legal on their home world, and that they enacted their plan to make a quick buck so to speak, because the earth had the right growing environment, thus the lacking of a scouting party, precautions and preparedness on their part. Now that would have a twist on everything and would account why they didn't need anything from us but just space to grow the weeds.

Doug