So, Skynet launched nukes at Russia, and the Russians nuked America back. Presumably, this would have wiped out any NATO/US Allies and any former Soviet-allies. What about the rest of the world? Is there any discussion in the movies/TV show about Skynet going after them too?
I’m pretty sure that at the end of T3,
you see just about every major city on the planet getting nuked.
Unnecessary; everybody knows that, without America, the rest of the world is going to descend into savagery and barbarism. :rolleyes:
I think that’s hardly relevant. By taking out America and Russia, Skynet eliminates a significant organized military industrial threat. I’m sure the various nations of South America and Africa might cobble together a defense and that it would quickly be overrun by endoskeletons and HKs.
Did Skynet only target Russia?
As I remember from the first or second movie, Skynet only launched missiles against Russia, which naturally retaliated, resulting in World War III.
Just counting ICBMs and SLBMs, the US sports about 5685 warheads. Even committing 6 warheads each to the 108 largest Russian cities leaves over 5000 for the rest of the world.
I had forgotten about that. I suppose Skynet could have retargeted all the ICBMs to take out all the major cities.
From the point of view of John Connor’s brigade, it would probably be difficult to get news from places like India or Brazil once the nukes had gone off. It doesn’t really bother me that we don’t hear about other countries in the movie.
I wonder, though, since Sarah seems to have spent a lot of time in Central America and Mexico, that maybe those areas survive for a period of time before Skynet can get to them.
What about Australia? China is and was a nuclear power at the time, so I assume they were involved in the conflagration by…Oh, Hollywood logic.
But Australia doesn’t and in 1984 didn’t have nuclear weapons, so…we don’t hear anything about nuclear war in the southern hemisphere.
You’re not supposed to ask questions like this about sci fi in movies or books - everyone knows the US is the only country that counts, now or in the future (yeah, I might be a little bitter about being a non-American and 99.99% of the sci fi I’ve read and watched for the last 35 years having the US as the centre of the universe now and forever).
Well, some of it is story.
When the first movie was made, Skynet nuked Russia because Russia was it. (“it” meaning “our only storyline-acceptable nuclear enemy.”)
If that move was made today, Skynet would (have?) nuke(d?) more nations.
According to the third movie, all the events of the first two movies did was push Judgment Day back a few years.
Therefore (and logically), Skynet re-targeted to eliminate not just Russia, but any city with nuclear capability.
If “Terminator” were remade today, Kim Jong-Il would cum his pants (and not just as a stroke-related side effect) if Pyongyang were shown to have been obliterated by Skynet, because, just like a band knows they’ve hit the big time when Weird Al parodies them, a rogue nation knows it’s big-time when James Cameron includes it in his apocalypse.
[sub]thus, when tel aviv goes up on judgment day, the last words of many egyptians was “i KNEW it!!!”[/sub]
I think thats a question you could ask of alot of “apocalypse-based” science fiction. Its universally assumed that once the US (and presumably Europe, USSR, and possibly China) are toast, that life as we know it would collapse into chaos, and post-apocalyptic shenanigans. But they never stop to think about the rest of the world. What about Argentina, South Africa, or Indonesia ? They would presumably survive pretty much unscathed.
I don’t know if anyone has ever used this as a basis for a sci-fi novel. i.e. life in non-western-centric world post WWIII.
Isn’t that pretty much the plot of On the Beach by Nevil Shute? (Although it’s set in Australia, it’s about how the fallout from World War III is devastating the Southern Hemisphere.)
I remember in Alas Babylon, there’s a brief mention that China and India are attempting to negotiate a peace between the US and USSR.
But with Terminator, we might not have the same dynamic. Post-apocolytpic stories assume that the war is between USSR and the US and related allies. But does Skynet want to destroy all people on the planet? Or was it only interested in destroying the US (in order to save itself)?
Obviously, the “Road Warrior” movies take place in the same universe as “Terminator”.
Presuming that Russia, China, Europe and North America are reduced to glowing slag pretty quickly…
Japan has (depending on what source you rely on) either the fifth or fourth largest defense budget in the world, and has focused primarily on defense (as opposed to power projection). Their military is highly advanced, and very well equipped. They are reputed to have large inventories of medium-range missiles, which is believable given the hostility of some of their neighbours (e.g. North Korea lobbing missiles over Japan). Of course, they could be high on SkyNet’s list, too, especially given their ultra-high technology base.
Australia is (as noted above) geographically isolated from most likely targets in a prompt exchange, boasts a well trained military and has sufficient technology, raw materials and [potential] industrial capacity to switch to a serious war-footing should they have the time.
From Skynet’s POV, any nation capable of mobilizing an effective defense (or counter-offense) is a threat, particularly those which have political and cultural ties to Skynet’s primary targets (US and Australia go back a ways, kinda like how the US and UK are generally considered to always have eachothers’ backs in a fight). If Skynet is going on a threat-based targeting assessment, and has access to a very large supply of nuclear weapons, Australia’s major cities are probably toast.
Oh, and those of you who are annoyed that all sci-fi assumes the US is the center of the universe, go enjoy some Anime and Manga, where Tokyo is the key to the defense of Earth (to the point where it’s downright refreshing and endearingly quirky that a show like Gunsmith Cats takes place in Chicago, with an almost entirely American cast of characters). In sci-fi, the alternative seems to be to throw the setting far enough forward where Earth as a whole is considered unimportant. For less Yankee-centric sci-fi, I recommend Honor Harrington, which is Anglophile sci-fi with the only direct analogue to the United States being the Republic of Haven, which spends the first 9 or 10 books as the primary antagonist.
Anyhow, if the US started a nuclear exchange with Russia and China, the response, I understand, would effectively unbalance things throughout most of the world, if only because of how involved our military is in many parts of the world (Western Europe as a whole would be a logical target in a retaliatory attack, who knows what all would be on the list in Asia of a Chines military having to response very quickly to a nuclear attack, eand even if the Middle East isn’t attacked, you still end up with large heavily armed force of confused demoralized men who no longer have any outside support, and that’s likely gonna go badly no matter what.
Actually, that there could be an interesting topic for post-apocalyptic sci-fi, foreign deployed troops having to find ways to survive after a nuclear exchange destroys their home countries
Still, if Japan survives, it’s fun to picture a dystopian future with Termantor endoskeletons and HKs duking it out with Japanese-built mecha.
You’ve got to be kidding. The People’s Republic of Haven is pre-Napoleonic France. Their leader is even named Rob S. Pierre. Up till book 9, it’s clearly based on late 18th century Europe. The USA is not involved at all.
Rob S. Pierre? Oy.
Well, I said the Republic of Haven. Same nation, different government, and of course, it pops up in Book 10. To amend my previous statement, they were stand-ins for the French when they were more or less the official black hat bad guys, and by the time they become the America analogue, they’re more stuck hanging onto a rampaging bull (stay on, be nominally in control, and take the blame, let go, get trampled to death immediately) than they are actually trying to cause problems for Manticore.
Before the latest rendition of the Havenite revolving-door government, the closest America analogues were Grayson and Erewhon. Graysonites are Conservative Christians, they listen to Country Music, play baseball, wear neckties (something nobody else in the known universe does anymore) and practice Japanese style sword fighting (I’m unclear if it’s supposed to be Aikido, Kendo, or something else. Oh, and they’re kinda sorta polygamist.
The Erewhonese are what you get when the Mafia leaves Earth to make their own stake and go legit by becoming their own government, and then end up instituting the strictest law enforcement in the known universe (if you violate the speed limit, they remotely shut down the engine in your aircar. Nobody violates the speed limit.)
Still, my point stands, Honor Harrington, sci-fi where America is not the center of the universe (indeed, the only time they actually GO to America itself is in a spinoff story, and even then they spend most of their time in the sewers. /Digress.