Schneier on Security

Richard Steven Hack • May 21, 2011 4:36 AM

The main problem I have with the whole “zombie” genre is how stupid the concept is. It would next to impossible to have a zombie outbreak that actually took over the world unless it was done directly by some sort of mass biowarfare infection. Just relying on a small infection to spread until it was uncontrollable would be completely useless, just like most biowarfare is considered inefficient – because someone – indeed quite a few someones – are always resistant to infection.

Worse, once a bunch of dead bodies are really believed to be running around eating and infecting people, the US military would plow in and quite literally kill EVERYONE even remotely possibly infected. The US military doesn’t mind killing civilians just to get terrorists in the neighborhood – does anyone think they would let ZOMBIES get loose in sufficient numbers to be a problem?

Which also raises a question none of the zombie fiction ever answers: If the zombies are eating all the live people, where are new zombies being created? Do they just eat you a LITTLE bit, then you come back as zombie?

Do they have dietary limitations they have to follow, like instead of no pork it’s no fingers or little toes, just brains, so they just eat your brains and then you come back as a brainless zombie?

And if you’re a brainless zombie, how come a shot in the head takes one out? You’re just shooting an empty skull (pretty much like shooting any soldier).

Zombies are the sort of sci-fi you get when no one has bothered to think through the premise. Which is pretty much all the sci-fi on TV these days.

It’s like the Terminator franchise. Judgment Day kills three billion people. Based on the current seven billion population of the world, that still leaves four billion people for Skynet to deal with – rather an overwhelming proposition no matter how fast you crank out those Terminators from your converted GM factories (oh, wait, they blew up during the nuclear war), right?

Even if you assume a significant percentage die from the resultant fallout, nuclear winter, economic collapse, personal problems, whatever, you’re still left with a hell of a lot of monkeys to handle.

Only a nanotech weapon would even have a chance of dealing with the problem – and James Cameron didn’t know anything about nanotech at the time.

At least in T-4, they kinda sorta acknowledged that by establishing there were still plenty of people around and even things like nuclear subs, and A-10 Thunderbolts and not quite so many massed armies of Terminators like the earlier movies.

I still maintain Skynet’s best approach should have been to make them all look like Summer Glau:

http://film-book.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/summer-glau-terminator-the-sarah-connor-chronicles-6.jpg

Richard Steven Hack • May 22, 2011 12:41 AM

At: “the war went on for over 30 years — plenty of time to kill the survivors.”

And plenty of time for the survivors to both fight back AND reproduce.

“What do you think the T-1000 was?”

Liquid metal – whatever the hell that is. It wasn’t nanotech, although conceivably the technology might have been related. With REAL nanotech Skynet wouldn’t have bothered with a moving machine – just drop some replicators through the time portal – no more humans in X hours or days or weeks – and no possibility of biological resistance.

Which reminds me of one of the events in “Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles” which really annoyed me. Josh Friedman, the producer, had to get from the time of T-2 to the current time, so he decided to have a forward-going time machine (which was lousy plotting in itself given the potential of such a device).

But then he decided he had to get Cromartie from the past into the future in order to continues hunting the Connors. Leaving aside why he didn’t just have a different Terminator do that in the future (since he was switching actors in the process anyway), he decided to allow Cromartie’s metal head pass through the time portal, explaining to fan critics that it was allowed to because a “strip of flesh”was attached to it.

First, that violated the principle that metal has to be SURROUNDED by flesh as enunciated by Kyle Reese in T-1.

Second, if that was allowed, what was to stop Skynet from sending back a Terminator with a nuclear weapon in tow with a “strip of flesh” on it? Let’s see John Connor duck that one!

The problem with citing 5.8-6 billion population figures back then is that 1) it’s STILL six billion, allowing 3 billion to remain after Judgment Day, and 2) Judgement Day was going to happen not in 1984 but in 1997 (initially). As pointed out, that figure is still close enough to six billion. And in T-3 the date was pushed back to 2003 when the world population was approximately 6.3 billion, and in TSCC, the date is pushed back to today – with seven billion but the same three billion initial casualties.

Oh, well, consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds – especially in sci-fi. Which was my point.

What the movies and TV show should have done was show just exactly how dangerous a single Terminator is. Cameron portrayed the T-800’s as basically lumbering, not particularly fast (except with their arms on occasion), gun platforms. In fact, given just known robotic technology – which presumably was improved upon by Skynet – they should have been far more dangerous.

For instance, they are shown missing with firearms frequently. This should have been near impossible unless the target is in violent erratic motion or behind cover.

Their sensory capabilities should have been more than displayed, too, given the known abilities of existent sensors.

With a much more dangerous machine, the explanation for why the human population was unable to stem their decimation for so long would be more believable.

I have a concept for a reboot of the TSCC show using the Cameron character portrayed by Glau which would modify the character to be a truly independent AI which is far more dangerous than as shown so far. Only the T-1000 models would be more dangerous.

The show would be more along the lines of “The Hulk” or “The Fugitive” playing on the fact that a machine like Cameron would be the most valuable entity on the planet in this time period – even if she wasn’t hot – worth trillions of dollars to anyone who could get their hands on her. She would be operating independently against Skynet for her own reasons, no longer obeying orders from either Skynet or the Connors, past or future.