4 Reasons Terminators Suck At Their Jobs
Skynet is the evil artificial intelligence behind all of the Terminator movies, and its first priority is to kill all humans. After the program took control of the world's supply of nuclear weapons, it used them to blow up a good portion of the human race. What was left of humanity lived on, only to fight a near-invincible army of merciless robots with whatever used, battered and broken weaponry it could scavenge. And yet, not only did this one-sided war "span over 30 years," instead of the more expected "one really shitty afternoon," but human beings actually won out in the end. Do you know why? Because Terminators were the worst idea in history. Here are all the reasons they suck:
#4.
They Have to Pass as Human
There are many varieties of robot in the Terminator universe, but all of the titular Terminator models are vaguely humanoid machines, some of which are coated in flesh so they could pass for people. This was so they could better infiltrate the human resistance camps and kill all combatants once inside. They were given living flesh because rubber skin just didn't look right and sparse personalities so they could make it past the gate guards. And they were made anatomically correct, because they might need to infiltrate the camp showers and possibly bone a few of the resistance fighters to lower morale before the slaughter started.
Wait, how does that lower anything?
But why bother with any of that? Skynet's main problem wasn't that the robots couldn't get past the velvet ropes at all the human clubs because they looked too roboty; it was that Skynet couldn't find where the damn humans were hiding in the first place. If it knew where they were, Skynet could just send over one of those tanks that shoots out motorcycles, or a jet with giant blades, or hell -- maybe just a good old-fashioned bomb, if it's feeling a bit boring that day.
Whatever's clever.
The whole resistance movement revolved around hiding from Skynet, not just locking the doors when Skynet came knocking. Saying you needed human-looking Terminators to kill humans is like saying the reason we haven't killed Bin Laden yet is because our soldiers don't have convincing-enough turbans to get into his cave. Whatever the motive, the one thing we can establish for certain is that, although Skynet is fully capable of making gigantic aircraft and heavily armored tanks like these ...
... it prefers to make robots that look and behave exactly like people instead. So ... they're for intelligence-gathering, right? The Terminators are the espionage models, and all the battlefield robots look like those bitchin' death machines above. Except ...
... they don't. Several times we're shown that the skinless, humanoid Terminators are the main Skynet force on the battlefield. These are the foot soldiers. Skynet's version of infantry.
What's so wrong with that? Well ...
#3.
They Have a Pretty Crappy Design
So we've established there's no great reason for the espionage, and that the Terminators -- modeled after humans, remember -- are mostly used in battle as foot soldiers. Humans are at the top of the food chain because of our intelligence, community and opposable thumbs, not the rest of our bodies. We don't exactly have the best design in the animal kingdom. In fact, you know what's better than us?
Those fingernails will fuck your day.
Literally everything: Four-legged mammals run faster and jump higher, winged creatures take to the air, clawed creatures burrow beneath the earth, finned creatures swim -- a warrior robot simply has no need for hands or bipedal locomotion. These things aren't pre-existing; Skynet's designing and building new ones all the time, expressly for the purpose of killing folks. The robots don't need thumbs to grab guns; guns could just be built already on them. Or if you do find humanity's one physical advantage -- our hands -- to be a necessary feature, why copy the rest? Just slap some humanoid arms on a giant land shark! Copying humanity's schematics presents no discernible advantage on the battlefield.
Unless Skynet understands our biggest weakness is boners.
But Skynet stuck with the most accurate human design possible -- no six-armed humans, no humans with jetpacks -- just an ordinary human shape. Which means the Terminators have to walk everywhere they go (and they are shown doing just that in the films) while their supersonic jet robots and tank-treaded death machines hover around, babysitting the poorly designed foot soldiers.
"Guys, wait up! Carl twisted his robot ankle and chipped one of his metal teeth that we have for some reason."
Oh, but it's so easy to be snarky and tear ideas down. It's so much harder to build. Hell, it's not like we've got better human eradication tactics just sitting around.
Wait -- yes we do. We use them all the time. In the goddamn Army.
For example, much like the Terminators, our armed forces use flying drones. But unlike these advanced killer robots from the future, designed and given life by a vast, incomprehensible super-intelligence, we thought to give ours guns: In Terminator Salvation, a drone flies up to young Kyle Reese, identifies him and then transmits that data to the armed flying machines. In the time it takes the weaponized robots to get to that location, they've lost Reese. We could have all been spared another 90 minutes of that movie if the first drone had a machine gun, or a small pistol, or even just a sharp bit off to one side with maybe a little rust on it (if that's not, you know, overkill).
Most of these points were adressed in the Sarah Connor chronicles.
Replyterminator universe is actually interesting. The first movie was reeeeeeally stupid. Flesh-coating, nuclear war, stable time loops and so on - all from the first movie. Everything else is trying to dance around this B-movie logic and try to turn it into a serious sci-fi setting with internal logic.
wait what if skynet had an inferiority complex because it views us as its creators and as such need to kill us on a level playing field to solve it
Replywhat if skynet builds androids that are coated with highly contagious virus, or has one lung filled with
Replysay agent orange or something maybe that's why they keep building em that way
First off I want to say that a really enjoyed reading this article (“Unless Skynet understands our biggest weakness is boners” !!!). But there are some things I have to disagree. The author used some picture from The Sarah Conner Chronicles but I don’t think he actually looked it. They explain a lot of interesting stuff during the two seasons.
Reply#4.
They Have to Pass as Human
Already discussed in many comments below. A Cyborg could pretend to be an injured human or a survivor from another resistance camp so the humans will take him with them to a camp. Also in the Sarah Conner Chronicles they capture humans, get information out of them and then copy there appearance and send them to the camp where nobody spot them as terminators because they look like friends.
#3.
They Have a Pretty Crappy Design
I don’t think so. For example building a giant killer tank maybe isn´t a good way of fighting small resistance groups. Take a look at World War 2. After the war nearly every military nation scrapped the big warship designs. I became clear that a group of smaller more movable vessels (like endoskeletons) are much more efficient than one enormous warship. In one episode of TSCC Cameron (friendly attractive Terminator) points out that a small crate of metal (Coltan) is enough to build like 500 endoskeletons. She also says that resources are very hard to find during the war. I´m pretty sure building 500 endoskeletons is much more effective than building just a small amount of big tanks, aircrafts which are easy to take down with some tactical attacks.
#2.
They Have the Worst Tactics
Actually there is a whole episode of TSCC about bio weapons. Skyet uses them to wipe out resistance bunkers. You can even see it in the future war scenes of the first movie. Some of the resistance fighters carrying gas mask at their belts. So I’m pretty sure they are aware of the ABC weapons Skynet could use to kill them. There is also a nice quote from one of the resistance fighters in the TSCC episode. She says something about rabbits in Australia and no matter what the humans tried to get rid of them (like building fences, traps AND using viruses) they just were not able to kill these little bastards. Much like Skynet versus humans. Another possibility is that the resistance (after been hit by some bio weapons) could track down where they are produced and undertake massive attacks to destroy those factories.
#1.
They're Built for Time Travel
Okay. Building a time machine that can only be used with organic material really is some kind of stupid. After all it´s just a movie and they had to find an excuse for not bringing future weapons to the past. BUT if I would build a time machine and travel to the past I would probably also go through time without clothing or anything technology based stuff from the future. If it would fall into wrong hands (or the right ones) it could change the way of technology development by reverse engineering. After all even Skynet seems to understand that messing with the timeline is a bad idea (apart from killing John Conner). They even build a Terminator (T-Infinity) to "correct" the timeline.
#4.
They Have to Pass as Human
You have a point there.
#3.
They Have a Pretty Crappy Design
That is not a very good explanation; you act as if the only alternative to human shaped robots are vehicles like jets or tanks. Not true, my friend. Bennion was right on the money with this point. Human shaped robots may have a special place in espionage missions, but for general warfare, they are absolutely terrible. Quadrupeds are better suited all around in this area. I mean: why is a human shaped robot preferable as opposed to a vaguely dog shaped machine with built-in weapons and several hands mounted on its body in open combat? And even if humanoid robots had merits to it shape, why stick with only two arms? Why no shoulder-mounted cannons? Why only two eyes only on the front side of their face? Why skeletal appearance at all? Why are these human-shaped robots the infantry? Doesn't make sense.
#2.
They Have the Worst Tactics
Lots of things can be used as poison, not just diseases. Mercury comes to mind. Radiation is also a good one. But, I don't think diseases should be left off the table. Developing a viral infection that use common animals as carriers is an option. Something like super-HIV. Skynet could still go this route; this method of introducing a human-only virus into animals we eat would not immediately kill all humans, but it would severely limit our long time survival which is also an option.
#1.
They're built for Time Travel
Again, not a very good point. If a Terminator does it job right, then they wouldn't have to worry about the technology falling into the wrong hands. The wrong hands point is also particularly weak when you consider that any piece of tech, including the Terminator itself, could fall into the wrong hands. That was actually a plot point of T2. Anyway, the fear of any piece falling into the wrong hands could placated by sending a Terminator with a powerful self-destruct with a large blast radius. Get within range of Sarah or John Conner and go ka-boom. They're dead, the technology is gone, and no one is the wiser.
Besides, Skynet obviously do not understand time, or gives no f**k about time since it sent the Terminator in the first place. (This would have been a better plot point if the resistance were the ones who built the time machine, and the Terminator was sent after the soldier to kill him before he stopped Skynet from ever being developed. It would explain why the time machine needed a organic material and why Skynet continues to build androids. It would also strengthen your point #4; Skynet would need to disguise its Terminator for it to get to the time machine in the first place. Boom, everything makes sense except for point #2.)
for number four, i think the idea is that the resistance will find a survivor (the terminator) and take him back to the base, where he transmits the bases location, then the rest of skynet blows them up
ReplyI'm thinking the biological weapons thing would not work initially. We don't exactly have bio-weapons attached to our missiles or otherwise weaponized and ready to go by direction of a machine intelligence...but we DO have a shitload of nuclear missiles still armed and ready to go. Calculated risk on Skynet's part for a machine not yet capable of manufacturing the proxies it would later use to carry out its mission.
Replybecause the movie had to be atleast 2hrs long not 10 minutes
Replythe problem with the bomb thing in the last one is that if skynet did that they have no way of knowing if they are also dropping the bomb on a key member of the sky net project thus destroying itself as well apart from that very well reasoned
ReplyExactly.
Skynet doesn't like being sef aware & is trying to commit "suicide by cop".
Reply"Guys, wait up! Carl twisted his robot ankle and chipped one of his metal teeth that we have for some reason."
ReplyBest part of the article imo.
For me the biological (and chemical) warfare is the main reason why a Skynet-like being could easily stomp out humanity. Don't bother trying to get in to the human bunkers. Simply build a sealed enclosure around the door and fill it with pure mercury. The second they try opening the door it will dump into the stronghold and every human inside would quickly get severe brain damage from the vapour.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesSpawn tons of air-transmittable viruses and bugs, and dump them into the atmosphere. Cycle between different cocktails of these things so human vaccinations won't work. Not only would people breath it in, you could easily make rain-water undrinkable.
In addition, inject highly toxic chemicals into groundwater systems. Both the rain water and the ground water would be contaminated, on top of them breathing the biological warfare in. This would be far less inexpensive than manufacturing thousands or millions of military robots, and Skynet would be immune to it.
I'm telling you man, there are a million more effective and efficient ways than "Fight them the same way they are fighting us".
Yeah thanks for repeating what the article says.
Viruses aren't cookies. You can't just "spew viruses" around. Some have a long live, yes, but the vast majority disperses and dies off in a few minutes to a few hours. Some can't even be exposed to air. You first have to know where they are.
The few that do live a long time are basically a long time coming so we have immunities to them. We already have vast resistance to most known viruses and bacteria and the few that kill us do so because we're crowded and spread it easily.
You can't stomp out resistance cells by bio warfare.
And chemical warfare is complex. Sure a machine needs no food, but it still needs a biosphere to keep itself from succumbing to nuclear winter. It needs sunlight, air, fuel, energy. If you poison an entire planet, it will be dead and soon any tech within.
Finally, it makes no sense that a machine, however advanced, can think for itself. I know what the movies said, but if it were to ever make sense, it would need to keep some humans around. We may be squishy, but I don't think early killer robots could crimp CAT6.
Well hell for that matter what exactly are the machines motivations? I pretty sure the prime directive that was programmed into Skynet wasn't "destroy all of humanity". So what the hell is its goal? The create some robot utopia so they can go around and create yet more robots unheeded? Yeah lack of mortality and basic human desires can really make an existance seem pointless.
There is absolutely no reason to do anything the way Skynet did it unless you're trying to make your plan unfold like an action movie.
ReplyWait...
I am a Human and I can Pass as a Robot. Origato.
ReplyWe're already doing the genocide thing ourselves dude...
ReplyIf Skynet does turn out to be real, you guys sure are giving them a lot of helpful pointers.
Replyoh man! This article is dangerous if it got into the wrong site
Replyspeaking of tactics, when terminator in 1 went to the police station sarah was hiding in, the police officer was doing paperwork and had like 3 pages left, he said to arnold "Ill let you see her just give me a second while i do this paperwork" if arni had just sat down, turned off his incredibly senstive impatience program, he'd of gotten inside the station silently, and started by killing sarah in the police station rampage scene.
ReplySo it went from starting by killing the target to starting by killing the first line of defence, giving Sarah a shitload of time to run. If arnold had just sat there T1 would of ended early and theired be no sequals.
Except he was a base invader. Also do you think they would have let the giant gangster looking mother f****r that matches the description Sarah gave just walk in and say hi?
"Skynet is fully capable of making gigantic aircraft and heavily armored tanks like these ..."
ReplyThe "heavily armored tank" you refer to and picture was not created by Skynet. Those machines were designed before Skynet was turned on. They were at the military installation when they tried to reach Kate Brewster's Dad in T3.
Yes they were.. the human built ones were tiny prototypes.
I always figured what we might've been seeing when Skynet and the Resistance were throwing down was a battle being waged by humanity against their infiltration unit factories. I dunno- I figured if they had the upper hand, like Reese had pointed out, then Skynet would have tossed everything it had at the Resistance, even their own infiltration units, to counter them.
ReplyI have always found T time travel really improbable, what will happen if a T goes to the Past and kills all the Connors? He will create another time line and he will not be able to return to the same time he came from himself because in the NoConnor Future the T could have not returned to kill Connor cause the Skynet of that time line does not have motivations to do so, So basically the Skynet who sent the T back will never get rid of Connor on that way, he cannot simply dissapear on its time and if Connor dissapears on that time line just as nothing, Skynet will also forget about its existense, so we have a f*****g Paradox and a Terminator Forever Alone on our time.
ReplyCan't even be bothered to argue..