Yes, they were destroying buildings too, and even though we do not see it they would presumably leave fauna (except for humans obviously) alone. We DO see them keeping plants intact.
However you are a little hasty in your doom and gloom assessment at the end there, as the nanobots started in the southeast USA and were shown to travel in expanding circles. So only a little bit on the east coast was affected by them.
As for the EMP, yeah that is a problem and will lead to deaths in the millions (not billions), because of limited medical capabilities, as well as some disasters which now cannot be stopped easily. However, it didn't wipe out power completely. There would still be ways to harness energy (Solar, Water, Wind, etc.), we still have the knowhow, and that would hasten a rebuilding of the infrastructure, i would assume. There is also nothing to theoretically stop us from using fossil fuels, or nuclear energy again. But that is the message this movie wanted to tell.
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gb901
9 years ago
Negating the earths ability to produce electricity was so pointless. After all he was klaatu was persuaded to spare humanity, in large part, due the beauty of music, but whose going to be able to listen without power?! Ridiculous: reduce a world population to literally the dark ages and let them die in squalor!
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ShinzouMoa
9 years ago
Well, i agree that the movie as a whole was ridiculously bad, but you do realize that there are acoustic instruments, right? You do not need electricity for music, and considering it was J.S. Bach that convinced Klatu, i am pretty sure every symphonic orchestra in the world would be able to convince him as well.
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midflinx007
9 years ago
Even the analog-hands watch on the Secretary's wrist stopped after the global pulse. It could have been battery-powered, but the implication was even a wound-spring watch wouldn't work anymore. Everything electric shut down as well. The solar energy you mention could only be used for concentrating heat for cooking. Wind and water would become windmills and waterwheels at most.
Today's cities cannot exist without the massive importation of food, pumped water, goods and medicine, etc. About 3.5 billion people live in cities, and simply feeding the world population isn't possible without motorized farm equipment. My rough guess is at least a billion people would die after technology stopped working. Depending on their location, the inability to get enough water, food, medicine, shelter and other supplies to people would kill them.
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Dejay
9 years ago
Yeah I wondered if anybody else had noticed. It looked like a spring wound watch. What the hell?
Maybe it was meant only as a temporary outage but why would mechanical objects fail if they aren't somehow clearly damaged? The story makes no sense if the outage is permanent.
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strntz
9 years ago
Maybe it was meant only as a temporary outage but why would mechanical objects fail if they aren't somehow clearly damaged?
A watch is an extraordinarily low friction low energy device. If you ever had one apart, you would find that you could stop the escapement wheel with barely anything more than a single strand of hair.
This means that unless they are completely made of non ferrous metal, watches can become magnetized either by being too close to a permanent magnet or being subjected to a strong electrical field or pulse. If magnetized, the internal gears will drag against each other magnetically.
The wristwatch in question will eventually lose it's magnetic orientation over time and begin running again, or it can be demagnetized. Since demagnetizers are powered by electricity, this option would not have been available.
Is very bad to steal Jobu's rum. Is very bad.
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