TechStuff Watches Independence Day

you have no one to blame but yourselves. We are on this eve of Independence Day here in the United States, going to cover the film Independence Day and talk about some of the technology and science stuff that happens in the movie, whether or not any of it is plausible, Which parts were you know, more or less right on target, which parts were even prescient, and then which parts were

not really not really plausible, if at all possible. So, uh, but to start off, 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 six, right now, there were a few other things that were going on at that time. That'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 VHS. And we don't ever 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 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 a sequel was planned and would end up being vaporware for more than a decade. Uh. There was a certain animal that was born that year. Yeah, Dolly the cloned sheep was born. That's first first cloned mammal. Yep, Dolly the Sheep, first mammal 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 Telecommunications 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 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 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 the Internet unless they just happen 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 exactly yeah. And and according to uh the people history dot com that they say that in the twelve 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 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 All the Day After Tomorrow. Uh. He's really big on worldwide destruction. And of course we 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 I think UM and Independence Day stars some some folks that you might recognize, like Will Smith would be the big name Bill Pullman,

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 where he I do too. I enjoy it. Randy Quaid also in the movie as a as what you assume is a delusional drunk all though apparently he was to

the truth. Yeah, he's not collusion. Um. Adam Baldwin's in it, tiny chevy Adam Baldwin. He's so young and adorable. It's very cute. Yeah, it's 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 is 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. I think it's safe to spoil it now. Yeah, I think that's statue 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 a defense, a desperate defense, to fight off these alien invaders. And this all happens, of course, on on from July second to July four, which here in the United States is kind of a celebration of independence and hence the term independence dates extremely Um, it's not not ethnocentric, genoistic. Yeah, it's it's all right. Let

me put 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 of 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 that's July. 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 depiction of other cultures is somewhat stereotypical within the context of this movie, perhaps stilted. Don't don't worry though, everything is so it's it's not just that we have a very very American centric film. No one comes out of this lookally too great. But but that's that's more. That's 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, 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 the regulars on the moon and yeah, and the American flag, and then a shadow comes across the moon and you hear this terrible rumbling noise because

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 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, 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 is possible. That's something will 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 drive which somehow can affect actual particles. Um, so we'll give them the rumbling. We'll give them at least the movement part. The rumbling part is a little yeah, and then multiple 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 thing. Yeah, you can't, although I do appreciate it when people don't do that, right, like just we Firefly, where you would 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 where has some realized and it is it is pronounced sea right, not s E t I because one of the characters in the film pronounces it S t I. We just call it set Excellent 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 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 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 sign to to who goes like, I'm hearing beeps and boops, literal audio beeps and groups coming through this headset, and that means something so 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. 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, because 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 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 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 spaceship was not detected until after it was right there at the Moon already. Yeah, but in Earth's orbit. But thermal imaging works. So in 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 mothership, because before it has let out

any other smaller ships, is huge. According to the movie, it is five hundred and fifty kilometers in diameter, which is about three two miles. That's just under half the size of Texas at its widest point and U and it says that it's about a quarter of the mass

of the Moon. All of this meanings 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, 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 but with telescopes we'd be

able to see it even further away. Sure, and and possibly you know, maybe maybe the shields because it is revealed the ship has some kind of shielding mechanism UM which which blocks you know, torpedoes, um. Yeah, but maybe maybe it 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 if it if a dramatic effect, it's like a villain that only makes

sense within the context of a movie. With Then when you step outside of that and you look at if you were going to destroy a planet, wouldn't you wouldn't you want 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 once fully once, shame on you, pull me four and seventy eight times shame on me. All right, not again for seven nine. It's going down. Okay, But yeah, 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, literally with 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 the ship must have some sort of super fast propulsion system for deep space travel faster 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 do learn that these aliens share a lot in common with us.

They breathe oxygen, they have the same sort of tolerant s is for heat and cold, and so they have they have some kind of visual cortex that that allows them to 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, 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 not quite that close. But you still have you know, general you know, limbs and that head and the verse is a very 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. That's a sample size of one. We have one planet that we know of that supports life as we know it, So that's an incredibly small sample size. So and 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 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 consus 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 exo planets out there, lots we've we've already found found lots of exo planets. Uh, there are several that we've 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 start track, it would be called a class M plan Yeah, yeah, meaning that meaning that that it would at least 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 our own galaxy, there must be countless planets that fall into this category, which makes you wonder, why would you bother going to uh 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 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 an emotional response in us. Yeah, as though they are the creators of the film. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, so, 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 the building as it was. Yeah, exactly, you park it directly over some incredibly identifiable landmark, because

that's very it's a great visual effect. Uh, 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 don't know. Uh. They talk about how the radio

signal um is originating for the moon. Uh that you can't I don't know how they figure that out, Like how I mean, you could figure out that came from that direction? Problem study, say this radio signal is coming from the moon, right, But you don't. I mean, you could see what direction 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 can 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 part definitely an equation. 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's so the moon has a mass of seventy three grams, which would be if you if you down the number seven and then the number three and then put twenty one zeros after it, that's how many grams of mass 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. There's no nuclear weapon that could

destroy that much mass. It just we have not created a nuclear weapon that could that much damage. Yeah, there's that's so massive. 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. I mean because they're they're looking at it from a thermal imaging perspective, which really just that 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 even maybe and then you wouldn't be able to calculate, you know, figure out what the masses that. That's 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 over the various cities, including like directly over the Empire State Building, directly over the Capitol Building, directly over part of l A, etceter 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. 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 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 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, and he notices 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 countdown, which is perfectly plausible. No, no no, no, no, that's that's that's great fine science. That part I was like, I

am alright with this. This makes sense that you would have a repeating pattern that's getting slightly shorter each time. That sounds like a countdown. Yeah. The issue that I've got here is that UM is that it shows a couple of our satellites crashing into the mother ship. 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. 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 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? Does it do it? I don't remember. Does it do a green boom or an exploding but

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 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 as great as a teenager. It had Will Smith and like it's action stuff blown up As an adult, Uh, some of the shine has worn off. Actually, I guess it wasn't a teenager back then either. It's my birthday today, um, and now I'm doing mathppy birthday, Jonathan, Thank you so uh, we didn't have the various people in American government reacting

and trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Uh, the Secretary Defense wants to blow it out of the sky with an ice ub um, even though I've just said that 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 be heretically that I would if you're talking about the size of the city, then you could take it down. Yeah,

you could do 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. And because these things are city sized and they are hovering noiselessly and um and effortlessly like like like they are not creating any um any kind of ripples in the spacetime continuum. As we know, it's these cities.

You've got You've got this ship that's ard over your city, but it's not pushing down. Just hang 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 force pressing down on you. There's 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 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 laptopic, it's just a screen. It's a screen with I don't know. Yeah, 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 time radar is not working and the other half the time they talk about a radar readout. Uh don't know. Maybe it's just that the aliens keep forgetting to turn the stuff button on. Um, because these ships are not design. If you've listened to our podcast about stealth technology, you know that a part of the way that stealth technology works is just based on the actual

physical design of the vehicles. 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 up they have to be able to if we're talking about those gravitational drives or something

like that. I never knew you were an alien apologist, um, but yeah, so, so 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 the representation of these ships enter ring the

Earth's atmosphere. 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,

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 fact. Maybe this is just the 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, you know what, We got a lot more to say about this movie, but before we do, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor, Audible.

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suggestion would be War of 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 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 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 throughout the film, these aliens have amazing technology that our technology just cannot stand up to. Like

nothing we have puts a dentity. 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 even worry about targeting the largest cities first, unless it's just to get as many people dead as possible, which could just be an efficiency thing, in 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 goal is 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, but I wanted to give one of our scientists something to latch onto. Yeah, well, in order to make 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 on 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 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 to like 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, some were being destroyed and some of the some of 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 that an alien signal underlying our own signals is interesting. Uh. Depending upon the bandwidth of the satellite. I could actually see it 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 obliterated spoiler alert, um, Harvey Firestein. 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, 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 the full picture. How does that happen? Like? How would you? How would 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 Ultron.

And I completely dismiss your your apologetic response. Yeah, this 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 all work together to bring together the president's words. Uh. 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 uh yeah, that's in the process. So he goes with his dad, uh and he and his dad go

down to DC. Because Jeff Goldblum's 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 self in this period where Fox Molder's cell phone. I mean they were bricks, they were rare to not everyone had them. But but

triangulating is probably not the right word here. You could triangulate someone's position 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 saying at the time, didn't they didn't they kind of purposefully scramble a lot of that. Where couldn't you not really use GPS? I GPS GPS does that's not even that's not even a thing. So, I mean, GPS is a thing, but

not on any civilian cell phone. Not 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. 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 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 you're looking for. Yeah, and he obviously doesn't have

all that information. What he was really 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 at. The ships actually start to unleash their attack so at this point are various heroes have all started to make their way out of the cities otherwise over really quickly, 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 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 for again traumatic effect, because if it was going at light speed, it would just be boo and you're like, wow, um, this this was more you know, intimidating and frightening. But so let's just assume it's some form of laser. There could even be plasma ification going on, because if the laser is powerful enough,

it could actually plasma atmosphere. Yeah, the atmosphere around the laser. And then you see this this explosion from the focal point moving outward and it just keeps rolling out effect. Yeah, exactly like if you're to throw a rock into a pond and you watch those ripples. That's exactly what this looks like. Except it's just the one ripple, right, It's not like a it's not like a six sequence of all.

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 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. That's what we're blowing up, um because it makes really good movie posters. They've been watching watching our our communication signal and they probably actually had already seen em Ric's future films before he had even made them, and they said that's a good idea. So uh, because

I mean, 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 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 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, so they're they're using hands out. You know what, if you're talking about plasma that works, I will I 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. So assuming that the ships were able to hit most of 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 at and Is in round two. So we don't

get off scott free in this one. Um. So, in nineteen nineties six, the world had approximately five point eight billion people. We've got quite a few more since then, but five point eight billion people in n 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 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 you've got about one point one six billion people left left behind in those cities. So then I said, all right, let's assume a seventy percent fatality rate, meaning that 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 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. Uh, 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. 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 eight hundred and twelve million people die as a result of the

of of this uh, of this attack. That's a conservative estimate. Then we've got the thing about the alien shields, which we have him or probably some form of magnetic or

maybe even gravity drive. 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 cities start start being blowed up and uh and and the president in a bunch of other military persona head 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 in Area fifty one. And the President says, no, no, no, no, no, no no, that's urban legend. It's not it's not real. And then the 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 the military didn't really refer to it as Area fifty one beyond some designations on a map. And the reason that it was called Area fifty one is because of its proximity to nuclear testing range, where they had divided

up the range in two 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 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 Groom, like Nevada, are not close to each other, although there there are theorists too have said that that that any potential crash landings at Roswell were brought to a secret underground base at area, effect essentially shipped across state lines to go to this secret underground base. Uh.

But uh, 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 it was in the fifties where uh a resident of New Mexico nine, thank you, Yeah, it's a little earlier than I was thinking. So seven 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 it was some form of UFO UH 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

information and radio it back to some other place. And uh, there are plenty of conspiracy theorists 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 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 Prism and that will be this 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 space and it's there are three levels of spaceship and independence stay. There is the mother ship, which is the kilometer diameter

ship hanging out and by the moon. Yes, there are the city sized ships that hovered 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. 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 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 is work, just because someone has the highest possible security clearances 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 fifty one where they find a state of the art scientific lab where people are top men are working on determining what Spiner with long gray hair and glasses uh and and coming across as like the the typical science geek character with no or limited social So anyway, he shows off the ship which they said, has suddenly been come active once the uh, the other ships have come

into the proximity of Earth. And that's actually really cool, this concept of of the ships having some kind of 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 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 in we really didn't have mesh networks the way

we 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 networks. So you're talking about like Bluetooth devices that can seamlessly link in and 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 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. Yeah. Although, while while we're on the topic of grids, I I did want to kind of point out that no ever really talks about the fact that if you destroy this many major metropolitan areas, that the electrical grid would probably be not good. Yeah, that's true. We don't know where

everyone's getting their power. Yeah, and you can assume that Area fifty one to have its own generators, right right, right, Yeah, And but and some of these army bases, I suppose have access to power from other places. I mean most most of these military bases I suspect do not have

their own power generating facilities. They might have backup generators, but for a limited amount of right anyway, So we also know that 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. 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 to survive, like at least some communication lines

have survived, the Transatlantic lines. Actually, anything that's 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 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 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 signal. Um. But I assume that they weren't really trying to mask their communications 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, 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 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, 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 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 um memory, muscles systems, and and furthermore, 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, 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, and also Brent Spiner talks from the alien's point of view, so it becomes a data puppet. You'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 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 a gravity drives must get in the way. Sorry, guys, get any communication you want all the way now, because we're about to start moving, and you know there's no 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 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 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 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 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 biomechanical. But then we're also seeing things like robotic limbs that are designed to mimic the way our biological limb would work,

and that's really awesome. Again, still it's mechanical, it's not biomechanical, but we're slowly moving toward what could possibly be a bio mechanical 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 mechanical one or or electronic one. So I thought that that

was really neat. I did think that the design was weird, specifically the feet, because they have 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 on

the 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 this podcast at some point so we can see that the tentacles. We will both do our own version.

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 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. I don't know. Um, So then the next note I have actually involves a plot point in not not just the science. 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

from Battlestar Galactica. Right, so the president's wife is injured, 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 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 they depict America and all of the world 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. We keep saying Jeff Goldbloom is 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 Mac and if we can get that virus into the ships, then we can take down the 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 no word. I don't know if what you think

it means. Yeah, if we did an episode about Princess Bright to be much shorter, but it would 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. 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 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 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 here either lock you out and grant someone else access or simply grant someone else. Right. Yeah, so the whole backdoor access and thing where you can get access to another person's machine. You might not you might not 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, 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 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 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 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 a 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 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 to interface one system with another. How do you connect a 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,

they're they're not, they're not. Well, you know, it appears that you just have to get close enough and you can magically do it. 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 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 as being largely virus proof, not so much as today as much as we used to. But I would argue that the 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, yeah, it was more difficult. But also there were fewer Mac users for 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 back is to

go after. Yeah, you want to go after because you certainly can't rule out but alternate although I mean Windows really was the thing you aimed for because Windows 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 Apples 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. Yeah, because if 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 PC or a Linux machine Unix doesn't matter because you're talking about an alien computer 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 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. 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 two thousand one reference good Morning Day. 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, right because they're they're they're going into space. I mean also just from a from a piloting standpoint, Will Smith's character just gets in there and kind of does it. And 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.

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 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 did. Yeah. 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 dramatic effect, 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. 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 that 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. 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 clear it's UM. Yeah. And also, like all other programmers and hackers from the ninety nineties, he uses a a animated skull Jolly Roger in the symbol of the virus. Yeah. 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 Germanic effect, The idea being that this gives the heroes 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 too, 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 to outrun an explosion. Now, there's plenty of outrunning explosions in this movie too, especially in the arts where the cities are being destroyed. But if y I, folks, 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. Even you Usain Bolt, don't try it. So, yeah, it's the we're getting towards

the end of the movie here. So we've got the explosion of the mother Ship, which is really odd. You pointed this out to Lauren that the explosion for the Mothership has this weird kind of disc explosion, like it doesn't explode out in all directions. 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 just spreads apart, like in a horizontal plane, it doesn't go out in all directions. 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 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. We 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 that led directly to the reactor core. And then Alderon I might be thinking of a different movie.

I think, I think you are. 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 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 because he has a stepson now, because I forgot he got married, because you have to have that yet another emotionally manipulative moment um, So his stepson. He says to a stepson, 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 laptop to pull up a while in the car in the car 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 phone books in the United States in order to find his ex wife's phone number, and uh, I just thought it was funny they didn't just have the phone number written down that This was obviously another one of those moments was designed to show you that this guy is good for 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, 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 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 the show, for entertainment, it is

for entertainment purposes. And and as much as Jonathan and I are kind of you know, ratings rating 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. Know that gives it some somewhat of a pass. Uh. And 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. But as as an adult, you get 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 not science. Yeah, I'm kind of like, didn't

I mean, wasn't anyone. I mean this the script had to have gone through multiple, multiple treatments and all kinds of eyes, and I mean studios like that are huge, you know, 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 this 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 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.

The net is another great one. Anything anything we're hacking is essentially like you are. 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 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 keeping in mind when you're doing science fiction, you know you kind of the science part is really there to let you do stuff

that normally we could never do. So it's really taking the place of magic like in fantasy. Uh, the goal of science fiction is to make it at least sound plausible or seem plausible through technology. Um, in this case, all the alien stuff we can kind of give a pass too, because you just say that we don't understand it. All the human stuff doesn't get that kind of free ride anyway. That wraps up this discussion, this long discussion

about Independence Day. Happy Independence Day, all of my fellow Americans. UM, and hey, remember world today, July three is our tech stuff Independence Day. Yeah, so let's let's go light some sparklers. Guys. If you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, please let us know. Send us an email our address this tech Stuff at Discovery dot com or drops the line on Facebook for Twitter, or handle at both of those.

Is tech stuff, hs W and Lauren and I will tell to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it hastaff works dot com