Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff
Speaker 1: and Jonathan Stick and we're gonna do something a little
Speaker 1: different today. It's something that we threatened to do in
Speaker 1: a previous episode and fans really picked it up. Exactly,
Speaker 1: you have no one to blame but yourselves. We are
Speaker 1: on this eve of Independence Day here in the United States,
Speaker 1: going to cover the film Independence Day and talk about
Speaker 1: some of the technology and science stuff that happens in
Speaker 1: the movie, whether or not any of it is plausible,
Speaker 1: Which parts were you know, more or less right on target,
Speaker 1: which parts were even prescient, and then which parts were
Speaker 1: not really not really plausible, if at all possible. So, uh,
Speaker 1: but to start off, we should probably give an overview
Speaker 1: of the film for those of you who have not
Speaker 1: seen it. Now, this movie came out in nine six,
Speaker 1: right now, there were a few other things that were
Speaker 1: going on at that time. That's the year that DVDs
Speaker 1: launched in Japan. Yeah, so when I actually asked my
Speaker 1: friends if anyone had a copy of this, they all
Speaker 1: said they had it on VHS. And we don't ever
Speaker 1: remember that media. I don't even know if I have
Speaker 1: anything that will still play a tape. Uh. There were
Speaker 1: other things that happened that year in the world of technology.
Speaker 1: Internet Explorer three launched. That was Microsoft's big browser, and
Speaker 1: of course the three was one of the bigger ones
Speaker 1: of the releases Windows in T four point it was
Speaker 1: released by Microsoft as well. eBay got started. A little
Speaker 1: first person shooter by the name of Duke NUKEAM three
Speaker 1: D launched and that ended up, of course getting a
Speaker 1: lot of people really excited. They enjoyed the game. I
Speaker 1: include a sequel was planned and would end up being
Speaker 1: vaporware for more than a decade. Uh. There was a
Speaker 1: certain animal that was born that year. Yeah, Dolly the
Speaker 1: cloned sheep was born. That's first first cloned mammal. Yep,
Speaker 1: Dolly the Sheep, first mammal successfully cloned. That's also the
Speaker 1: year that IBMS Deep Blue defeated the chess champion, Gary Kasparov,
Speaker 1: so man versus machine and machine wins. Yeah. It was
Speaker 1: also the Telecommunications Act of strangely enough, happened in UM
Speaker 1: and and that basically allowed the Internet to sort of
Speaker 1: be lumped in along with broadband signals and UM allowed
Speaker 1: cable companies to start offering Internet services. People were really
Speaker 1: excited about this new megabit speeds that we're going to
Speaker 1: start happening, right right, We were finally getting away from
Speaker 1: the kill a bit speeds that we were thinking of
Speaker 1: with the old dial up modems. And you know, this
Speaker 1: is this is back when the Internet is pretty young
Speaker 1: as far as the general public is concerned. The Internet
Speaker 1: itself had been around for a while, but really only
Speaker 1: research institutions, universities, some government facilities, military, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Those organizations had access to it, but anyone outside of
Speaker 1: that really did not have a whole lot of access
Speaker 1: to the Internet unless they just happen to work someplace
Speaker 1: or go to school someplace that had it. At this
Speaker 1: point in ninety six, we've actually got the point where
Speaker 1: the Worldwide Web is a thing, but still very early
Speaker 1: on in the kind of the g c S era
Speaker 1: of the exactly yeah. And and according to uh the
Speaker 1: people history dot com that they say that in the
Speaker 1: twelve months of the Internet, host computer number goes from
Speaker 1: about one million computers to ten million computers. So obviously
Speaker 1: explosive growth at this time, although it's still very much
Speaker 1: a new thing, which kind of comes into play a
Speaker 1: little bit in the film Independence Day. So Independence Day
Speaker 1: it was a movie by Dean Devlin and Roland. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Emerick is of course he's become known as the
Speaker 1: guy who likes to blow up the Earth. Uh. He's
Speaker 1: blown up the earth in several movies and other projects,
Speaker 1: things like everything from Godzilla to All 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 I think UM and
Speaker 1: 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 all though apparently he was to
Speaker 1: the truth. Yeah, he's not collusion. Um. Adam Baldwin's in it,
Speaker 1: tiny chevy Adam Baldwin. He's so young and adorable. It's
Speaker 1: very cute. Yeah, it's it's definitely well before his firefly days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Brent Brent Spiner data data from Star Trek Next Generation,
Speaker 1: although he does not play data from Star Trek Next
Speaker 1: Generation in this movie. That would have been confusing. So
Speaker 1: to give a brief rundown on what the film is
Speaker 1: all about in case you have not seen it, there's
Speaker 1: gonna be a lot of spoilers in this podcast, but
Speaker 1: essentially it's ninety six. I think it's safe to spoil
Speaker 1: it now. Yeah, I think that's statue of let me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the movie is all about how, uh, this alien
Speaker 1: invasion force comes into two Earth's orbit and then lays
Speaker 1: waste to the major cities on Earth in preparation for
Speaker 1: a full on invasion. And it's about how Earth forces
Speaker 1: kind of mount up a defense, a desperate defense, to
Speaker 1: fight off these alien invaders. And this all happens, of course,
Speaker 1: on on from July second to July four, which here
Speaker 1: in the United States is kind of a celebration of
Speaker 1: independence and hence the term independence dates extremely Um, it's
Speaker 1: not not ethnocentric, genoistic. Yeah, it's it's all right. Let
Speaker 1: me put it this way. It's about America. It's an
Speaker 1: American movie, is um, there's quite a bit of there's
Speaker 1: quite a bit of uh of stuff about America. And
Speaker 1: then there's some token mentions of other places around the
Speaker 1: world where you see a brief scene in Iraq with
Speaker 1: British forces saying things like the Americans on the case,
Speaker 1: bloody hell, like that's July. And then it goes to
Speaker 1: Japan and Russia, and of course all the Russians are
Speaker 1: sitting around vodka and listening to the radio. And I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just let's just say that the depiction of other
Speaker 1: cultures is somewhat stereotypical within the context of this movie,
Speaker 1: perhaps stilted. Don't don't worry though, everything is so it's
Speaker 1: it's not just that we have a very very American
Speaker 1: centric film. No one comes out of this lookally too great.
Speaker 1: But but that's that's more. That's more commentary on the
Speaker 1: quality of the film. Let's get down to some of
Speaker 1: the science, because this film is filled with science and
Speaker 1: technology and likely and some of the stuff. There's one
Speaker 1: thing in particular, there's a couple of things that are
Speaker 1: really cool, yeah, that end up being something that that's
Speaker 1: similar to what we use today. And I'm actually really impressed.
Speaker 1: And it was a really cool idea that I don't
Speaker 1: know who came up with it, but it was a
Speaker 1: really nifty thing. But the movie opens with a shot
Speaker 1: of the Moon and you're actually looking at one of
Speaker 1: the moon landing sites where you see the you know,
Speaker 1: the footprints on the regulars on the moon and yeah,
Speaker 1: and the American flag, and then a shadow comes across
Speaker 1: the moon and you hear this terrible rumbling noise because
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 will 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 drive
Speaker 1: which somehow can affect actual particles. Um, so we'll give
Speaker 1: them the rumbling. We'll give them at least the movement part.
Speaker 1: The rumbling part is a little yeah, and then 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 thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't, although I do appreciate it when people don't
Speaker 1: do that, right, like just we 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 has some realized and it is it is pronounced
Speaker 1: sea right, not s E t I because one of
Speaker 1: the characters in the film pronounces it S t I.
Speaker 1: We just call it set Excellent 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 sign to to who goes like,
Speaker 1: I'm hearing beeps and boops, literal audio beeps and groups
Speaker 1: coming through this headset, and that means something so 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, because I mean objects
Speaker 1: within space, anything with with with gravity or with light,
Speaker 1: you can have you can have the potential for that,
Speaker 1: you can have anything like quasars things like that that
Speaker 1: create these radio signals. So what SETI has to do
Speaker 1: is not only look for the presence of radio signals,
Speaker 1: but then to actually, yeah, to make sure that that's
Speaker 1: some sort 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 spaceship was not detected until
Speaker 1: after it was right there at the Moon already. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but in Earth's orbit. But 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 mothership, because before it has let out
Speaker 1: any other smaller ships, is huge. According to the movie,
Speaker 1: it is five hundred and fifty kilometers in diameter, which
Speaker 1: is about three two miles. That's just under half the
Speaker 1: size of Texas at its widest point and U and
Speaker 1: it says that it's about a quarter of the mass
Speaker 1: of the Moon. All of this meanings it's it's very,
Speaker 1: very big, and we would be able to see it,
Speaker 1: if not, even without radar with our naked eye, like
Speaker 1: 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 but with telescopes we'd be
Speaker 1: able to see it even further away. Sure, and and
Speaker 1: possibly you know, maybe maybe the shields because it is
Speaker 1: revealed the ship has some kind of shielding mechanism UM
Speaker 1: which which blocks you know, torpedoes, um. Yeah, but maybe
Speaker 1: maybe it also blocks visual data. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: then it with the question would be why do they
Speaker 1: bother to reveal themselves at all? Because if it if
Speaker 1: a dramatic effect, it's like a villain that only makes
Speaker 1: sense within the context of a movie. With Then when
Speaker 1: you step outside of that and you look at if
Speaker 1: you were going to destroy a planet, wouldn't you wouldn't
Speaker 1: you want to have a dramatic entrant. I have learned
Speaker 1: my lesson. I am no longer revealing my egomaniacal plans
Speaker 1: to the hero before I set them in motion. You
Speaker 1: once fully once, shame on you, pull me four and
Speaker 1: seventy eight times shame on me. All right, not again
Speaker 1: for seven nine. It's going down. Okay, But yeah, the
Speaker 1: the it does not appear to be invisible. So that's one.
Speaker 1: That's one thing we can point out as being a
Speaker 1: problem that we would have seen this thing coming towards
Speaker 1: the Earth even with no instrumentation, literally with telescopes, yet
Speaker 1: we would have seen it well before it ever reached
Speaker 1: as far as the Moon. That being said, we also
Speaker 1: don't know if I assumed the ship must have some
Speaker 1: sort of super fast propulsion system for deep space travel
Speaker 1: faster or at least yeah, I mean it would have
Speaker 1: to be because there are no nearby systems that could
Speaker 1: support life, uh compared you know, from our position right
Speaker 1: there are no planets that are because we do learn
Speaker 1: that these aliens share a lot in common with us.
Speaker 1: They breathe oxygen, they have the same sort of tolerant
Speaker 1: s is for heat and cold, and so they have
Speaker 1: they have some kind of visual cortex that that allows
Speaker 1: them to 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: not quite that close. But you still have you know,
Speaker 1: general you know, limbs and that head and the verse
Speaker 1: is a very strange place, is all I'm saying. I'm
Speaker 1: that's one that I'm willing to let slide. Well, for
Speaker 1: them to be so similar to us and in multiple
Speaker 1: ways is a huge coincidence when you think about all
Speaker 1: the variables out there, I mean, when you when you
Speaker 1: really get down to it, when you talk about our
Speaker 1: sample size for planets with life on it, that's a one.
Speaker 1: That's a sample size of one. We have one planet
Speaker 1: that we know of that supports life as we know it,
Speaker 1: So that's an incredibly small sample size. So and this
Speaker 1: is a problem that's throughout science fiction. I'm not just
Speaker 1: picking on independence, but but you know, we have to
Speaker 1: extrapolate 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 consus 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 found
Speaker 1: lots of exo planets. Uh, there are several that we've
Speaker 1: found that are what we within what we call the
Speaker 1: Goldilocks zone, which is this zone within a distance from
Speaker 1: the host star of that planet. If we were in
Speaker 1: start track, it would be called a class M plan Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: meaning that meaning that that it would at least have
Speaker 1: the potential for supporting life as we know it based
Speaker 1: upon its distance from the star. But that's all the
Speaker 1: you know, And we might know something about the composition
Speaker 1: of the planet itself, but we wouldn't know enough about
Speaker 1: to say that whether there is or isn't life on it. However,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that just based upon the huge number we've
Speaker 1: already started to see in our within our own galaxy,
Speaker 1: there must be countless planets that fall into this category,
Speaker 1: which makes you wonder, why would you bother going to
Speaker 1: uh try and colonize one where the residents of that
Speaker 1: planet might potentially fight back. Well, they it is, I
Speaker 1: would say, I would argue that that these aliens had
Speaker 1: to have been watching us long enough to to understand
Speaker 1: our language, and understand our computer language, which we'll get
Speaker 1: to in just a second, and and furthermore understand our culture. Um,
Speaker 1: because when they do send out those little spaceships, they
Speaker 1: send them not to the most populated regions of the planet,
Speaker 1: but to the major cultural landmarks, as though they are
Speaker 1: specifically trying to evoke an emotional response in us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as 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 the 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. Uh, if you
Speaker 1: are an alien, the reason you do it is, I
Speaker 1: don't know, you're already leveling cities. Um. So they we
Speaker 1: presume that they have some sort of faster than light
Speaker 1: drive in order for them to get to where they're going.
Speaker 1: We don't know that. It's never revealed in the movie
Speaker 1: where they came from or how they got here. Um,
Speaker 1: we don't know. Uh. They talk about how the radio
Speaker 1: signal um is originating for the moon. Uh that you
Speaker 1: can't I don't know how they figure that out, Like
Speaker 1: how I mean, you could figure out that came from
Speaker 1: that direction? Problem study, say this radio signal is coming
Speaker 1: from the moon, right, But you don't. I mean, you
Speaker 1: could see what direction it was coming from if you
Speaker 1: were you know, triangulating from various radio stations and you
Speaker 1: saw how long it took to get to each one,
Speaker 1: you can figure out kind of where the origin point was.
Speaker 1: Distance is a little weird. I mean because radio signals
Speaker 1: can come from really far away. Now, grant the strength
Speaker 1: of the signal would give you an idea, but that
Speaker 1: that part definitely an equation. That's a little bit on
Speaker 1: the fly. Um, they start using our own satellites to
Speaker 1: communicate the aliens do the mothership eventually has other ships
Speaker 1: split off from it. Oh and one other thing I
Speaker 1: want to mention. You said that had a quarter of
Speaker 1: the mass of the Moon. In case you're curious, I
Speaker 1: did the math. Here's so the moon has a mass
Speaker 1: of seventy three grams, which would be if you if
Speaker 1: you down the number seven and then the number three
Speaker 1: and then put twenty one zeros after it, that's how
Speaker 1: many grams of mass the moon has. So this, uh,
Speaker 1: this spaceship has one point eight grams of mass. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they talk about the possibility of using an I C.
Speaker 1: B M to bring this mother ship down before it
Speaker 1: starts to split off and all the other ships come
Speaker 1: out from it. Uh. There's no nuclear weapon that could
Speaker 1: destroy that much mass. It just we have not created
Speaker 1: a nuclear weapon that could that much damage. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: that's so massive. We don't not only why why would we,
Speaker 1: but how could we? So? How how how do we
Speaker 1: know 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 that is a is
Speaker 1: a gravitational pull. And and unless it is um, unless
Speaker 1: they've calculated the amount that it's offset the tides, or
Speaker 1: even maybe and then you wouldn't be able to calculate,
Speaker 1: you know, figure out what the masses that. That's a
Speaker 1: good question, I think it was. I think the answer
Speaker 1: is they wanted to make sure it looked like it
Speaker 1: was big. This is from my sheet of increasingly incredulous question.
Speaker 1: How is this possible? Well, the mother ship has all
Speaker 1: these large city sized ships split off from it, and
Speaker 1: the city size ships then come down and hover over
Speaker 1: the various cities, including like directly over the Empire State Building,
Speaker 1: directly over the Capitol Building, directly over part of l A,
Speaker 1: etceter etcetera. And they, I think they say at one
Speaker 1: point it's like ten to fifteen ships. So apparently they
Speaker 1: never get an accurate account. Um. The ships are using
Speaker 1: our satellite system to communicate with each other. They're bouncing
Speaker 1: signals off of our satellites, which raises a question how
Speaker 1: do they get their technology to interact with ours? So
Speaker 1: they they've clearly learned our our computer programming languages. They
Speaker 1: must have, because how else, and they must have been
Speaker 1: designed machines on their their ships that could then interface
Speaker 1: with our machines, because otherwise, you know, yes, you can
Speaker 1: see that they're broadcasting radio signals, but on a technological level,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to interact with that unless yours
Speaker 1: were somehow um, you know, had some sort of adapter
Speaker 1: alien to Earth adapter or you could tap into our technology.
Speaker 1: But they're using our satellite systems to send out a message,
Speaker 1: which Jeff Goldblum figures out. He does well because he's
Speaker 1: he's a really smart guy. Um. And to be fair though,
Speaker 1: this was one part of the movie that I found
Speaker 1: very plausible. He discovers a repeating pattern that's being broadcast
Speaker 1: over radio signals. Now you don't have to know what
Speaker 1: that what that translates to, in order to notice that
Speaker 1: there's that there's a pattern, and he notices that that
Speaker 1: it's that it's winding down, it's reducing each time it repeats,
Speaker 1: it reduces. So he then figures out that this countdown,
Speaker 1: which is perfectly plausible. No, no no, no, no, that's that's
Speaker 1: that's great fine science. That part I was like, I
Speaker 1: am alright with this. This makes sense that you would
Speaker 1: have a repeating pattern that's getting slightly shorter each time.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a countdown. Yeah. The issue that I've
Speaker 1: got here is that UM is that it shows a
Speaker 1: couple of our satellites crashing into the mother ship. UM,
Speaker 1: which means that a the mothership is significantly lower in
Speaker 1: orbit than the moon or parts of it are anyway.
Speaker 1: Um and uh. And and secondly, just the way that
Speaker 1: they talk about satellites is not necessarily the way that
Speaker 1: satellites are talked about. UM. Difficult Blue mentions transponder channels,
Speaker 1: which is like saying a pizza pie like it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of the same word over again. It transponders it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really like, um, you know, it's essentially the it's
Speaker 1: technobabble to try and sound like he's doing something effective.
Speaker 1: There's another thing that happens with the cable station in
Speaker 1: particular that just drive me crazy because I was I
Speaker 1: I understand again that was done for effect, but it
Speaker 1: made no sense. Bubble. We'll get into that in a
Speaker 1: little bit. So you've got all these spaceships splitting off.
Speaker 1: The satellite hits the spaceship and there's no visible damage whatsoever.
Speaker 1: You also don't see the force field, but you don't
Speaker 1: see the force field at that point. You just see
Speaker 1: the satellite bang into the spaceship and then go boom.
Speaker 1: Which does it? Does it do it? I don't remember.
Speaker 1: Does it do a green boom or an exploding but
Speaker 1: don't I think it's an exploding boom as I recall now. Granted,
Speaker 1: I should add this movie is two hours and twenty
Speaker 1: minutes long something. Yes, So we took turns watching and
Speaker 1: then 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
Speaker 1: teenager as great as a teenager. It had Will Smith
Speaker 1: and like it's action stuff blown up As an adult, Uh,
Speaker 1: some of the shine has worn off. Actually, I guess
Speaker 1: it wasn't a teenager back then either. It's my birthday today, um,
Speaker 1: and now I'm doing mathppy birthday, Jonathan, Thank you 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. Uh,
Speaker 1: the Secretary Defense wants to blow it out of the
Speaker 1: sky with an ice ub um, even though I've just
Speaker 1: said that that we do not have one that is
Speaker 1: that big, even though maybe it's a secret government program. Now,
Speaker 1: the city sized ships, once those split off, those could
Speaker 1: be heretically that I would if you're talking about the
Speaker 1: size of the city, then you could take it down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could do enough damage to it. You could do
Speaker 1: enough damage to it where I seriously think it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to maintain flight. I mean, nuclear weapons are
Speaker 1: pending on your your engine power source, which we still
Speaker 1: haven't determined. And because these things are city sized and
Speaker 1: they are hovering noiselessly and um and effortlessly like like
Speaker 1: like they are not creating any um any kind of
Speaker 1: ripples in the spacetime continuum. As we know, it's these cities.
Speaker 1: You've got You've got this ship that's ard over your city,
Speaker 1: but it's not pushing down. Just hang yeah, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not pushing down in any way that would make
Speaker 1: it like if you stepped outside, you wouldn't suddenly feel
Speaker 1: like some weird force pressing down on you. There's nothing,
Speaker 1: so we don't know how they're hanging in the air
Speaker 1: 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 laptopic, it's just a screen. It's a
Speaker 1: screen with I don't know. Yeah, it's supposed to show
Speaker 1: a readout, a radar readout of the ships. I don't
Speaker 1: know why radar is working now. Um, there's no explanation
Speaker 1: for why the radar readout works as opposed to because
Speaker 1: half the time radar is not working and the other
Speaker 1: half the time they talk about a radar readout. Uh
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe it's just that the aliens keep forgetting
Speaker 1: to turn the stuff button on. Um, because these ships
Speaker 1: are not design. If you've listened to our podcast about
Speaker 1: stealth technology, you know that a part of the way
Speaker 1: that stealth technology works is just based on the actual
Speaker 1: physical design of the vehicles. They have these weird angular
Speaker 1: uh designs to them, and that makes that makes stuff
Speaker 1: bounce off of them at awkward angles so that you
Speaker 1: can't receive the signals exactly exactly. But these ships are
Speaker 1: just gigantic flying saucers, so big flat services that radar
Speaker 1: could easily bounce off up they have to be able
Speaker 1: to if we're talking about those gravitational drives or something
Speaker 1: like that. I never knew you were an alien apologist, um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so, so don't know why the radar sometimes
Speaker 1: works and sometimes doesn't, but it's still kind of interesting here. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's also when the ships are moving into position over
Speaker 1: the cities, there's this weird sheath of fire that's all
Speaker 1: around them, and I was wondering if that was supposed
Speaker 1: to be the representation of these ships enter ring the
Speaker 1: Earth's atmosphere. 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 fact. Maybe this is just the
Speaker 1: the equivalent of painting flames on your hot rod. This
Speaker 1: is wicked cool, guys, Let's turn the flames on, you know,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm thinking. Well, you know what, We got
Speaker 1: a lot more to say about this movie, but before
Speaker 1: we do, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor, Audible.
Speaker 1: Audible dot com is the leading provider of downloadable digital
Speaker 1: audio books and spoken word entertainment. Audible has over one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand titles to choose from to be downloaded to
Speaker 1: your iPod or m P three play. Go to audible
Speaker 1: podcast dot com slash tech stuff to get a free
Speaker 1: audio book download of your choice when you sign up today.
Speaker 1: And since we're talking about science fiction today, one good
Speaker 1: suggestion would be War of the Worlds. They have several
Speaker 1: different versions at audible, including one read by orson Freaking Wells,
Speaker 1: So go check that out. Okay, so we've got the
Speaker 1: ships there over the various cities, we've got the everyone's
Speaker 1: freaking out. No one knows exactly what's going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jeff Goldblum's discovered the signal, uh and he he figures
Speaker 1: out this probably some sort of coordinated attack. This raises
Speaker 1: a question in my mind that's more of a plot
Speaker 1: question and less of a technology question, which is, I
Speaker 1: don't understand why the attack needs to be incredibly coordinated, because,
Speaker 1: as is demonstrated throughout the film, these aliens have amazing
Speaker 1: technology that our technology just cannot stand up to. Like
Speaker 1: nothing we have puts a dentity. It doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter if they're going to blow us up simultaneously
Speaker 1: or at a slight leg right right, Why why even
Speaker 1: worry about targeting the largest cities first, unless it's just
Speaker 1: to get as many people dead as possible, which could
Speaker 1: just be an efficiency thing, in which case, all right,
Speaker 1: I can get that they're trying to kill as many
Speaker 1: people and as little time as possible because their ultimate
Speaker 1: goal is to invade the planet, and this way they'd
Speaker 1: wipe out, you know, the major centers of population. They're
Speaker 1: clearly just just bond villains really at heart there Again,
Speaker 1: they're doing it for dramatic effect, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: give one of our scientists something to latch onto. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: in order to make us feel like we have a
Speaker 1: fighting chance. I think. I think the I think the
Speaker 1: wiping out as many people as possible is as much
Speaker 1: sense as I can make of it. But I mean
Speaker 1: it does make sense in a way. If you're if
Speaker 1: you're talking about clearing on an area so that you
Speaker 1: can then come in and and and reap all the benefits,
Speaker 1: then I understand, like, all right, well you wanted to
Speaker 1: do that. You need to hit before everyone realizes what's up,
Speaker 1: because then they're just going to scatter like like cockroaches,
Speaker 1: and then you have to hunt them all down. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is This is also about when when are our satellites,
Speaker 1: like all of our to like communications start kind of
Speaker 1: breaking up a little bit, and this weird static pattern,
Speaker 1: which I'm not sure is how satellites were satellites were well,
Speaker 1: some were 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 that an
Speaker 1: alien signal underlying our own signals is interesting. Uh. Depending
Speaker 1: upon the bandwidth of the satellite. I could actually see
Speaker 1: it working in a way where it means that our
Speaker 1: signals are actually weaker. But I don't think it would
Speaker 1: come across exactly the way it did in the movie.
Speaker 1: There's one point, you know, Jeff Goldblum's character, the brilliant
Speaker 1: scientist guy who is now essentially just working for a
Speaker 1: cable company, a cable provider. Uh, there's one point where
Speaker 1: he's talking with his his comedic sidekick character who is
Speaker 1: later on obliterated spoiler alert, um, Harvey Firestein. Where he's
Speaker 1: chatting with him, and then suddenly a white House announcement
Speaker 1: comes on the screens, and and and this wall of
Speaker 1: screens that had previously been picking up broadcasts from all
Speaker 1: different channels. Yeah. Yeah, So you think of a like
Speaker 1: just a wall of television screens, and each television screen
Speaker 1: is showing a different channel, and now they're all showing
Speaker 1: the White House thing. But some of them, like groups
Speaker 1: of nine screens, become one big display, so you know
Speaker 1: you're there the power Rangers or something, and they're all
Speaker 1: just just building up together Ultron. Sorry that's era, but no. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this idea that you know that if you have a
Speaker 1: block of nine screens, the upper left screen is the
Speaker 1: upper left corner of the full picture. How does that happen? Like?
Speaker 1: How would you? How would would that mean? Like Channel
Speaker 1: thirty two is only showing the upper left corner of
Speaker 1: the alien the alien disruption in our in our communication
Speaker 1: signal is causing our television is to start acting like Ultron.
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 president's words. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Jeff Goldblum decides he has to go to d
Speaker 1: C to find his ex wife, who now works at
Speaker 1: the White House and also marginally helps save the planet. Right,
Speaker 1: so uh yeah, that's in the process. So he goes
Speaker 1: with his dad, uh and he and his dad go
Speaker 1: down to DC. Because Jeff Goldblum's 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 self in this
Speaker 1: period where Fox Molder's cell phone. I mean they were bricks,
Speaker 1: they were rare to not everyone had them. But but
Speaker 1: triangulating is probably not the right word here. You could
Speaker 1: triangulate someone's position using someone who's using a cell phone.
Speaker 1: You could triangulate it, particularly if you're the cell phone company.
Speaker 1: But more likely what he was doing was saying at
Speaker 1: the time, didn't they didn't they kind of purposefully scramble
Speaker 1: a lot of that. Where couldn't you not really use GPS?
Speaker 1: I GPS GPS does that's not even that's not even
Speaker 1: a thing. So, I mean, GPS is a thing, but
Speaker 1: not on any civilian cell phone. Not so you could
Speaker 1: do it just by the cell phone signal, you know,
Speaker 1: the cell phone sending out radio signals from the phone,
Speaker 1: because she's on the phone at the time. And the
Speaker 1: idea is that what he's doing is detecting the radio
Speaker 1: signal from her phone and then figuring out where she
Speaker 1: is within the context of the White House. He couldn't
Speaker 1: really triangulate. I mean, to triangulate, you need three points.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the whole idea of triangulation. You need
Speaker 1: these three sides, and you have to be able to
Speaker 1: know the different angles between you and a cup. You
Speaker 1: need note at least the distance between you and one
Speaker 1: other point and at least the measurement of two angles
Speaker 1: for you to be able to determine the position of
Speaker 1: whatever you're looking for. Yeah, and he obviously doesn't have
Speaker 1: all that information. What he was really doing was a
Speaker 1: kind of localization through multilateral radio signals, which is possible
Speaker 1: but is not terribly precise. So in other words, he'd
Speaker 1: be able to say she's in the White House, which
Speaker 1: they already knew. But anyway, again, movie logic, Um, we
Speaker 1: have the whole uh bit of where they're at. The
Speaker 1: ships actually start to unleash their attack so at this
Speaker 1: point are various heroes have all started to make their
Speaker 1: way out of the cities otherwise over really quickly, and
Speaker 1: the spaceships start to beam down energy into the cities
Speaker 1: to wipe them out. We don't know what kind of
Speaker 1: energy it is, some kind of energy weapon. It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a green and glowing laser stuff that moves
Speaker 1: slower than light speed. Right, So so it's kind of
Speaker 1: like our podcast about plasma weapons, you know, it's similar
Speaker 1: to that. But we figure, all right, so the slowing
Speaker 1: down obviously that's for for again traumatic effect, because if
Speaker 1: it was going at light speed, it would just be
Speaker 1: boo and you're like, wow, um, this this was more
Speaker 1: you know, intimidating and frightening. But so let's just assume
Speaker 1: it's some form of laser. There could even be plasma
Speaker 1: ification going on, because if the laser is powerful enough,
Speaker 1: it could actually plasma atmosphere. Yeah, the atmosphere around the laser.
Speaker 1: And then you see this this explosion from the focal
Speaker 1: point moving outward and it just keeps rolling out effect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly like if you're to throw a rock into a
Speaker 1: pond and you watch those ripples. That's exactly what this
Speaker 1: looks like. Except it's just the one ripple, right, It's
Speaker 1: not like a it's not like a six sequence of all.
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
Speaker 1: whatever like uh iconic building or structure is there. They're
Speaker 1: not only we're gonna kill you, we're gonna blow up
Speaker 1: your stuff, like the stuff you like, the stuff that's
Speaker 1: on your postcards. That's what we're blowing up, um because
Speaker 1: it makes really good movie posters. They've been watching watching
Speaker 1: our our communication signal and they probably actually had already
Speaker 1: seen em Ric's future films before he had even made them,
Speaker 1: and they said that's a good idea. So uh, because
Speaker 1: I mean, 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, so 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.
Speaker 1: So assuming that the ships were able to hit most
Speaker 1: of the major cities in the world, and really at
Speaker 1: first they're they're hitting like ten or fifteen of them, uh,
Speaker 1: and then they move on to hit smaller cities like
Speaker 1: Atlanta at and Is in round two. So we don't
Speaker 1: get off scott free in this one. Um. So, in
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties six, the world had approximately five point eight
Speaker 1: billion people. We've got quite a few more since then,
Speaker 1: but five point eight billion people in n So I
Speaker 1: assumed that about of the world's population were in cities.
Speaker 1: Now that's a rough assumption. In nineteen fifty it was
Speaker 1: around thirty percent, and I think it was two thousand
Speaker 1: eight when we finally hit fifty percent population in urban environments.
Speaker 1: So between nineteen fifty and two thousand and eight, I'm saying,
Speaker 1: so of the world's population in cities, that's about two
Speaker 1: point three billion people total. And then I made a
Speaker 1: further assumption. I said, alright, a lot of people try
Speaker 1: to evacuate, So let's say that fifty percent of them
Speaker 1: got out of the city and they're safe, and the
Speaker 1: other fifty percent are still within the city when these
Speaker 1: attacks happen. That means that you've got about one point
Speaker 1: one six billion people left left behind in those cities.
Speaker 1: So then I said, all right, let's assume a seventy
Speaker 1: percent fatality rate, meaning that of the population is able
Speaker 1: to find some place where they're able to hunker down
Speaker 1: and survive there in a bomb shelter, or they're helpful alleyway,
Speaker 1: if you happen to be Will Smith's love interest, Thank goodness,
Speaker 1: the dog lives um. By the way, this movie not
Speaker 1: so subtle with its emotional manipulation. They use everything children, Uh,
Speaker 1: they use dogs. Uh, they use the wonderful trope of
Speaker 1: character who has been terribly injured, but not so badly
Speaker 1: that they can't have that one last tender thank you,
Speaker 1: President Laura. That's that's the scene I hate the most
Speaker 1: in this movie, and that's saying something. Anyway, with a
Speaker 1: seventy percent fatality rate, I figured that about eight hundred
Speaker 1: and twelve million people die as a result of the
Speaker 1: of of this uh, of this attack. That's a conservative estimate.
Speaker 1: Then we've got the thing about the alien shields, which
Speaker 1: we have him or probably some form of magnetic or
Speaker 1: maybe even gravity drive. We don't really know that. We
Speaker 1: don't know about the what the energy weapons really are,
Speaker 1: all right, So that that brings us to this whole
Speaker 1: idea of the Roswell slash Area fifty one part of
Speaker 1: the movie, right right, because because what happens is they,
Speaker 1: you know, all the cities start start being blowed up
Speaker 1: and uh and and the president in a bunch of
Speaker 1: other military persona head off to Area fifty one after
Speaker 1: the secret base after just located underground. Right, Jeff Goldblum's
Speaker 1: dad says, hey, you guys, you knew about this ever
Speaker 1: since the thing in Roswell, and then you hit it
Speaker 1: in Area fifty one. And the President says, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no, that's urban legend. It's not it's not real.
Speaker 1: And then the Secretary of Defense is like, well, actually
Speaker 1: cut to yeah, but here's the thing. First of all,
Speaker 1: the president in this in this sequence appears to be
Speaker 1: unaware of the actual existence of Area fifty one, which
Speaker 1: is an actual base. Is an actual base, although the
Speaker 1: the military didn't really refer to it as Area fifty
Speaker 1: one beyond some designations on a map. And the reason
Speaker 1: that it was called Area fifty one is because of
Speaker 1: its proximity to nuclear testing range, where they had divided
Speaker 1: up the range in two different areas. Uh. It was
Speaker 1: more known as Groom Lake, which was a dry lake
Speaker 1: bed in Nevada, and it really is a real place,
Speaker 1: but it was used to test experimental and secret aircraft,
Speaker 1: so things like spy planes that were being tested by
Speaker 1: the Air Force were that was the testing ground and
Speaker 1: it was meant to be this secret area so that
Speaker 1: they could do this test without revealing to the world. Hey,
Speaker 1: this is what we're working on. Um. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: actually have any connection to Roswell. And in fact, Roswell,
Speaker 1: New Mexico, and Groom, like Nevada, are not close to
Speaker 1: each other, although there there are theorists too have said
Speaker 1: that that that any potential crash landings at Roswell were
Speaker 1: brought to a secret underground base at area, effect essentially
Speaker 1: shipped across state lines to go to this secret underground base. Uh.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know the Roswell event. By the way,
Speaker 1: in case you're not familiar with that, this is an
Speaker 1: event that happened uh in the I think it was
Speaker 1: in the fifties where uh a resident of New Mexico nine,
Speaker 1: thank you, Yeah, it's a little earlier than I was thinking.
Speaker 1: So seven a resident of essentially Roswell, New Mexico, came
Speaker 1: across this weird stuff. It was a shiny stuff that
Speaker 1: had um It was in a little pile on the ground,
Speaker 1: and for a while people were assuming that it was
Speaker 1: some form of UFO UH from outer space that had
Speaker 1: 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 radio it back to some other place. And uh,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of conspiracy theorists 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 little preview for a
Speaker 1: future episode of tech Stuff. Anyway, in this film, they
Speaker 1: take the assumption that the space ship crash and Roswell
Speaker 1: was in fact an alien spaceship. It was not some balloon.
Speaker 1: It was in fact one of these aliens space and
Speaker 1: it's there are three levels of spaceship and independence stay.
Speaker 1: There is the mother ship, which is the kilometer diameter
Speaker 1: ship hanging out and by the moon. Yes, there are
Speaker 1: the city sized ships that hovered directly over city, thus
Speaker 1: making it easy to tell how big they are because
Speaker 1: you just look at and say, that's the size of
Speaker 1: the city. Uh, not terribly precise, but you know, gets
Speaker 1: the point across. Then you have the fighter ships. These
Speaker 1: are like the tiny little ones that are kind of
Speaker 1: a similar to jet fighters here on Earth. That's kind
Speaker 1: of their purpose, at least in the film, that's what
Speaker 1: it seems to be. So it was one of those
Speaker 1: smaller ones that had apparently crashed in Roswell. And then
Speaker 1: they move the ship and its inhabitants, who two of
Speaker 1: whom are dead, and the third one who dies a
Speaker 1: few days later. Back over to Area fifty one in
Speaker 1: 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: clearances that it's it's it's um, what's the word I'm
Speaker 1: looking for, compartmentalized. Yes, it is very much compartmentalized. So
Speaker 1: just because someone has got the highest levels of security
Speaker 1: 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 what Spiner with long gray hair and glasses uh
Speaker 1: and and coming across as like the the typical science
Speaker 1: geek character with no or limited social So anyway, he
Speaker 1: shows off the ship which they said, has suddenly been
Speaker 1: come active once the uh, the other ships have come
Speaker 1: into the proximity of Earth. And that's actually really cool,
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 in we really didn't have mesh networks the way
Speaker 1: we do now. But now we've got networks where you
Speaker 1: can 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 networks. 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
Speaker 1: mean kudos to them for coming up with us, because
Speaker 1: it really was a cool idea that we're actually seeing
Speaker 1: put into place in a different implementation. Obviously, we haven't
Speaker 1: invaded any alien planets as far as I'm aware, but
Speaker 1: we have started to use this kind of approach, 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 ever
Speaker 1: really talks about the fact that if you destroy this
Speaker 1: many major metropolitan areas, that the electrical grid would probably
Speaker 1: be not good. Yeah, that's true. We don't know where
Speaker 1: everyone's getting their power. Yeah, and you can assume that
Speaker 1: Area fifty one to have its own generators, right right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And but and some of these army bases, I suppose
Speaker 1: have access to power from other places. I mean most
Speaker 1: most of these military bases I suspect do not have
Speaker 1: their own power generating facilities. They might have backup generators,
Speaker 1: but for a limited amount of right anyway, So we
Speaker 1: also know that global communications are down, so they get
Speaker 1: around that by using telegraph wires Morse code, and they
Speaker 1: use Morse code. Uh. I assume they're using Morse code
Speaker 1: simply because the telegraph wires are the most reliable means
Speaker 1: of communicating, rather than some way of masking the communication
Speaker 1: from aliens. How it seems like a little bit of both,
Speaker 1: which confuses me. On on a you're you're still conveying
Speaker 1: information electrically and transcontinentally. Um is a really long I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just I find it implausible that
Speaker 1: that wire would have survived. It's well, if it's all underwater,
Speaker 1: if it's under the ocean, then it is possible that
Speaker 1: the that at least some of the telegraph wires have
Speaker 1: have managed to survive, like at least some communication lines
Speaker 1: have survived, the Transatlantic lines. Actually, anything that's 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 that's different, right, that's not that's
Speaker 1: not divided up into packets of information like an email is.
Speaker 1: It's sent as a direct signal. Um. But I assume
Speaker 1: that they weren't really trying to mask their communications if
Speaker 1: they were. Morse code is not that difficult to crack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just a code. All it is is replacing letters
Speaker 1: with particular uh, a particular dash and dot combination. Certainly,
Speaker 1: if these aliens can can crack art our satellite communication systems,
Speaker 1: then they could definitely, especially if if they've had any
Speaker 1: contact with humans where they understand the concept, because they do.
Speaker 1: They do give you that that feeling that whenever an
Speaker 1: alien makes telepathic contact with a human, which we see
Speaker 1: in this area fifty one scene Brent Spiner, Uh, he
Speaker 1: gets his his brain all taken over, and the president
Speaker 1: does too. Briefly by a telepathic alien. That knowledge is
Speaker 1: shared that the the person who has the telepathic communication
Speaker 1: with the alien learns things about the alien's brain, and
Speaker 1: the alien learns things about the humans brain. So just
Speaker 1: that alone, I mean, even if the even if the
Speaker 1: person that the control doesn't understand Morse code, like they
Speaker 1: don't know Morse code, they probably at least have heard
Speaker 1: what Morse code is, which means the aliens will be like,
Speaker 1: all right, this is a code where they've replaced letters
Speaker 1: with this. I know what the letters are. Let's just
Speaker 1: figure this out and it wouldn't take you long at all.
Speaker 1: I mean, once you know the basic rules of language,
Speaker 1: decoding something that's a simple replacement cipher very easy. So
Speaker 1: that's why I'm saying, I don't think it was meant
Speaker 1: to mask the communications so much as just be a
Speaker 1: way of people communicating across vast distances once the other
Speaker 1: lines had been cut. I'm I'm wondering, I'm I'm wondering
Speaker 1: right now how the psychic communication part happens, which is
Speaker 1: which is straying a little bit from technology, I understand,
Speaker 1: but it is it is science and and and that's
Speaker 1: you know, because if if you can communicate more or
Speaker 1: less telepathically, and I'm assuming electrically due to the way
Speaker 1: that that that these aliens brains seem to have an
Speaker 1: effect on um memory, muscles systems, and and furthermore, electrical
Speaker 1: systems in the nearby area. It's it's almost like they
Speaker 1: send out kind of an e MP a couple of times.
Speaker 1: And um, yeah, and well, you would think that anything
Speaker 1: that would require manipulation of thought would have to work
Speaker 1: on an electrical basis, at least at some point, because
Speaker 1: when you get down to the cellular level. Well, and
Speaker 1: also Brent Spiner talks from the alien's point of view,
Speaker 1: so it becomes a data puppet. You're actually making puppet
Speaker 1: motions with your Yeah, no, no, no, it made perfect sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and yeah, at that point it's your muscular systems
Speaker 1: are electrical. So yeah, so you don't there's no explanation
Speaker 1: of how this telepathic, uh, and why they need to
Speaker 1: use their satellites if they're telepathic, right, yeah, if they
Speaker 1: are telepathy, unless it's the telepathy only works over short distances.
Speaker 1: But this is a gravity drives must get in the way. 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 biomechanical. But
Speaker 1: then we're also seeing things like robotic limbs that are
Speaker 1: 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 biomechanical,
Speaker 1: but we're slowly moving toward what could possibly be a
Speaker 1: bio mechanical future where perhaps, uh, someone who has to
Speaker 1: have a limb amputated receives something that's more akin to
Speaker 1: a bio mechanical arm as opposed to just a mechanical
Speaker 1: one or or electronic one. So I thought that that
Speaker 1: was really neat. I did think that the design was weird,
Speaker 1: specifically the feet, because they have 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 on
Speaker 1: the practical effects. I think I think that it was
Speaker 1: supposed to be the same wiggly tentacle that we saw
Speaker 1: being wiggly and pneumatic earlier. As totally sad that you
Speaker 1: guys can't see this because when Lauren, when Lauren demonstrates
Speaker 1: wiggly tentacles, she's she's looking a bit like a frantic muppet.
Speaker 1: Um to be fairy usually look a bit like a
Speaker 1: frantic muppet. I think we'll have to shoot the video
Speaker 1: version of this podcast at some point so we can
Speaker 1: see that the tentacles. We will both do our own version.
Speaker 1: Is Google glasses coming. I'll be getting my my parent
Speaker 1: a couple of days. Um. Yeah, But anyway, I just
Speaker 1: thought that the feet were weird. But if they were
Speaker 1: supposed to be tentacles that are actually flexible. That makes
Speaker 1: more sense to me. But if they were supposed to
Speaker 1: be these rigid, weird, curled backward toe things, that's not
Speaker 1: the best foundation for your bipedal suit. Maybe on their
Speaker 1: 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 science. 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: from 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 they depict America and all of
Speaker 1: the world Like it's just a it's a it's a
Speaker 1: very simple, simple representation of emotion and politics. Um. Now
Speaker 1: we get into the part of the movie that everyone
Speaker 1: remembers whenever anyone has a discussion about Independence Day and
Speaker 1: science and technology. This is the part that everyone brings
Speaker 1: up right right, because this the entire plot hinges upon
Speaker 1: Jeff gold Bloom's characters. We keep saying Jeff Goldbloom is
Speaker 1: though he was actually there. Um, I was not paying
Speaker 1: that much attention, I have to say. Um, his his
Speaker 1: concept is Okay, So we can't destroy these ships because
Speaker 1: they're shielded. Um, but I can program a virus on
Speaker 1: my Mac and if we can get that virus into
Speaker 1: the ships, then we can take down the shields and
Speaker 1: then blow the ships up. You know this is ah,
Speaker 1: this is just a mostly due to a gross misunderstanding
Speaker 1: of what exactly a computer viruses. So in this movie
Speaker 1: a computer we're using a word that it's you keep
Speaker 1: using no word. I don't know if what you think
Speaker 1: it means. Yeah, if we did an episode about Princess
Speaker 1: Bright to be much shorter, but it would just be
Speaker 1: us quoting is all it would be. You can do
Speaker 1: that with your friends. I do with my friends all
Speaker 1: the time. But yeah, the the in this film a
Speaker 1: computer virus is essentially saying, this will turn the shields off.
Speaker 1: That's all this computer virus does. So it's really more
Speaker 1: like a command, sending a command to like the shield thing,
Speaker 1: switch that to the off position and keep it off
Speaker 1: for as long as you possibly can. But they call
Speaker 1: it a computer virus. Now, typically computer viruses do one
Speaker 1: of a few things. You're very basic. Computer worm, the
Speaker 1: the old style computer virus that was really just meant
Speaker 1: to cause as much mischief as possible was a self
Speaker 1: replicating piece of code that if you were to execute,
Speaker 1: it would start to copy itself and to whatever medium
Speaker 1: you were using, so like a hard drive, so it
Speaker 1: would copy itself to your hard drive filling up your
Speaker 1: hard drive space and making your computer essentially unusable. Also
Speaker 1: your your computer's memory, so it just kind of bricks
Speaker 1: your computer. Uh. Then there were the kinds that would
Speaker 1: try to wipe all the data off, you know, just
Speaker 1: essentially reform at your computer. Then there were the kinds
Speaker 1: that were designed to to take advantage of a vulnerability
Speaker 1: in whatever operating system you were using, so that someone
Speaker 1: could get access to your machine. Administrative level access here
Speaker 1: either lock you out and grant someone else access or
Speaker 1: simply grant someone else. Right. Yeah, so the whole backdoor
Speaker 1: access and thing where you can get access to another
Speaker 1: person's machine. You might not you might not lock them
Speaker 1: out at all, so that they seem to think that
Speaker 1: everything is working fine. They don't. To them, it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be any different. It might be, but then
Speaker 1: someone else is running the game and trying to use
Speaker 1: your computer to do various things. Um, So that those
Speaker 1: are your basic types of malware. I mean there are
Speaker 1: other kinds as well. They're phishing scams, things that do
Speaker 1: key logging to try and figure out what it is
Speaker 1: that you're typing. But that's kind of the basics for
Speaker 1: computer viruses. They're not necessarily something that you know, does
Speaker 1: very specific functions. So here here are the multiple problems
Speaker 1: I have here. One one is that you have an
Speaker 1: alien computer system and a human computer system that are
Speaker 1: at all compatible. Just as biology being compatible is really implausible,
Speaker 1: computer systems is incredibly implausible. And and again I'm almost
Speaker 1: willing to give him a pass on the aliens studying
Speaker 1: us enough to have figured out our satellite communication systems, um,
Speaker 1: because you know, I don't know how long they've been
Speaker 1: studying us. That's that's sure, and they're aliens, that's fine
Speaker 1: at least since right, But if you're just watching Jeff Goldbloom,
Speaker 1: if it's just one dude over the course of like
Speaker 1: a day. Yeah, And and the idea, even if they've
Speaker 1: been studying the alien technology aboard this ship, I doubt
Speaker 1: that they had had any luck. And a you know,
Speaker 1: clearly they said that the ship had not been operational
Speaker 1: at all until a couple of days like since the right,
Speaker 1: so they didn't didn't have any access to the computer
Speaker 1: system there. There's no reason their computer systems would run
Speaker 1: on the same sort of binary system that we use. Now.
Speaker 1: The fact that our system uses this particular form of
Speaker 1: computer science is because that's what was working for us.
Speaker 1: But there's no guarantee that any other society would develop
Speaker 1: computers the same way we did, So there's no and
Speaker 1: even if they did, there's no guarantee that there would
Speaker 1: be an easy way to interface one system with another.
Speaker 1: How do you connect a an Earth based computer so
Speaker 1: that you can actually send a virus to a an
Speaker 1: alien technology? This is They didn't even have Bluetooth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're not, they're not. Well, you know, it appears
Speaker 1: that you just have to get close enough and you
Speaker 1: can magically do it. But which would be like Bluetooth?
Speaker 1: But I don't know, I don't you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: no explanation for that. It's it's just it's simply this
Speaker 1: is a plot device meant to let the heroes have
Speaker 1: their chance at overcoming odds. Yeah. Yeah, And I understand
Speaker 1: it from a a story beat perspective, like this is
Speaker 1: what we need to do in order for there to
Speaker 1: be this heroic moment. I completely get that. From an
Speaker 1: actual computer science perspective, it makes no sense. Um, there
Speaker 1: are some people who say, wow, it makes no sense
Speaker 1: that he's using a MAC. I want to address that
Speaker 1: very quickly. So we think of Max as being largely
Speaker 1: virus proof, not so much as today as much as
Speaker 1: we used to. But I would argue that the reason
Speaker 1: why Max were less likely to fall victim to viruses
Speaker 1: is due to two things. One, Apple does lock it
Speaker 1: system down really tightly, so that does help. The fact
Speaker 1: that that that's so locked down meant that it was
Speaker 1: not as accessible to people who wanted to write code
Speaker 1: they could take advantage of it. Yeah, 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 back is to
Speaker 1: go after. Yeah, you want to go after because you
Speaker 1: certainly can't rule out but alternate although I mean Windows
Speaker 1: really was the thing you aimed for because Windows had
Speaker 1: the majority of the share, so you want to go
Speaker 1: for a target rich environment. Now you could say that
Speaker 1: Windows was more had more vulnerabilities than Apples systems, which
Speaker 1: 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. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: if they're like, well, I could try and write a
Speaker 1: virus for Mac and it might work, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to hit five of the computer population when I could
Speaker 1: aim for nine percent, which is going to get bigger
Speaker 1: results 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 computer 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 Day. 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 into 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: And because he's seen how they fly so like as
Speaker 1: in he's watched the ships go. Yeah, he's seen how
Speaker 1: they move through an atmosphere. Therefore he knows how they
Speaker 1: fly 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 did. Yeah. See, That's what I'm saying is that
Speaker 1: being an expert on one does not mean that you're
Speaker 1: an expert on the other. However, for the purposes of
Speaker 1: dramatic effect, let's let it go. We're giving this movie
Speaker 1: a lot of passes right now. Um. Also, we know
Speaker 1: that this episode has gone on really long, but so
Speaker 1: we've got that. That's the big one. Everyone points out
Speaker 1: is this computer virus that is designed to turn off
Speaker 1: the shields, and of course their goal is they have
Speaker 1: to get aboard the mothership in order for this to work,
Speaker 1: there's no way for them to beam the code directly
Speaker 1: to the mothership. They never explain how it is that
Speaker 1: by just getting into the proximity of the ship they're
Speaker 1: able to get the code into the mothership. They don't
Speaker 1: explain that. So apparently proximity is necessary, but we don't
Speaker 1: know why, Like why do you have that the mac
Speaker 1: into a into a magnetic port within the ship and
Speaker 1: then through the magnetic docking mechanism. That's it. Clearly they
Speaker 1: get aboard. They get aboard the alienship and like, oh sweet,
Speaker 1: it's got FireWire. We're good to go. Man, we would
Speaker 1: have been so boned if we hadn't had FireWire in here.
Speaker 1: It's clear it's UM. Yeah. And also, like all other
Speaker 1: programmers and hackers from the ninety nineties, he uses a
Speaker 1: a animated skull Jolly Roger in the symbol of the virus. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do that. And of course they deliver a nuclear bomb
Speaker 1: that has a thirty second timer on it to UM
Speaker 1: to destroy the mothership and then get out. There's no
Speaker 1: explanation as to why they picked thirty seconds other than
Speaker 1: the fact again Germanic effect, The idea being that this
Speaker 1: gives the heroes and even uh tougher challenge to escape
Speaker 1: the blast radius of a nuclear bomb before they are
Speaker 1: affected by it. Um and I haven't personally done the
Speaker 1: math on Half Past too, would have to fly in
Speaker 1: order to outfly an explosion. But I'm I'm almost I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's at least not outrunning an explosion, so I'm
Speaker 1: kind of it's a little better. It's a little better
Speaker 1: than having to outrun an explosion. Now, there's plenty of
Speaker 1: outrunning explosions in this movie too, especially in the arts
Speaker 1: where the cities are being destroyed. But if y I, folks,
Speaker 1: don't try not to ever put yourself in a position
Speaker 1: where you need to outrun an explosion because you would die.
Speaker 1: Explosions move faster than you can run. Even you Usain Bolt,
Speaker 1: don't try it. So, yeah, it's the we're getting towards
Speaker 1: the end of the movie here. So we've got the
Speaker 1: explosion of the mother Ship, which is really odd. You
Speaker 1: pointed this out to Lauren that the explosion for the
Speaker 1: Mothership has this weird kind of disc explosion, like it
Speaker 1: doesn't explode out in all directions. Yeah, it explodes out
Speaker 1: in a plane like a plane as in a horizontal plane.
Speaker 1: It's like you think of a plate that's been smashed
Speaker 1: into a thousand pieces and there's just spreads apart, like
Speaker 1: in a horizontal plane, it doesn't go out in all directions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're different. Maybe it's just because the way the ship
Speaker 1: was built that's just really really secure on the top
Speaker 1: and bottom, but the outer edge is just just paper mache,
Speaker 1: just paper mache. Um. We don't know what it is
Speaker 1: that really causes the massive explosion within the the ship itself,
Speaker 1: I mean, apart from a nuclear bomb going off. But
Speaker 1: again one nuclear bomb would not be enough to destroy
Speaker 1: a ship of that mass. We found the gas tank. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're thinking like maybe there's fusion coils or something that
Speaker 1: were affected and that created some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe the nuclear bomb actually fell down
Speaker 1: a ventilation shaft that led directly to the reactor core.
Speaker 1: And then Alderon I might be thinking of a different movie.
Speaker 1: I think, I think you are. And then the very
Speaker 1: end of the movie has Stephen Dave, who you know,
Speaker 1: you don't know if they've survived, but surprised they did,
Speaker 1: and they're they're walking down the desert and they're greeted
Speaker 1: by their respective women folk, and they are children folk
Speaker 1: and children folk, and they are embraced and everyone's happy.
Speaker 1: And then uh, Steve will Smith's character leans down to
Speaker 1: his uh, the little boy that would would be his
Speaker 1: adopted son essentially or his stepson, should he because he
Speaker 1: has a stepson now, because I forgot he got married,
Speaker 1: because you have to have that yet another emotionally manipulative
Speaker 1: moment um, So his stepson. He says to a stepson,
Speaker 1: didn't I promise you fireworks? That I thought? And only
Speaker 1: eight hundred and twelve million people had to die for
Speaker 1: those fireworks to happen. And see, there's so much more
Speaker 1: in this movie. There's the part where where David the
Speaker 1: Jeff Goldblum character is writing to Washington, d C. With
Speaker 1: his dad and he opens up his laptop to pull
Speaker 1: up a while in the car in the car WiFi. Essentially, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's not he's not. I seriously doubt that he was
Speaker 1: using any kind of really primitive cellular data network to
Speaker 1: pull this information, especially since that was represented by graphics.
Speaker 1: It must have been stored locally on the computer. But
Speaker 1: he pulls up all um all phone books in the
Speaker 1: United States in order to find his ex wife's phone number,
Speaker 1: and uh, I just thought it was funny they didn't
Speaker 1: just have the phone number written down that This was
Speaker 1: obviously another one of those moments was designed to show
Speaker 1: you that this guy is good for computers, computers, that
Speaker 1: this guy are good friends. But it is also funny
Speaker 1: to think that today anyone with a phone can look
Speaker 1: up a phone book anywhere. Yeah, the Internet, and we
Speaker 1: do that now. Back in the web was young, it
Speaker 1: did exist, but it wasn't as robust as it is today.
Speaker 1: So I mean there was no Google back so that
Speaker 1: would have made it harder all by itself. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some there's some really odd moments in this movie. Now,
Speaker 1: all that being said, we do understand, like we said
Speaker 1: at the top of the show, for entertainment, it is
Speaker 1: for entertainment purposes. And and as much as Jonathan and
Speaker 1: I are kind of you know, ratings rating it a
Speaker 1: little bit right now, it is I mean, there are
Speaker 1: parts of it that are that are very entertaining and
Speaker 1: very funny, and and it's it's designed. It's designed to
Speaker 1: be a popcorn movie. Know that gives it some somewhat
Speaker 1: of a pass. Uh. And you know, if they had
Speaker 1: tried to make a movie that was as scientifically and
Speaker 1: technically accurate as possible, it probably would not have been
Speaker 1: as entertaining. Maybe they could have avoided some of the
Speaker 1: more melodramatic, emotionally manipulative scenes, which I find I don't know.
Speaker 1: At the time. At the time, I didn't find it
Speaker 1: as irritating, but I was also dumber. But as as
Speaker 1: an adult, you get more aware of that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. I I certainly don't fault
Speaker 1: especially big blockbuster movies like this on on being light
Speaker 1: on the science, but but things that are just just
Speaker 1: blatantly not not science. Yeah, I'm kind of like, didn't
Speaker 1: I mean, wasn't anyone. I mean this the script had
Speaker 1: to have gone through multiple, multiple treatments and all kinds
Speaker 1: of eyes, and I mean studios like that are huge,
Speaker 1: you know, it was enormous. I think, I think what
Speaker 1: would be fun to do, maybe in the future, is
Speaker 1: to come up with our list of movies that have
Speaker 1: the the worst portrayal of science and technology and not
Speaker 1: necessarily go through it like this like that. This was
Speaker 1: a special thing that we did because I jokingly said
Speaker 1: that we should do it, and then our so so
Speaker 1: this is what you get. But maybe in the future
Speaker 1: will do more of an episode where we just kind
Speaker 1: of talk about some of the more ridiculous depictions of technology,
Speaker 1: like hackers, which has some really awful awful sequences. Like
Speaker 1: essentially anything that has depicted hacking as some sort of video.
Speaker 1: The net is another great one. Anything anything we're hacking
Speaker 1: is essentially like you are. You are actually making your
Speaker 1: way through a three dimensional castle and you have to
Speaker 1: avoid skeletons, and this is actually the way hacking works.
Speaker 1: And if you can get to the treasure room, you
Speaker 1: get the files. There is a movie like that. I
Speaker 1: 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 keeping in mind when
Speaker 1: you're doing science fiction, you know you kind of the
Speaker 1: science part is really there to let you do stuff
Speaker 1: that normally we could never do. So it's really taking
Speaker 1: the place of magic like in fantasy. Uh, the goal
Speaker 1: of science fiction is to make it at least sound
Speaker 1: plausible or seem plausible through technology. Um, in this case,
Speaker 1: all the alien stuff we can kind of give a
Speaker 1: pass too, because you just say that we don't understand it.
Speaker 1: All the human stuff doesn't get that kind of free
Speaker 1: ride anyway. That wraps up this discussion, this long discussion
Speaker 1: about Independence Day. Happy Independence Day, all of my fellow Americans. UM,
Speaker 1: and hey, remember world today, July three is our tech
Speaker 1: stuff Independence Day. Yeah, so let's let's go light some sparklers. Guys.
Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: please let us know. Send us an email our address
Speaker 1: this tech Stuff at Discovery dot com or drops the
Speaker 1: line on Facebook for Twitter, or handle at both of those.
Speaker 1: Is tech stuff, hs W and Lauren and I will
Speaker 1: tell to you again really soon for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it hastaff works dot
Speaker 1: com