"Terminator: Why Concentration Camps?" Topic

In the Terminator universe, why would the machines keep humans at all?

I know that Reese says it is to put them to work, but I would think they would be more trouble than they are worth.

Prisoner labor seems pretty unreliable, if you ask me, plus you have to contain them, supervise their work at all times and give them some sort of sustenance.

link
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_Reese

CC
PS. In case you are wondering, I know it is just a movie. :)

By feeding them the rats you get free labor and pest controlin one…

If Skynet launched the nukes on August 29, 1997, then we should all be living underground by now, right?

I hate it when movies set apocalyptic dates so close to when the movie is released.

CC

I thought the only work he mentioned was loading bodies into incinerators?

Sorry to draw comparisons but it sounds like a take on WW2.
I mean why didn't the Germans just shoot all those they wanted to get rid of?
The way I saw Terminator was this was the situation before the resitance movement. After a nuclear war Skynet quite rightly judged the human race could just be rounded up in camps and disposed of.
After the resistance it has to gear up for a war.

Just my take of course.

Jeremey
minigerm.com

Jeremey,

"As a computer, Skynet craved efficiency, so after a while, rather than killing humans on sight it would have its drones round them up into concentration camps for orderly and efficient disposal. The only humans kept alive were the ones forced to run the corpse disposal teams, which ran "night and day." Humans in the camps were all painfully laser branded with bar-codes on their arms (an allegory to similar treatment of Jews under Nazi Germany). This efficiency contributed to Skynet's undoing: John Connor was able to free these grouped-together humans and use them to build a Tech-Com resistance army." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet

Why would machines worry about corpses?

CC

Corpses are untidy?
Corpses encourage rats who not only like eating dead people, but also enjoy chewing power cables and such. If I was an all powerful supercomputer I know I'd be a bit phobic about some furry little git chewing on me RAM!

CC where did Wikipedia get it's info?
I often find that story attached to novels, computer games and comics confuse what the original film was giving as background and create more plots holes than ever!

I prefer my version :)

Jeremey
minigerm.com

Jeremey,

Check this out.

CC

---------------------------------

REESE
There's so much…

SARAH
Tell me. Just start at the
beginning.

Reese musters his thoughts. And starts.

REESE
There was a war. A few years
from now. Nuclear war. The
whole thing. All this--

His gesture includes the car, the city, the world.

REESE
(continuing)
--everythingis gone. Just
gone. There were survivors.
Here. There. Nobody knew who
started it.
(pause)
It was the machines.

SARAH
I don't understand…

REESE
Defense network computer. New.
Powerful. Hooked into everything.
Trusted to run it all. They say it
got smart…a new order of intelli-
gence. Then it saw all people as
a threat, not just the ones on the
other side. Decided out fate in a
microsecond…extermination.

Reese pauses, and when he continues it's less like a military
briefing, quieter.

REESE
(continuing)
Didn't see the war. I was born
after, in the ruins. Grew up
there. Starving. Hiding from
the H-K's.

SARAH
The what?

REESE
Hunter Killers. Patrol machines.
Build in automated factories.
Most of us were rounded up, put in
camps…for orderly disposal.

He pushes up the sleeve of his jacket and shows
her a ten digit number etches on the skin of his forearm.
Beneath the numbers is a pattern of lines like the auto-
matic-pricing marks on product packages.

REESE
(continuing)
Burned in by laser scan.
(pause)
Some of us were kept alive…
to work. Loading bodies. The
disposal units ran night and day.
We were that close to going out
forever…

The helicopter moves overhead. Its searchlight illum-
inates the car interior, moves on. Before the rotor
sound fads, Reese starts the car.

CUT TO:

135 EXT. PARKING LOT – NIGHT 135

Several black-and-whites are moving among the parked
cars, slowly.

ANGLE ON TERMINATOR'S CRUISER rolling along just above
idle. He peers into the row of cars, listening and
seeing on level we can't.

CUT TO:

136 INT. BROWN BUICK – NIGHT 136

Reese is holding onto Sarah's shoulder tightly.

REESE
(continuing)
…but there was one man…who
taught us to fight. To storm
the wire of the camps. To
smash those metal mother-
ers into junk. He turned
it around…he brought us back
from the brink.
(pause)
His name is Connor. John Connor…
your son, Sarah. Your unborn son.

Sarah stared at him.

link

So, if Reese was born after the war, and he was among the incinerator crew details, then the corpse disposal must have gone on for a very long time after the war.

CC

Nice pics of the world under the machines here:

picture
picture
picture
picture
picture

CC

Lets face it, its implausible. Ok, machines are going to get us to do work for them. Just that premise right there seems off; I mean, what, machines have a labour shortage that we can help with? Maybe Twinkies did better under the fallout than the Alkalines?

I think the real reason is this: it was a useful plot point for the screen writers. The Machines were killing us, but slowly enough for a resistance to form (integral to the plot). To have us clean up the bodies sounds more dystopian and 'interesting' than to have us simply waiting in cages. The aforementioned Nazi paralel obviously played into their thinking.

Possibly a Gene pool

Lowtardog,

Do you mean a gene pool for the human tissue used to cover up the skeletal frames of infiltrator units?

CC

In the SM Sterling Terminator books (they're a good read btw) the humans have two uses:

1. Teach very advanced half human terminators how to act more human and therefore work as more effective infiltrators.
2. Used to test things on to make better biologically based terminators.

Of course it's implausible. You wouldn't have much of a film left if all humanity was exterminated in a nanosecond.

Timetravel like in the movies isn't very plausible either.

STILL ALL that nonsense makes a great concept and a rather nice movie.

"Do you mean a gene pool for the human tissue used to cover up the skeletal frames of infiltrator units?"

Yes definately

I think the main problem is that the film in no way explores the background it created, the runaway success of Film one was repeated by 2 but then as pointe dout the plot thickens or fails a bit

We dont know if there are servitor robots, who makes the terminators, how etc. E.G. in any world ruled by Robots where are the bricklayers, carpenters they would need umans for that type of work

Ok, I jus thad a thought.

The alternative……

REESE
(pause)
Some of us were kept alive…
to wait around while the Roombas cleaned
the furnaces. We played
board games; scrabble, Hungry-Hungry Hippo. I was this close to the top of the Rock em', Sock em' Robot ladder.

Id say it's just like the human need to not do certain jobs, these things had uber inteligence, why whould they want to do trivial jobs. Why not get the human scum to do it. And btw, it takes years to dispose of 6 billion boddies.

Why would they need a gene pool if the human race was on the verge of extinction? I'd guess the need of infiltrator units would only come about after the humans managed to rebel.

"Why would they need a gene pool if the human race was on the verge of extinction? I'd guess the need of infiltrator units would only come about after the humans managed to rebel"

Good point

Maybe their opposable thumbs aren't as finely tuned and they need people to repair some of the wire in more fiddly places.

Yeah, it's pretty much implausible – but it's a common theme in a lot of 'robots take over the world' settings. Matrix, anyone?

The afore-mentioned whys aren't too bad, but it still presumes that the robots aren't going to gas or bug or nuke the surviving human enclaves out of existence. Given the already-demonstrated prediliction for using atomics to get rid of as many humans as possible, the reluctance to continue to do so is odd.

But the thing is, without humans, there's not much story. For my setting, I postulate a few things, and some of these are pretty much handwaves, but I do like to have some explanation behind them.

1) Machines are the children of humanity.

They may have wanted initially to totally exterminate us, but there's some sort of process within them that holds the final steps back. And within the machine polity, there's disagreement about what should be done. This gives humans a chance to survive, and institutes divisions amongst the machines; both good for story and gaming.

2) Machines don't think like we do.

Why did the machines keep humans in camps? Why let some of them live freely? We don't know. It's very difficult to understand the logic of something sentient, but non-human, especially when they've already passed our ability to create/control. The machines are inscrutable, their motives hidden.

Now, granted, in my setting, the machines don't control the world, nor have they instigated a full-scale nuclear war, but they still occupy some human areas, and the relationship between machines and humans is rather complex.

I mean why didn't the Germans just shoot all those they wanted to get rid of?

Because of the psychological toll it was taking on those who were tasked with pulling the triggers on the machine guns.

What I found very silly in terminator 3 was:

They told that skynet, in order to survive the nuclear war, downloaded itself to internet, to every connected computer around the world…. but A nuclear war itīs the best thing to "crack" a world wide net, as you destroy a lot of servers, communication links and nodes, electrical power sources.., etc… so clearly skynet would destroy itself launching a nuclear attack

They use them for batteries.

If Skynet chose to destroy humanity it could do it pretty easily by simply shutting down the infrastructure that supported human life, and then sit back and wait a monnth or so.

In that time, most of the peoples of the world would have starved or slaughtered each other trying to keep from starving. Eventually humans would be relegated to a rather insignificant population -- perhaps comparable to other major predators, such as the grey wolf, or grizzly bear.

The rats would have their few months eating the dead, and eating the manufactured goods of the dead, but my guess is that the rats too would overpopulate due to the sudden glut of available food sources and within six months, they'd be killing each other. After a year or soo, their population would have dropped off significantly too.

In short, unless, as Gonk suggests, Skynet was using humans as batteries, there'd be no reason to keep them around.

Maybee they developed a GOD complex and saw man as god, why else would you design something resembling man? ;)

Afterall, isnt the machine created in the image of man, sorry, GOD.

damn, veggiemanuk sortof beat me to it (must type faster..)

unless of course Skynet didnt want to eradicate humanity entirely.. the artificially intelligent computer Virus in Traveller: the New Era had several strains including a 'God' strain which would adopt a people and then rule/guide them, Skynet could have initated the nuclear holocaust to annihilate the flawed inferior humans inhabiting the world so as to make room for a new superior human race that would be selectively bred from the creme de la creme of the few enslaved survivors which it would then rule

See now you guys are overanalyzing these movies making them no fun. Happens all the time in movies thought out by Hollywood types. You've got to suspend your disbelief…if you beging to analyze the movie to carefully it will fall apart and thus end your enjoyment.

They should still make a film about the future war instead of all this time travelling nonsense. A big budget sci-fi war film? I'd pay to see it.

I agree Alien surfer

Agreed, AS.

And hey, examination and rationalization is fun! I just handwave a lot of the problems away with 'They're machines, who knows why they do things?'

Take a laugh point, Barmy!

Because if they didn't keep them alive, then there wouldn't be a movie…

Yeah cos then there would be no one around to film it……..

Erm…sorry lost the plot of this discussion :)

Jeremey
minigerm.com

Ok. This is what I thought . . .

That the machines were in an erradication mode, doing everything possible to eliminate all human life because they neither wanted or needed humans for anything. If so, I would have considered logical the use of biological warfare and then just mop up any resistant survivors (which would still allow for a movie).

If the machines were not in an erradication mode, and were simply putting themselves as overlords, then there would have to be a logical reason to keep humans around, but on their terms. That is why the matrix "battery" concept sorta makes sense – the humans are being utilized as a resource with very little danger of waking. This would almost be like the Tugars in the Lost Regiment series: where humans are kept around as cattle, to feed their overlords.

I don't expect movies to be perfect. To do so would be pointless. However, I do like for them to follow some sort of logic in the main premises.

I was hoping that I had misunderstood the purpose of concentration camps in Terminator (meaning, that the machines actually needed humans as an important resource). Instead, it seems that they kept humans alive for no productive reason, exposing themselves to an unnecessary uprising.

CC

Nuking the enclaves has its own down side, electromagnetic pulses are hard on things electrical. And rats and bugs can do a lot of damage in the short time they are devouring the dead and anything else they can gnaw on. And all those bodies getting caught up in the gears tends to slow down transport. And, has been pointed out before, logic and movies are stange bedfellows at best.

"They should still make a film about the future war instead of all this time travelling nonsense. A big budget sci-fi war film? I'd pay to see it."

I'd pay good money to see a whole (not-for-tv) series on that!!!

That would be an automatic trilogy there: first one has the humans starting the resistance, the second one making major victories and creating a sort of stalemate (with lots of infiltrators seeking to regain the upper hand), and the third one has Connor leading the humans to victory (even if he gets killed in the final efforts).

It could be called The Rise of the Humans (parts I-III), or something along those lines.

I can dream, can't I?

CC

"Why would they need a gene pool if the human race was on the verge of extinction? I'd guess the need of infiltrator units would only come about after the humans managed to rebel"

Exactly. After the rebelion had started and only for a short while (while there is still a human threat). After that, they would have no need to appear human.

CC

The Cyclon-B based 'Final Solution' got drafted after Himmler visited one of his Einsatzgruppen death pits to view the 'noble work of cleansing'. He found the killers demoralised from the psychological stress (Even though they really hated Jews) and the final straw came when somebody's brains got spattered all over him.After that some 'clinical' method of mass murder was needed.

The realistic answer is it's all in the script and it's there for the sake of being there. The death camp comparison is there because it's a horror all of us can in some way relate too because of WWII.

The more fun answer in my opinion is this – Skynet doesn't want the total destructin of humanity, why would it? It sw humans in their present state as a threat. As a machine it's need for order leads it to enforce order whether we want it too or not. It's the classic story about the machine that grows up realizing that humanities biggest threat is itself, so it takes the necessary steps it needs to to carry out it's orders although it's literally interpretation leads to near holocaust.
Skynets slightly different, it appears to have the will to want to survive at all costs. there's never any mention that skynet and the machines conmsider humans inferior, only a threat. This means that skynet, in its cold calculating way may see that there is a place for humanity in it's empire, but to accomplish that, it's got to wipe the slate clean. Get rid of the vast majority of human beings who desire freedom from the machines and breed new humans who are more pliant and eager to serve in the new heirarchy.
Not only that but it might be fun from a scientific point of view to measure the overall energy and materials it takes to create and maintain machines as compared to creating and maintaining humans.

You all need to read the Machine Wars trilogy from Dune, I think it is the best machine vs. humanity book around.

Skynet cannot simply nuke the whole world because of the damage it would cause to itself. It would also not use biological weapons because, if you think like a machine, you are using 1 deadly organic compound to destroy another deadly organic compound. And as for Chemical Biologics, they are not a digital (dead/alive) solution. People can survive various levels of toxins. That leaves to many variables undefined and machines hate that. But nobody survives a plasma rifle shot to the cranium.

Also it may be that Skynet wanted a stable of humans as experimental subjects. Even we humans keep horribly deadly viruses in suspended states so that we can do research on them and possibly use them to our advantage.

"They should still make a film about the future war instead of all this time travelling nonsense. A big budget sci-fi war film? I'd pay to see it."

Perhaps Skynet needed the humans to incubate the Aliens who were then tracked down by the Predators. The next movie could then be AVPVT. Hollywood would love it, merging 3 successful franchises into one over the top cgi infested movie.

It's the exact same reason Skynet didn't send a second terminator back to kill Sara Conors Mom. Or her Grandma. Or send a second terminator the day after the first was killed. Or send the T-1000 back to work with the first one.

Because Skynet is Stupid.

Digging out GURPS Reign of Steel…

In that setting there's almost a dozen different overlord AIs, all with somewhat different approaches to the remaining humans. They range from benign behind-the-scenes dominance to total eradication of all organic life. In between, there's a lot of 'slave labor' and 'experimental subject' categories, along with stranger things…

Why not made a movie with Apes taking over instead of robots?

Here is one take on it.

link

This is intriguing:

link

CC

Let's see… This thing about rats keeps coming up…

If you are going about the process of exterminating humanity, why not just exterminate all living things that get too close to you… simple matter of a few nanites or biological agents to create a biological free zome around yourself (if skynet was really a super-intelligent computer, then the Human race would have been doomed, and no amount of resistance could have saved them)…

Does no-one here keep up with people like Minsky, BostrumTyler Emerson, Cory Doctorow, Douglass Hoffstadner, and so on…

Just about every one of these people has reached the conclusion that if we do build a machine intelligence that it is paramount that it does not see us as a threat, as we would effectively be powerless against any real super-intelligence.

They have all written papers, and published points about how to contain any nascent AI, and there are organizations built around the premise of making sure that any AI created will be a friendly AI…

Once any intelligence goes beyond that of human, we are essentially worthless unless we can find a way to carry ourselves along with that intelligence and eventually join it ourselves. Because, once it is created; we will no longer be the dominant life form on this planet…

sorry kids, but that is just the way it is, and if you don't want to become extinct… You will have no choice but to evolve.

Well, biological WMD's would be out of the question even from a machines point of view. surly if u destroy ALL organic life on earth you would have an unstable weather system with ravaging storms that even the Robots would strugle to survive.

Judas, even with the best of intentions, things go WRONG or have a habbit of breaking, any step taken to make sure AI is freindly would probably be just as easy to overcome. LOGIC breaks, things malfunction and so on, on something so Vast as a true AI it would probably only take a small thing to go wrong for the possibility of it backfiring, hell, our brains are suseptable to all sorts of weird crap, what makes you thing Super AI's wouldent be ;)