TechStuff Classic: TechStuff Watches Independence Day

How well does the film treat science and technology in Independence Day? What are the big goofs committed in the movie? How realistic is the plan to defeat the aliens?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to text Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
and I love all things tech and today we're going
to listen to another classic episode of tech Stuff. This
one's titled tech Stuff Watches Independence Day. It originally published

(00:27):
on July three, two thousand thirteen, seven years ago. Wow. So,
as the name suggests, we sat down and watched Independence
Day and then we had a discussion about the technology
in that film, and you know how it stacks up
against reality. I hope you guys enjoy. To start off,

(00:48):
we should probably give an overview of the film for
those of you who have not seen it. Now, this
movie came out in nine Now, there were a few
other things that were going on at that time. That
It's the year that DVDs launched in Japan. Yeah, so
when I actually asked my friends if anyone had a
copy of this, they all said they had it on

(01:08):
vhs and said, hs, we don't even remember that media.
I don't even know if I have anything that will
still play a tape. Uh. There were other things that
happened that year, in the world of technology, Internet Explorer
three launched. That was Microsoft's big browser, and of course
the three was one of the bigger ones of the
releases Windows in T four point it was released by

(01:30):
Microsoft as well. eBay got started. A little first person
shooter by the name of Duke NUKEAM three D launched
and that ended up, of course getting a lot of
people really excited. They enjoyed the game. I include was planned.
Y sequel was planned and would end up being vaporware
for more than a decade. Uh. There was a certain

(01:53):
animal that was born that year. Yeah, Dolly the cloned
sheep was born, first first cloned mammal. Yep, Dolly the Sheep,
first mammals successfully cloned. That's also the year that IBMS
Deep Blue defeated the chess champion, Gary Kasparov, so man
versus machine and machine wins. Yeah. It was also the

(02:13):
tele Communications Act of strangely enough, happened in UM and
and that basically allowed the Internet to sort of be
lumped in along with broadband signals, and UM allowed cable
companies to start offering Internet services. People were really excited
about this new megabit speeds that we're going to start
happening right right. We were finally getting away from the
kill a bit speeds that we were thinking of with

(02:35):
the old dial up modems. And you know, this is
this is back when the Internet is pretty young as
far as the general public is concerned. The Internet itself
had been around for a while, but really only research institutions, universities,
some government of facilities, military, that kind of stuff. Those
organizations had access to it, but anyone outside of that
really did not have a whole lot of access to

(02:55):
the Internet unless they just having to work someplace or
go to school someplace that had it. At this point
in ninety six, we've actually got the point where the
Worldwide Web is a thing, but still very early on
in the kind of the g c S era of
the Internet exactly. And and according to uh the people
history dot com that they say that in the twelve

(03:17):
months of the Internet, host computer number goes from about
one million computers to ten million computers, So obviously explosive
growth at this time, although it's still very much a
new thing, which kind of comes into play a little
bit in the film Independence Day. So Independence Day it
was a movie by Dean Devlin and Roland Yeah, and

(03:40):
Emerick is. Of course, he's become known as the guy
who likes to blow up the Earth. Uh. He's blown
up the earth in several movies and other projects, things
like everything from Godzilla to the Day After Tomorrow. Uh.
He's really big on worldwide destruction. And of course we

(04:00):
should mention that. Not too long ago, it was announced
that sequels to Independence Day had been planned two sequels UM,
with the first one coming out like I think, UM
and Independence Day stars some some folks that you might recognize,
like Will Smith would be the big name Bill Pullman,

(04:20):
who I always get mixed up with Bill Paxton. If
you put them side by side, I would not be
able to name one versus the other. And I have
you have you have this this problem pretty commonly UM.
Also also Jeff Goldbloom, who was very famous for being
UM wacky scientist at the time due to Jurassic Park. Right.
He's also known as Uh. He does this stuttering thing

(04:42):
where he I do too. I enjoy it. Randy Quaid
also in the movie as a as what you assume
is a delusional drunk, although apparently he was the truth. Yeah,
he's not delusional. UM. Adam Baldwin's in Tiny cheeby Adam Baldwin.
He's so young and adorable. It's very cute. Yeah, it's

(05:04):
it's definitely well before his firefly days. Yeah, Brent Brent
Spiner data data from Star Trek Next Generation, although he
does not play data from Star Trek Next Generation in
this movie. That would have been confusing. So to give
a brief rundown on what the film's all about in
case you have not seen it, there's gonna be a
lot of spoilers in this podcast, but essentially it's ninety six.

(05:25):
I think it's safety spoil at night. Yeah, I think
the statute of let me Yeah. So the movie is
all about how, uh, this alien invasion force comes into
two Earth's orbit and then lays waste to the major
cities on Earth in preparation for a full on invasion.
And it's about how Earth forces kind of mount up

(05:48):
a defense, a desperate defense, to fight off these alien invaders.
And this all happens, of course, on on from July
two to July four, which here in the United States
is kind of a celebration and of independence and hence
the term Independence Day. It's extremely um, what's it not
not ethnocentric, gendoistic, it's it's all right, let me put

(06:11):
it this way. It's about America. It's an American movie,
is um, there's quite a bit of there's quite a
bit of uh stuff about America. And then there's some
token mentions of other places around the world, where you
see a brief scene in Iraq with British forces saying
things like the Americans on the case, bloody hell like

(06:33):
that's you know, and then it goes to Japan and Russia,
and of course all the Russians are sitting around vodka
and listening to the radio. And I mean, it's just
let's just say that the the depiction of other cultures
is somewhat stereotypical within the context of this movie, but stilted.
Don't don't worry though. Everything is so it's it's not

(06:56):
just that we have a very very American centric film.
No one comes out of this looking too great. But
but that's that's more more commentary on the quality of
the film. Let's get down to some of the science,
because this film is filled with science and technology and
likely and some of the stuff. There's one thing in particular,

(07:16):
there's a couple of things that are really cool. Yeah,
that end up being something that that's similar to what
we use today. And I'm actually really impressed, and it
was a really cool idea that I don't know who
came up with it, but it was a really nifty thing.
But the movie opens with a shot of the Moon
and you're actually looking at one of the moon landing
sites where you see the you know, the footprints on

(07:38):
the regulus on the moon and the placard, yeah, and
the American flag, and then a shadow comes across the
Moon and you hear this terrible rumbling noise. Because in space,
everyone can hear you scream. Yeah. See, that's one of
the things that happens in this film is that sound
does travel in space in this movie, which I can
only assume that the ships themselves are miked, that somehow

(08:01):
they're they're pushing out an atmosphere where sound can actually travel. Um. Yeah,
because because there's a rumbling on the on the Moon,
which technically you would not be able to hear unless
you had your ear right up against the Moon's surface
because there's not any atmosphere on the Moon, so there's
no way for particles to travel. Remember, sound is a
physical uh, manifestation. It's actually particles that are banging together,

(08:24):
and there's no atmosphere for the particles to bang together.
You wouldn't be able to hear anything. Speaking of which
there there are really no I mean this. The ship
kicks up all kinds of moon dust and uh and yeah,
it shakes everything around a whole lot, which wouldn't really
be Yeah, that wouldn't happen either unless the propulsion system
for the ship is somehow something like gravity based, which

(08:47):
is possible. That's something we'll we'll give you that one, right, Yeah,
alien technology. We don't know how it works because we
are not we're not privy to that information. So it's
quite possible that they're using some sort of gravity draw
if which somehow can affect actual particles. Um, so we'll
give them the rumbling. We'll give at least the movement part.
The rumbling part is a little yeah, yeah, and multiple

(09:09):
talking again about the ships in just a minute. I
think we're kind of going in chronological order throughout the
movie because that's how we took our notes, exactly exactly.
And we should also say that lots of science fiction
films have sound in space, and it's a dramatic. Yeah,
you can't, although I do appreciate it when people don't
do that, right, like just wee firefly where you would

(09:30):
have a ship explode and you don't hear anything because
you wouldn't be able to Uh, that makes sense, But
I understand why they do it for dramatic effect. It
would not be as effective for an audience, So I
give them a pass on that because they're using a
common trope that's throughout all the science fiction films. Um.
We then get down to the surface of the planet

(09:52):
where where where Steady has suddenly realized and it is
it is pronounced study Steady, right, not s E t I,
because one of the characters in the film s t I.
What we just call it set search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Now,
this is a real organization and they use radio telescopes
to search out radio signals from other places in the

(10:13):
galaxy to see if there's anything broadcasting out there. But
by radio signals, we don't necessarily mean audio like audible. Yeah,
it might be. It might be well, just like just
like our WiFi is a kind of radio transmission. Uh,
it may be that it's just a series of frequencies
that we pick up that end up looking like it's

(10:35):
some form of communication. It wouldn't necessarily be like or
listening to nineteen fifties rock or anything. Um, you might
be able to translate that into some sort of audible sound,
but it wouldn't necessarily sound like anything. So yeah, yeah,
And which is interesting to me because in the seat
headquarters they do have a scientist who goes like, I'm

(10:55):
hearing beeps and boops, literal audio beeps and groups coming
through this headset, and that means some things, right, So,
so clearly, steady in this in this little fractured universe,
has UM translated all of their radio frequencies into an
audible signal that technicians can and and to be clear,
steady actually you know when they're looking for these radio signals,

(11:16):
one of the things you have to keep in mind
is there's a lot of stuff out there that can
create a radio signal that isn't intelligent. It's it's just
it's a natural phenomenon. Basically space, I mean objects within space,
anything with with with gravity or with light you can
have you can have the potential for that. You can
have anything like quasars, things like that that create these

(11:37):
radio signals. So what SETI has to do is not
only look for the presence of radio signals, but then
to actually, yeah, to make sure that that's some sort
of meaningful communication as opposed to just random noise. Well,
in this case, they figure out, hey, there's something up there,
and they see that there's a through through some form

(11:59):
of thermal imaging, they see a gigantic spaceship. Now, later
on the movie, we discover that radar does not work
on these spaceships. So radar, that's one that's I guess
the excuse of why the the spaceship was not detected
until after it was right there at the Moon already. Yeah,
But in Earth's orbit, the thermal imaging works. So in

(12:21):
other words, there's no cloaking device here. There's nothing that's
that's keeping it invisible to us from our Now we
can't get them by radar, but we could see them. Now.
This ship, the mother ship, because this is before it
has let out any other smaller ships, is huge. According
to the movie, it is five hundred and fifty kilometers

(12:41):
in diameter, which is about three two miles. That's just
under half the size of Texas at its widest point,
and and it says that it's about a quarter of
the mass of the Moon. All of this meaning it's
it's very, very big, and we would be able to
see it, if not, even without radar with our naked eye,
like looking up at the sky, we would go, oh what, Yeah,

(13:02):
you would at least be able to see the light
from this thing if nothing else, I mean, the sunlight
reflecting off of it. But with telescopes we'd be able
to see it even further away. And possibly you know,
maybe maybe the shields, because it is revealed that the
ship has some kind of shielding mechanism um which which
blocks you know, torpedoes, um. Yeah, but maybe maybe it

(13:25):
also blocks visual data. I don't know. I mean, then
it with the question would be why do they bother
to reveal themselves at all? Because of it? If a
dramatic effect, it's like all that only makes sense within
the context of a movie within when you step outside
of that and you look at cloud. If you were
going to destroy a planet, wouldn't you wouldn't you want

(13:45):
to have a dramatic entrant. I have learned my lesson.
I am no longer revealing my egomaniacal plans to the
hero before I set them in motion. You know, once
for me once, shame on you, full me four D
and seventy eight times shame on me. All right, not
again for seven nine. It's going down okay, But yeah,

(14:06):
the the it does not appear to be invisible. So
that's one. That's one thing we can point out as
being a problem that we would have seen this thing
coming towards the Earth even with no instrumentation. We would
have literally telescopes. Yet we would have seen it well
before it ever reached as far as the moon. That
being said, we also don't know if I assumed this

(14:27):
ship must have some sort of super fast propulsion system
for faster than or at least yeah, I mean it
would have to be because there are no nearby systems
that could support life, uh compared you know from our
position right there are no planets that are because we

(14:48):
do learn that these aliens share a lot in common
with us. They breathe oxygen, they have the same sort
of tolerances for heat and cold, and so they have
they have some kind of visual cortex that that allows
them to you use very similar computer displays to ours. Yeah,
that's a problem, but we'll get into that. But yeah,
they they they have a lot of similarities to humans,

(15:10):
which is already a huge coincidence. I mean, there's no
there's nothing that says that another intelligent kind of life
would have to be humanoid in shape. That's one that
I'm willing to give them though. That's that's that's one.
I mean, they're not quite you know, it's it's not
like clingons versus humans, and so it's not it's not
quite quite that close. But you still have you know, generally,
you know, limbs and that head and is a very

(15:31):
strange place, is all I'm saying. I'm that's one that
I'm willing to let slide. Well. For them to be
so similar to us and in multiple ways is a
huge coincidence when you think about all the variables out there,
I mean, when you when you really get down to it,
when you talk about our sample size for planets with
life on it, that's a one. As a sample size
of one, we have one planet that we know of

(15:53):
that supports life as we know it as we know it,
So that's an incredibly small sample size. So this is
a problem that's throughout science fiction. I'm not just picking
on independence, but but you know, we have to extrapolate
from what we know, so I mean, I understand that,
but for something to be this similar to us, it's
pretty phenomenal. Anyway. The fact that they're this similar means

(16:16):
that that the well draws a lot of of questions,
one of which is that why are they coming here?
And they eventually it's revealed that they're planning on invading
and taking over the planet. That what they do is
they go from planet to planet, they consent the resources,
and then move on to them. They're like, well, this
one's done, let's go on, which then raises another question,
which is that we assume there are a lot of

(16:37):
exo planets out there, lots we've we've already found to
found lots of exo planets. Uh, there are several that
we found that are what we within what we call
the Goldilocks zone, which is this zone within a distance
from the host star of that planet. If we were
in Star Trek, it would be called a Class M planet. Yeah, yeah,
meaning that if meaning that that it would at least

(16:59):
have the potential for supporting life as we know it
based upon its distance from the star. But that's all
the you know, and we might know something about the
composition of the planet itself, but we wouldn't know enough
about to say that whether there is or isn't life
on it. However, I'm sure that, just based upon the
huge number we've already started to see in our within

(17:20):
our own galaxy, there must be countless planets that fall
into this category, which makes you wonder, why would you
bother going to try and colonize one where the residents
of that planet might potentially fight back. Well, they it is,
I would say, I would argue that that these aliens
had to have been watching us long enough to to

(17:41):
understand our language, and understand our computer language, which we'll
get to in just a second, and and furthermore understand
our culture. Um, because when they do send out those
little spaceships, they send them not to the most populated
regions of the planet, but to the major cultural landmarks,
as though they are specifically trying to evoke emotional response
in us. Yeah, though they are the creators of the film. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, so,

(18:05):
if you're looking at it from a storyteller perspective, you
want your you want to park your your your spaceship
directly over the Empire, State State Building, or directly over
the White House or building as it was. Yeah, exactly,
you park it directly over some incredibly identifiable landmark, because

(18:25):
that's very it's a great visual effect if you are
an alien. The reason you do it is, I don't know,
you're already leveling cities. Um, so they we presume that
they have some sort of faster than light drive in
order for them to get to where they're going. We
don't know that. It's never revealed in the movie where
they came from or how they got here. Um, we

(18:48):
don't know. Uh. They talk about how the radio signal
um is originating from the moon. Uh you can't. I
don't know how they figure that out, Like how I
mean you could feel or other came from that direction.
Study say, say this radio signal is coming from the moon, right,
But you don't I mean, you could see what direction

(19:08):
it was coming from. If you were, you know, triangulating
from various radio stations and you saw how long it
took to get to each one, you could figure out
kind of where the origin point was. Distance is a
little weird, I mean, because radio signals can come from
really far away. Now, grant the strength of the signal
would give you an idea, but that that partly an equation.

(19:29):
That's a little bit on the fly. Um, they start
using our own satellites to communicate the aliens do the
mothership eventually has other ships split off from it. Oh
and one other thing I want to mention. You said
that had a quarter of the mass of the Moon.
In case you're curious, I did the math here. It's
so the moon has a massive seventy three grams, which

(19:52):
would be if you if you wrote down the number
seven and then the number three and then put twenty
one zeros after it. That's so many grams of math
us the moon has so this Uh, this spaceship has
one point eight grams of mass. Uh. And they talk
about the possibility of using an I C. B M
to bring this mother ship down before it starts to
split off and all the other ships come out from it. Uh.

(20:15):
There's no nuclear weapon that could destroy that much mass.
It just we have not created a nuclear weapon that
could do that much damage. Yeah, there's that's so massive,
and we don't not only why why would we? But
how could we? So? How how how do we know
how much mass this thing has? Yeah? I don't know.

(20:37):
I mean, because they're they're looking at it from a
thermal imaging perspective, which really just is a is a
gravitational pull and and unless it is um, unless they've
calculated the amount that it's offset the tides, or I
don't even even then, you wouldn't be able to calculate,
you know, figure out what the mass is. That that's

(20:57):
a good question. I think it was. I think the
answer is they wanted to make sure it looked like
it was big. This is from my sheet of increasingly
incredulous question. How is this possible? Well, the mother ship
has all these large city sized ships split off from it,
and the city size ships then come down and hover

(21:18):
over the various cities, including like directly over the Empire
State Building, directly over the Capitol Building, directly over part
of l At, etcetera. And they I think they say
at one point it's like ten to fifteen ships. So
apparently they never get an accurate account. Um. The ships
are using our satellite system to communicate with each other.

(21:40):
They're bouncing signals off of our satellites, which raises a question,
how do they get their technology to interact with ours?
So they they've clearly learned our our computer programming languages.
They must have, because how else, and they must have
been designed machines on their their ships that could then
interface with our machines, because otherwise, you know, yes, you

(22:01):
can see that they're broadcasting radio signals, but on a
technological level, you wouldn't be able to interact with that
unless yours were somehow um you know, had some sort
of adapter alien to Earth adapter or you could tap
into our technology. But they're using our satellite systems to
send out a message, which Jeff Goldblum figures out. He

(22:22):
does well because he's he's a really smart guy. Um.
And to be fair, though, this was one part of
the movie that I found very plausible. He discovers a
repeating pattern that's being broadcast over radio signals. Now you
don't have to know what that what that translates to,
in order to notice that there's that there's a pattern,

(22:42):
and he knows is that that it's that it's winding down,
it's reducing each time it repeats, it reduces. So he
then figures out that this is countdown, which is perfectly plausible.
No, no no, no, no, that's that's that's great fine science.
And that part I was like, I am all right
with this. This makes sense that you would have a
heating pattern that's getting slightly shorter each time. That sounds

(23:03):
like a countdown. Yeah. The issue that I've got here
is that is that it shows a couple of our
satellites crashing into the mothership. Um, which means that a
the mothership is significantly lower in orbit than the moon
or parts of it are anyway. Um and uh. And
and secondly, just the way that they talk about satellites
is not necessarily the way that satellites are talked about. UM.

(23:25):
Difficult Blue mentions transponder channels, which is like saying a
pizza pie like it's it's kind of the same word
over again. It transponders it. Yeah, it's really like, um,
you know, it's essentially the it's technobabble to try and
sound like he's doing something effective. There's another thing that
happens with the cable station in particular that just drive
me crazy because I was I I understand again that

(23:48):
was done for effect, but it made no sense bubble.
We'll get into that in a little bit. So you've
got all these spaceships splitting off, the satellite hits the
spaceship and there's no visible damage whatsoever. You also don't
see the force field, but you don't see the force
field at that point. You just see the satellite bang
into the spaceship and then go boom. Which does it?

(24:08):
Does it do it? I don't remember. Does it do
a green boom or an exploding I don't. I think
it's an exploding boom, as I recall now. Granted, I
should add this movie is two hours and twenty minutes
long something. Yes, So we took turns watching and then
taking breaks, and then watching, and then playing Borderlines too,
and then watching and then desperately trying to find something

(24:31):
else to do, and then watching. Um. I mean I
watched this movie all the way through in the theater
when it came out. I love this movie as a teenager.
We're gonna take a quick break from watching Independence Day
and then slagging on it to thank our sponsors. So uh,

(24:53):
we didn't have the various people in American government reacting
and trying to figure out what the heck is going on.
The Secretary Defense wants to blow it out of the
sky with an ice cub even though I've just said
that we do not have one that is that big,
even though maybe it's a secret government program. Now, the
city sized ships, once those split off, those could I

(25:16):
would if you're talking about the size of the city,
then you could take it down. Yeah, you're not doing
enough damage to it. You could do enough damage to
it where I seriously think it wouldn't be able to
maintain flight. I mean nuclear weapons are pending on your
your engine power source, which we still haven't determined, because
because these things are city sized and they are hovering
noiselessly and um and effortlessly like like like they are

(25:40):
not creating any um any kind of ripples in the
spacetime continuum as we know. It's right above these cities.
You've got you've got this ship that's parked over your city.
But it's not pushing down plane just hanging. Yeah, it's
not it's not pushing down in any way that would
make it like if you stepped outside, you wouldn't suddenly
feel like some weird are suppressing down on you. There's

(26:01):
no nothing, So we don't know how they're hanging in
the air like that alien technology. I'll give it to them. Yeah,
it might as well be magic. So we don't know
what's going on on that case. We've got the whole
um Oval Office reaction. One of my favorite little moments
in this is there's a point where a person brings

(26:21):
in a silver briefcase to show the president something, Oh yeah, yeah,
and opens it up and there's like a little it's
not even a laptop, it's just a screen. It's a
screen with I don't know. It's supposed to show a readout,
a radar readout of the ships. I don't know why
radar is working now. Um, there's no explanation for why
the radar readout works as opposed to because half the

(26:44):
time radar is not working and the other half the
time they talk about a radar readout. Don't know. Maybe
it's just that the aliens keep forgetting to turn the
stuff button on. UM. Because these ships are not designed.
If you've listened to our podcast about stealth technology, you
know that a part of the way stell technology works
is just based on the actual physical design of the vehicles.

(27:05):
They have these weird angular uh designs to them, and
that makes that makes stuff bounce off of them at
awkward angles so that you can't receive the signals exactly exactly.
But these ships are just gigantic flying saucers, so big
flat services that radar could easily bounce off off They
have to be able to if if we're talking about
those gravitational drives or something like that. I never knew

(27:28):
you were an alien. Apologies, um, but yeah, so so
I don't know why the radar sometimes works and sometimes doesn't,
but it's still kind of interesting here. Uh. There's also
when the ships are moving into position over the cities,
there's this weird sheath of fire that's all around them,
and I was wondering if that was supposed to be

(27:48):
the representation of these ships entering the Earth's atmosphere. That
I am, but they don't seem to be moving very quickly,
so it's almost like they have a very controlled descent
into Earth's atmosphere. So they wouldn't you know, the whole
heat and fire stuff would only make sense if they
were coming in at an incredible speed um, and they're
creating this amazing amount of pressure as they're coming in,

(28:10):
and that's what builds up all this heat. Maybe they
have a fine magnesium powder that's operating their shielding system.
That's just lighting on fire as they I don't know
if that's a science factor. Maybe this is just the
equivalent of painting flames on your hot rod. This is wicked. Cool, guys,
let's turn the flames on. You know, That's what I'm thinking. Well,

(28:31):
you know what. We got a lot more to say
about this movie, but before we do, let's take a
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(28:52):
slash tech stuff to get a free audio book download
of your choice when you sign up today. And since
we're talking about science fiction today, one good suggestion would
be War the Worlds. They have several different versions at Audible,
including one read by orson Freaking Wells. So go check
that out. Okay, So we've got the ships there over

(29:13):
the various cities. We've got the everyone's freaking out. No
one knows exactly what's going on. Yeah, Jeff Goldblum's discovered
the signal uh, and he figures out this probably some
sort of coordinated attack. This raises a question in my
mind that's more of a plot question and less of
a technology question, which is, I don't understand why the
attack needs to be incredibly coordinated, because, as is demonstrated

(29:36):
throughout the film, these aliens have amazing technology that our
technology just cannot stand up to. Like nothing we have
puts a denty, It doesn't it doesn't really matter if
they're going to blow us up simultaneously or at a
slight leg right right, Why why you even worry about
targeting the largest cities first, unless it's just to get
as many people dead as possible, which could just be

(29:59):
an efficiency thing, which case, all right, I can get
that they're trying to kill as many people and as
little time as possible because their ultimate goals to invade
the planet, and this way they'd wipe out, you know,
the major centers of population. They're clearly just just bond
villains really at heart. There again, they're doing it for
dramatic effect. I wanted to give one of our scientists
something to latch onto. Yeah, well, in order to make

(30:20):
us feel like we have a fighting chance. I think
I think the I think the wiping out as many
people as possible is as much sense as I can
make of it. But I mean it does make sense
in a way. If you're if you're talking about clearing
out an area so that you can then come in
and and and reap all the benefits, then I understand, like,
all right, well you wanted to do that. You need
to hit before everyone realizes what's up, because then they're

(30:41):
just going to scatter like like cockroaches, and then you
have to hunt them all down. Yeah. Yeah, this is
This is also about when when are our satellites, like
all of our satellite communications start kind of breaking up
a little bit, and this weird static pattern, which I'm
not sure is how satellites were satellites were, well they do.
Some are being destroyed and some of the some of

(31:01):
the capacity of the satellite was being used to transmit
this alien signal. I think that the signal would just
go out. I don't think it would be static anything
that was destroyed, obviously the signal would go out. The
uh there. You know, having this idea of an alien
signal underlying our own signals is interesting. Uh. Depending upon
the bandwidth of the satellite, I could actually see it

(31:23):
working in a way where it means that our signals
are actually weaker. But I don't think it would come
across exactly the way it did in the movie. There's
one point, you know, Jeff Goldblum's character, the brilliant scientist
guy who is now essentially just working for a cable company,
a cable provider. Uh, there's one point where he's talking
with his his comedic sidekick character who is later on

(31:45):
obliterated spoiler alert um, Harvey Fierstein, where he's chatting with him,
and then suddenly a white House announcement comes on the screens,
and and and this wall of screens that had previously
been picking up broadcasts from all different channels. Yeah. Yeah,
So you think of a like just a wall of
television screens, and each television screen is showing a different channel,

(32:06):
and now they're all showing the white House thing. But
some of them, like groups of nine screens, become one
big display, so you know, you're there the power Rangers
or something, and they're all just just building up together. Ultron,
Sorry that's era, but no. Yeah, this idea that you
know that if you have a block of nine screens,
the upper left screen is the upper left corner of

(32:29):
the full picture. How does that happen? Like, how would
you how would you would that mean? Like Channel thirty
two is only showing the upper left corner of the
alien the alien disruption in our in our communication signal
is causing our television is to start acting like Vultron again.
And I completely dismiss your your apologetic response. Yeah, this

(32:52):
is one of those things where I just thought it
was ridiculous where you have all these disconnected screens suddenly
showing a unified display. It just I mean, it was
clearly there for dramatic effect, but it doesn't make any sense.
The only way that works is if you have prerecorded
it and programmed out the screens to show exactly what
you want when you want it. It doesn't happen over
a live broadcast where suddenly nine screens gained sentience and

(33:14):
all work together to bring together the presence words the
Jeff Goldblum decides he has to go to d C
to find his ex wife, who now works at the
White House and also marginally helps save the planet. Right,
So yeah, that's in the process. So he goes with
his dad, uh, and he and his dad go down

(33:34):
to DC because Jeff Goldblin' Scaracter doesn't drive a car,
so he rides with his dad, who does drives very
slowly comedic effect, and they arrive at d C and
then he he quote triangulates the position of his wife
through her cell phone use, which is cell phones in
this period where Fox Molder's cell phone. I mean they
were bricks, they were rare to not everyone had them.

(33:55):
But but triangulating is probably not the right word here.
You could triangulate someone's issue using someone who's using a
cell phone. You could triangulate it, particularly if you're the
cell phone company, but more likely what he was doing
was at the time, didn't they didn't They kind of
purposefully scramble a lot of that where it couldn't you
not really use GPS I GPS GPS does that's not

(34:18):
even that's not even a thing, Okay, So, I mean
GPS is a thing, but not on any civilian cell phone.
So you could do it just by the cell phone signal,
you know, the cell phone sending out radio signals from
the phone, because she's on the phone at the time,
and the idea is that what he's doing is detecting
the radio signal from her phone and then figuring out
where she is within the context of the White House.

(34:39):
He couldn't really triangulate. I mean, to triangulate, you need
three points. That's kind of the whole idea of triangulation.
You need these three sides, and you have to be
able to know the different angles between you and a cup.
You need to note at least the distance between you
and one other point and at least the measurement of
two angles for you to be able to determine the
position of whatever is you're looking for. Yeah, and he
obviously doesn't have all that information. What he was really

(35:02):
doing was a kind of localization through multilateral radio signals,
which is possible but is not terribly precise. So in
other words, he'd be able to say she's in the
White House, which they already knew. But anyway, again, movie logic, Um,
we have the whole uh bit of where they're The

(35:23):
ships actually start to unleash their attack, so at this
point our various heroes have all started to make their
way out of the cities. Otherwise the movie over really quickly. Yeah,
and the spaceships start to beam down energy into the
cities to wipe them out. We don't know what kind
of energy it is, some kind of energy weapon. It's
it's kind of a green and glowing laser stuff that

(35:45):
moves slower than light speed. Right, So so it's kind
of like our podcast about plasma weapons, you know, it's
similar to that. But we figure all right, so the
slowing down obviously that's for again traumatic effect, because if
it was going at light speed, would to speak and
you're like, wow, um, this this was more you know,
intimidating and frightening. But so let's just assume it's some

(36:08):
form of laser. There could even be plasma ification going on,
because if the laser is powerful enough, it could actually
plasma atmosphere, the atmosphere around the laser. And then you
see this this explosion from the focal point moving outward
and it just keeps rolling out like effect pond. Yeah,
exactly like if you were to throw a rock into
a pond and you watch those ripples. That's exactly what

(36:31):
this looks like, except it's just the one ripple, right,
It's not like it's not like a six sequence of them.
So you see this one ripple moving outward of exclusiveness. Uh,
and it never seems to um to to disperse until
it gets to like the edge of the city. It
just keeps going outward, which uh, the blast only happens once,
like it shoots down once at whatever monument it happens

(36:54):
to be parked over, because we've already established that's what
they do. The aliens are kind of they're kind of jerks.
There are a bunch of jerk faces. Not only are
they destroying our cities, but they have to first hit whatever,
like uh iconic building or structure is there. They're not
only we're gonna kill you, we're gonna blow up your stuff,
like the stuff you like, the stuff that's on your postcards.

(37:17):
That's what we're blowing up, um because it makes really
good movie posters. They've been they've been watching watching our
communication signal and they probably actually had already seen em
riks future films before he had even made them, and
they said, that's a good idea. So U because I
mean it, they're going faster than light. That means they've
got some time travel stuff going on too. Anyway, this
this uh, this explosion that moves out where there's The

(37:38):
scientific problem I have with this is that the energy
doesn't seem to disperse, like they shoot the blast down
once and then the blast turns off and then you
just see the the spreading explosion and it never seems
to be losing energy. But in order for this to
really work, they'd have to constantly be pouring energy into it,
because you know, otherwise it would just disperse outward. Heat

(37:59):
does not stay in a ripple effect. Maybe maybe only
that initial blast is within the visible spectrum and the
rest is using some of that graviton technology that they
clearly have to create some kind of like like magnetic
gravitational rings, and they're they're using hands out. You know what,
if you're talking about plasma that works, I will I

(38:19):
will grant you that, because plasma will respond to magnetic fields.
So um, okay, I retract my objection. If that's possibly
what happened, then that's fine. So I did some math
here where I was trying to determine how many people
would have theoretically died as a result of these attacks. Right, So,
assuming that the ships were able to hit most of

(38:41):
the major cities in the world, and really at first
they're they're hitting like ten or fifteen of them, uh,
and then they move on to hit smaller cities like Atlanta.
Atlanta's in round two, so we don't get off scot
free in this one. Um. So, in nineteen six the
world had approximately five point eight billion people. We've got
quite a few more since then, but five point eight

(39:03):
billion people in So I assumed that about of the
world's population were in cities. Now that's a rough assumption.
In nineteen fifty it was around thirty percent, and I
think it was two thousand eight when we finally hit
fifty percent population in urban environments. So between nineteen fifty
and two thousand and eight, I'm saying, so of the

(39:26):
world's population in cities, that's about two point three billion
people total. And then I made a further assumption. I said, alright,
a lot of people try to evacuate, So let's say
that fifty percent of them got out of the city
and they're safe, and the other fifty percent are still
within the city when these attacks happen. That means that

(39:46):
you've got about one point one six billion people left
left behind those cities. So then I said, all right,
let's assume a seventy percent fatality rate, meaning that thirty
percent of the population is able to find some place
where they're able to hunker down and survive there in
a bomb shelter, or they're helpful alleyway, if you happen

(40:07):
to be Will Smith's love interest, thank goodness the dog
lives um. By the way, this movie not so subtle
with its emotional manipulation. They use everything children, uh, they
use dogs. They use the wonderful trope of character who
has been terribly injured, but not so badly that they
can't have that one last tender thank you, President Laura Man.

(40:30):
That's that's the scene I hate the most in this movie,
and that's saying something anyway, with a seventy percent fatality rate,
I figured that about that eight hundred and twelve million
people die as a result of the of this uh,
of this attack. That's a conservative estimate. Then we've got
the thing about the alien shields, which we assume are
probably some form of magnetic or maybe even gravity drive.

(40:54):
We don't really know that, we don't know about the
what the energy weapons really are, all right, So that
that brings us to this whole idea of the roswell
slash Area fifty one part of the movie, right right,
because because what happens is they you know, all the
city start start being blowed up, and uh and and
the president in a bunch of other military persona head

(41:16):
off to Area fifty one after the secret base after
just located underground, right, Jeff Goldblum's dad says, hey, you guys,
you knew about this ever since the thing in Roswell
and then you hit it an Area fifty one, and
the President says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
that's urban legend. It's not it's real. And then the

(41:38):
Secretary of Defense is like, well, actually cut to yeah,
but here's the thing. First of all, the president in
this in this sequence appears to be unaware of the
actual existence of Area fifty one, which is an actual base.
Is an actual base, although the military didn't really refer
to it as Area fifty one beyond PSALM designations on
a map. And the reason that it was called Area

(41:59):
fifty one is because of its proximity to Nuclear Testing
Range where they had divided up the range into different areas. Uh.
It was more known as Groom Lake, which was a
dry lake bed in Nevada, and it really is a
real place, but it was used to test experimental and
secret aircraft, so things like spy planes that were being

(42:23):
tested by the Air Force were that was the testing
ground and it was meant to be this secret area
so that they could do this test without revealing to
the world. Hey, this is what we're working on. UM.
But it doesn't actually have any connection to Roswell, And
in fact, Roswell, New Mexico, and Groomla, Nevada are not
close to each other, although there there are theorists who

(42:44):
have said that that that any potential crash landings at
Roswell were brought to a secret underground base at area,
essentially shipped across state lines to go to this secret
underground base. Uh. But you know the Roswell event. By
the way, in case you're not familiar with that, this
is an event that happened, uh in the I think

(43:06):
it was in the fifties where uh, a resident of
New Mexico, thank you. Yes, it's a little earlier than
I was thinking, son, a resident of essentially Roswell, New Mexico,
came across this weird stuff. It was a shiny stuff
that had UM. It was in a little pile on
the ground and for a while people were assuming that

(43:28):
it was some form of UFO from outer space that
had crashed landed on the Earth. Later on, much later on,
the military said that what this was was part of
Operation Mogul, which was a spy balloon initiative. It was
testing out using balloons as spy vehicles to to get

(43:50):
information and radioed back to some other place. And uh,
there are plenty of conspiracy theorist who don't accept that
and who would say that that's not that's not the
right answer. Although you know, the military for a while
was very much quiet about what this actually was, but
then it was because it was a spy program, so
you don't really want to let everyone know. Yeah, it

(44:12):
was during the Cold War, you know, people were trying
to keep things under wraps. So yeah, you know, we've
seen in recent events how people don't want spy information
to get out to the general public. But that's an
entirely different podcast that we do plan on recording, so
we want to have enough time to be able to
really cover that in great detail. If you don't know
what I'm talking about, just look up in Essay and

(44:32):
Prism and that will be this a little preview for
a future episode of Tech Stuff. Anyway, in this film,
they take the assumption that the space ship crash and
Roswell was in fact an alien spaceship. It was not
some balloon. It was in fact one of these aliens spaceships,
and it was. There are three levels of spaceship and

(44:53):
independent stay. There is the mother ship, which is the
kiometer diameter ship hanging out and by the moon. There
are the city sized ships that hover directly over city,
thus making it easy to tell how big they are
because you just look at and say, that's the size
of the city. Uh, not terribly precise, but you know,
gets the point across. Then you have the fighter ships.

(45:14):
These are like the tiny little ones that are kind
of a similar to jet fighters here on Earth. That's
kind of their purpose, at least in the film, that's
what it seems to be. So it was one of
those smaller ones that had apparently crashed in Roswell. And
then they move the ship and its inhabitants, who two
of whom are dead and the third one who dies
a few days later, back over to Area fifty one

(45:36):
in Nevada Underground. So the President is alerted that in fact,
all of this stuff actually did happen, and he says, well,
why wasn't I told, And they'd say plausible deniability, so
that if anyone asked you, you would honestly say that
it doesn't exist because as far as you know, it doesn't.
Although to be fair that the way that security clearance

(45:57):
is work. Just because someone has the highest possible security
clearance does that it's it's it's um, what's the word
I'm looking for. Compartmentalized. Yes, it is very much compartmentalized.
So just because someone has got the highest levels of
security clearance doesn't mean that they actually have all the information. Uh,
you still have to go through all the different channels
to get it anyway. Uh. So they go to Area

(46:19):
fifty one where they find a state of the art
scientific lab where people are top men are working on
determining nerds. BNT Spiner with long gray hair and glasses
uh and and coming across as like the the typical

(46:40):
science geek character with no or limited social So anyway,
he shows off the ship, which they said has suddenly
become active once the the other ships have come into
the proximity of Earth. And that's actually really cool. This
this concept of of the ships having some kind of

(47:00):
mesh network. Yeah, yeah, this this is one of those
things where I think Independence Day really got it right
to the point where this is a really cool idea.
It's this idea of this entire force, this this spaceship
force that is working on some form of what I
presume is radio frequency, where that they are communicating all

(47:22):
with each other so that there can be a truly
coordinated effort on the part of the entire force. So
this includes everything from power to communications. So when the
the fleet gets within the right range of Earth, this
ship starts to react and we have mesh networks. Now,
back we really didn't have mesh networks the way we

(47:44):
do now. But now we've got networks where you can
have elements of that network join and drop out, uh,
spontaneously throughout an entire you know, period of time, whatever
that period of time you want to be like, uh,
you know, you can think of a mesh network from
everything from a personal size mesh network, so you're talking
about like Bluetooth devices that can seamlessly link in and

(48:07):
link out of it to citywide mesh networks if you
really wanted to. We talk about smart cars and this
idea of a smart grid where the cars can kind
of maneuver through a city autonomously that's essentially a mesh
network where every single car is a part of it.
So this is actually an idea that I thought was
ahead of its time and made sense. Yeah, So, I mean,

(48:29):
kudos to them for coming up with us, because it
really was a cool idea that we're actually seeing put
into place in a different implementation. Obviously, we haven't invaded
any alien planets as far as I'm aware, but we
have started to use this kind of approach, right right. Yeah, Although,
while while we're on the topic of grids, I I
did want to kind of point out that no one

(48:50):
ever really talks about the fact that if you destroy
this many major metropolitan areas, that the electrical grid would
probably be not host not good. Yeah, that's true. We
don't know where every one's getting their power point. Yeah,
and you can assume that area have its own generators,
but right, right, right, yeah, And but and some of
these army bases I suppose have access to power from

(49:12):
other places. I mean, most most of these military bases
I suspect do not have their own power generating facilities.
We'll be right back talking more about Independence Day, but
first let's take another quick break. We also know that

(49:33):
global communications are down, so they get around that by
using telegraph wires Morse code, and they use Morse code. Uh.
I assume they're using Morse code simply because the telegraph
wires are the most reliable means of communicating, rather than
some way of masking the communication from aliens. How it
seems like a little bit of both, which confuses me.

(49:55):
On on a you're you're still conveying information electrically and transcontinentally.
Um is a really long I mean, I don't know.
I just I find it implausible that that wire would
have survived. It's well, if it's all underwater, if it's
under the ocean, then it is possible that the that
at least some of the telegraph wires have have managed

(50:17):
to survive, like at least some communication lines have survived,
the Transatlantic lines. Actually anything that is under the ocean.
I have no problem believing that that survived, whether it
survived enough nodes so that you could have a dedicated connection.
But that's one of the good things about the Internet,
and and it's something that I think we easily look over.
It's the idea that the way that the transmission protocols

(50:39):
were designed for the Internet. Means that if you were
to lose a large part of the Internet, information could
still because because it can, it can dynamically route across
different networks. Now telegraphs, So that's different, right, that's not
that's not divided up into packets of information like an
email is. It's sent as a direct sign all um.

(51:02):
But I assume that they weren't really trying to mask
their communications. But if they were, Morse code is not
that difficult to crack. Yeah, it's just a code. All
it is is replacing letters with particular uh, a particular
dash and dot combination. Certainly, if these aliens can can
crack art our satellite communication systems, then they could definitely code,

(51:25):
especially if if they've had any contact with humans where
they understand the concept. Because they do, they do give
you that that feeling that whenever an alien makes telepathic
contact with a human, which we see in this area
fifty one scene Brent Spiner, Uh, he gets his his
brain all taken over and the president does too. Briefly

(51:46):
by a telepathic alien, that knowledge is shared that the
the person who has the telepathic communication with the alien
learns things about the alien's brain, and the alien learns
things about the humans brain. So just that alone, I mean,
even if the even if the person that the control
doesn't understand Morse code, like they don't know Morse code,
they probably at least have heard what Morse code is,

(52:09):
which means the aliens will be like, all right, this
is a code where they've replaced letters with this, I
know what the letters are. Let's just figure this out.
And it wouldn't take you long at all. I mean,
once you know the basic rules of language, decoding something
that's a simple replacement cipher very easy. So that's why
I'm saying, I don't think it was meant to mask
the communications so much as just be a way of
people communicating across vast distances once the other lines had

(52:33):
been cut. I'm I'm wondering, I'm I'm wondering right now
how the psychic communication part happens, which is which is
straying a little bit from technology, I understand, but it
is it is science and and and that's you know,
because if if you can communicate more or less telepathically
and I'm assuming electrically, due to the way that that
that these aliens brains seem to have an effect on

(52:54):
um memory, muscle systems, and and furthermore, are electrical systems
in the nearby area. It's it's almost like they send
out kind of an e MP A couple of times,
and um, yeah they would. And well you would think
that anything that would require manipulation of thought would have
to work on an electrical basis, at least at some point,
because when you get down to the cellular level. Well,

(53:17):
and also Brent Spiner talks from the alien's point of view,
so it becomes a data puppet, right, we're actually making
puppet motions with your Yeah, no, no, no, it made
perfect sense. Yeah, and and yeah, at that point it's
your muscular systems are electrical, so yeah, so you don't

(53:37):
there's no explanation of how this telepathic, uh, and why
they need to use their satellites if they're telepathic, right, yeah,
if they are telepathy, unless it's the telepathy only works
over short distances. But this is all gravity drives must
get in the way, exactly the telepathetic signal. Sorry, guys,
get any communication you want all the way now, because
we're about to start moving and you know there's no

(53:57):
talking once we get moving um because they don't they
don't have any mouths, they cannot speak, but they do
communicate telepathically. We don't understand much of that. But then
the movie is told from the point of view of
the human protagonists, and the humans are a disadvantage because
they know very little in general about the aliens. So

(54:19):
I'm even willing to give them a bit of a
pass on this, saying that the alien physiology and the
telepathy are beyond our understanding, and we call it telepathy
because we don't have a word for whatever it is
they're using, um. But I agree with you and first
and also, assuming that there's going to be any kind
of of compatibility between alien physiology and human physiology where

(54:42):
this telepathy would work across species is a huge leap.
I mean, you know, these are two species that don't
have any connection to one another at all biologically as
far as we know, so the ability for telepathy to
work across species is a pretty big jump. I just
I just had the earnest I apologize for this. I

(55:03):
just had the earnest thought. Well, it worked really well
in Slither Moving Forward biomechanical suits, so these aliens are
actually the when you first see them, there are these big, giant,
nasty looking critters. But it turns out that the big giant,
nasty looking critter is actually a shell for a smaller
nasty looking critter inside of it, and that the shell

(55:25):
is a biomechanical suit. This is another thing I thought
was really super cool. Yeah, you know, we've got a
lot of work in exoskeletons here today on Earth. Now,
these exoskeletons are mechanical and electronic, they're not bio mechanical.
But then we're also seeing things like robotic limbs that
are designed to mimic the way our biological limb would work,

(55:49):
and that's really awesome. Again, still it's mechanical, it's not
bio mechanical, but we're slowly moving toward what could possibly
be a biomechanical future where perhaps uh, someone who has
to have a limb amputated receives something that's more akin
to a bio mechanical arm as opposed to just a
me mechanical one or electronic one. So I thought that

(56:12):
that was really neat. I did think that the design
was weird, specifically the feet, because they have they have
these tentacles that are kind of curled under like sloth toes,
and I think they look they look like they are
um like they're rigid to me. So to me, they
look like not like tentacles, but like these toes that
are curled around. I think that was a that was
a limitation of the puppet that was being used the

(56:34):
practical effects. I think I think that it was supposed
to be the same wiggly tentacle that we saw being
wiggly and pneumatic earlier. As totally sad that you guys
can't see this because when Lauren, when Lauren demonstrates wiggly tentacles,
she's she's looking a bit like a frantic muppet. Um
to be fairy usually look a bit like a frantic muppet.
I think we'll have to shoot the video version of

(56:55):
this podcast at some point so we can see that
the tentacles and we'll both do our own version, and
that is Google glasses coming. I'll be getting my my
parent a couple of days. Um. Yeah, But anyway, I
just thought that the feet were weird. But if they
were supposed to be tentacles that are actually flexible, that
makes more sense to me. But if they were supposed
to be these rigid, weird, curled backward toe things. That's

(57:16):
not the best foundation for your bipedal suit. Maybe on
their planet the gravity is different, so it's like that C. S.
Lewis C. S. Lewis novel. Maybe they just all hang
upside down from trees and they have to hook their
toes onto the tree limbs in order to be able
to move, and so they're not normally walking on ground.

(57:39):
I don't know. Um so, then the next note I
have actually involves a plot point in not not just
the same. Yeah, yes, the movie does have a plot,
but the president's wife is injured in a helicopter crash.
The President's wife, of course, being played by President Laura
Fro Battlestar Galactica. Right, so the president's wife is injured,

(58:02):
uh critically, but she has specifically yeah, yeah, there's it's
very vague. There's internal bleeding. That's all we know. She's
she's suffered the internal bleeding injury, and the duration of
which is it will let her live just long enough
for her to have with her husband just before passing away.
And then of course you get the little daughter saying

(58:23):
is mommy sleeping and the president saying yes, she is,
and then the sad moment, like again not a subtle
movie is Independence Day. Uh. They like to take emotion
and whack you right upside the head with it in
a very clumsy, ham fisted manner, kind of similar to
the way that they depict America and all of the world.

(58:44):
Like it's just a it's a it's a very simple,
simple representation of emotion and politics. Um. Now we get
into the part of the movie that everyone remembers whenever
anyone has a discussion about Independence Day and science and technology.
This is the part that everyone brings up right right,
because this the entire plot hinges upon Jeff gold Bloom's characters.

(59:06):
We keep saying Jeff Goldbloom as though he was actually there. Um,
I was not paying that much attention, I have to say. Um,
his his concept is Okay, so we can't destroy these
ships because they're shielded. Um, but I can program a
virus on my macy and if we can get that
virus into the ships, then we can take down the

(59:27):
shields and then blow the ships up. You know, this
is ah, this is just a mostly due to a
gross misunderstanding of what exactly a computer viruses. So in
this movie a computer we're using a word that it's
you keep using the word. I don't know if what
you think it means. Yeah, if we did an episode
about Princess bry to be much shorter, but it would

(59:49):
just be us quoting is all it would be. You
can do that with your friends. I do with my
friends all the time. But yeah, the the in this
film a computer virus is essentially saying, this will turn
the shields off. That's all this computer virus does. So
it's really more like a command, sending a command to
like the shield thing, switch that to the off position
and keep it off for as long as you possibly can.

(01:00:11):
But they call it a computer virus. Now, typically computer
viruses do one of a few things. You're very basic.
Computer worm, the the old style computer virus that was
really just meant to cause as much mischief as possible,
was a self replicating piece of code that if you
were to execute, it would start to copy itself and

(01:00:32):
to whatever medium you were using, so like a hard drive,
so it would copy itself to your hard drive, filling
up your hard drive space and making your computer essentially unusable.
Also your your computer's memory, so it just kind of
bricks your computer. Uh. Then there were the kinds that
would try to wipe all the data off, you know,
just essentially reform at your computer. Then there were the

(01:00:52):
kinds that were designed to to take advantage of a
vulnerability in whatever operating system you were using, so that
someone could get access to your machine administrative level access
to either lock you out and grant someone else access
or simply grant someone else. Right. Yeah, so the whole
back door access and thing where you can get access
to another person's machine. You might not you might not

(01:01:14):
lock them out at all, so that they seem to
think that everything is working fine. They don't. To them,
it doesn't seem to be any different. It might be
a visible parasite, but then someone else is running the
game and trying to use your computer to do various things. Um,
so that those are your basic types of malware. I
mean there are other kinds as well. They're phishing scams,
things that do key logging to try and figure out

(01:01:36):
what it is that you're typing. But that's kind of
the basics for computer viruses. They're not necessarily something that
you know does very specific functions. So here here are
the multiple problems I have here. One one is that
you have an alien computer system and a human computer
system that are at all compatible. Just as biology being

(01:01:57):
compatible is really implausible, computer systems is incredibly implausible. And
and again I'm almost willing to give him a pass
on the aliens studying us enough to have figured out
our satellite communication systems UM, because you know, I don't
know how long they've been studying us. That's that's sure,
And they're aliens, that's fine at least since right, But
if you're just watching Jeff Goldbloom, if it's just one

(01:02:20):
dude over the course of like a day, Yeah, And
and the idea, even if they've been studying the alien
technology aboard this ship, I doubt that they had had
any luck. And you know clearly they said that the
ship had not been operational at all until a couple
of days like since the right, so they didn't didn't
have any access to the computer system there. There's no

(01:02:42):
reason their computer systems would run on the same sort
of binary system that we use. Now. The fact that
our system uses this particular form of computer science is
because that's what was working for us. But there's no
guarantee that any other society would develop computers the same
way we did, so there's no and even if they did,
there's no guarantee that there would be an easy way

(01:03:03):
to interface one system with another. How do you connect
an Earth based computer so that you can actually send
a virus to a an alien technology? This is they
didn't even have Bluetooth. Yeah, yeah, they're they're not, They're
not like you know, it appears that you just have
to get close enough and you can magically do it.

(01:03:25):
But which would be like Bluetooth? But I don't know,
I don't you know, there's there's no explanation for that.
It's it's just it's simply this is a plot device
meant to let the heroes have their chance at overcoming odds. Yeah. Yeah,
And I understand it from a a story beat perspective,
like this is what we need to do in order

(01:03:46):
for there to be this heroic moment. I completely get that.
From an actual computer science perspective, it makes no sense. Um.
There are some people who say, wow, it makes no
sense that he's using a MAC. I want to address
that very quickly. So we think of max is being
largely virus proof, not so much as today, as much
as we used to. But I would argue that the

(01:04:07):
reason why Max were less likely to fall victim to
viruses is due to two things. One, Apple does lock
it system down really tightly, so that does help. The
fact that that that's so locked down meant that it
was not as accessible to people who wanted to write
code they could take advantage of it. Yeah, it was
more difficult, but also there were fewer Mac users for

(01:04:27):
a very long time, exactly, Lauren. That is that is
the key, right, there are fewer Max when you look
at and so if you're trying to cause havoc, then
really your your best bang for your buck is to
go after Window. Yeah, you want to go after PCs
because you certainly can't rule out alternate although I mean
Windows really was the thing you aimed for because Windows

(01:04:49):
had the majority of the share, So you want to
go for a target rich environment. Now you could say
that Windows was more had more vulnerabilities than Apple systems,
which I'm not going to argue that I think that's true.
But it's not that the Mac was immune to viruses.
It's that it had a lot working for it to
prevent people from even trying to write virus Because if

(01:05:10):
They're like, well, I could try and write a virus
for Mac and it might work, but I'm going to
hit five of the computer population when I could aim
for nine percent, which is going to get bigger results
for me. I might as well focus on that. Anyway.
I don't have a problem with the fact that he's
using a Mac to design this code. My problem is
it shouldn't work anyway. Whether it's a Mac or a

(01:05:31):
PC or a Linux machine, Unix doesn't matter because you're
talking about an alien your system and a human computer system,
so it doesn't matter which operating system you're using. Um.
But anyway, that's his idea, and he shows it off
an area fifty one. He's able to turn the shields
off and activate the ship's flight controls because apparently, once

(01:05:51):
you're able to connect to your computer to the alien computer,
you know what everything does. Like, think about all the
systems that would be required to make an alien ship work,
especially considering the fact that, uh, Jeff Goldblum's character David.
It is David because because when he boot boots up
his laptop, reference the two thousand one reference of Dave.

(01:06:13):
You know, uh, good morning day, don't reference better movies
in your movies, people, um, just reference worst movies, Grant.
It's hard to guess which movies are worse until you're done,
but you know, aim for really bad ones because then
the odds are in your favor. Anyway, he there's the

(01:06:35):
two thousand one reference. Good Morning Days. So he's David
and Steve is Will Smith's characters. So Steve and Dave
get into their alienship and blast off to go after
the mothership. Right, Well, think of all the systems that
are required to make that work. You have to have
the propulsion systems, the flight systems, you have to have
the life support systems. Thank goodness, these aliens breathe oxygen,

(01:06:56):
right because they're they're they're going to space. I mean
also just from a from a piloting standpoint, Will Smith's
character just gets in there and kind of does it
because he's seen how they fly so like as in
he's watched the ships go. Yeah, he's seen how they
move through an atmosphere. Therefore he knows how they fly
and in space too, because he's not space trained. People,

(01:07:16):
I've seen jets fly, I could not fly it. Yet.
I've seen helicopters fly. I could not fly a helicopter.
Just because I've seen how they move through a certain
area doesn't mean I can fly them. Well, I mean,
you know, he's a trained fighter pilot. Um. Maybe a
more apt description would be, you know, I've seen people
drive mac trucks, but I don't know how to drive

(01:07:38):
a diesel truck. Okay, how about this. I have piloted
a ship that was a sailing ship. I have never
driven a motor boat. But both of them do move
through the water. The propulsion systems are totally different. But
I see. That's what I'm saying is that being an
expert on one does not mean that you're an expert
on the other. However, for the purposes of magic effect,

(01:08:01):
let's let it go. We're giving this movie a lot
of passes right now. Um. Also, we know that this
episode has gone on really long, but so we've got that.
That's the big one. Everyone points out is this computer
virus that is designed to turn off the shields, and
of course their goal is they have to get aboard
the mothership in order for this to work. There's no
way for them to beam the code directly to the mothership.

(01:08:24):
They never explain how it is that by just getting
into the proximity of the ship, they're able to get
the code into the mothership. They don't explain that, so
apparently proximity is necessary, but we don't know why, Like
why do you have to be the mac into a
into a magnetic port within the ship and then through
the magnetic docking mechanism. That's it. Clearly they get aboard.

(01:08:47):
They get aboard the alienship and like, oh sweet, it's
got FireWire. We're good to go. Man, we would have
been so boned if we hadn't had FireWire in here.
It's clearly, it's clearly UM. And and also, like all
other programmers and hackers from the ninety nineties, he uses
a a animated skull Roger Jolly Roger in the symbol

(01:09:10):
the virus. Yeah, yeah, I have to do that. And
of course they deliver a nuclear bomb that has a
thirty second timer on it to UM to destroy the
mothership and then get out. There's no explanation as to
why they picked thirty seconds other than the fact again
dramatic effect. The idea big that this gives the heroes

(01:09:31):
and even Uh tougher challenge to escape the blast radius
of a nuclear bomb before they are affected by it
um and I haven't personally done the math on half
past to would have to fly in order to outfly
an explosion. But I'm I'm almost I mean, it's it's
at least not outrunning an explosion, so I'm kind of
it's a little better. It's a little better than having

(01:09:52):
to outrun an explosion. Now, there's plenty of outrunning explosions
in this movie too, especially in the parts where the
cities are being destroyed. But if y I don't try
not to ever put yourself in a position where you
need to outrun an explosion because you would die. Explosions
move faster than you can run. Yes, even you Usain
Bolt don't try it. So, yeah, it's the We're getting

(01:10:15):
towards the end of the movie here. So we got
the explosion of the mother Ship, which is really odd.
You pointed this out to Lauren that the explosion for
the mother Ship has this weird kind of disc explosion,
like it doesn't explode out in all directions explos Yeah,
it explodes out in a plane like a plane as
in a horizontal plane. It's like you think of a
plate that's been smashed into a thousand pieces, and there's

(01:10:37):
just spreads apart, like in a horizontal plane, it doesn't
go out in all directions. Explosion. Yeah, they're different. Maybe
it's just because the way the ship was built that's
just really really secure on the top and bottom, but
the outer edge is just just paper mache, just paper mache. Um.
We don't know what it is that really causes the

(01:10:59):
massive explosion within the the ship itself, I mean, apart
from a nuclear bomb going off. But again, one nuclear
bomb would not be enough to destroy a ship of
that mass. Found the gas tank, Yeah, we're thinking like
maybe there's fusion coils or something that were affected and
that created some sort of you know, I don't know,
maybe the nuclear bomb actually fell down a ventilation shaft

(01:11:22):
that led directly to the reactor core. And then Alderon
I might be thinking of a different movie. And then
the very end of the movie has Stephen Dave, who
you know, you don't know if they've survived, but surprised
they did, and they're they're walking down the desert and
they're greeted by their respective women folk and they are

(01:11:45):
and children folk and children folk and they are embraced
and everyone's happy. And then Uh. Steve will Smith's character
leans down to his uh, the little boy that would
would be his adopted son essentially or his stepson should
he always I guess he has a stepson now because
I forgot got married, because you have to have that
yet another emotionally manipulative moment um. So his stepson, he

(01:12:08):
says to his steps on, didn't I promise you fireworks?
That I thought? And only eight hundred and twelve million
people had to die for those fireworks to happen. And see,
there's so much more in this movie. There's the part
where where David the Jeff Goldblum character is writing to Washington,
d C. With his dad and he opens up his

(01:12:30):
laptop to pull up a while in the car in
ther WiFi. Essentially, Yeah, there's not he's not. I seriously
doubt that he was using any kind of really primitive
cellular data network to pull this information, especially since that
was represented by graphics. It must have been stored locally
on the computer. But he pulls up all um all

(01:12:54):
phone books in the United States in order to find
his ex wife's phone number, and uh, I just thought
it was funny that didn't just have the phone number
written down that This was obviously another one of those
moments which designed to show you that this guy is
good computers, computers that this guy are good friends. But
it is also funny to think that today anyone with
a phone can look up a phone book anywhere. Yeah,

(01:13:18):
the Internet and we do that now. Back in the
web was young, it did exist, but it wasn't as
robust as it is today. So I mean there was
no Google back in, so that would have made it
harder all by itself. Um, yeah, there's some there's some
really odd moments in this movie. Now, all that being said,
we do understand, like we said at the top of

(01:13:40):
the show, for entertainment, it is for entertainment purposes. And
and as much as Jonathan and I are kind of,
you know, viscerrating it a little bit right now, it
is I mean, there are parts of it that are
that are very entertaining and very funny, and and it's
it's designed it's designed to be a popcorn movie. Now
that gives it some somewhat of a pass. Uh. And

(01:14:02):
you know, if they had tried to make a movie
that was as scientifically and technically accurate as possible, it
probably would not have been as entertaining. Maybe they could
have avoided some of the more melodramatic, emotionally manipulative scenes,
which I find I don't know at the time. At
the time, I didn't find it as irritating, but I
was also dumber about as as an adult, you get

(01:14:23):
more aware of that kind of thing. I mean, I
don't know. I I certainly don't fault especially big blockbuster
movies like this on on being light on the science.
But but things that are just just blatantly not right
not science. Yeah, I'm kind of like, didn't I mean,
wasn't anyone. I mean, this this script had to have
gone through multiple, multiple treatments and all kinds of eyes,
and I mean studios like that are huge, you know,

(01:14:45):
it was enormous. I think I think what would be
fun to do, maybe in the future, is to come
up with our list of movies that have the the
worst portrayal of science and technology and not necessarily go
through it like the like that this was a special
thing that we did because I jokingly said that we
should do it, and then our so so this is

(01:15:07):
what you get. But maybe in the future will do
more of an episode where we just kind of talk
about some of the more ridiculous depictions of technology, like Hackers,
which has some really awful awful sequences, Like essentially anything
that has depicted hacking as some sort of video game.
The net is another great one. Anything anything we're hacking

(01:15:31):
is essentially like you are the plot. You are actually
making your way through a three dimensional castle and you
have to avoid skeletons, and this is actually the way
hacking works. And if you can get to the treasure room,
you get the files. There is a movie like that.
I can show you the video clip after this is done,
So maybe we'll do that at some point and just

(01:15:52):
kind of give you a rundown on some of the
movies that have maybe do a few that are that
are really good. Yeah, there are a few out there
that have done some great some great work and representing
what technology can actually do. And that wraps up this
classic episode. You know, we would occasionally do these episodes
where we would take a film that has a lot
of technology in it. We've done it with the James
Bond films, Star Wars, Independence Day obviously, and we would

(01:16:15):
go through and talk about how the technology was portrayed,
how realistic was it? Uh, did it set n realistic expectations.
If you guys would like us to do any more
of those, let us know, tell us some of the
movies that we should really take a look at and
kind of dissect. But if you have any other suggestions,
feel free to pop them my way. You can reach

(01:16:36):
out on Twitter or Facebook. The handle for both is
text stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again
really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

(01:16:57):
your favorite shows. Eight