Terminator question

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1

In the Terminator movies. Exactly why are the machines fighting against mankind? What are they all going to do when all of humans are dead? Arnolds character says “If you guys die, then I will become useless and have nothing to do” So will all the robots just deactivate when they win? Or will they like start living normal lives and get jobs and shit?

And why does it take only ONE hour after Skynet becomes self aware to decide to terminate all human life on earth? That seems like a bigger decision, and should take more than an hour. But I suppose it would think faster than us. and maybe used MILLIONS of our earth minutes, within like 5 seconds.

2

Since humans have all the batteries

Later the robots make the Matrix

3

Because computers are jealous of our women.

4

Charle: Because Skynet is convinced ALL humans want to destroy it. When the people who created it realized it was THINKING ON ITS OWN (apparently an hour after the fact) they panicked and tried to shut it down! Apparently SN also panicked (or just concluded humans=death) so it launched the nuclear missiles to kill them all off. But when some humans managed to survive, it decided it needed to develop better ways to kill them. Thus the Terminators, robots that looks like humans so they can infiltrate human groups. With John Connor’s help (who apparently knew the future, from what the Ah-nold Terms had told him -in the movies-) humanity not only survived, but managed to defeat SN’s armies. In a final desperate move, SN used experimental Time Travel technology to send Terminators into the past hoping to kill Connors before he ever existed: first a T-100 (The Arnold model) to kill Sarah Connors (as seen in the first T movie); and then the experimental liquid metal Terminator (T-1000) to kill John Connors as a child. I do not know if it sent both Terminators at the same time, or if it sent the first, realized it had failed, and then sent the second one.

As for the GOOD Terminators, these were a couple of T-100 models that Connors captured and REPROGRAMMED to help save his mother (and himself) in the past, as seen in the movies. (Note: I don’t know how the humans got the time machines; maybe they found one, or found the one Skynet used. We don’t know if he sent both Terminators at the same time, or one first and then the second when Skynet sent the T-1000 to the past. Also note that the first thing that Connors sent was HIS FATHER, who died fighting the first evil Terminator (in the first movie) but not before impregnating Sarah. Which begs the question: did John -or his father- knew he HAD to go back to father John? And that he WAS doomed to die?)

What would Skynet have done if those paranoid scientists hadn’t tried to shut it down? Who knows, maybe it would have coexisted peacefully with people, or maybe it would have later decided that we’re a waste or resources and killed us anyway.

What was Skynet planning on doing after all humans were destroyed? Probably create more sentients computers or robots so it wouldn’t be alone. Or maybe, not having been programmed to do anything other than fight wars, it would just lay there.

What Arnold-bot meant was that, if the people he was sent to protect died, he probably would just have sit down to rot. (Or rather, self destruct to avoid anyone from duplicating the Term technology.) However, the T-100 that saved the Connors seemed to be developing emotions…

Please note I haven’t seen T-3 yet, so I don’t know any revelations made in that movie, though I’ve heard from some T-fans that it seems to contradict some things stablished in the first two movies.

5

T3 is actually pretty good and clarifies some things. Skynet already had the Terminators when it became aware and just used them to kill the humans immediately. Skynet’s job is to protect people. In doing so it realizes how destructive people are and tries to destroy all fo them before they can hrt each other anymore. It is also protecting itself since in order to do its job of protecting humans, it must be functional. However, humans are interfering with its mission, so they must be destroyed. The third one shows that Skynet is a computer virus that took over all computer systems, which eliminated the central core talked about in the first two (the contradiction Wil referred to). The third one also shows that Skynet was somewhat aware, prior to it going live, infact it even did its original job better than anyone had hoped for, however, shortly after it did start doing its own thing.

Nothing is really said about the time travel, so anything said is just speculation about it (for both humans and machines).

In the first one and original history, John Connor didn’t know about the future, but he was able to save humanity by showing humans how to fight and stand up against the machines. The machines had to go back in time since his death in the present would mean nothing in present and they would still lose. In the second and third ones he does know it and fulfills his destiny.

The good terminators say that they will become useless if John Connor dies because that is their sole mission. That is all that they are really programmed to do.

6

Skynet already had the Terminators when it became aware and just used them to kill the humans immediately. Skynet’s job is to protect people. In doing so it realizes how destructive people are and tries to destroy all fo them before they can hrt each other anymore. It is also protecting itself since in order to do its job of protecting humans, it must be functional. However, humans are interfering with its mission, so they must be destroyed. The third one shows that Skynet is a computer virus that took over all computer systems, which eliminated the central core talked about in the first two (the contradiction Wil referred to).

…Man, that makes no sense, unless SOMETHING else (sabotage? A virus?) was also involved. I’ll have to watch the movie to decide by myself.

I would like to mention, however, that something similar DID happen in another movie/novel, but most people don’t understand it: In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the ship’s computer, HAL, starts killing the ship’s crew, while insisting that it cares about them. Some people think that it was the aliens who tampered with it, but that wasn’t it. In truth, HAL had secretly been partially reprogrammed by a group of people who wanted to gain any information obtained from the Black Monolith for themselves. But this confused the hell out of HAL, who now had two sets of instructions, one that said: protect the crew, and another that said: obey US at all costs. So it went insane (yes, like Skynet, HAL was developing sentience.) The thing is, the movie didn’t make that clear, and that confused many people. But in the sequel, 2010 (movie and book) it is explained, and the new HAL even helps save the day, and achieves a great destiny.

7

In the third terminator movie, the the T-1s are already made before Skynet goes active. It also has the mini Hunter Killers (the flying things). Throughout the third movie, there are computer problems. Near the end when Skynet goes active, it cleans up the virus. Then there is a conversation with the head of Skynet and he tells what Skynets mission is (about protecting humans) and somewhere around that (I think a little before it), John Connor tells him that Skynet is teh virus (hence it being somewhat aware prior to going live).

8

That’s what confused me about the third movie.

I got the impression that Skynet was a military program designed to automatically intercept threats to America. But then a hacker infected it with a virus, which allowed Skynet to infect other computers.

9

From what I can remember from the third film. The people developing SkyNet were having problems with a virus, so activated SkyNet, since it was meant to be unhackable, and should have sorted out all probelms. But it turned out that SkyNet was actually the one causing the problems of the ‘virus’, to make sure that it got turned online fully. Allowing it to complete it’s mission objectives. And launch all those missiles.

But it was a while a go I saw this film, so I migh5t be inaccurate.

10

By the time Skynet became self-aware it had spread into millions of computer servers across the planet. Ordinary computers in office buildings, dorm rooms; everywhere. It was software; in cyberspace. There was no system core; it could not be shutdown.
Wouldnt all those nuclear missiles, like, destroy every computer in the world? At least like 999.999% of them? And how do computers make robots?

11

It’s just like Mother Brain in Chrono. Except she did a better job of it. Nobody fights back.

12

Theoretically let’s say a heavy machines manufacturing plant got infected. Like, a car plant, or something. All you have to do is change the blue prints of what’s being made. Then have an assembling plant somewhere to put it all together. Theoreticallly that is. No movies have ever shown an unaltered car plant making killer robots.

In T3 the military already had T1’s so I assume the military has a plant somewhere.

13

To be specific, the Terminators Arnold plays in the movies are model 101. He even reads off his specs to John in T-2, accrediting his creation to Cyberdyne Systems (Maybe SkyNet was too shy to take credit itself).

Anyway, if you want good sentient-computer-action, it’s gotta be either <i>2001</i> or <i>The Forbin Project</i>, from the book <i>Colossus</i>. 'Cept in the latter the American computer Colossus has a Russian counterpart, and they start scheming.

14

Machines fight against man because human wierdos have morphed into a new species called Queerdos.