Speaker 1: Welcome to text Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and today we're going
Speaker 1: to listen to another classic episode of tech Stuff. This
Speaker 1: one's titled tech Stuff Watches Independence Day. It originally published
Speaker 1: on July three, two thousand thirteen, seven years ago. Wow. So,
Speaker 1: as the name suggests, we sat down and watched Independence
Speaker 1: Day and then we had a discussion about the technology
Speaker 1: in that film, and you know how it stacks up
Speaker 1: against reality. I hope you guys enjoy. To start off,
Speaker 1: we should probably give an overview of the film for
Speaker 1: those of you who have not seen it. Now, this
Speaker 1: movie came out in nine Now, there were a few
Speaker 1: other things that were going on at that time. That
Speaker 1: It's the year that DVDs launched in Japan. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: when I actually asked my friends if anyone had a
Speaker 1: copy of this, they all said they had it on
Speaker 1: vhs and said, hs, we don't even remember that media.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if I have anything that will
Speaker 1: still play a tape. Uh. There were other things that
Speaker 1: happened that year, in the world of technology, Internet Explorer
Speaker 1: three launched. That was Microsoft's big browser, and of course
Speaker 1: the three was one of the bigger ones of the
Speaker 1: releases Windows in T four point it was released by
Speaker 1: Microsoft as well. eBay got started. A little first person
Speaker 1: shooter by the name of Duke NUKEAM three D launched
Speaker 1: and that ended up, of course getting a lot of
Speaker 1: people really excited. They enjoyed the game. I include was planned.
Speaker 1: Y sequel was planned and would end up being vaporware
Speaker 1: for more than a decade. Uh. There was a certain
Speaker 1: animal that was born that year. Yeah, Dolly the cloned
Speaker 1: sheep was born, first first cloned mammal. Yep, Dolly the Sheep,
Speaker 1: first mammals successfully cloned. That's also the year that IBMS
Speaker 1: Deep Blue defeated the chess champion, Gary Kasparov, so man
Speaker 1: versus machine and machine wins. Yeah. It was also the
Speaker 1: tele Communications Act of strangely enough, happened in UM and
Speaker 1: and that basically allowed the Internet to sort of be
Speaker 1: lumped in along with broadband signals, and UM allowed cable
Speaker 1: companies to start offering Internet services. People were really excited
Speaker 1: about this new megabit speeds that we're going to start
Speaker 1: happening right right. We were finally getting away from the
Speaker 1: kill a bit speeds that we were thinking of with
Speaker 1: the old dial up modems. And you know, this is
Speaker 1: this is back when the Internet is pretty young as
Speaker 1: far as the general public is concerned. The Internet itself
Speaker 1: had been around for a while, but really only research institutions, universities,
Speaker 1: some government of facilities, military, that kind of stuff. Those
Speaker 1: organizations had access to it, but anyone outside of that
Speaker 1: really did not have a whole lot of access to
Speaker 1: the Internet unless they just having to work someplace or
Speaker 1: go to school someplace that had it. At this point
Speaker 1: in ninety six, we've actually got the point where the
Speaker 1: Worldwide Web is a thing, but still very early on
Speaker 1: in the kind of the g c S era of
Speaker 1: the Internet exactly. And and according to uh the people
Speaker 1: history dot com that they say that in the twelve
Speaker 1: months of the Internet, host computer number goes from about
Speaker 1: one million computers to ten million computers, So obviously explosive
Speaker 1: growth at this time, although it's still very much a
Speaker 1: new thing, which kind of comes into play a little
Speaker 1: bit in the film Independence Day. So Independence Day it
Speaker 1: was a movie by Dean Devlin and Roland Yeah, and
Speaker 1: Emerick is. Of course, he's become known as the guy
Speaker 1: who likes to blow up the Earth. Uh. He's blown
Speaker 1: up the earth in several movies and other projects, things
Speaker 1: like everything from Godzilla to the Day After Tomorrow. Uh.
Speaker 1: He's really big on worldwide destruction. And of course we
Speaker 1: should mention that. Not too long ago, it was announced
Speaker 1: that sequels to Independence Day had been planned two sequels UM,
Speaker 1: with the first one coming out like I think, UM
Speaker 1: and Independence Day stars some some folks that you might recognize,
Speaker 1: like Will Smith would be the big name Bill Pullman,
Speaker 1: who I always get mixed up with Bill Paxton. If
Speaker 1: you put them side by side, I would not be
Speaker 1: able to name one versus the other. And I have
Speaker 1: you have you have this this problem pretty commonly UM.
Speaker 1: Also also Jeff Goldbloom, who was very famous for being
Speaker 1: UM wacky scientist at the time due to Jurassic Park. Right.
Speaker 1: He's also known as Uh. He does this stuttering thing
Speaker 1: where he I do too. I enjoy it. Randy Quaid
Speaker 1: also in the movie as a as what you assume
Speaker 1: is a delusional drunk, although apparently he was the truth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's not delusional. UM. Adam Baldwin's in Tiny cheeby Adam Baldwin.
Speaker 1: He's so young and adorable. It's very cute. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely well before his firefly days. Yeah, Brent Brent
Speaker 1: Spiner data data from Star Trek Next Generation, although he
Speaker 1: does not play data from Star Trek Next Generation in
Speaker 1: this movie. That would have been confusing. So to give
Speaker 1: a brief rundown on what the film's all about in
Speaker 1: case you have not seen it, there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: lot of spoilers in this podcast, but essentially it's ninety six.
Speaker 1: I think it's safety spoil at night. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: the statute of let me Yeah. So the movie is
Speaker 1: all about how, uh, this alien invasion force comes into
Speaker 1: two Earth's orbit and then lays waste to the major
Speaker 1: cities on Earth in preparation for a full on invasion.
Speaker 1: And it's about how Earth forces kind of mount up
Speaker 1: a defense, a desperate defense, to fight off these alien invaders.
Speaker 1: And this all happens, of course, on on from July
Speaker 1: two to July four, which here in the United States
Speaker 1: is kind of a celebration and of independence and hence
Speaker 1: the term Independence Day. It's extremely um, what's it not
Speaker 1: not ethnocentric, gendoistic, it's it's all right, let me put
Speaker 1: it this way. It's about America. It's an American movie,
Speaker 1: is um, there's quite a bit of there's quite a
Speaker 1: bit of uh stuff about America. And then there's some
Speaker 1: token mentions of other places around the world, where you
Speaker 1: see a brief scene in Iraq with British forces saying
Speaker 1: things like the Americans on the case, bloody hell like
Speaker 1: that's you know, and then it goes to Japan and Russia,
Speaker 1: and of course all the Russians are sitting around vodka
Speaker 1: and listening to the radio. And I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: let's just say that the the depiction of other cultures
Speaker 1: is somewhat stereotypical within the context of this movie, but stilted.
Speaker 1: Don't don't worry though. Everything is so it's it's not
Speaker 1: just that we have a very very American centric film.
Speaker 1: No one comes out of this looking too great. But
Speaker 1: but that's that's more more commentary on the quality of
Speaker 1: the film. Let's get down to some of the science,
Speaker 1: because this film is filled with science and technology and
Speaker 1: likely and some of the stuff. There's one thing in particular,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of things that are really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that end up being something that that's similar to what
Speaker 1: we use today. And I'm actually really impressed, and it
Speaker 1: was a really cool idea that I don't know who
Speaker 1: came up with it, but it was a really nifty thing.
Speaker 1: But the movie opens with a shot of the Moon
Speaker 1: and you're actually looking at one of the moon landing
Speaker 1: sites where you see the you know, the footprints on
Speaker 1: the regulus on the moon and the placard, yeah, and
Speaker 1: the American flag, and then a shadow comes across the
Speaker 1: Moon and you hear this terrible rumbling noise. Because in space,
Speaker 1: everyone can hear you scream. Yeah. See, that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that happens in this film is that sound
Speaker 1: does travel in space in this movie, which I can
Speaker 1: only assume that the ships themselves are miked, that somehow
Speaker 1: they're they're pushing out an atmosphere where sound can actually travel. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because because there's a rumbling on the on the Moon,
Speaker 1: which technically you would not be able to hear unless
Speaker 1: you had your ear right up against the Moon's surface
Speaker 1: because there's not any atmosphere on the Moon, so there's
Speaker 1: no way for particles to travel. Remember, sound is a
Speaker 1: physical uh, manifestation. It's actually particles that are banging together,
Speaker 1: and there's no atmosphere for the particles to bang together.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't be able to hear anything. Speaking of which
Speaker 1: there there are really no I mean this. The ship
Speaker 1: kicks up all kinds of moon dust and uh and yeah,
Speaker 1: it shakes everything around a whole lot, which wouldn't really
Speaker 1: be Yeah, that wouldn't happen either unless the propulsion system
Speaker 1: for the ship is somehow something like gravity based, which
Speaker 1: is possible. That's something we'll we'll give you that one, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: alien technology. We don't know how it works because we
Speaker 1: are not we're not privy to that information. So it's
Speaker 1: quite possible that they're using some sort of gravity draw
Speaker 1: if which somehow can affect actual particles. Um, so we'll
Speaker 1: give them the rumbling. We'll give at least the movement part.
Speaker 1: The rumbling part is a little yeah, yeah, and multiple
Speaker 1: talking again about the ships in just a minute. I
Speaker 1: think we're kind of going in chronological order throughout the
Speaker 1: movie because that's how we took our notes, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: And we should also say that lots of science fiction
Speaker 1: films have sound in space, and it's a dramatic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't, although I do appreciate it when people don't
Speaker 1: do that, right, like just wee firefly where you would
Speaker 1: have a ship explode and you don't hear anything because
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to Uh, that makes sense, But
Speaker 1: I understand why they do it for dramatic effect. It
Speaker 1: would not be as effective for an audience, So I
Speaker 1: give them a pass on that because they're using a
Speaker 1: common trope that's throughout all the science fiction films. Um.
Speaker 1: We then get down to the surface of the planet
Speaker 1: where where where Steady has suddenly realized and it is
Speaker 1: it is pronounced study Steady, right, not s E t I,
Speaker 1: because one of the characters in the film s t I.
Speaker 1: What we just call it set search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a real organization and they use radio telescopes
Speaker 1: to search out radio signals from other places in the
Speaker 1: galaxy to see if there's anything broadcasting out there. But
Speaker 1: by radio signals, we don't necessarily mean audio like audible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it might be. It might be well, just like just
Speaker 1: like our WiFi is a kind of radio transmission. Uh,
Speaker 1: it may be that it's just a series of frequencies
Speaker 1: that we pick up that end up looking like it's
Speaker 1: some form of communication. It wouldn't necessarily be like or
Speaker 1: listening to nineteen fifties rock or anything. Um, you might
Speaker 1: be able to translate that into some sort of audible sound,
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't necessarily sound like anything. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And which is interesting to me because in the seat
Speaker 1: headquarters they do have a scientist who goes like, I'm
Speaker 1: hearing beeps and boops, literal audio beeps and groups coming
Speaker 1: through this headset, and that means some things, right, So,
Speaker 1: so clearly, steady in this in this little fractured universe,
Speaker 1: has UM translated all of their radio frequencies into an
Speaker 1: audible signal that technicians can and and to be clear,
Speaker 1: steady actually you know when they're looking for these radio signals,
Speaker 1: one of the things you have to keep in mind
Speaker 1: is there's a lot of stuff out there that can
Speaker 1: create a radio signal that isn't intelligent. It's it's just
Speaker 1: it's a natural phenomenon. Basically space, I mean objects within space,
Speaker 1: anything with with with gravity or with light you can
Speaker 1: have you can have the potential for that. You can
Speaker 1: have anything like quasars, things like that that create these
Speaker 1: radio signals. So what SETI has to do is not
Speaker 1: only look for the presence of radio signals, but then
Speaker 1: to actually, yeah, to make sure that that's some sort
Speaker 1: of meaningful communication as opposed to just random noise. Well,
Speaker 1: in this case, they figure out, hey, there's something up there,
Speaker 1: and they see that there's a through through some form
Speaker 1: of thermal imaging, they see a gigantic spaceship. Now, later
Speaker 1: on the movie, we discover that radar does not work
Speaker 1: on these spaceships. So radar, that's one that's I guess
Speaker 1: the excuse of why the the spaceship was not detected
Speaker 1: until after it was right there at the Moon already. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But in Earth's orbit, the thermal imaging works. So in
Speaker 1: other words, there's no cloaking device here. There's nothing that's
Speaker 1: that's keeping it invisible to us from our Now we
Speaker 1: can't get them by radar, but we could see them. Now.
Speaker 1: This ship, the mother ship, because this is before it
Speaker 1: has let out any other smaller ships, is huge. According
Speaker 1: to the movie, it is five hundred and fifty kilometers
Speaker 1: in diameter, which is about three two miles. That's just
Speaker 1: under half the size of Texas at its widest point,
Speaker 1: and and it says that it's about a quarter of
Speaker 1: the mass of the Moon. All of this meaning it's
Speaker 1: it's very, very big, and we would be able to
Speaker 1: see it, if not, even without radar with our naked eye,
Speaker 1: like looking up at the sky, we would go, oh what, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would at least be able to see the light
Speaker 1: from this thing if nothing else, I mean, the sunlight
Speaker 1: reflecting off of it. But with telescopes we'd be able
Speaker 1: to see it even further away. And possibly you know,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe the shields, because it is revealed that the
Speaker 1: ship has some kind of shielding mechanism um which which
Speaker 1: blocks you know, torpedoes, um. Yeah, but maybe maybe it
Speaker 1: also blocks visual data. I don't know. I mean, then
Speaker 1: it with the question would be why do they bother
Speaker 1: to reveal themselves at all? Because of it? If a
Speaker 1: dramatic effect, it's like all that only makes sense within
Speaker 1: the context of a movie within when you step outside
Speaker 1: of that and you look at cloud. If you were
Speaker 1: going to destroy a planet, wouldn't you wouldn't you want
Speaker 1: to have a dramatic entrant. I have learned my lesson.
Speaker 1: I am no longer revealing my egomaniacal plans to the
Speaker 1: hero before I set them in motion. You know, once
Speaker 1: for me once, shame on you, full me four D
Speaker 1: and seventy eight times shame on me. All right, not
Speaker 1: again for seven nine. It's going down okay, But yeah,
Speaker 1: the the it does not appear to be invisible. So
Speaker 1: that's one. That's one thing we can point out as
Speaker 1: being a problem that we would have seen this thing
Speaker 1: coming towards the Earth even with no instrumentation. We would
Speaker 1: have literally telescopes. Yet we would have seen it well
Speaker 1: before it ever reached as far as the moon. That
Speaker 1: being said, we also don't know if I assumed this
Speaker 1: ship must have some sort of super fast propulsion system
Speaker 1: for faster than or at least yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: would have to be because there are no nearby systems
Speaker 1: that could support life, uh compared you know from our
Speaker 1: position right there are no planets that are because we
Speaker 1: do learn that these aliens share a lot in common
Speaker 1: with us. They breathe oxygen, they have the same sort
Speaker 1: of tolerances for heat and cold, and so they have
Speaker 1: they have some kind of visual cortex that that allows
Speaker 1: them to you use very similar computer displays to ours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a problem, but we'll get into that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they they they have a lot of similarities to humans,
Speaker 1: which is already a huge coincidence. I mean, there's no
Speaker 1: there's nothing that says that another intelligent kind of life
Speaker 1: would have to be humanoid in shape. That's one that
Speaker 1: I'm willing to give them though. That's that's that's one.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're not quite you know, it's it's not
Speaker 1: like clingons versus humans, and so it's not it's not
Speaker 1: quite quite that close. But you still have you know, generally,
Speaker 1: you know, limbs and that head and is a very
Speaker 1: strange place, is all I'm saying. I'm that's one that
Speaker 1: I'm willing to let slide. Well. For them to be
Speaker 1: so similar to us and in multiple ways is a
Speaker 1: huge coincidence when you think about all the variables out there,
Speaker 1: I mean, when you when you really get down to it,
Speaker 1: when you talk about our sample size for planets with
Speaker 1: life on it, that's a one. As a sample size
Speaker 1: of one, we have one planet that we know of
Speaker 1: that supports life as we know it as we know it,
Speaker 1: So that's an incredibly small sample size. So this is
Speaker 1: a problem that's throughout science fiction. I'm not just picking
Speaker 1: on independence, but but you know, we have to extrapolate
Speaker 1: from what we know, so I mean, I understand that,
Speaker 1: but for something to be this similar to us, it's
Speaker 1: pretty phenomenal. Anyway. The fact that they're this similar means
Speaker 1: that that the well draws a lot of of questions,
Speaker 1: one of which is that why are they coming here?
Speaker 1: And they eventually it's revealed that they're planning on invading
Speaker 1: and taking over the planet. That what they do is
Speaker 1: they go from planet to planet, they consent the resources,
Speaker 1: and then move on to them. They're like, well, this
Speaker 1: one's done, let's go on, which then raises another question,
Speaker 1: which is that we assume there are a lot of
Speaker 1: exo planets out there, lots we've we've already found to
Speaker 1: found lots of exo planets. Uh, there are several that
Speaker 1: we found that are what we within what we call
Speaker 1: the Goldilocks zone, which is this zone within a distance
Speaker 1: from the host star of that planet. If we were
Speaker 1: in Star Trek, it would be called a Class M planet. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: meaning that if meaning that that it would at least
Speaker 1: have the potential for supporting life as we know it
Speaker 1: based upon its distance from the star. But that's all
Speaker 1: the you know, and we might know something about the
Speaker 1: composition of the planet itself, but we wouldn't know enough
Speaker 1: about to say that whether there is or isn't life
Speaker 1: on it. However, I'm sure that, just based upon the
Speaker 1: huge number we've already started to see in our within
Speaker 1: our own galaxy, there must be countless planets that fall
Speaker 1: into this category, which makes you wonder, why would you
Speaker 1: bother going to try and colonize one where the residents
Speaker 1: of that planet might potentially fight back. Well, they it is,
Speaker 1: I would say, I would argue that that these aliens
Speaker 1: had to have been watching us long enough to to
Speaker 1: understand our language, and understand our computer language, which we'll
Speaker 1: get to in just a second, and and furthermore understand
Speaker 1: our culture. Um, because when they do send out those
Speaker 1: little spaceships, they send them not to the most populated
Speaker 1: regions of the planet, but to the major cultural landmarks,
Speaker 1: as though they are specifically trying to evoke emotional response
Speaker 1: in us. Yeah, though they are the creators of the film. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, so,
Speaker 1: if you're looking at it from a storyteller perspective, you
Speaker 1: want your you want to park your your your spaceship
Speaker 1: directly over the Empire, State State Building, or directly over
Speaker 1: the White House or building as it was. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: you park it directly over some incredibly identifiable landmark, because
Speaker 1: that's very it's a great visual effect if you are
Speaker 1: an alien. The reason you do it is, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you're already leveling cities. Um, so they we presume that
Speaker 1: they have some sort of faster than light drive in
Speaker 1: order for them to get to where they're going. We
Speaker 1: don't know that. It's never revealed in the movie where
Speaker 1: they came from or how they got here. Um, we
Speaker 1: don't know. Uh. They talk about how the radio signal
Speaker 1: um is originating from the moon. Uh you can't. I
Speaker 1: don't know how they figure that out, Like how I
Speaker 1: mean you could feel or other came from that direction.
Speaker 1: Study say, say this radio signal is coming from the moon, right,
Speaker 1: But you don't I mean, you could see what direction
Speaker 1: it was coming from. If you were, you know, triangulating
Speaker 1: from various radio stations and you saw how long it
Speaker 1: took to get to each one, you could figure out
Speaker 1: kind of where the origin point was. Distance is a
Speaker 1: little weird, I mean, because radio signals can come from
Speaker 1: really far away. Now, grant the strength of the signal
Speaker 1: would give you an idea, but that that partly an equation.
Speaker 1: That's a little bit on the fly. Um, they start
Speaker 1: using our own satellites to communicate the aliens do the
Speaker 1: mothership eventually has other ships split off from it. Oh
Speaker 1: and one other thing I want to mention. You said
Speaker 1: that had a quarter of the mass of the Moon.
Speaker 1: In case you're curious, I did the math here. It's
Speaker 1: so the moon has a massive seventy three grams, which
Speaker 1: would be if you if you wrote down the number
Speaker 1: seven and then the number three and then put twenty
Speaker 1: one zeros after it. That's so many grams of math
Speaker 1: us the moon has so this Uh, this spaceship has
Speaker 1: one point eight grams of mass. Uh. And they talk
Speaker 1: about the possibility of using an I C. B M
Speaker 1: to bring this mother ship down before it starts to
Speaker 1: split off and all the other ships come out from it. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's no nuclear weapon that could destroy that much mass.
Speaker 1: It just we have not created a nuclear weapon that
Speaker 1: could do that much damage. Yeah, there's that's so massive,
Speaker 1: and we don't not only why why would we? But
Speaker 1: how could we? So? How how how do we know
Speaker 1: how much mass this thing has? Yeah? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, because they're they're looking at it from a
Speaker 1: thermal imaging perspective, which really just is a is a
Speaker 1: gravitational pull and and unless it is um, unless they've
Speaker 1: calculated the amount that it's offset the tides, or I
Speaker 1: don't even even then, you wouldn't be able to calculate,
Speaker 1: you know, figure out what the mass is. That that's
Speaker 1: a good question. I think it was. I think the
Speaker 1: answer is they wanted to make sure it looked like
Speaker 1: it was big. This is from my sheet of increasingly
Speaker 1: incredulous question. How is this possible? Well, the mother ship
Speaker 1: has all these large city sized ships split off from it,
Speaker 1: and the city size ships then come down and hover
Speaker 1: over the various cities, including like directly over the Empire
Speaker 1: State Building, directly over the Capitol Building, directly over part
Speaker 1: of l At, etcetera. And they I think they say
Speaker 1: at one point it's like ten to fifteen ships. So
Speaker 1: apparently they never get an accurate account. Um. The ships
Speaker 1: are using our satellite system to communicate with each other.
Speaker 1: They're bouncing signals off of our satellites, which raises a question,
Speaker 1: how do they get their technology to interact with ours?
Speaker 1: So they they've clearly learned our our computer programming languages.
Speaker 1: They must have, because how else, and they must have
Speaker 1: been designed machines on their their ships that could then
Speaker 1: interface with our machines, because otherwise, you know, yes, you
Speaker 1: can see that they're broadcasting radio signals, but on a
Speaker 1: technological level, you wouldn't be able to interact with that
Speaker 1: unless yours were somehow um you know, had some sort
Speaker 1: of adapter alien to Earth adapter or you could tap
Speaker 1: into our technology. But they're using our satellite systems to
Speaker 1: send out a message, which Jeff Goldblum figures out. He
Speaker 1: does well because he's he's a really smart guy. Um.
Speaker 1: And to be fair, though, this was one part of
Speaker 1: the movie that I found very plausible. He discovers a
Speaker 1: repeating pattern that's being broadcast over radio signals. Now you
Speaker 1: don't have to know what that what that translates to,
Speaker 1: in order to notice that there's that there's a pattern,
Speaker 1: and he knows is that that it's that it's winding down,
Speaker 1: it's reducing each time it repeats, it reduces. So he
Speaker 1: then figures out that this is countdown, which is perfectly plausible.
Speaker 1: No, no no, no, no, that's that's that's great fine science.
Speaker 1: And that part I was like, I am all right
Speaker 1: with this. This makes sense that you would have a
Speaker 1: heating pattern that's getting slightly shorter each time. That sounds
Speaker 1: like a countdown. Yeah. The issue that I've got here
Speaker 1: is that is that it shows a couple of our
Speaker 1: satellites crashing into the mothership. Um, which means that a
Speaker 1: the mothership is significantly lower in orbit than the moon
Speaker 1: or parts of it are anyway. Um and uh. And
Speaker 1: and secondly, just the way that they talk about satellites
Speaker 1: is not necessarily the way that satellites are talked about. UM.
Speaker 1: Difficult Blue mentions transponder channels, which is like saying a
Speaker 1: pizza pie like it's it's kind of the same word
Speaker 1: over again. It transponders it. Yeah, it's really like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's essentially the it's technobabble to try and
Speaker 1: sound like he's doing something effective. There's another thing that
Speaker 1: happens with the cable station in particular that just drive
Speaker 1: me crazy because I was I I understand again that
Speaker 1: was done for effect, but it made no sense bubble.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that in a little bit. So you've
Speaker 1: got all these spaceships splitting off, the satellite hits the
Speaker 1: spaceship and there's no visible damage whatsoever. You also don't
Speaker 1: see the force field, but you don't see the force
Speaker 1: field at that point. You just see the satellite bang
Speaker 1: into the spaceship and then go boom. Which does it?
Speaker 1: Does it do it? I don't remember. Does it do
Speaker 1: a green boom or an exploding I don't. I think
Speaker 1: it's an exploding boom, as I recall now. Granted, I
Speaker 1: should add this movie is two hours and twenty minutes
Speaker 1: long something. Yes, So we took turns watching and then
Speaker 1: taking breaks, and then watching, and then playing Borderlines too,
Speaker 1: and then watching and then desperately trying to find something
Speaker 1: else to do, and then watching. Um. I mean I
Speaker 1: watched this movie all the way through in the theater
Speaker 1: when it came out. I love this movie as a teenager.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a quick break from watching Independence Day
Speaker 1: and then slagging on it to thank our sponsors. So uh,
Speaker 1: we didn't have the various people in American government reacting
Speaker 1: and trying to figure out what the heck is going on.
Speaker 1: The Secretary Defense wants to blow it out of the
Speaker 1: sky with an ice cub even though I've just said
Speaker 1: that we do not have one that is that big,
Speaker 1: even though maybe it's a secret government program. Now, the
Speaker 1: city sized ships, once those split off, those could I
Speaker 1: would if you're talking about the size of the city,
Speaker 1: then you could take it down. Yeah, you're not doing
Speaker 1: enough damage to it. You could do enough damage to
Speaker 1: it where I seriously think it wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: maintain flight. I mean nuclear weapons are pending on your
Speaker 1: your engine power source, which we still haven't determined, because
Speaker 1: because these things are city sized and they are hovering
Speaker 1: noiselessly and um and effortlessly like like like they are
Speaker 1: not creating any um any kind of ripples in the
Speaker 1: spacetime continuum as we know. It's right above these cities.
Speaker 1: You've got you've got this ship that's parked over your city.
Speaker 1: But it's not pushing down plane just hanging. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not it's not pushing down in any way that would
Speaker 1: make it like if you stepped outside, you wouldn't suddenly
Speaker 1: feel like some weird are suppressing down on you. There's
Speaker 1: no nothing, So we don't know how they're hanging in
Speaker 1: the air like that alien technology. I'll give it to them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it might as well be magic. So we don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on on that case. We've got the whole
Speaker 1: um Oval Office reaction. One of my favorite little moments
Speaker 1: in this is there's a point where a person brings
Speaker 1: in a silver briefcase to show the president something, Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and opens it up and there's like a little it's
Speaker 1: not even a laptop, it's just a screen. It's a
Speaker 1: screen with I don't know. It's supposed to show a readout,
Speaker 1: a radar readout of the ships. I don't know why
Speaker 1: radar is working now. Um, there's no explanation for why
Speaker 1: the radar readout works as opposed to because half the
Speaker 1: time radar is not working and the other half the
Speaker 1: time they talk about a radar readout. Don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's just that the aliens keep forgetting to turn the
Speaker 1: stuff button on. UM. Because these ships are not designed.
Speaker 1: If you've listened to our podcast about stealth technology, you
Speaker 1: know that a part of the way stell technology works
Speaker 1: is just based on the actual physical design of the vehicles.
Speaker 1: They have these weird angular uh designs to them, and
Speaker 1: that makes that makes stuff bounce off of them at
Speaker 1: awkward angles so that you can't receive the signals exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: But these ships are just gigantic flying saucers, so big
Speaker 1: flat services that radar could easily bounce off off They
Speaker 1: have to be able to if if we're talking about
Speaker 1: those gravitational drives or something like that. I never knew
Speaker 1: you were an alien. Apologies, um, but yeah, so so
Speaker 1: I don't know why the radar sometimes works and sometimes doesn't,
Speaker 1: but it's still kind of interesting here. Uh. There's also
Speaker 1: when the ships are moving into position over the cities,
Speaker 1: there's this weird sheath of fire that's all around them,
Speaker 1: and I was wondering if that was supposed to be
Speaker 1: the representation of these ships entering the Earth's atmosphere. That
Speaker 1: I am, but they don't seem to be moving very quickly,
Speaker 1: so it's almost like they have a very controlled descent
Speaker 1: into Earth's atmosphere. So they wouldn't you know, the whole
Speaker 1: heat and fire stuff would only make sense if they
Speaker 1: were coming in at an incredible speed um, and they're
Speaker 1: creating this amazing amount of pressure as they're coming in,
Speaker 1: and that's what builds up all this heat. Maybe they
Speaker 1: have a fine magnesium powder that's operating their shielding system.
Speaker 1: That's just lighting on fire as they I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's a science factor. Maybe this is just the
Speaker 1: equivalent of painting flames on your hot rod. This is wicked. Cool, guys,
Speaker 1: let's turn the flames on. You know, That's what I'm thinking. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what. We got a lot more to say
Speaker 1: about this movie, but before we do, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor, Audible. Audible dot com
Speaker 1: is the leading provider of downloadable digital audio books and
Speaker 1: spoken word entertainment. Audible has over one hundred thousand titles
Speaker 1: to choose from to be downloaded to your iPod or
Speaker 1: m P three player. Go to audible podcast dot com
Speaker 1: slash tech stuff to get a free audio book download
Speaker 1: of your choice when you sign up today. And since
Speaker 1: we're talking about science fiction today, one good suggestion would
Speaker 1: be War the Worlds. They have several different versions at Audible,
Speaker 1: including one read by orson Freaking Wells. So go check
Speaker 1: that out. Okay, So we've got the ships there over
Speaker 1: the various cities. We've got the everyone's freaking out. No
Speaker 1: one knows exactly what's going on. Yeah, Jeff Goldblum's discovered
Speaker 1: the signal uh, and he figures out this probably some
Speaker 1: sort of coordinated attack. This raises a question in my
Speaker 1: mind that's more of a plot question and less of
Speaker 1: a technology question, which is, I don't understand why the
Speaker 1: attack needs to be incredibly coordinated, because, as is demonstrated
Speaker 1: throughout the film, these aliens have amazing technology that our
Speaker 1: technology just cannot stand up to. Like nothing we have
Speaker 1: puts a denty, It doesn't it doesn't really matter if
Speaker 1: they're going to blow us up simultaneously or at a
Speaker 1: slight leg right right, Why why you even worry about
Speaker 1: targeting the largest cities first, unless it's just to get
Speaker 1: as many people dead as possible, which could just be
Speaker 1: an efficiency thing, which case, all right, I can get
Speaker 1: that they're trying to kill as many people and as
Speaker 1: little time as possible because their ultimate goals to invade
Speaker 1: the planet, and this way they'd wipe out, you know,
Speaker 1: the major centers of population. They're clearly just just bond
Speaker 1: villains really at heart. There again, they're doing it for
Speaker 1: dramatic effect. I wanted to give one of our scientists
Speaker 1: something to latch onto. Yeah, well, in order to make
Speaker 1: us feel like we have a fighting chance. I think
Speaker 1: I think the I think the wiping out as many
Speaker 1: people as possible is as much sense as I can
Speaker 1: make of it. But I mean it does make sense
Speaker 1: in a way. If you're if you're talking about clearing
Speaker 1: out an area so that you can then come in
Speaker 1: and and and reap all the benefits, then I understand, like,
Speaker 1: all right, well you wanted to do that. You need
Speaker 1: to hit before everyone realizes what's up, because then they're
Speaker 1: just going to scatter like like cockroaches, and then you
Speaker 1: have to hunt them all down. Yeah. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: This is also about when when are our satellites, like
Speaker 1: all of our satellite communications start kind of breaking up
Speaker 1: a little bit, and this weird static pattern, which I'm
Speaker 1: not sure is how satellites were satellites were, well they do.
Speaker 1: Some are being destroyed and some of the some of
Speaker 1: the capacity of the satellite was being used to transmit
Speaker 1: this alien signal. I think that the signal would just
Speaker 1: go out. I don't think it would be static anything
Speaker 1: that was destroyed, obviously the signal would go out. The
Speaker 1: uh there. You know, having this idea of an alien
Speaker 1: signal underlying our own signals is interesting. Uh. Depending upon
Speaker 1: the bandwidth of the satellite, I could actually see it
Speaker 1: working in a way where it means that our signals
Speaker 1: are actually weaker. But I don't think it would come
Speaker 1: across exactly the way it did in the movie. There's
Speaker 1: one point, you know, Jeff Goldblum's character, the brilliant scientist
Speaker 1: guy who is now essentially just working for a cable company,
Speaker 1: a cable provider. Uh, there's one point where he's talking
Speaker 1: with his his comedic sidekick character who is later on
Speaker 1: obliterated spoiler alert um, Harvey Fierstein, where he's chatting with him,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly a white House announcement comes on the screens,
Speaker 1: and and and this wall of screens that had previously
Speaker 1: been picking up broadcasts from all different channels. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you think of a like just a wall of
Speaker 1: television screens, and each television screen is showing a different channel,
Speaker 1: and now they're all showing the white House thing. But
Speaker 1: some of them, like groups of nine screens, become one
Speaker 1: big display, so you know, you're there the power Rangers
Speaker 1: or something, and they're all just just building up together. Ultron,
Speaker 1: Sorry that's era, but no. Yeah, this idea that you
Speaker 1: know that if you have a block of nine screens,
Speaker 1: the upper left screen is the upper left corner of
Speaker 1: the full picture. How does that happen? Like, how would
Speaker 1: you how would you would that mean? Like Channel thirty
Speaker 1: two is only showing the upper left corner of the
Speaker 1: alien the alien disruption in our in our communication signal
Speaker 1: is causing our television is to start acting like Vultron again.
Speaker 1: And I completely dismiss your your apologetic response. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is one of those things where I just thought it
Speaker 1: was ridiculous where you have all these disconnected screens suddenly
Speaker 1: showing a unified display. It just I mean, it was
Speaker 1: clearly there for dramatic effect, but it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: The only way that works is if you have prerecorded
Speaker 1: it and programmed out the screens to show exactly what
Speaker 1: you want when you want it. It doesn't happen over
Speaker 1: a live broadcast where suddenly nine screens gained sentience and
Speaker 1: all work together to bring together the presence words the
Speaker 1: Jeff Goldblum decides he has to go to d C
Speaker 1: to find his ex wife, who now works at the
Speaker 1: White House and also marginally helps save the planet. Right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's in the process. So he goes with
Speaker 1: his dad, uh, and he and his dad go down
Speaker 1: to DC because Jeff Goldblin' Scaracter doesn't drive a car,
Speaker 1: so he rides with his dad, who does drives very
Speaker 1: slowly comedic effect, and they arrive at d C and
Speaker 1: then he he quote triangulates the position of his wife
Speaker 1: through her cell phone use, which is cell phones in
Speaker 1: this period where Fox Molder's cell phone. I mean they
Speaker 1: were bricks, they were rare to not everyone had them.
Speaker 1: But but triangulating is probably not the right word here.
Speaker 1: You could triangulate someone's issue using someone who's using a
Speaker 1: cell phone. You could triangulate it, particularly if you're the
Speaker 1: cell phone company, but more likely what he was doing
Speaker 1: was at the time, didn't they didn't They kind of
Speaker 1: purposefully scramble a lot of that where it couldn't you
Speaker 1: not really use GPS I GPS GPS does that's not
Speaker 1: even that's not even a thing, Okay, So, I mean
Speaker 1: GPS is a thing, but not on any civilian cell phone.
Speaker 1: So you could do it just by the cell phone signal,
Speaker 1: you know, the cell phone sending out radio signals from
Speaker 1: the phone, because she's on the phone at the time,
Speaker 1: and the idea is that what he's doing is detecting
Speaker 1: the radio signal from her phone and then figuring out
Speaker 1: where she is within the context of the White House.
Speaker 1: He couldn't really triangulate. I mean, to triangulate, you need
Speaker 1: three points. That's kind of the whole idea of triangulation.
Speaker 1: You need these three sides, and you have to be
Speaker 1: able to know the different angles between you and a cup.
Speaker 1: You need to note at least the distance between you
Speaker 1: and one other point and at least the measurement of
Speaker 1: two angles for you to be able to determine the
Speaker 1: position of whatever is you're looking for. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: obviously doesn't have all that information. What he was really
Speaker 1: doing was a kind of localization through multilateral radio signals,
Speaker 1: which is possible but is not terribly precise. So in
Speaker 1: other words, he'd be able to say she's in the
Speaker 1: White House, which they already knew. But anyway, again, movie logic, Um,
Speaker 1: we have the whole uh bit of where they're The
Speaker 1: ships actually start to unleash their attack, so at this
Speaker 1: point our various heroes have all started to make their
Speaker 1: way out of the cities. Otherwise the movie over really quickly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the spaceships start to beam down energy into the
Speaker 1: cities to wipe them out. We don't know what kind
Speaker 1: of energy it is, some kind of energy weapon. It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of a green and glowing laser stuff that
Speaker 1: moves slower than light speed. Right, So so it's kind
Speaker 1: of like our podcast about plasma weapons, you know, it's
Speaker 1: similar to that. But we figure all right, so the
Speaker 1: slowing down obviously that's for again traumatic effect, because if
Speaker 1: it was going at light speed, would to speak and
Speaker 1: you're like, wow, um, this this was more you know,
Speaker 1: intimidating and frightening. But so let's just assume it's some
Speaker 1: form of laser. There could even be plasma ification going on,
Speaker 1: because if the laser is powerful enough, it could actually
Speaker 1: plasma atmosphere, the atmosphere around the laser. And then you
Speaker 1: see this this explosion from the focal point moving outward
Speaker 1: and it just keeps rolling out like effect pond. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly like if you were to throw a rock into
Speaker 1: a pond and you watch those ripples. That's exactly what
Speaker 1: this looks like, except it's just the one ripple, right,
Speaker 1: It's not like it's not like a six sequence of them.
Speaker 1: So you see this one ripple moving outward of exclusiveness. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it never seems to um to to disperse until
Speaker 1: it gets to like the edge of the city. It
Speaker 1: just keeps going outward, which uh, the blast only happens once,
Speaker 1: like it shoots down once at whatever monument it happens
Speaker 1: to be parked over, because we've already established that's what
Speaker 1: they do. The aliens are kind of they're kind of jerks.
Speaker 1: There are a bunch of jerk faces. Not only are
Speaker 1: they destroying our cities, but they have to first hit whatever,
Speaker 1: like uh iconic building or structure is there. They're not
Speaker 1: only we're gonna kill you, we're gonna blow up your stuff,
Speaker 1: like the stuff you like, the stuff that's on your postcards.
Speaker 1: That's what we're blowing up, um because it makes really
Speaker 1: good movie posters. They've been they've been watching watching our
Speaker 1: communication signal and they probably actually had already seen em
Speaker 1: riks future films before he had even made them, and
Speaker 1: they said, that's a good idea. So U because I
Speaker 1: mean it, they're going faster than light. That means they've
Speaker 1: got some time travel stuff going on too. Anyway, this
Speaker 1: this uh, this explosion that moves out where there's The
Speaker 1: scientific problem I have with this is that the energy
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to disperse, like they shoot the blast down
Speaker 1: once and then the blast turns off and then you
Speaker 1: just see the the spreading explosion and it never seems
Speaker 1: to be losing energy. But in order for this to
Speaker 1: really work, they'd have to constantly be pouring energy into it,
Speaker 1: because you know, otherwise it would just disperse outward. Heat
Speaker 1: does not stay in a ripple effect. Maybe maybe only
Speaker 1: that initial blast is within the visible spectrum and the
Speaker 1: rest is using some of that graviton technology that they
Speaker 1: clearly have to create some kind of like like magnetic
Speaker 1: gravitational rings, and they're they're using hands out. You know what,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about plasma that works, I will I
Speaker 1: will grant you that, because plasma will respond to magnetic fields.
Speaker 1: So um, okay, I retract my objection. If that's possibly
Speaker 1: what happened, then that's fine. So I did some math
Speaker 1: here where I was trying to determine how many people
Speaker 1: would have theoretically died as a result of these attacks. Right, So,
Speaker 1: assuming that the ships were able to hit most of
Speaker 1: the major cities in the world, and really at first
Speaker 1: they're they're hitting like ten or fifteen of them, uh,
Speaker 1: and then they move on to hit smaller cities like Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Atlanta's in round two, so we don't get off scot
Speaker 1: free in this one. Um. So, in nineteen six the
Speaker 1: world had approximately five point eight billion people. We've got
Speaker 1: quite a few more since then, but five point eight
Speaker 1: billion people in So I assumed that about of the
Speaker 1: world's population were in cities. Now that's a rough assumption.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty it was around thirty percent, and I
Speaker 1: think it was two thousand eight when we finally hit
Speaker 1: fifty percent population in urban environments. So between nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: and two thousand and eight, I'm saying, so of the
Speaker 1: world's population in cities, that's about two point three billion
Speaker 1: people total. And then I made a further assumption. I said, alright,
Speaker 1: a lot of people try to evacuate, So let's say
Speaker 1: that fifty percent of them got out of the city
Speaker 1: and they're safe, and the other fifty percent are still
Speaker 1: within the city when these attacks happen. That means that
Speaker 1: you've got about one point one six billion people left
Speaker 1: left behind those cities. So then I said, all right,
Speaker 1: let's assume a seventy percent fatality rate, meaning that thirty
Speaker 1: percent of the population is able to find some place
Speaker 1: where they're able to hunker down and survive there in
Speaker 1: a bomb shelter, or they're helpful alleyway, if you happen
Speaker 1: to be Will Smith's love interest, thank goodness the dog
Speaker 1: lives um. By the way, this movie not so subtle
Speaker 1: with its emotional manipulation. They use everything children, uh, they
Speaker 1: use dogs. They use the wonderful trope of character who
Speaker 1: has been terribly injured, but not so badly that they
Speaker 1: can't have that one last tender thank you, President Laura Man.
Speaker 1: That's that's the scene I hate the most in this movie,
Speaker 1: and that's saying something anyway, with a seventy percent fatality rate,
Speaker 1: I figured that about that eight hundred and twelve million
Speaker 1: people die as a result of the of this uh,
Speaker 1: of this attack. That's a conservative estimate. Then we've got
Speaker 1: the thing about the alien shields, which we assume are
Speaker 1: probably some form of magnetic or maybe even gravity drive.
Speaker 1: We don't really know that, we don't know about the
Speaker 1: what the energy weapons really are, all right, So that
Speaker 1: that brings us to this whole idea of the roswell
Speaker 1: slash Area fifty one part of the movie, right right,
Speaker 1: because because what happens is they you know, all the
Speaker 1: city start start being blowed up, and uh and and
Speaker 1: the president in a bunch of other military persona head
Speaker 1: off to Area fifty one after the secret base after
Speaker 1: just located underground, right, Jeff Goldblum's dad says, hey, you guys,
Speaker 1: you knew about this ever since the thing in Roswell
Speaker 1: and then you hit it an Area fifty one, and
Speaker 1: the President says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's urban legend. It's not it's real. And then the
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense is like, well, actually cut to yeah,
Speaker 1: but here's the thing. First of all, the president in
Speaker 1: this in this sequence appears to be unaware of the
Speaker 1: actual existence of Area fifty one, which is an actual base.
Speaker 1: Is an actual base, although the military didn't really refer
Speaker 1: to it as Area fifty one beyond PSALM designations on
Speaker 1: a map. And the reason that it was called Area
Speaker 1: fifty one is because of its proximity to Nuclear Testing
Speaker 1: Range where they had divided up the range into different areas. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was more known as Groom Lake, which was a
Speaker 1: dry lake bed in Nevada, and it really is a
Speaker 1: real place, but it was used to test experimental and
Speaker 1: secret aircraft, so things like spy planes that were being
Speaker 1: tested by the Air Force were that was the testing
Speaker 1: ground and it was meant to be this secret area
Speaker 1: so that they could do this test without revealing to
Speaker 1: the world. Hey, this is what we're working on. UM.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't actually have any connection to Roswell, And
Speaker 1: in fact, Roswell, New Mexico, and Groomla, Nevada are not
Speaker 1: close to each other, although there there are theorists who
Speaker 1: have said that that that any potential crash landings at
Speaker 1: Roswell were brought to a secret underground base at area,
Speaker 1: essentially shipped across state lines to go to this secret
Speaker 1: underground base. Uh. But you know the Roswell event. By
Speaker 1: the way, in case you're not familiar with that, this
Speaker 1: is an event that happened, uh in the I think
Speaker 1: it was in the fifties where uh, a resident of
Speaker 1: New Mexico, thank you. Yes, it's a little earlier than
Speaker 1: I was thinking, son, a resident of essentially Roswell, New Mexico,
Speaker 1: came across this weird stuff. It was a shiny stuff
Speaker 1: that had UM. It was in a little pile on
Speaker 1: the ground and for a while people were assuming that
Speaker 1: it was some form of UFO from outer space that
Speaker 1: had crashed landed on the Earth. Later on, much later on,
Speaker 1: the military said that what this was was part of
Speaker 1: Operation Mogul, which was a spy balloon initiative. It was
Speaker 1: testing out using balloons as spy vehicles to to get
Speaker 1: information and radioed back to some other place. And uh,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of conspiracy theorist who don't accept that
Speaker 1: and who would say that that's not that's not the
Speaker 1: right answer. Although you know, the military for a while
Speaker 1: was very much quiet about what this actually was, but
Speaker 1: then it was because it was a spy program, so
Speaker 1: you don't really want to let everyone know. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was during the Cold War, you know, people were trying
Speaker 1: to keep things under wraps. So yeah, you know, we've
Speaker 1: seen in recent events how people don't want spy information
Speaker 1: to get out to the general public. But that's an
Speaker 1: entirely different podcast that we do plan on recording, so
Speaker 1: we want to have enough time to be able to
Speaker 1: really cover that in great detail. If you don't know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about, just look up in Essay and
Speaker 1: Prism and that will be this a little preview for
Speaker 1: a future episode of Tech Stuff. Anyway, in this film,
Speaker 1: they take the assumption that the space ship crash and
Speaker 1: Roswell was in fact an alien spaceship. It was not
Speaker 1: some balloon. It was in fact one of these aliens spaceships,
Speaker 1: and it was. There are three levels of spaceship and
Speaker 1: independent stay. There is the mother ship, which is the
Speaker 1: kiometer diameter ship hanging out and by the moon. There
Speaker 1: are the city sized ships that hover directly over city,
Speaker 1: thus making it easy to tell how big they are
Speaker 1: because you just look at and say, that's the size
Speaker 1: of the city. Uh, not terribly precise, but you know,
Speaker 1: gets the point across. Then you have the fighter ships.
Speaker 1: These are like the tiny little ones that are kind
Speaker 1: of a similar to jet fighters here on Earth. That's
Speaker 1: kind of their purpose, at least in the film, that's
Speaker 1: what it seems to be. So it was one of
Speaker 1: those smaller ones that had apparently crashed in Roswell. And
Speaker 1: then they move the ship and its inhabitants, who two
Speaker 1: of whom are dead and the third one who dies
Speaker 1: a few days later, back over to Area fifty one
Speaker 1: in Nevada Underground. So the President is alerted that in fact,
Speaker 1: all of this stuff actually did happen, and he says, well,
Speaker 1: why wasn't I told, And they'd say plausible deniability, so
Speaker 1: that if anyone asked you, you would honestly say that
Speaker 1: it doesn't exist because as far as you know, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Although to be fair that the way that security clearance
Speaker 1: is work. Just because someone has the highest possible security
Speaker 1: clearance does that it's it's it's um, what's the word
Speaker 1: I'm looking for. Compartmentalized. Yes, it is very much compartmentalized.
Speaker 1: So just because someone has got the highest levels of
Speaker 1: security clearance doesn't mean that they actually have all the information. Uh,
Speaker 1: you still have to go through all the different channels
Speaker 1: to get it anyway. Uh. So they go to Area
Speaker 1: fifty one where they find a state of the art
Speaker 1: scientific lab where people are top men are working on
Speaker 1: determining nerds. BNT Spiner with long gray hair and glasses
Speaker 1: uh and and coming across as like the the typical
Speaker 1: science geek character with no or limited social So anyway,
Speaker 1: he shows off the ship, which they said has suddenly
Speaker 1: become active once the the other ships have come into
Speaker 1: the proximity of Earth. And that's actually really cool. This
Speaker 1: this concept of of the ships having some kind of
Speaker 1: mesh network. Yeah, yeah, this this is one of those
Speaker 1: things where I think Independence Day really got it right
Speaker 1: to the point where this is a really cool idea.
Speaker 1: It's this idea of this entire force, this this spaceship
Speaker 1: force that is working on some form of what I
Speaker 1: presume is radio frequency, where that they are communicating all
Speaker 1: with each other so that there can be a truly
Speaker 1: coordinated effort on the part of the entire force. So
Speaker 1: this includes everything from power to communications. So when the
Speaker 1: the fleet gets within the right range of Earth, this
Speaker 1: ship starts to react and we have mesh networks. Now,
Speaker 1: back we really didn't have mesh networks the way we
Speaker 1: do now. But now we've got networks where you can
Speaker 1: have elements of that network join and drop out, uh,
Speaker 1: spontaneously throughout an entire you know, period of time, whatever
Speaker 1: that period of time you want to be like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you can think of a mesh network from
Speaker 1: everything from a personal size mesh network, so you're talking
Speaker 1: about like Bluetooth devices that can seamlessly link in and
Speaker 1: link out of it to citywide mesh networks if you
Speaker 1: really wanted to. We talk about smart cars and this
Speaker 1: idea of a smart grid where the cars can kind
Speaker 1: of maneuver through a city autonomously that's essentially a mesh
Speaker 1: network where every single car is a part of it.
Speaker 1: So this is actually an idea that I thought was
Speaker 1: ahead of its time and made sense. Yeah, So, I mean,
Speaker 1: kudos to them for coming up with us, because it
Speaker 1: really was a cool idea that we're actually seeing put
Speaker 1: into place in a different implementation. Obviously, we haven't invaded
Speaker 1: any alien planets as far as I'm aware, but we
Speaker 1: have started to use this kind of approach, right right. Yeah, Although,
Speaker 1: while while we're on the topic of grids, I I
Speaker 1: did want to kind of point out that no one
Speaker 1: ever really talks about the fact that if you destroy
Speaker 1: this many major metropolitan areas, that the electrical grid would
Speaker 1: probably be not host not good. Yeah, that's true. We
Speaker 1: don't know where every one's getting their power point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can assume that area have its own generators,
Speaker 1: but right, right, right, yeah, And but and some of
Speaker 1: these army bases I suppose have access to power from
Speaker 1: other places. I mean, most most of these military bases
Speaker 1: I suspect do not have their own power generating facilities.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back talking more about Independence Day, but
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break. We also know that
Speaker 1: global communications are down, so they get around that by
Speaker 1: using telegraph wires Morse code, and they use Morse code. Uh.
Speaker 1: I assume they're using Morse code simply because the telegraph
Speaker 1: wires are the most reliable means of communicating, rather than
Speaker 1: some way of masking the communication from aliens. How it
Speaker 1: seems like a little bit of both, which confuses me.
Speaker 1: On on a you're you're still conveying information electrically and transcontinentally.
Speaker 1: Um is a really long I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just I find it implausible that that wire would
Speaker 1: have survived. It's well, if it's all underwater, if it's
Speaker 1: under the ocean, then it is possible that the that
Speaker 1: at least some of the telegraph wires have have managed
Speaker 1: to survive, like at least some communication lines have survived,
Speaker 1: the Transatlantic lines. Actually anything that is under the ocean.
Speaker 1: I have no problem believing that that survived, whether it
Speaker 1: survived enough nodes so that you could have a dedicated connection.
Speaker 1: But that's one of the good things about the Internet,
Speaker 1: and and it's something that I think we easily look over.
Speaker 1: It's the idea that the way that the transmission protocols
Speaker 1: were designed for the Internet. Means that if you were
Speaker 1: to lose a large part of the Internet, information could
Speaker 1: still because because it can, it can dynamically route across
Speaker 1: different networks. Now telegraphs, So that's different, right, that's not
Speaker 1: that's not divided up into packets of information like an
Speaker 1: email is. It's sent as a direct sign all um.
Speaker 1: But I assume that they weren't really trying to mask
Speaker 1: their communications. But if they were, Morse code is not
Speaker 1: that difficult to crack. Yeah, it's just a code. All
Speaker 1: it is is replacing letters with particular uh, a particular
Speaker 1: dash and dot combination. Certainly, if these aliens can can
Speaker 1: crack art our satellite communication systems, then they could definitely code,
Speaker 1: especially if if they've had any contact with humans where
Speaker 1: they understand the concept. Because they do, they do give
Speaker 1: you that that feeling that whenever an alien makes telepathic
Speaker 1: contact with a human, which we see in this area
Speaker 1: fifty one scene Brent Spiner, Uh, he gets his his
Speaker 1: brain all taken over and the president does too. Briefly
Speaker 1: by a telepathic alien, that knowledge is shared that the
Speaker 1: the person who has the telepathic communication with the alien
Speaker 1: learns things about the alien's brain, and the alien learns
Speaker 1: things about the humans brain. So just that alone, I mean,
Speaker 1: even if the even if the person that the control
Speaker 1: doesn't understand Morse code, like they don't know Morse code,
Speaker 1: they probably at least have heard what Morse code is,
Speaker 1: which means the aliens will be like, all right, this
Speaker 1: is a code where they've replaced letters with this, I
Speaker 1: know what the letters are. Let's just figure this out.
Speaker 1: And it wouldn't take you long at all. I mean,
Speaker 1: once you know the basic rules of language, decoding something
Speaker 1: that's a simple replacement cipher very easy. So that's why
Speaker 1: I'm saying, I don't think it was meant to mask
Speaker 1: the communications so much as just be a way of
Speaker 1: people communicating across vast distances once the other lines had
Speaker 1: been cut. I'm I'm wondering, I'm I'm wondering right now
Speaker 1: how the psychic communication part happens, which is which is
Speaker 1: straying a little bit from technology, I understand, but it
Speaker 1: is it is science and and and that's you know,
Speaker 1: because if if you can communicate more or less telepathically
Speaker 1: and I'm assuming electrically, due to the way that that
Speaker 1: that these aliens brains seem to have an effect on
Speaker 1: um memory, muscle systems, and and furthermore, are electrical systems
Speaker 1: in the nearby area. It's it's almost like they send
Speaker 1: out kind of an e MP A couple of times,
Speaker 1: and um, yeah they would. And well you would think
Speaker 1: that anything that would require manipulation of thought would have
Speaker 1: to work on an electrical basis, at least at some point,
Speaker 1: because when you get down to the cellular level. Well,
Speaker 1: and also Brent Spiner talks from the alien's point of view,
Speaker 1: so it becomes a data puppet, right, we're actually making
Speaker 1: puppet motions with your Yeah, no, no, no, it made
Speaker 1: perfect sense. Yeah, and and yeah, at that point it's
Speaker 1: your muscular systems are electrical, so yeah, so you don't
Speaker 1: there's no explanation of how this telepathic, uh, and why
Speaker 1: they need to use their satellites if they're telepathic, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: if they are telepathy, unless it's the telepathy only works
Speaker 1: over short distances. But this is all gravity drives must
Speaker 1: get in the way, exactly the telepathetic signal. Sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: get any communication you want all the way now, because
Speaker 1: we're about to start moving and you know there's no
Speaker 1: talking once we get moving um because they don't they
Speaker 1: don't have any mouths, they cannot speak, but they do
Speaker 1: communicate telepathically. We don't understand much of that. But then
Speaker 1: the movie is told from the point of view of
Speaker 1: the human protagonists, and the humans are a disadvantage because
Speaker 1: they know very little in general about the aliens. So
Speaker 1: I'm even willing to give them a bit of a
Speaker 1: pass on this, saying that the alien physiology and the
Speaker 1: telepathy are beyond our understanding, and we call it telepathy
Speaker 1: because we don't have a word for whatever it is
Speaker 1: they're using, um. But I agree with you and first
Speaker 1: and also, assuming that there's going to be any kind
Speaker 1: of of compatibility between alien physiology and human physiology where
Speaker 1: this telepathy would work across species is a huge leap.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, these are two species that don't
Speaker 1: have any connection to one another at all biologically as
Speaker 1: far as we know, so the ability for telepathy to
Speaker 1: work across species is a pretty big jump. I just
Speaker 1: I just had the earnest I apologize for this. I
Speaker 1: just had the earnest thought. Well, it worked really well
Speaker 1: in Slither Moving Forward biomechanical suits, so these aliens are
Speaker 1: actually the when you first see them, there are these big, giant,
Speaker 1: nasty looking critters. But it turns out that the big giant,
Speaker 1: nasty looking critter is actually a shell for a smaller
Speaker 1: nasty looking critter inside of it, and that the shell
Speaker 1: is a biomechanical suit. This is another thing I thought
Speaker 1: was really super cool. Yeah, you know, we've got a
Speaker 1: lot of work in exoskeletons here today on Earth. Now,
Speaker 1: these exoskeletons are mechanical and electronic, they're not bio mechanical.
Speaker 1: But then we're also seeing things like robotic limbs that
Speaker 1: are designed to mimic the way our biological limb would work,
Speaker 1: and that's really awesome. Again, still it's mechanical, it's not
Speaker 1: bio mechanical, but we're slowly moving toward what could possibly
Speaker 1: be a biomechanical future where perhaps uh, someone who has
Speaker 1: to have a limb amputated receives something that's more akin
Speaker 1: to a bio mechanical arm as opposed to just a
Speaker 1: me mechanical one or electronic one. So I thought that
Speaker 1: that was really neat. I did think that the design
Speaker 1: was weird, specifically the feet, because they have they have
Speaker 1: these tentacles that are kind of curled under like sloth toes,
Speaker 1: and I think they look they look like they are
Speaker 1: um like they're rigid to me. So to me, they
Speaker 1: look like not like tentacles, but like these toes that
Speaker 1: are curled around. I think that was a that was
Speaker 1: a limitation of the puppet that was being used the
Speaker 1: practical effects. I think I think that it was supposed
Speaker 1: to be the same wiggly tentacle that we saw being
Speaker 1: wiggly and pneumatic earlier. As totally sad that you guys
Speaker 1: can't see this because when Lauren, when Lauren demonstrates wiggly tentacles,
Speaker 1: she's she's looking a bit like a frantic muppet. Um
Speaker 1: to be fairy usually look a bit like a frantic muppet.
Speaker 1: I think we'll have to shoot the video version of
Speaker 1: this podcast at some point so we can see that
Speaker 1: the tentacles and we'll both do our own version, and
Speaker 1: that is Google glasses coming. I'll be getting my my
Speaker 1: parent a couple of days. Um. Yeah, But anyway, I
Speaker 1: just thought that the feet were weird. But if they
Speaker 1: were supposed to be tentacles that are actually flexible, that
Speaker 1: makes more sense to me. But if they were supposed
Speaker 1: to be these rigid, weird, curled backward toe things. That's
Speaker 1: not the best foundation for your bipedal suit. Maybe on
Speaker 1: their planet the gravity is different, so it's like that C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis C. S. Lewis novel. Maybe they just all hang
Speaker 1: upside down from trees and they have to hook their
Speaker 1: toes onto the tree limbs in order to be able
Speaker 1: to move, and so they're not normally walking on ground.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Um so, then the next note I
Speaker 1: have actually involves a plot point in not not just
Speaker 1: the same. Yeah, yes, the movie does have a plot,
Speaker 1: but the president's wife is injured in a helicopter crash.
Speaker 1: The President's wife, of course, being played by President Laura
Speaker 1: Fro Battlestar Galactica. Right, so the president's wife is injured,
Speaker 1: uh critically, but she has specifically yeah, yeah, there's it's
Speaker 1: very vague. There's internal bleeding. That's all we know. She's
Speaker 1: she's suffered the internal bleeding injury, and the duration of
Speaker 1: which is it will let her live just long enough
Speaker 1: for her to have with her husband just before passing away.
Speaker 1: And then of course you get the little daughter saying
Speaker 1: is mommy sleeping and the president saying yes, she is,
Speaker 1: and then the sad moment, like again not a subtle
Speaker 1: movie is Independence Day. Uh. They like to take emotion
Speaker 1: and whack you right upside the head with it in
Speaker 1: a very clumsy, ham fisted manner, kind of similar to
Speaker 1: the way that they depict America and all of the world.
Speaker 1: Like it's just a it's a it's a very simple,
Speaker 1: simple representation of emotion and politics. Um. Now we get
Speaker 1: into the part of the movie that everyone remembers whenever
Speaker 1: anyone has a discussion about Independence Day and science and technology.
Speaker 1: This is the part that everyone brings up right right,
Speaker 1: because this the entire plot hinges upon Jeff gold Bloom's characters.
Speaker 1: We keep saying Jeff Goldbloom as though he was actually there. Um,
Speaker 1: I was not paying that much attention, I have to say. Um,
Speaker 1: his his concept is Okay, so we can't destroy these
Speaker 1: ships because they're shielded. Um, but I can program a
Speaker 1: virus on my macy and if we can get that
Speaker 1: virus into the ships, then we can take down the
Speaker 1: shields and then blow the ships up. You know, this
Speaker 1: is ah, this is just a mostly due to a
Speaker 1: gross misunderstanding of what exactly a computer viruses. So in
Speaker 1: this movie a computer we're using a word that it's
Speaker 1: you keep using the word. I don't know if what
Speaker 1: you think it means. Yeah, if we did an episode
Speaker 1: about Princess bry to be much shorter, but it would
Speaker 1: just be us quoting is all it would be. You
Speaker 1: can do that with your friends. I do with my
Speaker 1: friends all the time. But yeah, the the in this
Speaker 1: film a computer virus is essentially saying, this will turn
Speaker 1: the shields off. That's all this computer virus does. So
Speaker 1: it's really more like a command, sending a command to
Speaker 1: like the shield thing, switch that to the off position
Speaker 1: and keep it off for as long as you possibly can.
Speaker 1: But they call it a computer virus. Now, typically computer
Speaker 1: viruses do one of a few things. You're very basic.
Speaker 1: Computer worm, the the old style computer virus that was
Speaker 1: really just meant to cause as much mischief as possible,
Speaker 1: was a self replicating piece of code that if you
Speaker 1: were to execute, it would start to copy itself and
Speaker 1: to whatever medium you were using, so like a hard drive,
Speaker 1: so it would copy itself to your hard drive, filling
Speaker 1: up your hard drive space and making your computer essentially unusable.
Speaker 1: Also your your computer's memory, so it just kind of
Speaker 1: bricks your computer. Uh. Then there were the kinds that
Speaker 1: would try to wipe all the data off, you know,
Speaker 1: just essentially reform at your computer. Then there were the
Speaker 1: kinds that were designed to to take advantage of a
Speaker 1: vulnerability in whatever operating system you were using, so that
Speaker 1: someone could get access to your machine administrative level access
Speaker 1: to either lock you out and grant someone else access
Speaker 1: or simply grant someone else. Right. Yeah, so the whole
Speaker 1: back door access and thing where you can get access
Speaker 1: to another person's machine. You might not you might not
Speaker 1: lock them out at all, so that they seem to
Speaker 1: think that everything is working fine. They don't. To them,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to be any different. It might be
Speaker 1: a visible parasite, but then someone else is running the
Speaker 1: game and trying to use your computer to do various things. Um,
Speaker 1: so that those are your basic types of malware. I
Speaker 1: mean there are other kinds as well. They're phishing scams,
Speaker 1: things that do key logging to try and figure out
Speaker 1: what it is that you're typing. But that's kind of
Speaker 1: the basics for computer viruses. They're not necessarily something that
Speaker 1: you know does very specific functions. So here here are
Speaker 1: the multiple problems I have here. One one is that
Speaker 1: you have an alien computer system and a human computer
Speaker 1: system that are at all compatible. Just as biology being
Speaker 1: compatible is really implausible, computer systems is incredibly implausible. And
Speaker 1: and again I'm almost willing to give him a pass
Speaker 1: on the aliens studying us enough to have figured out
Speaker 1: our satellite communication systems UM, because you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know how long they've been studying us. That's that's sure,
Speaker 1: And they're aliens, that's fine at least since right, But
Speaker 1: if you're just watching Jeff Goldbloom, if it's just one
Speaker 1: dude over the course of like a day, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and the idea, even if they've been studying the alien
Speaker 1: technology aboard this ship, I doubt that they had had
Speaker 1: any luck. And you know clearly they said that the
Speaker 1: ship had not been operational at all until a couple
Speaker 1: of days like since the right, so they didn't didn't
Speaker 1: have any access to the computer system there. There's no
Speaker 1: reason their computer systems would run on the same sort
Speaker 1: of binary system that we use. Now. The fact that
Speaker 1: our system uses this particular form of computer science is
Speaker 1: because that's what was working for us. But there's no
Speaker 1: guarantee that any other society would develop computers the same
Speaker 1: way we did, so there's no and even if they did,
Speaker 1: there's no guarantee that there would be an easy way
Speaker 1: to interface one system with another. How do you connect
Speaker 1: an Earth based computer so that you can actually send
Speaker 1: a virus to a an alien technology? This is they
Speaker 1: didn't even have Bluetooth. Yeah, yeah, they're they're not, They're
Speaker 1: not like you know, it appears that you just have
Speaker 1: to get close enough and you can magically do it.
Speaker 1: But which would be like Bluetooth? But I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't you know, there's there's no explanation for that.
Speaker 1: It's it's just it's simply this is a plot device
Speaker 1: meant to let the heroes have their chance at overcoming odds. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I understand it from a a story beat perspective,
Speaker 1: like this is what we need to do in order
Speaker 1: for there to be this heroic moment. I completely get that.
Speaker 1: From an actual computer science perspective, it makes no sense. Um.
Speaker 1: There are some people who say, wow, it makes no
Speaker 1: sense that he's using a MAC. I want to address
Speaker 1: that very quickly. So we think of max is being
Speaker 1: largely virus proof, not so much as today, as much
Speaker 1: as we used to. But I would argue that the
Speaker 1: reason why Max were less likely to fall victim to
Speaker 1: viruses is due to two things. One, Apple does lock
Speaker 1: it system down really tightly, so that does help. The
Speaker 1: fact that that that's so locked down meant that it
Speaker 1: was not as accessible to people who wanted to write
Speaker 1: code they could take advantage of it. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: more difficult, but also there were fewer Mac users for
Speaker 1: a very long time, exactly, Lauren. That is that is
Speaker 1: the key, right, there are fewer Max when you look
Speaker 1: at and so if you're trying to cause havoc, then
Speaker 1: really your your best bang for your buck is to
Speaker 1: go after Window. Yeah, you want to go after PCs
Speaker 1: because you certainly can't rule out alternate although I mean
Speaker 1: Windows really was the thing you aimed for because Windows
Speaker 1: had the majority of the share, So you want to
Speaker 1: go for a target rich environment. Now you could say
Speaker 1: that Windows was more had more vulnerabilities than Apple systems,
Speaker 1: which I'm not going to argue that I think that's true.
Speaker 1: But it's not that the Mac was immune to viruses.
Speaker 1: It's that it had a lot working for it to
Speaker 1: prevent people from even trying to write virus Because if
Speaker 1: They're like, well, I could try and write a virus
Speaker 1: for Mac and it might work, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: hit five of the computer population when I could aim
Speaker 1: for nine percent, which is going to get bigger results
Speaker 1: for me. I might as well focus on that. Anyway.
Speaker 1: I don't have a problem with the fact that he's
Speaker 1: using a Mac to design this code. My problem is
Speaker 1: it shouldn't work anyway. Whether it's a Mac or a
Speaker 1: PC or a Linux machine, Unix doesn't matter because you're
Speaker 1: talking about an alien your system and a human computer system,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't matter which operating system you're using. Um.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that's his idea, and he shows it off
Speaker 1: an area fifty one. He's able to turn the shields
Speaker 1: off and activate the ship's flight controls because apparently, once
Speaker 1: you're able to connect to your computer to the alien computer,
Speaker 1: you know what everything does. Like, think about all the
Speaker 1: systems that would be required to make an alien ship work,
Speaker 1: especially considering the fact that, uh, Jeff Goldblum's character David.
Speaker 1: It is David because because when he boot boots up
Speaker 1: his laptop, reference the two thousand one reference of Dave.
Speaker 1: You know, uh, good morning day, don't reference better movies
Speaker 1: in your movies, people, um, just reference worst movies, Grant.
Speaker 1: It's hard to guess which movies are worse until you're done,
Speaker 1: but you know, aim for really bad ones because then
Speaker 1: the odds are in your favor. Anyway, he there's the
Speaker 1: two thousand one reference. Good Morning Days. So he's David
Speaker 1: and Steve is Will Smith's characters. So Steve and Dave
Speaker 1: get into their alienship and blast off to go after
Speaker 1: the mothership. Right, Well, think of all the systems that
Speaker 1: are required to make that work. You have to have
Speaker 1: the propulsion systems, the flight systems, you have to have
Speaker 1: the life support systems. Thank goodness, these aliens breathe oxygen,
Speaker 1: right because they're they're they're going to space. I mean
Speaker 1: also just from a from a piloting standpoint, Will Smith's
Speaker 1: character just gets in there and kind of does it
Speaker 1: because he's seen how they fly so like as in
Speaker 1: he's watched the ships go. Yeah, he's seen how they
Speaker 1: move through an atmosphere. Therefore he knows how they fly
Speaker 1: and in space too, because he's not space trained. People,
Speaker 1: I've seen jets fly, I could not fly it. Yet.
Speaker 1: I've seen helicopters fly. I could not fly a helicopter.
Speaker 1: Just because I've seen how they move through a certain
Speaker 1: area doesn't mean I can fly them. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, he's a trained fighter pilot. Um. Maybe a
Speaker 1: more apt description would be, you know, I've seen people
Speaker 1: drive mac trucks, but I don't know how to drive
Speaker 1: a diesel truck. Okay, how about this. I have piloted
Speaker 1: a ship that was a sailing ship. I have never
Speaker 1: driven a motor boat. But both of them do move
Speaker 1: through the water. The propulsion systems are totally different. But
Speaker 1: I see. That's what I'm saying is that being an
Speaker 1: expert on one does not mean that you're an expert
Speaker 1: on the other. However, for the purposes of magic effect,
Speaker 1: let's let it go. We're giving this movie a lot
Speaker 1: of passes right now. Um. Also, we know that this
Speaker 1: episode has gone on really long, but so we've got that.
Speaker 1: That's the big one. Everyone points out is this computer
Speaker 1: virus that is designed to turn off the shields, and
Speaker 1: of course their goal is they have to get aboard
Speaker 1: the mothership in order for this to work. There's no
Speaker 1: way for them to beam the code directly to the mothership.
Speaker 1: They never explain how it is that by just getting
Speaker 1: into the proximity of the ship, they're able to get
Speaker 1: the code into the mothership. They don't explain that, so
Speaker 1: apparently proximity is necessary, but we don't know why, Like
Speaker 1: why do you have to be the mac into a
Speaker 1: into a magnetic port within the ship and then through
Speaker 1: the magnetic docking mechanism. That's it. Clearly they get aboard.
Speaker 1: They get aboard the alienship and like, oh sweet, it's
Speaker 1: got FireWire. We're good to go. Man, we would have
Speaker 1: been so boned if we hadn't had FireWire in here.
Speaker 1: It's clearly, it's clearly UM. And and also, like all
Speaker 1: other programmers and hackers from the ninety nineties, he uses
Speaker 1: a a animated skull Roger Jolly Roger in the symbol
Speaker 1: the virus. Yeah, yeah, I have to do that. And
Speaker 1: of course they deliver a nuclear bomb that has a
Speaker 1: thirty second timer on it to UM to destroy the
Speaker 1: mothership and then get out. There's no explanation as to
Speaker 1: why they picked thirty seconds other than the fact again
Speaker 1: dramatic effect. The idea big that this gives the heroes
Speaker 1: and even Uh tougher challenge to escape the blast radius
Speaker 1: of a nuclear bomb before they are affected by it
Speaker 1: um and I haven't personally done the math on half
Speaker 1: past to would have to fly in order to outfly
Speaker 1: an explosion. But I'm I'm almost I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: at least not outrunning an explosion, so I'm kind of
Speaker 1: it's a little better. It's a little better than having
Speaker 1: to outrun an explosion. Now, there's plenty of outrunning explosions
Speaker 1: in this movie too, especially in the parts where the
Speaker 1: cities are being destroyed. But if y I don't try
Speaker 1: not to ever put yourself in a position where you
Speaker 1: need to outrun an explosion because you would die. Explosions
Speaker 1: move faster than you can run. Yes, even you Usain
Speaker 1: Bolt don't try it. So, yeah, it's the We're getting
Speaker 1: towards the end of the movie here. So we got
Speaker 1: the explosion of the mother Ship, which is really odd.
Speaker 1: You pointed this out to Lauren that the explosion for
Speaker 1: the mother Ship has this weird kind of disc explosion,
Speaker 1: like it doesn't explode out in all directions explos Yeah,
Speaker 1: it explodes out in a plane like a plane as
Speaker 1: in a horizontal plane. It's like you think of a
Speaker 1: plate that's been smashed into a thousand pieces, and there's
Speaker 1: just spreads apart, like in a horizontal plane, it doesn't
Speaker 1: go out in all directions. Explosion. Yeah, they're different. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's just because the way the ship was built that's
Speaker 1: just really really secure on the top and bottom, but
Speaker 1: the outer edge is just just paper mache, just paper mache. Um.
Speaker 1: We don't know what it is that really causes the
Speaker 1: massive explosion within the the ship itself, I mean, apart
Speaker 1: from a nuclear bomb going off. But again, one nuclear
Speaker 1: bomb would not be enough to destroy a ship of
Speaker 1: that mass. Found the gas tank, Yeah, we're thinking like
Speaker 1: maybe there's fusion coils or something that were affected and
Speaker 1: that created some sort of you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe the nuclear bomb actually fell down a ventilation shaft
Speaker 1: that led directly to the reactor core. And then Alderon
Speaker 1: I might be thinking of a different movie. And then
Speaker 1: the very end of the movie has Stephen Dave, who
Speaker 1: you know, you don't know if they've survived, but surprised
Speaker 1: they did, and they're they're walking down the desert and
Speaker 1: they're greeted by their respective women folk and they are
Speaker 1: and children folk and children folk and they are embraced
Speaker 1: and everyone's happy. And then Uh. Steve will Smith's character
Speaker 1: leans down to his uh, the little boy that would
Speaker 1: would be his adopted son essentially or his stepson should
Speaker 1: he always I guess he has a stepson now because
Speaker 1: I forgot got married, because you have to have that
Speaker 1: yet another emotionally manipulative moment um. So his stepson, he
Speaker 1: says to his steps on, didn't I promise you fireworks?
Speaker 1: That I thought? And only eight hundred and twelve million
Speaker 1: people had to die for those fireworks to happen. And see,
Speaker 1: there's so much more in this movie. There's the part
Speaker 1: where where David the Jeff Goldblum character is writing to Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. With his dad and he opens up his
Speaker 1: laptop to pull up a while in the car in
Speaker 1: ther WiFi. Essentially, Yeah, there's not he's not. I seriously
Speaker 1: doubt that he was using any kind of really primitive
Speaker 1: cellular data network to pull this information, especially since that
Speaker 1: was represented by graphics. It must have been stored locally
Speaker 1: on the computer. But he pulls up all um all
Speaker 1: phone books in the United States in order to find
Speaker 1: his ex wife's phone number, and uh, I just thought
Speaker 1: it was funny that didn't just have the phone number
Speaker 1: written down that This was obviously another one of those
Speaker 1: moments which designed to show you that this guy is
Speaker 1: good computers, computers that this guy are good friends. But
Speaker 1: it is also funny to think that today anyone with
Speaker 1: a phone can look up a phone book anywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Internet and we do that now. Back in the
Speaker 1: web was young, it did exist, but it wasn't as
Speaker 1: robust as it is today. So I mean there was
Speaker 1: no Google back in, so that would have made it
Speaker 1: harder all by itself. Um, yeah, there's some there's some
Speaker 1: really odd moments in this movie. Now, all that being said,
Speaker 1: we do understand, like we said at the top of
Speaker 1: the show, for entertainment, it is for entertainment purposes. And
Speaker 1: and as much as Jonathan and I are kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, viscerrating it a little bit right now, it
Speaker 1: is I mean, there are parts of it that are
Speaker 1: that are very entertaining and very funny, and and it's
Speaker 1: it's designed it's designed to be a popcorn movie. Now
Speaker 1: that gives it some somewhat of a pass. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you know, if they had tried to make a movie
Speaker 1: that was as scientifically and technically accurate as possible, it
Speaker 1: probably would not have been as entertaining. Maybe they could
Speaker 1: have avoided some of the more melodramatic, emotionally manipulative scenes,
Speaker 1: which I find I don't know at the time. At
Speaker 1: the time, I didn't find it as irritating, but I
Speaker 1: was also dumber about as as an adult, you get
Speaker 1: more aware of that kind of thing. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I I certainly don't fault especially big blockbuster
Speaker 1: movies like this on on being light on the science.
Speaker 1: But but things that are just just blatantly not right
Speaker 1: not science. Yeah, I'm kind of like, didn't I mean,
Speaker 1: wasn't anyone. I mean, this this script had to have
Speaker 1: gone through multiple, multiple treatments and all kinds of eyes,
Speaker 1: and I mean studios like that are huge, you know,
Speaker 1: it was enormous. I think I think what would be
Speaker 1: fun to do, maybe in the future, is to come
Speaker 1: up with our list of movies that have the the
Speaker 1: worst portrayal of science and technology and not necessarily go
Speaker 1: through it like the like that this was a special
Speaker 1: thing that we did because I jokingly said that we
Speaker 1: should do it, and then our so so this is
Speaker 1: what you get. But maybe in the future will do
Speaker 1: more of an episode where we just kind of talk
Speaker 1: about some of the more ridiculous depictions of technology, like Hackers,
Speaker 1: which has some really awful awful sequences, Like essentially anything
Speaker 1: that has depicted hacking as some sort of video game.
Speaker 1: The net is another great one. Anything anything we're hacking
Speaker 1: is essentially like you are the plot. You are actually
Speaker 1: making your way through a three dimensional castle and you
Speaker 1: have to avoid skeletons, and this is actually the way
Speaker 1: hacking works. And if you can get to the treasure room,
Speaker 1: you get the files. There is a movie like that.
Speaker 1: I can show you the video clip after this is done,
Speaker 1: So maybe we'll do that at some point and just
Speaker 1: kind of give you a rundown on some of the
Speaker 1: movies that have maybe do a few that are that
Speaker 1: are really good. Yeah, there are a few out there
Speaker 1: that have done some great some great work and representing
Speaker 1: what technology can actually do. And that wraps up this
Speaker 1: classic episode. You know, we would occasionally do these episodes
Speaker 1: where we would take a film that has a lot
Speaker 1: of technology in it. We've done it with the James
Speaker 1: Bond films, Star Wars, Independence Day obviously, and we would
Speaker 1: go through and talk about how the technology was portrayed,
Speaker 1: how realistic was it? Uh, did it set n realistic expectations.
Speaker 1: If you guys would like us to do any more
Speaker 1: of those, let us know, tell us some of the
Speaker 1: movies that we should really take a look at and
Speaker 1: kind of dissect. But if you have any other suggestions,
Speaker 1: feel free to pop them my way. You can reach
Speaker 1: out on Twitter or Facebook. The handle for both is
Speaker 1: text stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows. Eight