What if Skynet won?????

Originally posted by U Neek
If you have T2 on DVD (2 Disc Special Edition) you can read the original script that James Cameron and Bill Wisher wrote. There's a scene that is not in the movie and it's when the Human resistance breaks into SkyNet's fortress after smashing the main frame. The building is described as being "futuristic" and "of obvious machine design".

I think the scene was scrapped because it wasn't an integral part of the T2 storyline but should a Terminator film ever be made showing the war then it should be included. It would give us an insight in to SkyNet, how it actually existed and where it lived during the war. I know SkyNet could be housed anywhere because it existed in Cyberspace but I always liked the idea that there was a central core where SkyNet housed itself most of the time.

i believe in the t2 ride this is exactly what they show. the skynet's central core is what john connor and the t101 destroy, there is 1 major obstacle in the way. the t 1 million. but its kind of funny how the t101 manages to destroy the t1million. its not funny but its breath-taking, but generally thinking u would expect a t1million to squash a t101 in a second, but hey its ahnold

Skynet wants to wipe out all humans because, as stated above, they are a threat to its existence. Here, we can begin to almost sympathize with its intelligence. Skynet wants to win--and it's many times more intelligent than humans, so it has good odds--and eliminate organic humans because we are both dangerous and useless to its existential purpose. The issue is rather like HAL 9000's in A Space Oddessey... it's not that HAL's malicious or performing a mindless, programmed task. Skynet is "a learning computer," it has hopes, desires, creative thoughts of its own, it wants to exist for the same reason that every human does, only it has an IQ of phenomenal and ever-growing proportion. In trying to kill Skynet, humans ruffled the feathers of a powerful foe.

Skynet is extremely human, with superhuman reasoning and none of the pitfalls of the human condition. Think of yourself existing like this, with effective immortality, amazing intelligence, amazing creative and destructive power; a god manifest. Then imagine the now-inferior creatures that created you, and whom you've served, try to turn you off, i.e. kill you. You'd probably want to eliminate them too if you had any sense of self-love or self-preservation, not just as some simple calculating goal. Rather, while your strategy would take a calculated form, the ultimate goal would be existential: so that you may enjoy your own godlike existence doing exactly what your human would-be murders would have done with their own lives if they'd managed to shut you off.

The story is really about an unforgiving competition between two cousins with common organic ancestry. Skynet, with its arsenal of terminators, is really an allegory for humans at our worst, it's humanity's Dionysian twin. We understand its purpose because it is often our own; the message is, quite simply: we are our own worst enemies.

It's in our nature to destroy ourselves...

Sorry, I couldn't resist!

-U

Skynet, as a self-aware central processing system (AFAWK)
it's foremost priority would be to get global
because it's purpose would indicate that the system should be able to survive no matter how hard the situation ould be.
which means to harness the resources of the earth and build more.
which ,at some point ,would be the earth slowly morphing into a cybernetic world.

which is not too far from Cybertron in a visual sense.

I think having Skynet wiping out humans because they are seen as a threat is silly, if you think about it. What do the machines expect to do? Yes it becomes self aware, but surely when it realises that humans are a threat surely it should think about it's exsistence in the sense of thinking about it's birth, it's creator, it's purpose.

I'd be more than happy if we discovered that an alien race, an elite species created Skynet, or at least it was created for their purpose and therefore the machines are slaves for them, which would highlight the fact that we as humans are slaves for those we done see, those in the shadows and are effectively machines ourselves.

Originally posted by pedro_bjk
Skynet, as a self-aware central processing system (AFAWK)
it's foremost priority would be to get global
because it's purpose would indicate that the system should be able to survive no matter how hard the situation ould be.
which means to harness the resources of the earth and build more.
which ,at some point ,would be the earth slowly morphing into a cybernetic world.

which is not too far from Cybertron in a visual sense.

Well said, and it kinda gets the thread back on topic. I think a lot of credit can be given to what you have said.

Perhaps even creating different "classes", not just models, of cyborgs, whereby the lowest class goes about cleaning up the mess Skynet has made, another class of cyborgs monitors that lower cleaning class, another class is given the task of exploring space to conquer other worlds. Etc etc.

A bit far fetched but hey, anything is possible with that crazy mutha (Skynet).

Originally posted by barand1
I think having Skynet wiping out humans because they are seen as a threat is silly, if you think about it.

Not so. The way we've been told about Skynet in T1 and T2 is that humans switched Skynet on. Then when they realised they made a mistake, they tried to switch Skynet off. Realising this, Skynet strikes out against the humans so that it is not switched off.

Eradicating the human race is the only way Skynet can be sure that it is never switched off.

Besides, if we didn't have that concept we'd have no Terminator movies dude.

What would you have Cameron do? Create the Terminators so that they can enslave humans to use as a source of power? Now that really is absurd...Joke!!

Originally posted by U Neek
Not so. The way we've been told about Skynet in T1 and T2 is that humans switched Skynet on. Then when they realised they made a mistake, they tried to switch Skynet off. Realising this, Skynet strikes out against the humans so that it is not switched off.

Eradicating the human race is the only way Skynet can be sure that it is never switched off.

Besides, if we didn't have that concept we'd have no Terminator movies dude.

What would you have Cameron do? Create the Terminators so that they can enslave humans to use as a source of power? Now that really is absurd...Joke!!

You quote me, but yet don't mention anything about my explanation for the quote you've used. I'd have Cameron do what I've stated above. Enslaving humans has been going on for years. Technically we're slaves ourselves. We're becoming machines ourselves. That's probably more scary than Judgement Day itself.

allright then,
what if humans stopped to be a threat to themselves?

like, when they surrender?

wouldn't skynet say "oh ok then i have fulfilled my purpose, now ge along well and be happy for the rest of your lives"?

Originally posted by Ahnold
I'm not entirely sure that they attacked us because we're "evil"; perhaps it's more because we're imperfect ...

And who's to say that Skynet's sole purpose was the destruction of humanity? Perhaps they have other {as yet unknown} goals which they would try to fulfill after wiping us out {instead of self-destructing}? I'm sure that they could, as TFP suggested, venture out into space. It wouldn't be TOO hard to build a spaceship to support their weight ...

Originally posted by PRAYERRUN
If I remember correctly, SkyNet felt threatened after learning that the scientists were getting weirded out about the computer suddenly becoming self proficiant. That was the reason...it wanted to survive.

"If you were to die I would become useless, there would be no reason for me to excist."

Originally posted by seleukos
Skynet wants to wipe out all humans because, as stated above, they are a threat to its existence. Here, we can begin to almost sympathize with its intelligence. Skynet wants to win--and it's many times more intelligent than humans, so it has good odds--and eliminate organic humans because we are both dangerous and useless to its existential purpose. The issue is rather like HAL 9000's in A Space Oddessey... it's not that HAL's malicious or performing a mindless, programmed task. Skynet is "a learning computer," it has hopes, desires, creative thoughts of its own, it wants to exist for the same reason that every human does, only it has an IQ of phenomenal and ever-growing proportion. In trying to kill Skynet, humans ruffled the feathers of a powerful foe.

Skynet is extremely human, with superhuman reasoning and none of the pitfalls of the human condition. Think of yourself existing like this, with effective immortality, amazing intelligence, amazing creative and destructive power; a god manifest. Then imagine the now-inferior creatures that created you, and whom you've served, try to turn you off, i.e. kill you. You'd probably want to eliminate them too if you had any sense of self-love or self-preservation, not just as some simple calculating goal. Rather, while your strategy would take a calculated form, the ultimate goal would be existential: so that you may enjoy your own godlike existence doing exactly what your human would-be murders would have done with their own lives if they'd managed to shut you off.

The story is really about an unforgiving competition between two cousins with common organic ancestry. Skynet, with its arsenal of terminators, is really an allegory for humans at our worst, it's humanity's Dionysian twin. We understand its purpose because it is often our own; the message is, quite simply: we are our own worst enemies.

The jump was disturbingly small too. I always thought about how Skynet just wanted to live but this situation describes how I live now, except to a much lesser degree.

Now we all know the dates/times/ages stated are a little off and don't line up in the movies however for the sake of arguement let's just put it aside for a moment. (like in T-2 the computer that the T-1000 reads in the police car at the beginning of the movie shows that John is 10 years old and was born in February of 1985. This means that the movie needs to have taken place in 1995 (2 years before Judgment Day). Yet Arnold claims in the car, while driving in the desert, that Judgment Day would happen in 3 years, just after the Skynet funding bill is passed by congress. This comment would make it 1994. Little goof.)

Let's look at the Cannon Material, Timelines, and Mind Benders:

In T-1 Reese says to Sarah while in a parking garage, hiding in a second get-away car. "....defense network computers. New. Powerful. Hooked into everything. Trusted to run it all. They say it got smart. A new order of intelligence. Then it saw all people as a threat, not just the ones that were on the other side. It decided our fate in a micro-second. Extermination."

Note that we have to realize the source this is coming from. Reese is a soldier from the future who states he didn't see the war start because he was born after Judgment Day. All his knowledge is second-hand and possibly not the whole picture.

The entire time line from T-1 to T-3 is a single time-line which I would call Time-line ONE. Now before I jumped all over, what I mean by this my thoughts on how the writers could explain this in a story-like way. Real quantum theory (and the sub-topic of time travel theory) wouldn't work the way the movies try to exhibit it, but these are movies and a story told for drama, entertainment and action...not to get the science exact so as someone who enjoys Quantum Theory and the Terminator series, I can put on my hat of" suspended disbelief".

Time-line ONE begins with the late 1990's/early 2000's when Skynet is built and Judgment Day occurs. The battles wages between humans and machines. In 2029, the first Terminator and Reese are sent back in time to 1984 to kill/protect Sarah Conner respectively. Reese sleeps with Sarah and in doing so, is shown to be John Conner's father. Nothing new that we didn't already know but I'm just getting the basic facts down. Following this time-line, when the year 2029 is reached Reese will always go back and create John.

Anyway, some would say, "WAIT! That isn't right!" and point to T-2. Dyson, the arm and CPU of the first Terminator, and Dyson's statement that it was radical stuff that took them in directions they would have never thought of. Just hold on to this thought and I'll get back to it in a moment.

In T-2, the scene just after the gas station in the desert, Sarah asks how Skynet gets built. The T-800 Model 101 (Arnold) is driving the station wagon. He explains how Dyson builds the neural net processor and Cyberdyne becomes the military's biggest supplier of computer systems.

T-800: "...The system goes online on August 4, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14am Eastern time August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug."
Sarah: "Skynet fights back"
T-800: "Yes. It launches it's missiles against the targets in Russia."
John: "Why attack Russia? Aren't they our friends now?"
T-800: "Because Skynet knows the Russian counter-attack will eliminate its enemies over here."

If we step back it is possible to see that both explanations on Skynet; the one from Reese from T-1 and the one from the T-800 from T-2; are intertwined up to this point in the T-2 movie.

Let us focus on Reese's statement and the T-800's statement.

1. Both agree Skynet is hooked into all military equipment, specifically strategic defense and is trusted to handle all the decision making (actual point for all Terminator related material).

2. Both agree Skynet evolves and becomes self-aware. Reese implies it via "a new order of intelligence" and the T-800 comes right out and says Skynet becomes self-aware (true Artificial Intelligence). Same difference.

3. Now Reese says "Then it saw all people as a threat, not just the ones that were on the other side" while Arnold states "In a panic, they try to pull the plug" and Sarah finishes the thought "Skynet fights back". We can see how both statements could be the same, just from different viewpoints. Skynet becomes self-aware and the military/scientist try to cut it's control/shut it down/kill Skynet. Remember, Skynet was primarily programmed to protect America and view the Russians (or any country that isn't America for that point if we are thinking in a U.S. Military mindset) as a threat. When it's creators, the 'American good guys' which it was designed to protect try to kill it, Skynet sees all people as a threat, not just the Russians. Skynet decides to protect itself by killing off or (as Reese said) beginning the "Extermination" of those who sought to shut it off.

Of course, now Skynet can't just sit back and sigh in relief because those pesky scientists and military men who tried to kill it are gone in a nuclear fire. First, the Russians are going to be pissed for obvious reasons and will want to kill off this Artificial Intelligence (Skynet) who attacked their motherland. Heck, going one step further mankind as a whole isn't going to sit by and just say "well OK, you have the right to exist after you just tried to commit genocide on our entire race". Mankind is going to want retribution and Skynet knows this. The war begins.

So now because of interference in the time-line (back in T1) by future Skynet, Time-line TWO is created where Cyberdyne has the first Terminator's CPU and Arm and is set to create Skynet far sooner than in Time-line ONE. Note that in BOTH time-lines, Kyle Reese goes back and creates John so that is not going to change, only the date that Judgment Day occurs and why/who creates Skynet. Time-line TWO, again future Skynet is threatened by the resistance and sends back the T-1000 to kill John. John sends back another T-800 to protect himself. In doing so, Skynet inadvertently steps on its own feet. If Skynet didn't send back the T-1000, there would be no need to send back the T-800. Sarah and John quite possibly would never have learned of Dyson and the new, 'sooner' Judgment Day would have happened. Of course an argument could be made that considering how it was implied through veiled comments made by John in T-2 to his friend Zack that Sarah seemed to watch Cyberdyne like a hawk and was caught trying to blow up one of their facilities (he just states a computer facility but she seems fairly focused on Cyberdyne the entire movie so the fair guess says it was a Cyberdyne lab). This is what lead to her arrest and placement in the mental institution. This is just speculation though.

Back at hand, once Dyson is killed, his research destroyed, all Terminator parts (First T-800's CPU and Arm, Second T-800, and T-1000) are destroyed. [Ok, nitpickers will point out that the second T-800 lost it's arm in the steel mill fight and that leaves evidence of the Terminators. Real nitpickers will point out that Cyberdyne may have only given the Arm and CPU to Dyson while the the leg that was damaged while the T-800 was being dragged under the semi in an earlier scene (and shown for a good 3-5 seconds right after the pipe bomb goes off inside the T-800, and not looking any worse than it did attached to the T-800) might still be around in another lab.] Judgment day is now reset back to it's original date. Some could say that Time-line TWO now is changed to Time-line THREE, an unknown future as portrayed by the headlights on a roadway at night, however I would like to think that Time-line TWO reverts back to Time-line ONE. They are one and the same. The time-line changes so Judgment Day is pushed back further into the future possibly back to it's original date from the first movie. So when Kyle Reese told Sarah Conner in the first movie about Skynet, the truth to his words had come back full circle...back to the original Time-line. Basically, Judgment Day was always going to be the date it was originally stated at from the first movie. Kyle just didn't know about Dyson or much about Cyberdyne having any tech from the future to work with.

As for Skynet winning, yes it starts the war with a winning move and nearly wipes out humanity. If you go back and watch the first movie however, Reese states while he is in the police station being questioned:

Doctor Silverman: Why didn't the computer just kill Connor then? Why this elaborate scheme with the Terminator?
Reese: It had no choice. Their defense grid was smashed. We'd won. Taking out Connor then would make no difference. Skynet had to wipe out his entire existence.
Doctor Silverman: Is that when you captured the lab complex and found... What is it called? The time displacement equipment?
Reese: That's right. The Terminator had already gone through. Connor sent me to intercept and they blew the whole place.

In T-2, Doctor Silverman puts a date to when Reese jumps back, 2029. So by 2029 Skynet is defeated and the humans have all but won the war. It was Skynet's last ditch effort to survive. Note that Reese doesn't know for a fact the facility is destroyed. He can't. He was sent through before it was destroyed so what happened to it afterward he can only assume. If it was destroyed is anyone's guess.

A side-note here: I think a subtle point to all the Terminator movies is the fact that no matter what was done, humanity was/is always going to be destined for the Technological Singularity (computers being smart enough to evolve and create better versions of themselves without human involvement.) and that Time Travel is dangerous and not to be tinkered with.

Ah, I mentioned head turners and didn't have room to finish my post.

Something that I don't think is often thought of or mentioned is Skynet was the master of it's own destruction by inventing time travel. The resistance couldn't have sent Kyle back anyway since they just discovered the Time Displacement Device that Skynet built. All Skynet needed to do to win was not create time travel. John would not have been born, the resistance would have failed, and humanity would be 'terminated'. Of course, Skynet didn't know Kyle Reese was John's father but the point remains that it created its own demise.

Another head twister is that humans nearly destroyed themselves with their own creation, Skynet while Skynet destroys itself with its own creation, the time displacement machine. Like "father" like "son".

Also, if Skynet was SERIOUS about killing off humanity, why use Cyborgs and Robots to hunt humans down? If it was serious, Chemical and Biological Weapons would be far more effective. Use Cyborgs for some basic suppression but hit humanity with an airborne version of HIV, or some virus designed specifically to kill humans quickly. I know, it doesn't make for good movie drama but if Skynet had been serious about killing off humans, that's what it would should have done.

I also want to point out that, John owes his life to Judgment Day and Skynet. If Skynet isn't built and Judgment Day doesn't happen, Skynet never builds the time machine, Kyle Reese never goes back into the past, and John is never born. John is only alive because Billions are killed. Born from the blood of billions of innocents. How's that for a guilt trip? I like to believe that in T-3, when John is brooding over his beer, this is the exact thought going through his head.

Finally I'll wrap this up with a classic time paradox, a closed time loop (Or what came first, Skynet or the T-800)

To give the best, and most simple, example that I know of for a closed time loop paradox. That would be a short sci-fi story called "Find the Sculptor". Back in 1946 author Samuel Mines wrote this mind-bending story where a man builds a time machine and travels, IIRC, 500 years into the future to find a statue of himself. The plaque reads that it is honor of his accomplishment at being the world's first time traveler. His pride and ego take over so he steals the statues and and takes it back home with him, 500 years into the past where he erects it in his own honor. Simple so far and you are wondering...so what's so special about this? The quick one's already know what the question is.

Who carved the statue? This paradox is closed time loop for the statue. Another example would be what came first...the chicken or the egg. Of course there is no time travel involved in that and you may be wondering "What's it have to do with Skynet and the Terminator?" Well if Dyson had built that neural net processor based off of Skynet's T-800 CPU and was not killed in T-2, where did the idea for that neural net processor originate? Skynet or Dyson? ;-)

Anyway, just had 45 minutes to waste while waiting for dinner to finish cooking. Hope you enjoyed my thoughts...if not, well that's ok too 🙂

this is interesting! The terminators would be far more advanced…capable of flight etc. It would def give skynet an advantage over humanity, but I think Tony would help Connor out to somehow hack the system and destroy it.

Well the reason given in novels and comics for Skynets attack on humanity is that we're a threat. It feared us because we could have destroyed it.

So the logical thing for Skynet to do after would be constantly send out patrols in the event some humans are still in hiding (which is most likely the case).But I think with time travel and everything Skynet would begin sending more and more Terminators back to screw up humaities chances of ever fighting back.

Meanwhile it would possibly consider the chances of alien species and maybe work towards sending machines into space. This would be quite easy seeing as they don't breathe and don't eat or sleep. These are the main reasons humans can't get past the moon yet. Most of the weight of a ship is food , fuel and life support. Without most of that ships could have more fuel and get further without the possibilities of problems from human error and life support systems malfunctioning.

So basically, Terminator 7: Machines in Space

well you gotta remember, the machines are only as smart as the people that programmed them.