EVE's Firepower (WALL-E)

Zor · Post by **Zor** » 2008-09-16 12:42am

This is WALL-E Related, but something i was wondering about.

As we all have seen since the trailer, shortly after arriving on Earth EVE shoots a Bolder with her Plasma Gun thing, blowing a large chunk out of it and nearly destroying the poor innocent protagonist of the Film. The size of the bolder should not be too hard, you have WALL-E as a Measuring Stick who you see in proportion to Humans, so could someone do the Calc's for EVE's Gun?

Zor

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2008-09-16 10:48am

It seems pretty variable, considering in the movie she gets frustrated and blasts several ocean liners to crap. Kind of hard to say what her peak firepower is other than "substantial".

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-09-16 01:32pm

They were cargo and oil tankers. And blowing them to pieces was pretty intense. She was also able to blast that rock to slag that WALL-E hid behind and can vary the power level down to shots that won't damage the inside of the Axiom.

It's quite clear the humans of the BNL empire are advanced.

tim31 · Post by **tim31** » 2008-09-16 03:19pm

The technology that supports them is advanced. The only evidence that any human had learned how to do anything other than breathe and eat was the captain, and even he was stale. Your point stands however, the variable firepower suggests tremendous capacitance in very modest proportion.

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » 2008-09-16 03:32pm

tim31 wrote:The technology that supports them is advanced. The only evidence that any human had learned how to do anything other than breathe and eat was the captain, and even he was stale. Your point stands however, the variable firepower suggests tremendous capacitance in very modest proportion.

Since the machines are AIs, they may have been advancing their own technology while the humans sat around doing nothing. Additionally, earlier generations of humans even on the ships might have been a bit more active in their lives. (I've wondered before if the other ships took off on their own to terraform other worlds. To get that recovery on Earth as seen in the end credits, the Axiom would have had to carry at least genetic material of thousands, if not tens of thousands of species and some kind of terraforming tech. The captains' photographs on the walls would suggest that the humans didn't turn into useless lardballs overnight. Why couldn't a captain of another ship, maybe a hundred years in, hit the Auto's off-switch and set off to another planet?)

tim31 · Post by **tim31** » 2008-09-16 06:57pm

Yeah, I reckon you're right. How many BNL starliners were there? The Axiom was the largest, but I don't recall any mention of its population. Even if we assume that the ship housed 20 million people(rough population of NYC metro area), and assuming(that's two) that half the population of earth was alive for the exodus, and finally assuming(three) that all the ships could carry 20 million people, we wind up with one hundred and fifty ships, and as you say Maya, surely not every skipper decided to Stay The Course.

Very poorly grounded assumptions of course, so does anyone care to expand?

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2008-09-16 08:40pm

Mayabird wrote:Since the machines are AIs, they may have been advancing their own technology while the humans sat around doing nothing. Additionally, earlier generations of humans even on the ships might have been a bit more active in their lives. (I've wondered before if the other ships took off on their own to terraform other worlds. To get that recovery on Earth as seen in the end credits, the Axiom would have had to carry at least genetic material of thousands, if not tens of thousands of species and some kind of terraforming tech. The captains' photographs on the walls would suggest that the humans didn't turn into useless lardballs overnight. Why couldn't a captain of another ship, maybe a hundred years in, hit the Auto's off-switch and set off to another planet?)

It depends. We only got a very narrow view of the Wall-E universe. It depends on just how dependent humans were on WalMart... er... BuynLarge when the BNL fleets left Earth. They might well have never considered going against their autopilots. Some might have, but I think that humans may well have settled into their sessile grub like lives reasonably quickly.

PainRack · Post by **PainRack** » 2008-09-17 10:41am

Just out of curiousity, but when we first saw the Axiom, did anyone else think that the ship was doing mining in space? It was just a stray thought, but the ship appeared to be taking in gases from that purple cloud........

tim31 · Post by **tim31** » 2008-09-17 10:50am

Unless BNL has sidestepped thermodynamics, they need fuel. Even though the ship-in-the-clouds was just a classy establishing shot, it's entirely likely that the ship either deploys robot harvesters or collects matter directly through bussard collectors. Their energy requirements would be not only to run the ship and maintain its staff, but also feed the population.

Murazor · Post by **Murazor** » 2008-09-17 01:29pm

tim31 wrote:Their energy requirements would be not only to run the ship and maintain its staff, but also feed the population.

Not to mention the enormous piles of waste that the WALLAs throw into space. Even if what we saw was just the "once-a-year clean-up", I am fairly sure that the Axiom isn't large enough to explain such a waste volume for seven centuries.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-09-17 06:06pm

One would think they'd have had a better closed-cycle system, but it would seem they didn't mind chucking stuff and grabbing raw materials rather than recycle.

I'd say this was out-of-character, but this is the same species that totally ruined the Earth, so it's their MO.

Hehe, MO...