Samuel wrote:
It isn't the bombs that kill you- it is the complete and total societal collapse.
And since there isn't enough nukes in existence to pull off said total societal collapse on a global scale, my point still stands. Of course its a series about time travel so willing suspension of disbelief is obviously required in relatively large amounts, but the entirere planet being reduced to nothing but apocalyptic wastelands as far as the eye can see is simply not going to happen even if the Judgment Day of Terminator fame happened to occur.
(Of course I still love the series, but is its obviously completely unrealistic)
I thought Stuart had a rather nice description of what happens in case of a nuclear war?
Anyway, Skynet would not need to pull that off. Destroy the major cities and military installations, and what is left will not be a credible threat without electricity and major manufacturing and communications.
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charlemagne wrote:What I don't get about the super virus in T3 is: there is something trying to hack into their computers, they say "the firewalls still hold", but no one has the idea of just terminating the internet connection? I mean, what the hell? They act like there's nothing they can do if all they had to do was just pull the plug.
If you'd watched more low-budget science fiction, you'd know that whenever anyone tries to pull the plug out when an evil AI is in the system they get fried by lightning bolts.
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charlemagne wrote:What I don't get about the super virus in T3 is: there is something trying to hack into their computers, they say "the firewalls still hold", but no one has the idea of just terminating the internet connection? I mean, what the hell? They act like there's nothing they can do if all they had to do was just pull the plug.
If you'd watched more low-budget science fiction, you'd know that whenever anyone tries to pull the plug out when an evil AI is in the system they get fried by lightning bolts.
If you had even a passing knowledge about government networks, you'd know that that the secured ones are physically segregrated from unclass networks, so this is all academic anyway.
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Lonestar wrote:
If you had even a passing knowledge about government networks, you'd know that that the secured ones are physically segregrated from unclass networks, so this is all academic anyway.
Yeah, I know, so the military hooking one of it's most sensitive projects up to the internet really is too stupid already to worry about them not disconnecting from it.
Lonestar wrote:If you had even a passing knowledge about government networks, you'd know that that the secured ones are physically segregrated from unclass networks, so this is all academic anyway.
No, it's a lie! If there's anything Seven Days and Outer Limits taught me, it's that the evil east european hackers are going to hack into our base and shut off our power!
(but really, I have done my fair share of network consulting - hardware topology/configuration and protocol development - which is why I find this stuff so funny)
Shroom Man 777 wrote:Unless the AI is turned evil by a lightning bolt?
I remember this old cartoon, Bucky O'Hare, where the evil AI was in fact turned evil by a lightning bolt. And used lightning bolts to stop it's creators from pulling the plug.
And the plug in question was literally a giant plug in an electrical outlet.
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Darth Onasi wrote:
Not to mention that whole super virus thing is just.. garbage anyway. Yeah, you're the internet, Skynet? Good for you. What's that? Thousands of emp blasts just knocked out every unshielded computer in every major city in the world? Lobotomised yourself, did you?
As mentioned EMP disruption should be minimal (compared to the physical disruption anyways but the internet originated from ARPANET, so it'll still function) and SkyNET might as well take advantage of free processing time while it's there, right?
Has anyone consdiered that Skynet probably targeted population centers versus military bases in order to maximize the human death toll? After all, it would WANT the Russians to be capable of a massive retaliatory strike in order to maximize the NATO death toll.
Galvatron wrote:Has anyone consdiered that Skynet probably targeted population centers versus military bases in order to maximize the human death toll? After all, it would WANT the Russians to be capable of a massive retaliatory strike in order to maximize the NATO death toll.
Skynet would benefit from any surviving isolated military bases it could feed on for weapons, equipments, spare parts etc. Given it's mechanical nature it would benefit from killing as many humans as possible in the initial nuclear strike while leaving behind any infrastructure it would require to function.
I have to tell you something everything I wrote above is a lie.
Galvatron wrote:After all, it would WANT the Russians to be capable of a massive retaliatory strike in order to maximize the NATO death toll.
The Russian counter attack is actually what kills most people in the US according to the Terminator in the second movie.
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Galvatron wrote:After all, it would WANT the Russians to be capable of a massive retaliatory strike in order to maximize the NATO death toll.
The Russian counter attack is actually what kills most people in the US according to the Terminator in the second movie.
In reality though any counter-attack would be primarily directed at military facilities and retaliating civilian deaths would be only a secondary objective. The Russians would want to eliminate as much of the NATO nuclear capability as possible in order save whatever military assets and population centers they had left after the initial strike. Of course if the Russian equivalent of "Skynet" existed and co-operated with the US one, it would change the whole picture.
Marcus Aurelius wrote:Of course if the Russian equivalent of "Skynet" existed and co-operated with the US one, it would change the whole picture.
It existed in the Dark Horse comics ('MIR'). Apparently it was nonsentient to start with, but Skynet hacked into it and made it sentient. MIR agreed to ally with Skynet against the humans, but was secretly planning to wipe out Skynet's core by unloading the full payload of a Typhoon SSBN on Cheyenne Mountain. Frankly the plot for that series seemed kinda retarded - SOP for the Terminator spin-offs.
Starglider wrote:
It existed in the Dark Horse comics ('MIR'). Apparently it was nonsentient to start with, but Skynet hacked into it and made it sentient. MIR agreed to ally with Skynet against the humans, but was secretly planning to wipe out Skynet's core by unloading the full payload of a Typhoon SSBN on Cheyenne Mountain. Frankly the plot for that series seemed kinda retarded - SOP for the Terminator spin-offs.
That really is retarded, if the computer infrastructure for a Skynet-type AI existed in Russia, Skynet could just expand itself over there and take over and wouldn't have to create another sentient AI.
charlemagne wrote:That really is retarded, if the computer infrastructure for a Skynet-type AI existed in Russia, Skynet could just expand itself over there and take over and wouldn't have to create another sentient AI.
That was written in 1992, non-IT people (and for that matter, quite a lot of IT people) still didn't understand the concept of a distributed system. Major applications were still something that ran on a single monstrous mainframe somewhere, hence the concept of Skynet having a single vulnerable 'core', and the idea that another supercomputer would be another distinct intelligence rather than more computing power for a single distributed intelligence. One of the few good things about T3 was moving past that idea.
Starglider wrote:
That was written in 1992, non-IT people (and for that matter, quite a lot of IT people) still didn't understand the concept of a distributed system. Major applications were still something that ran on a single monstrous mainframe somewhere, hence the concept of Skynet having a single vulnerable 'core', and the idea that another supercomputer would be another distinct intelligence rather than more computing power for a single distributed intelligence. One of the few good things about T3 was moving past that idea.
Ah, true, true. How easily one forgets how knowledge we take for granted now wasn't that common only a couple of years ago.
Starglider wrote:That was written in 1992, non-IT people (and for that matter, quite a lot of IT people) still didn't understand the concept of a distributed system. Major applications were still something that ran on a single monstrous mainframe somewhere, hence the concept of Skynet having a single vulnerable 'core', and the idea that another supercomputer would be another distinct intelligence rather than more computing power for a single distributed intelligence. One of the few good things about T3 was moving past that idea.
Ironically, distributed intelligences would be more vunrable to power and communication lose. Especially given the historical shittyness of the USA powergrid at the time.
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Xon wrote:Ironically, distributed intelligences would be more vunrable to power and communication lose. Especially given the historical shittyness of the USA powergrid at the time.
It depends what they're distributed on. Obviously consumer stuff is toast but enterprise and carrier datacentres generally have days to weeks of backup power and are moderately robust. Military networks are of course much more hardened and have more generator endurance; remember that ARPAnet was originally designed specifically to continue functioning after a nuclear attack. A lot of major bases will be glassed, but there will be plenty of networked military computers running in more remote sites, and they can all contribute compute power.
Darth Ruinus wrote:The Russian counter attack is actually what kills most people in the US according to the Terminator in the second movie.
I know that. My point is that Skynet deemed all of humanity a threat ("not just those on the other side") and would thus target the most heavily populated areas in Russia. That should be taken into account if we're still discussing the post-Judgment Day world outside of NATO.
Darth Ruinus wrote:The Russian counter attack is actually what kills most people in the US according to the Terminator in the second movie.
I know that. My point is that Skynet deemed all of humanity a threat ("not just those on the other side") and would thus target the most heavily populated areas in Russia. That should be taken into account if we're still discussing the post-Judgment Day world outside of NATO.
Would it not also make sense for Skynet would through its databanks know everything about any US biological warfare? Once it had a chance priority would be to send in terminator units to acquire any and all samples that could be found for dispersement both locally and globally.
Starglider wrote:It depends what they're distributed on. Obviously consumer stuff is toast but enterprise and carrier datacentres generally have days to weeks of backup power and are moderately robust. Military networks are of course much more hardened and have more generator endurance;
It isn't so much the individual nodes, but the communication links. Those communication are horrifyingly fragile and quite easy to disrupt. And enterprise and carrier datacentres are designed to shut down hard in the event of emergency such as fires and the like to save the equivelment.
remember that ARPAnet was originally designed specifically to continue functioning after a nuclear attack.
ARPAnet was also dramatically smaller and simplier and did not have to function with modern traffic levels which have led to serious design and implementation consessions.
A lot of major bases will be glassed, but there will be plenty of networked military computers running in more remote sites, and they can all contribute compute power.
Bandwidth then becomes a major issue.
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"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." ~ Stephen Colbert
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Xon wrote:ARPAnet was also dramatically smaller and simplier and did not have to function with modern traffic levels which have led to serious design and implementation consessions.
True, but my point was that you could lose the public Internet and still have a lot of communications capability in private WANs (military and commercial) and dedicated point-to-point links. If Skynet is as good at hacking as it seems to be in T3 (and realistically a seed AI should be very very good), then it should be able to salvage a fair amount of capability. Even 1% of current global WAN capability is a lot if Skynet is the only significant user.
Skynet's plans, at least in the novels, did pay attention to areas outside the US. In the books, Skynet has access to automated factories across the world, which it uses to pump out a variety of automated nastyness and weapons for its human followers. Skynet allies itself with various extremist groups (such as, ironically enough, Luddites) using a variety of aliases and its near-total control over the communications network. It's human followers make things worse through destabilization and sabotage. As an example, it orders surviving human military to gather survivors together into camps for safety and to get organized. Then it allows its own followers into to deliberately infect everyone with various diseases, while withholding medical supplies. It makes the societal collapse effect so much worse.
Also, this generally assumes that the humans are not dicks. A large part of the books is dealing with the third world nations, who, in a position of power, generally try to fuck over the US and Europe.
Skynet could easily wipe out huge numbers of survivors of Judgement Day by releasing airborne ebola and smallpox anywhere that has a large number of people. The US and Russia are the only countries who still have smallpox, and airborne ebola has developed naturally in Africa (fortunately, it killed off everyone it infected before it could spread to other countries and continents.). If it planned properly, it could acquire both and begin developing them as weapons for use shortly after the nuclear exchange.
Did Skynet build any nukes after Judgement Day, or keep some in reserve? If so, it should logically build cobalt bombs. The radiation is far more persistent and deadly than a normal nuke, and it could launch secondary strikes to wipe out survivors outside North America or to make "fire breaks", huge swaths of land so radioactive that no human army could cross it to attack Skynet without suffering casualties. It's not like radiation is going to harm its robotic army.
How much use did Skynet make of chemical weapons? The US only just destroyed its last stocks of VX nerve gas in the last month, and it still has huge stockpiles of mustard gas to get rid of. VX would be massively useful since it's colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills in seconds. You could eliminate survivors and rebels rapidly and efficiently just by gassing them and then rolling in the Hunter-Killers and Terminators to finish off anyone who had a gas mask or was hidden somewhere the gas couldn't reach. Mustard would be useful since it incapacitates and is persistent, meaning an area is contaminated for extended periods of time. Chlorine would be great for gassing out bunkers and the like, where the humans like to hide. Heck, just have a Terminator infiltrate a human holdout and instead of going on a killing spree, have it subtly release nerve gas that it farts from canisters hidden inside its body.
Skynet should have made more use of incendiary weapons like flamethrowers too. Humans are far more vulnerable to fire than Skynet's machines, they make good area-effect weapons, and you can suffocate anyone holed up in a bunker whether they burn or not.
Instead, it insists on largely using crude methods like rolling robotic tanks and aircraft around and shooting people. Skynet is grossly inefficient.
Swindle1984 wrote:Instead, it insists on largely using crude methods like rolling robotic tanks and aircraft around and shooting people. Skynet is grossly inefficient.
Based on the movies, there's no reason to assume it wasn't doing the sort of stuff you described.
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