Why did Skynet lose the war ?

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Samuel
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by Samuel »

In the Terminator series you can build a time machine acting like McGayver. You guys were just talking about how they were handing them out like candy.
Well, most of the work needed would be scavenging and rubble-clearing. And, of course, you can force engineers to work at gunpoint, just like any other human.
Oh yeah... the blasts wouldnt destroy all the equipment. So Skynet would probably have gone for a decapitating nuke attack, not total destruction?
I'd wager "survival". Humans wanted to erase him (in yer face, Shroom! :P) in the original timeline, that's why he lashed out. Destroying the human ability to fight and resist is paramount to Skynet's survival, so he keeps fighting.
Than wouldn't it be smarter to convince people that humans started the nuclear war and position itself as a dedicated robot servant of humanity? Seizing power for their own good, of course.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by Stark »

Atlan wrote:A T-1000 is a block of nanotech. Polyalloy my ass, it looks and behaves like what a lot of scifi writers think a big blob of nanomachines should be like. A distributed intelligence (explaining why the smaller pieces aren't smart and want to get together with the rest), virtual invulnerability vs. low level kinetic weaponry (it behaves more like a liquid than a solid because of the small size of the individual machines), and rapid adaptability (hey, NANOTECH!). What powers it? Unadulterated bullshit probably.
The problems with actual nanotech have been discussed on this site ad nauseum.
Interestingly enough the whole "melts/dissolves in molten steel" IS completely realistic for nanotech. Heat that shit too far and it'll stop working FAST.
Oh dear. At least I don't need to think up an example of fannish capability-inflation anymore! :)

The fact people can throw around the idea of making T-1000 substance as being 'easy' makes me giggle uncontrollably, too, but fans of anything are always largely retards. This is probably the least-retarded thread I've ever seen on a Terminator topic.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by Guardsman Bass »

Could Skynet have just been running off of a large supply of spare parts, fuel, and technology (plus some limited automated and human-slave-labor-worked factories) that it had stored (or that had been stored by human militaries) before it started the nuclear war? That would help explain how it manages to keep turning up high technology and the various little complicated parts for the terminators and other war machines for so long - it would be husbanding its resources, and as they started to draw down and the humans got stronger, perhaps it used its technological know-how and the remainder of its resources to focus on "special projects" like the time machine and advanced infiltrators rather than more ground and air war machines.

It was mentioned that it salvaged machine parts - perhaps that's a big part of how Skynet keeps going. Perhaps it can make smart use of salvaged parts and keep jury-rigging its shit to last longer?
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by Guardsman Bass »

To add, I thought the above might present another reason for Skynet to really go full-hilt after the time machine, in addition to desperation on its part (or as close to it as a genocidal sentient supercomputer can get). Killing John Connor wouldn't just be about ultimately stopping the Resistance; it would be about stopping it as early as possible, before Skynet burns through all its supplies.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by FireNexus »

It seems to me that the easiest way to kill John Connor would be to get him while he's in the work camp, long before his escape. Skynet knows where he is at the time, knows he can't really run or protect himself effectively, and can probably load a termie with security data to get the then-current machines to listen to it. Hell, they might even just want to scuttle the whole work camp to prevent any kind of martyrdom on his part.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Maybe Skynet didn't know it had John at the work camp? I don't know how, but yeah...
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by Bilbo »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Maybe Skynet didn't know it had John at the work camp? I don't know how, but yeah...

Skynet must have really limited knowledge of John and his mother related purely to their time before the war started. John being John would have probably hidden his identity really well during any time that he was in a machine prison camp.

That is assumging that part of the timeline still happens. Considering how T3 ends and any changes that the tv show creates it seems unlikely that John Connor would have ever been a prisoner of the machines unless he intentionally got captured so as to lead a revolt and get himself a large number of freedom fighters.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by NecronLord »

Samuel wrote:In the Terminator series you can build a time machine acting like McGayver. You guys were just talking about how they were handing them out like candy.
Yes. In SCC. Everywhere else, those time machines are rather more impressive.
Than wouldn't it be smarter to convince people that humans started the nuclear war and position itself as a dedicated robot servant of humanity? Seizing power for their own good, of course.
Who knows? Perhaps it tried this, but it seems unlikely.

Certainly, T3 has Connor out there, telling people what happened, from Judgement Day onwards.
Stark wrote:The fact people can throw around the idea of making T-1000 substance as being 'easy' makes me giggle uncontrollably, too, but fans of anything are always largely retards. This is probably the least-retarded thread I've ever seen on a Terminator topic.
Given that the process by which it's known is completely unknown... Yeah. It may be easier than finding the diverse materials needed to manufacture chips, pneumatic pumps, hydrogen fuel cells, 'hyper-alloy' and everything else more conventional units need. To make a T-1000, you only need... whatever the ingredients in its 'hyper alloy' are, and whatever factory and power supply you need to make those. When that's done, you decant it as a blob, program it (however that's done; there's a novel with it in, but it doesn't really elaborate) and that's it. Your magic block of shapeshifting metal is done.
FireNexus wrote:It seems to me that the easiest way to kill John Connor would be to get him while he's in the work camp
I never really got the impression, aside from his being in one convoy captured in SCC, that he was ever 'legitimately' imprisoned in such a camp, so much as infiltrating it. He certainly wouldn't give his name as John Connor, or anything like that.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by Atlan »

Stark wrote: Oh dear. At least I don't need to think up an example of fannish capability-inflation anymore! :)

The fact people can throw around the idea of making T-1000 substance as being 'easy' makes me giggle uncontrollably, too, but fans of anything are always largely retards. This is probably the least-retarded thread I've ever seen on a Terminator topic.
I heartily agree with you, wether the show sticks to the "Mimetic Poly-alloy" BS, or eventually goes the "Nanomachines" way of explanation. A T-1000 (and the T-X covering) are as much pieces of magic as functioning time machines. They won't stop me from enjoying the show, but I wish people would stop the "It's easy" BS already. Skynet's a bloody goddamn bonafide GENIUS for coming up with either piece of tech. I wish the damn thing wasn't homicidal.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

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Atlan wrote:I heartily agree with you, wether the show sticks to the "Mimetic Poly-alloy" BS, or eventually goes the "Nanomachines" way of explanation. A T-1000 (and the T-X covering) are as much pieces of magic as functioning time machines. They won't stop me from enjoying the show, but I wish people would stop the "It's easy" BS already. Skynet's a bloody goddamn bonafide GENIUS for coming up with either piece of tech. I wish the damn thing wasn't homicidal.
I think you're getting the wrong end of the stick here. I'm not saying it should be easy to invent them. I'm saying we have no idea what the resource demands of creating a T-1000 are, and thus we cannot fairly dismiss making them as a waste of said resources.


Of course, I did object at the time (when the pilot was first leaked) to the time-machine in a bank vault. I quite agree that it should be a massive machine that's difficult to run. But SCC seems to have another idea.

I fear they may even subscribe to the crummy novels' idea that the time machine predates Skynet, and the USA made several, at different locations. Hence Connor having one.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

In the T2 novel, the T-1000 was one of a kind and, apparently, even Skynet was hesitant of deploying it since Skynet itself didn't fully know the limitations of the T-1000's tech.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by NecronLord »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:In the T2 novel, the T-1000 was one of a kind
Err. Not that I recall, and there was going to be a T-1000 in the extended intro, too. It was said to be an 'advanced prototype' but that hardly means it was unique.
and, apparently, even Skynet was hesitant of deploying it since Skynet itself didn't fully know the limitations of the T-1000's tech.
That's comics and such. There's never any filmatic evidence that it fears the T-1000.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by Ryan Thunder »

NecronLord wrote:That's comics and such. There's never any filmatic evidence that it fears the T-1000.
Well, to be fair, how could there be filmatic evidence? Skynet has about as much emotional expression as my goddamn toaster. :|
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

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Ryan Thunder wrote:
NecronLord wrote:That's comics and such. There's never any filmatic evidence that it fears the T-1000.
Well, to be fair, how could there be filmatic evidence? Skynet has about as much emotional expression as my goddamn toaster. :|
As in, lines in the film.

Sure, there's lines in some of the novels, I forget which ones, that suggest that it does. But there's also novels where it slings T-1000s out by the bucketful, and even just tells them to go slump down dead on the side of a mountain, to make space for new TXes.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by Drooling Iguana »

NecronLord wrote:Of course, I did object at the time (when the pilot was first leaked) to the time-machine in a bank vault. I quite agree that it should be a massive machine that's difficult to run. But SCC seems to have another idea.
The bank-vault time machine was built so that the engineer would have a way "home". Hence, it could have just been designed to allow travel into the future, rather than into the past. Time travel into the future is likely a hell of a lot easier than the other way.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by Samuel »

Does time traveling into the future break any physical laws? I am speaking faster than one second per seond of course.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

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Samuel wrote:Does time traveling into the future break any physical laws? I am speaking faster than one second per seond of course.
What? It is freaking time travel.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by weemadando »

Well, theoretically it could be as "simple" as creating a stasis pocket or similar and just having that exist throughout the intervening period.

Sending something back would be of a much greater complexity.

But hey, this is just me talking, I don't know much about quantum mechanics and the like, besides that it's fucking complex.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

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From my understanding, time travel forward is possible through time dialation, whereas travel backward is not. Refer to Ando's disclaimer for my authority on this.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by weemadando »

tim31 wrote:From my understanding, time travel forward is possible through time dialation, whereas travel backward is not. Refer to Ando's disclaimer for my authority on this.
That's pretty much what I'm getting at in my post. You just need to create a space where the things inside are "travelling" at relativistic speeds and thus standing still while the rest of the world moves on.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by NecronLord »

Time travel backwards doesn't actually break any known physical laws. It's just that it intereferes with causality, and thus no one in their right mind is going to say it's possible without some decent evidence that it is.

Of course, in the terminator setting, alternate timelines are the order of the day, and it's thus safe to assume that both time travel and faster than light travel are physically possible.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by Stark »

NecronLord wrote: I fear they may even subscribe to the crummy novels' idea that the time machine predates Skynet, and the USA made several, at different locations. Hence Connor having one.
You poor man. :) Your consumption of appalling EU material has finally driven you over the edge!
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by JGregory32 »

Just a few things here, in SCC it is mentioned that T888's are made with Coltan. Coltan is actually columbite-tantalite and the largest mining of it takes place in Australia.
Could Skynet have been placed in a losing position becasue most of the exotic materials needed are out of its hands? It needs a global infrastructure to maintain its systems and continue on to what ever kind of endgame its seeking. Considering that its mentioned that the two hardest hit countires during Judgement Day are Russia and the US there could be groups of Survivors in other countries who are preventing Skynet from creating the global network it needs.
This would mean that the the resistance in the US is only one of many factions, and Skynet rather than dying from a single blow is being whittled to death by a thousand cuts.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by JGregory32 »

Please ignore the previous post, I haven't been sleeping well and sometimes my arguments don't make a lot of sense.
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Re: Why did Skynet lose the war ?

Post by Bilbo »

If Skynet has any brains at all then their time travel tech means they have no problems acquiring resources. You just send an infiltrator terminator back in time to steal or purchase the needed materials in massive quantity then you have to moved to an extremely remote section of the Canadian rockies where no one is going to find them.

Then back in future time you go and pick up the stuff that has been sitting there all those years waiting for you.

Is there anything in the Terminator storyline that makes this not work?
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