And why would the disappear at the moment of the laser shot and not e.g. for 2 months when the meteor was supposed to hit, or or 2 months earlier for that matter when the whole plan came together. Why at that moment of the explosion?
The short answer, if the device had worked the way it should have, they should all have been vaporized. Since they were still alive, it didn't work properly.
Yes, I know Bloom ordered them to get Delaney to minimum safe distance. I see this as a lack of coordination on the writing team. Other things said about the anti-matter explosion make clear minimum safe distance is much farther than one can drive in a minute or two. Marcy spoke about tens of millions of deaths -- in other words all of Southern California, from San Diego to LA, and everywhere nearby. Hours of driving, not minutes.
Another stupid thing... Marcy surprises Dr Delaney by giving her a hypodermic shot. Delaney asks what it was for, and was told it was the antidote to the poison gas that had been leaked.
Duh. They could have given her a shot that combined the antidote, and a sedative. As Bloom pointed out, the retina scanner didn't care if Delaney was dead, alive, or too woozy to say "no". If they had given Delaney the sedative, they could have activated the device crucial minutes before the arrival of Major Red-head.
Stupid thing number three... It seems that multiple writers worked on this episode, and they had different ideas of the kill zone of the explosion they were about to set off.
When they are two minutes from the blast Bloom orders Mclaren's team to get Delaney to minimum safe distance. Well Jeez, Louise, what is the minimum safe distance from the explosion of a huge H bomb?
Answer: If you were in a main battle tank, like an Abrams, one with filters to filter out the fallout, I think the minimum safe distance, for immediate survival is about a kilometre. I don't know if that was for a small tactical scale nuke, or a medium sized strategic nuke. Most of the war-heads on US missiles are about 400kilotons. They spoke about this explosion being in the megaton range. And they are in a plain old van, not a 60 ton armored battle tank. So, the minimum safe distance would be a lot farther than we saw them drive.
Another factor... decades ago I read an article, from Scientific American, about the so-called neutron bomb. The US developed an H-bomb with one tenth the blast of a Hiroshima sized bomb, but with a disproportionate broadcast of radiation -- actual radiation, as opposed to radioactive fallout. If I recall correctly the crew members of a tank would survive the actual explosion of an A-bomb, and still die from radiation sickness, a few days later. Someone suggested that a weakness of the Neutron bomb was that all those tank crews would have a day or so of knowing they were going to die, when they would still be healthy enough to give your invading force a heck of a fight. The suggestion was that, knowing that they were going to die a horrible death through radiation sickness, would give them a suicidal ferocity.
Modern cities just aren't built to have enough expressways and commuter rail to evacuate the entire population, in hours. Not even days.
A minor point... I think Bloom said asteroid Helios was to strike 18 months later.
Personally I liked the idea that the director can even send the same person back multiple times, like blue the engineer. I thought he got send back multiple times?
Bloom, the Engineer... Yeah, my interpretation was that Bloom and Trevor knew one another from a previous excursion.
It seems to me that the belief that you disappear either way is not really plausible or removes the problem of the paradox they create (they came from a future that no longer exists).
Larry Niven wrote half a dozen funny time travel stories, collected into
"The Flight of the Horse".
In one story our hero knows another time traveler, who had been stranded in the past, had hi-jacked his time machine. He saw this guy effect a change that our hero knows made his history, the hero's history, no longer exist. In the next story, he is very depressed, because he knew he no longer existed.
It's funny. Well worth looking for.
reply
share
irata42
8 years ago
Marcy spoke about tens of millions of deaths -- in other words all of Southern California, from San Diego to LA, and everywhere nearby. Hours of driving, not minutes.
Marcy said "If this works we save tens of millions of lives."
You transcribed it, remember?
Delany: "To power it, you need the energy release of a matter-antimatter detonation. The blast radius could be miles wide."
Bloom: "People will die, yes. Certainly everyone here, but the laser will translate most of that energy into the beam."
reply
share
gswan
8 years ago
Marcy said "If this works we save tens of millions of lives."
You transcribed it, remember?
My interpretation of that comment. She is only thinking of the sudden and unexplained explosion of the anti-matter.
I thought she thought that by the slow leak of the toxic gas they were giving civil defense authorities an opportunity to evacuate all potential victims.
By a blast radius miles wide I think she meant the area where victims would be killed by concussion.
A really huge megaton blast kills people through the fires it triggers, and fallout, possibly starvation.
Only a tiny fraction of the prompt radiation of the H-bomb would be translated into x-ray laser light. None of the concussion, the blast energy, would be translated into x-ray laser light
Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative was to use satellite based x-ray lasers. They consisted of h-bombs, with metal rods sticking out of them, like a sea-urchin. The rods were steerable. As many as possible were to be pointed at recently launched Soviet missiles. When the H-bomb exploded the prompt radiation from the H-bomb that happened to already be heading in the direction of the rod would lase the rod.
Those of us old enough to remember the first lasers, remember that they consisted of ruby rods surrounded by very bright strobe lights. The very bright strobe would flash, and it would trigger the ruby rod to lase at its characteristic frequency.
So, only a tiny fraction of the energy from the strobe got translated into laser light. Later solid-state lasers were developed, lower power, much more energy efficient.
Bloom's laser is of the original kind, where a bright light causes a rod to lase at its characteristic frequency. There is no reason why Bloom's device would be able to use any of the prompt radiation aimed anywhere other than at her device.
reply
share
gswan
8 years ago
Marcy said "If this works we save tens of millions of lives."
You transcribed it, remember?
My interpretation of that comment. She is only thinking of the sudden and unexplained explosion of the anti-matter.
I thought she thought that by the slow leak of the toxic gas they were giving civil defense authorities an opportunity to evacuate all potential victims.
By a blast radius miles wide I think she meant the area where victims would be killed by concussion.
A really huge megaton blast kills people through the fires it triggers, and fallout, possibly starvation.
Only a tiny fraction of the prompt radiation of the H-bomb would be translated into x-ray laser light. None of the concussion, the blast energy, would be translated into x-ray laser light
Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative was to use satellite based x-ray lasers. They consisted of h-bombs, with metal rods sticking out of them, like a sea-urchin. The rods were steerable. As many as possible were to be pointed at recently launched Soviet missiles. When the H-bomb exploded the prompt radiation from the H-bomb that happened to already be heading in the direction of the rod would lase the rod.
Those of us old enough to remember the first lasers, remember that they consisted of ruby rods surrounded by very bright strobe lights. The very bright strobe would flash, and it would trigger the ruby rod to lase at its characteristic frequency.
So, only a tiny fraction of the energy from the strobe got translated into laser light. Later solid-state lasers were developed, lower power, much more energy efficient.
Bloom's laser is of the original kind, where a bright light causes a rod to lase at its characteristic frequency. There is no reason why Bloom's device would be able to use any of the prompt radiation aimed anywhere other than at her device.
reply
share
Sluggr-3
8 years ago
The short answer, if the device had worked the way it should have, they should all have been vaporized. Since they were still alive, it didn't work properly.
My take is that the laser did work, but that it was activated a few seconds too late due to the shootout and thus the beam missed the asteroid. IIRC they are moving at upwards of 50KM/sec so even a slight delay translates into a complete miss.
The tens of millions of people saved were likely those killed by the tsunamis and ensuing starvation after the asteroid impact.
I posted some thoughts in the "E5" thread about what I thought the nature of the show was and how it was possibly going to go given what we had been shown. But some of the ground rules have not been established or clearly delineated, such as can a mind be sent back more than once, and does the process of sending it back cause it to cease to exist in the future. In the beginning we thought it was just the 5 travelers, but now we are given and evidence of other teams and strong hints that the travelers have been sent back to way earlier times in history to effect change and/or set up infrastructure (remember, they had to build the laser) for MacClaren's team to detonate the antimatter bomb and zap the asteroid.
I was doing some mindless tasks last night which gave me an opportunity to really expand on the idea that the director is really what we call "God" and that he/she/it has been manipulating the course of mankind via travelers for a long portion of our history. So now when someone asks me why God did/allowed such and such, I can say it was all part of a masterplan to ensure that there was a laser for Maclaren's team to shoot at an asteroid. That'll leave em with a puzzled look. I think Brad Wright has come up with a concept that could really be expanded into a huge franchise, with different sets of travelers in different time periods, sort of like CSI in different cities.
My Chimp DNA seems to have lost its password temporarily. Sluggr-2
reply
share