# In a real life Terminator 1 and 2 situation, would the terminators be widely accepted or be regarded as a conspiracy theory **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 2, 2021, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-real-life-terminator-1-and-2-situation-would-the-terminators-be-widely-accepted-or-be-regarded-as-a-conspiracy-theory/947810 "2021-08-02T02:12:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2021, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-real-life-terminator-1-and-2-situation-would-the-terminators-be-widely-accepted-or-be-regarded-as-a-conspiracy-theory/947810/21 "2021-08-03T17:40:56Z")
Sarah might have been lost in the bureaucratic shuffle after 1 - some agent in charge may have made a command decision to have her declared insane rather than go through a bunch of paperwork and permissions to relocate and protect her. Plausible, if obviously dumb, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2021, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-real-life-terminator-1-and-2-situation-would-the-terminators-be-widely-accepted-or-be-regarded-as-a-conspiracy-theory/947810/22 "2021-08-03T17:45:52Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > (The idea that the cyborg would have ended up as the property of some newish private firm is a big flaw in the continuity between the two timelines, though it’s pretty easy to handwave this one (military contracts, yadda yadda yadda).) There’s a [deleted scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMSpmIYjXAg#t=9m9s) from T1 where the owner of the company where the final battle occurred finds a computer chip and gives it to an engineer for R&D. Then they pull back to show the name of the company is “Cyberdyne Systems.” ---
**Author:** ![eschrodinger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschrodinger/32/122_2.png) [@eschrodinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschrodinger)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2021, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-real-life-terminator-1-and-2-situation-would-the-terminators-be-widely-accepted-or-be-regarded-as-a-conspiracy-theory/947810/23 "2021-08-03T18:00:56Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > in the movie he is shot in the face repeatedly and it exposes the metal skeleton underneath. since Arnold was on a no kill order, every cop who saw it would survive to give eyewitness testimony. So that would provide the explanation: he was wearing some kind of new face armor covered by a disguise. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2021, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-real-life-terminator-1-and-2-situation-would-the-terminators-be-widely-accepted-or-be-regarded-as-a-conspiracy-theory/947810/24 "2021-08-03T18:03:44Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > The idea that the cyborg would have ended up as the property of some newish private firm is a big flaw in the continuity between the two timelines, though it’s pretty easy to handwave this one (military contracts, yadda yadda yadda I always felt that the situation implied that the factory owners found the remains inside the press and spirited them away before anyone was the wiser. They would have had time. The police would have showed up for the tanker explosion. They may not have even noticed the factory break-in until the owners themselves called it in. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2021, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-real-life-terminator-1-and-2-situation-would-the-terminators-be-widely-accepted-or-be-regarded-as-a-conspiracy-theory/947810/25 "2021-08-03T18:06:40Z")
I remember that! I also remember thinking this company had more steam and hydraulic presses than one would expect for a company named ‘Cyberdyne’. But let’s go further and accept the deleted scene as canon: 1. Cyberdyne can’t file an insurance claim for compensation ($) 2. They must still pay to fix all the repairs ($) 3. They now need to start a R&D division in something they weren’t focused on before, which takes ($$$) 4. They lose revenue while the machinery is being repaired ($) They really have no choice but to become an acquisition target… BUT! This is the era of junk bonds! In 1985, Cyberdyne execs can go see Michael Milken right there on Wilshire Blvd, float some 19%-yield bonds, and become high-flying participants in the Predator’s Ball, Milken’s annual business conference. But for what? Cyborgs? That’s not what Milken was about, to be honest. He wasn’t a product visionary, he was a finance visionary who had no problems fucking you out of your company: as he once famously said to one CEO of a Fortune 500 company who complained about Milken’s high-handed attitude - ‘We own $500,000,000 of your bonds and if you miss one interest payment, I’ll convert it to stock and take your company away.’ Cyberdyne doesn’t want to get into business with a man like that. Let’s just say I’m highly confident. (I also don’t want to contemplate a world where future Trump-supporter and pardonee Michael Milken has a monopoly on cyborgs.) No, Cyberdyne might have headed north to the Bay area, knowing that the ‘venture capital/university research’ model as developed at Stanford by Frederick Terman, et al, was a better model for R&D funding allowing the company to remain in the founders hands. So 1997-Arnold likely needed to change his destination, as Cyberdyne no doubt moved to Palo Alto. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2021, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-real-life-terminator-1-and-2-situation-would-the-terminators-be-widely-accepted-or-be-regarded-as-a-conspiracy-theory/947810/26 "2021-08-03T18:45:12Z")
All right, so let’s look at 1997 Cyberdyne. What do we know? 1. They have survived as a business entity for 13 years after the “incident” 2. They are open about their presence - their headquarters isn’t some office in a dingy office park, they have a lovely glass building with grounds and signage. 3. They do have an R&D department and are on the right track to bring about T2 world. 4. From what I can tell, the office is a minimum 3 stories high: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/6OR68gQgWDQ/maxresdefault.jpg "Terminator 2: Police Attack l The Best Quality 4K") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OR68gQgWDQ) 1. Guys, I’m gonna give a guesstimate… so we don’t really _know_ this… that there are 200 employees in this building. 2. Currently, a manufacturing concern averages about $200,000 in annual revenue per employee-year, while a tech company commonly averages $1,000,000/per. 3. Another guesstimate: I’m going to assume $300k. They’re tech, but they’re manufacturers of tech. Also: I am not adjusting for inflation. Therefore, Cyberdyne is a… minimum… $60m/year (2021 equivalent) operation. The question is: How do they generate their revenues? Because I know that, after 13 years… thirteen years… they haven’t done _JACK SHIT_ regarding: 1. “Cyborging” the police 2. “Cyborging” the military 3. “Cyborging” their very own, very public, very vulnerable, office Some hydraulic press manufacturer somehow gets a futuristic military cyborg in 1984, builds themselves to a minimum of a 200-person company within 15 years, and they don’t even have a “weapons” or “military” or “police” division? Really? And how do I know this? Not a damn thing popped out to fight Arnold in 1997 that really didn’t exist in real-world 1992. Nothing! No cybercops, no cyberweapons, nothing. Just, really, just what you would expect in our world in this situation… but we’re not in our world, we’re in a movie where the existence of military-grade cyborgs has been studied for 13 years. So I’m really interested as to how they’re getting $60,000,000 a year in revenue if they didn’t go the obvious route of sweet, sweet, government cash via their _from-the-future military cyborg lottery ticket_. Are they still making car parts or whatever they were doing before Arnold and Sarah canceled their factory? Gonna drop this here: > **[The Oral History of ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’](https://www.theringer.com/movies/2021/6/30/22555687/terminator-2-judgement-day-t2-oral-history)** > > Three decades ago, James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Linda Hamilton joined forces again to make the biggest, baddest, most eye-popping sequel ever. Here’s the story of how the machines took over Hollywood. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2021, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-real-life-terminator-1-and-2-situation-would-the-terminators-be-widely-accepted-or-be-regarded-as-a-conspiracy-theory/947810/27 "2021-08-03T18:51:54Z")
Lastly, given that T1 had mechanical cyborgs and T2 had metallic liquid cyborgs, could it be argued that T1 made things worse for humanity? ---
**Author:** ![DWMarch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwmarch/32/1010_2.png) [@DWMarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DWMarch)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2021, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-real-life-terminator-1-and-2-situation-would-the-terminators-be-widely-accepted-or-be-regarded-as-a-conspiracy-theory/947810/28 "2021-08-03T21:07:00Z")
Yes, this has been shown consistently over the course of the franchise. Skynet is winning. Every victory by the Connor crew sets Skynet back just enough that when it does inevitably emerge it is even deadlier than last time. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2021, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-real-life-terminator-1-and-2-situation-would-the-terminators-be-widely-accepted-or-be-regarded-as-a-conspiracy-theory/947810/29 "2021-08-03T22:27:11Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > The question is: > > How do they generate their revenues? > > Because I know that, after 13 years… thirteen years… they haven’t done _JACK SHIT_ regarding: > > 1. “Cyborging” the police > 2. “Cyborging” the military > 3. “Cyborging” their very own, very public, very vulnerable, office > > Some hydraulic press manufacturer somehow gets a futuristic military cyborg in 1984, builds themselves to a minimum of a 200-person company within 15 years, and they don’t even have a “weapons” or “military” or “police” division? Really? > > And how do I know this? Not a damn thing popped out to fight Arnold in 1997 that really didn’t exist in real-world 1992. Nothing! No cybercops, no cyberweapons, nothing. Just, really, just what you would expect in our world in this situation… but we’re not in our world, we’re in a movie where the existence of military-grade cyborgs has been studied for 13 years. > > So I’m really interested as to how they’re getting $60,000,000 a year in revenue if they didn’t go the obvious route of sweet, sweet, government cash via their _from-the-future military cyborg lottery ticket_. I’d figured that the idea was, they churn out computer processors — maybe the best processors in the world, for certain values of ‘best’ — and instead of ‘cyborging’ the police or the military or their own security forces, they aren’t really doing much of _anything_ in the way of reverse-engineering ‘punchy’ stuff from a futuristic robot arm; they’re just plugging away, for sweet sweet Pentagon dollars, at creating _thinky_ stuff that goes inside computers. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2021, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-real-life-terminator-1-and-2-situation-would-the-terminators-be-widely-accepted-or-be-regarded-as-a-conspiracy-theory/947810/30 "2021-08-03T23:43:14Z")
Not with Pentagon dollars they wouldn’t. Those people are rather insistent about “bang for megabuck.” The first things they would be ordered to do would be to build weaponry, if not a complete Mobile Infantry Marauder suit. “Thinky” later. “Kill Something” yesterday. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2021, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-real-life-terminator-1-and-2-situation-would-the-terminators-be-widely-accepted-or-be-regarded-as-a-conspiracy-theory/947810/31 "2021-08-03T23:49:22Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Not with Pentagon dollars they wouldn’t. Those people are rather insistent about “bang for megabuck.” The first things they would be ordered to do would be to build weaponry, if not a complete Mobile Infantry Marauder suit. “Thinky” later. “Kill Something” yesterday Would you settle for _hey, nice piece of aircraft you’ve got, there; how’d you like to remove the human pilot who needs a life-support system, replace him with a killer that reacts faster and doesn’t pass out at high Gs?_ ---
**Author:** ![Tzigone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Tzigone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tzigone)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2021, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-real-life-terminator-1-and-2-situation-would-the-terminators-be-widely-accepted-or-be-regarded-as-a-conspiracy-theory/947810/32 "2021-08-03T23:54:43Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Sarah might have been lost in the bureaucratic shuffle after 1 - some agent in charge may have made a command decision to have her declared insane rather than go through a bunch of paperwork and permissions to relocate and protect her. Plausible, if obviously dumb, IMO. That’s a pretty hard sell to me if they have the cyborg remains and have the reports from the police station about the future (can’t recall what survived). That’s very strong evidence that what Kyle said was true, and her child is the savior of the human race. I have trouble seeing the sort of incompetence that would risk losing track of her by not having constant guard. I mean, I guess never underestimate incompetence, but still… I do think once she delivered a boy, it’s likely he would be taken from her to be raised and trained and such. Which would, of course, be an absolutely stupid move, since him being raised and trained by Sarah was apparently a success, but somehow that sort of arrogant incompetence seems so much more plausible to me. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2021, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-real-life-terminator-1-and-2-situation-would-the-terminators-be-widely-accepted-or-be-regarded-as-a-conspiracy-theory/947810/33 "2021-08-03T23:55:53Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Would you settle for _hey, nice piece of aircraft you’ve got, there; how’d you like to remove the human pilot who needs a life-support system, replace him with a killer that reacts faster and doesn’t pass out at high Gs?_ And reality comes full circle. > **[Boeing making DARPA VTOL X-Plane with all electric drive that power ducted...](https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2014/06/boenig-making-darpa-vtol-x-plane-with.html)** > > DARPA will have conceptual design reviews for four vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) X-Plane contenders in the coming weeks. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-real-life-terminator-1-and-2-situation-would-the-terminators-be-widely-accepted-or-be-regarded-as-a-conspiracy-theory/947810.md?page=1)