So basically a worldwide EMP stopped anything electrical or battery operated...
This includes life-support systems, pacemakers, heading aids etc...
Sucks to be anyone that relies on anything like that..!
It also completely destroyed the economy of the world. Think of how much of the wealth of the world exists only electronically now.
shareIt was never intended as a happy ending. At some point Keanu told Jennifer that if the world was going to be saved, our lifestyle would change drastically.
I've calculated your chance of survival, but I don't think you'll like it.share
But imagine how many trees would have to be cut down for fire and lightning, instead from the beginning they could have get the humans the technology to not need to destroy nature ever again
The stupid have one thing in common.They alter the facts to fit their views not the other way
...how many animals would have to be killed for food now that our big farms with automated feeders don't work anymore..
shareKlaatu's comment would only have meaning if the destruction of all electrical devices was permanent. Not too hard to repair EMP damaged goods, but if we have to do without machines of any kind, we are back to the stone age.
shareIn a lot of creationist stories in many cultures you see a similar theme: life turning to death and then becoming life again -the never ending cycle of life. This has also occurred naturally on our planet as one disaster creates another and another until the planet balances itself again and life bounces back. We pollute this world which causes an imbalance and for now we are taking advantage of our new found technology and the resources it gives us. This is a good time for humanity but eventually the Earth will fight back to balance itself out and when that happens, aliens or otherwise, look out! We think we have a mastery of this world and nature itself but we are diluting ourselves. We dont need aliens to end our civilization... We're doing a fine job all on our own.
The EMP would have been bad, but a lot of hospitals etc have back up generators and what not to combat problems like that. Yeah there would have been people dying, no doubt, but I dont think it would have been as bad as you think.
R E S I S T A N C E IS F U T I L E !
Read the book Warday. It says a lot about what EMP would do to the nation's infrastructure, and that was over 20 years ago. Imagine how much more dependent we are on integrated circuits now. According to the book, the EMP damage would cause more lasting destruction than the radiation from a limited nuclear exchange.
EMP might not harm the generators directly but any of the control circuity would have been destroyed. And all of the equipment other than the lights would have been destroyed even if you could power them back up.
It would be like Gilligan's Island, but less fun and no Mary Ann!
"No phone, no lights, no motor cars, it's as primitive as can be."
He never said humanity had to live without machines of any kind, it's the method by which we power the machines that's the issue (burning fossil fuels, toxic chemicals, nuclear waste, etc). Humanity simply had to adapt and develop other sources of power. Solar energy and wind energy would likely have become the leading types of energy because they're clean. The technology just needs to be improved so that they can be used on a much larger scale.
shareAnd this is one the more stupid parts of the film, and the reason why this remake makes much less sense than the original.
Here's the setup - aliens say you're ruining your home (which we have no right to anyway) with the way you generate power so we're going to destroy you all.
Not, so here's how you do it. No, let's teach you how. No, here, we'll build you some power stations that draw power from the aether, don't pollute, and make your breath wintry fresh.
If they're really concerned, don't you think that approach makes sense? They claim life is precious, and to prove it they're going to wipe out 5 billion (mostly) sentient beings.
I get that Derrickson wanted to make a profound statement about conservation and stewardship of the earth, but his statement is stupid and he failed.
That is why the original works and this doesn't.
Klaatu's main concern was that humans lack the will to change. He sees humanity as a toxic element in the Earth's ecosystem - aggressive, arrogant, warlike and self-destructive. All of these characteristics are having a catastrophic effect on the Earth and its other lifeforms. As in the original, they shot him the moment he arrived, and even afterwards they planned to subject him to all manner of inhuman treatment. Instead of dealing with his arrival in a reasoned, open-minded manner like a truly evolved species might, it was handled with fear and aggression. After seeing how humanity has polluted the Earth (with little desire to change) and the way in which humans treat not only other lifeforms but each other (not just the endless wars and atrocities, but even the incident with the mugger in the train station), I would imagine by that point Klaatu sees humanity as a lost cause which is unlikely to change its ways before eventually destroying itself and the Earth with it. Simply giving humanity free "clean energy" power stations is not going to change human nature (an interesting semi-parallel to the situation in Iran there).
But after he gets to know Helen and Prof. Barnhardt, and the member of his own race who has been living among humans for years, he begins to see there is another side to humanity and perhaps all is not lost as he originally thought. "At the precipice, you change."
When I first saw the remake, I wasn't too keen on the ecological theme as opposed to the atomic war theme of the original (partly because I've always adored the original so a new version would automatically be inferior). But the idea isn't really that different, and the ecological theme is giving the story a modern slant to it. Although contentious, environmental issues are far more prominent now than they were in 1950. So rather than simply making a slavish scene-for-scene remake about nuclear weapons, it makes sense to expand the theme of the film to adapt to our changing times. I think a lot of people might dismiss it as "liberal" and "preachy" (especially those same anti-green right-wingers who still deny the existence of global warming), but I feel that just enhances the message of the film about people lacking the will to change. I still don't think the remake is quite as good as the original, but I don't think it's quite as bad a lot of people say it is either and is often misunderstood (though I would have had no objection to Gort destroying Jaden Smith).
That is a very well thought out, well argued point you are making. You have put more thought into this one than I did.
I think my major issue (other than the terrible acting of Jaden Smith and the lousy rendition of Gort in this remake) is that I think the premise is deeply flawed.
In the original, we were considered a threat to the peace of the other alien species in the galaxy. We were on the verge of space travel and we were developing nuclear weapons at a fairly alarming rate. (Plus, in the 1950s science fiction and pulp fiction were full of alien invasion stories. Aliens were practically never the good guys so the zeitgeist at the time was "Kill the aliens!") The other species were saying, in effect, if you try to bring that out here to us we are going to destroy you.
In this remake we are not a threat to the other species of the galaxy. You could extrapolate that mankind was considered the trailer park trash of the galaxy and that if we got out there in the universe we were going to bring property values down everywhere we went.
But, here's the thing. That was never used as a reason by Klaatu. It was, "You are befouling your own nest." There was never the mention or intimation that we could or would be a threat to anyone else. For all we know, they could have bottled us up on Earth and had done with us.
To me, that is an equivalent argument to saying the rest of humanity should be allowed to go utterly destroy all the people clearing the Amazonian rain forests.
I don't dispute the "message" of the movie, I dispute its delivery and "efficaciousness". I think that message was not served by recasting it into this remake.
In the film though, he implies that life on Earth was "seeded". I don't think he says it outright, but it's implied (when he says "your planet?") and then he goes on to say that there are so few planets in the cosmos that can support complex lifeforms and his people can't allow humanity to destroy this one. If that's the case, it makes sense for his people to step in and stop humanity from obliterating it. But even if his people were just galactic Greenpeace warriors, I still think there's some logic to his actions. So while the specifics of that plot point has changed from the original film, it is still about humanity's destructive behaviour having wider consequences.
I totally agree that the delivery could have been a bit better, and the film is far from perfect, but I must admit that even though I was lukewarm about the film when I first saw it, it improved greatly for me upon subsequent viewings. I've probably seen it about half a dozen times now, and even though my toes always curl up the moment Jaden Smith is onscreen, I've grown to like the film in general. I don't love it, but I do like it. I even came to like the new Gort. Again, you have completely free your mind from the original version where we have the charismatic Klaatu (Rennie) and Gort is a cool retro robot. But the "biological" Gort in the remake also makes sense to me in that its something new and different rather than just another robot, and he's also a biological weapon of sorts. The idea of him becoming a self-expanding "plague of locusts" to cleanse the Earth of humanity added an epic biblical dimension to the story and he was much more of a threat than in the original version (I always wondered how long it would take the original Gort to actually destroy the entire Earth with his one laser beam eye - probably a couple of centuries). The only thing I don't like about new Gort was that he looks too obviously CGI, which has become a dirty term in sci-fi in recent years.
I will still pay to see someone make a professional, high-end CGI presentation of Gort disintegrating Jaden Smith though. Even just the storyboards for it would make my day.
I agree, and you actually make me want to watch the movie again.
"From a phylogenetic perspective, we are all fish!"
"In this remake we are not a threat to the other species of the galaxy."
Klaatu says in this film that our planet is one of the few that can support complex life and cannot be allowed to perish. So the greater community still had a reason to protect this world from the humans.
'Then' and 'than' are different words - stop confusing them.
Not, so here's how you do it. No, let's teach you how. No, here, we'll build you some power stations that draw power from the aether, don't pollute, and make your breath wintry fresh.
Is very bad to steal Jobu's rum. Is very bad.share
Our own bodies would shut down.We have electrical impulses.
shareUh, no.
EMP doesn't shut electrical impulses down, it destroys electronic equipment. Since much of our power grid depends on electronic equipment, it would go offline. But a simple generator using a mechanical source (like moving water) would not be affected at an EMP blast.
Neither would your body.
It's not even remotely close to a happy ending. Something like 90% of the human population would be dead within six months.
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Christianity : A god who loves you so much that he'll set fire to you if you don't love him back
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7.5 billion people and climbing , no mammal species in the history of the earth had those numbers it's unmaintainable. It's only going to get worst.
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People have stop thinking so that having kids is a right and get a handle of some kind like China did with it's one child law it use to have.
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Like I said they predict 9 Billon is the max and also have a reasonable chance at a standard of living. It can go higher with a much less standard of living ,more like a fight to survive. At the point mother nature takes over.
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Actually it was way better compared to being completely eradicated. Since they were doing just that when Klaatu stopped the process. Survival of the species is what mattered at that point. It's a second chance to get it right. Everyone seems to think an alien species would have compassion for our destructive way of life. In reality it would probably be quite the opposite. The pulse he sent out at the end was the permanent removal of our technoligy not a regular EMP. He ended our threat but allowed us to survive if we can. As he said "there will be a price."
shareAnd how does a pulse "eradicate technology?" The knowledge remains.
And what technology did it eradicate? Did it repeal the laws of physics? Do levers no longer work? Or inclined planes? Do magnets moving between copper wires no longer produce electron flow?
I'm sorry but that answer is entirely too glib. EMP makes more sense, but then damn little about this ersatz science fiction tale makes sense. It only works as a whole thinly veiled eco-warrior tale which ignores the suffering of billions of humans to save the snail darter.
In other words, it's bunk.
If these aliens really need wanted to make a change they could have shown us how they produce energy. They basically forced people to fall back on less efficient and dirtier energy sources.
The story is stupid.
Okay let's go with your theory then. The EMP if that is what it really was did massive enough damage to knock power out everywhere. Backup generators did not kick in because we saw no evidence of power resuming anywhere after the pulse. Diesel generators here where I work kick in immediately our lights flicker for a second or two when it switches over. How much overall damage the grids, circuits and wiring took from the hit is unknown. How strong and what kind of a pulse was needed to stop those insectoids from eradicating technology and the human race? We don't know. Nobody knows what that alien tech does or what Klaatu had to do to stop them. All we know is they showed nothing working including an analog wristwatch after the pulse. You say temporary I say permanent. Go to extremetech.com and check out an article "The Machine Stops." It's not a physics problem. It's society and our dependency. Not saying it's a good movie or bad just commenting on my opinion of the impact of the ending.
shareBut would the backup systems kick in? Where I work the backup generators are kept in a warm oil bath so they can kick over immediately, but the control circuitry would be destroyed in an EMP. They would not come on.
I will grant you we don't really know what Klaatu did but doesn't it make more sense to teach or provide a better way than to simply destroy a way of life and say, "Good luck with that!"
Energy production has gotten cleaner than before but destroying the technology would force a return on really dirty tech like coal and less efficient methods like destroying forests to burn.
And okay, you were very nice in your answer. I appreciate that.
EMPs destroy electronics whether they are powered up or not.
An EMP induces voltage on anything ferrous, so the copper windings in the generators and electrical traces in a generator control board are antennas to the magnetic pulse converting the magnetic pulse into high voltage electricity. This induced voltage is what destroys the electronics.
And if the EMP is strong enough, it will not only destroy delicate electronics, but it can also cause arcing across the windings of a generator coil causing leakage or shorts between adjacent turns or from the coils to ground.
In any case, the back up generators would be destroyed as well.
Once humanity is faced with a new day of destroyed electronics, it will need to wind new generators to start the rebuild process.
This film is very relevant today. I got the chills watching it.
shareThis is true - but also a return to Steam Trains - Yeah!
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