I loved Signs. It is the only movie that ever really scared me. I never
get scared watching a movie. Startled, sure, but never scared or
terrified. Signs did that to me.

Picking apart things in WOTW or Signs is unneseccary. It’s fiction.
the enjoyment of the movie isn’t dependant on it all making sense to
us. The point in Signs ws that the aliens were primitive, meat eating,
predators, not invading, but raiding for food. The LAST thing we
expected “Advanced” aliens to be doing. The faith aspect to it was
great. Everything happens for a reason. It annoyed some people,
sure, but I liked it. Interesting little “things” thrown into the story.

Spoilers for WOTW

War of the worlds was similar. Why did the aliens wait until we had
microprocessors, f-16’s, tanks and anti-tank missles? Why didn’t they
do it a hundred years ago? How could they have “missed” all the
bacteria? Why did the shields go down when they got sick?

Maybe they wanted to wait till we spread ourselves around the globe,
so they could have more food and fertlizer. Maybe they decided to
invade a thousand years ago, but it took that long to get here.
Maybe they just missed one form of bacteria, out of trillions, that they
couldn’t deal with. Can’t plan for everything. Maybe the tripods were
connected to them, and operated like an extension of them(they
looked like them) an dwhen sick, the tripods got sick. they were
partially organic, and filled with fluid, so maybe…

Regardless, there’s no way to tell. They were kept alien. We don;’t
even know where they were from. their motivations, origins and
details of their plans are kept unknown. If we were in Tom Cruise’s
situation, we’d know just as much.

Those were some evil alien ba$tards, weren’t they? I thought the
alien designs were too much like stuff we’ve seen before (ID4 alien
heads), but the tripods were cool.

The placement of the turret gives it the greatest possible rang eof
movement. It protrudes a bit, so it can be fired back a few degrees, as
well as anywhere ahead of th eaircraft. If placed on top, targets slightly
below the aircraft would be hard to hit, plus, the wings , tail and vertical
stabilizer would be in the way.

There is zero probability of the beam being obstructed by any part of the
aircraft.

It is clearly areodynamically superior in the nose of the aircraft, rather
than a bump that distrubs the airflow over the body.

It allows the optics to be more straightforward. the components of the
laser are straight, and do not need to be directed 90degrees, maximizing
beam effeciency.

And they can shoot downwards as well…if they want to.

The ABL would probably only work for low orbit spy sattelites. Things
in geosynch are tens of thousands of miles up, and not likely to be
unshielded from radiation. Still, several seconds of laser radiation might
be enough to damage sensors and transmitters, or photo cells.

The AL-1 will probably not have much of a problem traking aircraft. At
such distances, the beam will have to move in very tiny increments to
fllow a fast moving, manuvering target.

Ballistic missles in the boost phase are simple – straight up. Even if
they’re moving faster, they’re very predictable. A manuvering fighter will
be slower, for sure, but harder to track. Different targets.

A cruising fighter, unaware of the AL’s presence is another matter. It
would be an easy target. This all hinge son the identification, ranging,
tracking lasers firing duration prior to the main blaster. If it takes more
than a few seconds to identifiy, range and prep a target, any fighter with
an IR sensor is going to be made aware pretty quickly.

Also of importanace is the vulnerability of the targets. A fighter might be
writen off if certain parts are hit for even a short period of time. A pilot
would be wounded very badly, and probably blinded by just a short
exposure to such a high intensiy beam. IR seekers on missles and
sensors on the plane would be likely destroyed, as would any optical
sensors. I wonder what firing time is required to actually cause structural
damage to the average airframe.

Yes I’ve heard of the Hawker hurricane, but that’s besides the point –
there’s the Eurofighter Typhoon already – why have two redundantly
named aircraft operational at the same time?

Hurricane is an awesome name, but I wouldn’t use it if it were going to be
serving alongside something named Typhoon, even if such was the case in
WWII.

It’ll be the Eurofighter Typhoon, the F-35 Hurricane, the B-XX Tropical
Storm, the U-XX Tropical Depression, The J-XXCyclone… Whirlwind,
Tropical Wave…

How about Thunderstorm?

The official name isn’t too important, the US pilots will name it
themselves. I wonder what they’re calling the raptor.

The reason NK wants nukes is because Kim Il wants nukes. That’s it.
He’s got a massive inferiority complex, and doesn’t want to have to listen
to anyone. If he has nukes, he feels people will have to listen to him.

He has spent billions on the army, and his palaces, and buildings that do no
good for the people. He’s created a brainwashed, poor populace unable
to care for themselves. They are dependant on whatever meager handouts
the government gives them, and susceptable to whatever propaganda the
government forces unto them. They are then made to believe their
troubles are all caused by the US, because we don’t want to give them
money and food. Which is true – we don’t want to, because we know he’ll
use whatever we give him for “eivl” building reactors to make bombs, food
to feed him military, money to buy weapons.

Kim Jong Il is an a$$hole. He has made it a point to brag about nuclear
weapons. That’s why I don’t worry about him too much – he wants it to
be known that he’s got them. he wants to use them as a bargainng tool,
not to destroy a neighboring country. He migth be crazy, but he knows
what happens if you nuke an ally of the US.

That said, the biggest problem we’d face if war broke out would be
artillery and ballistic missles. They’ve got a hell of a lot pointed at SK, and
they will undoubtedly get a few shots out of each unit before we can jdam
it. The best cure for the artillery is to have locations targets by SDB’s,
loaded in B1’s or B2’s, and let loose. Each plane can carry around 200 of
the things.

Well, if they’re getting cyotes, then that’s ok.

I get nervous around bigdogs that show aggressive tendancies. Not
nervous around them , actually, but knowing they’re there. I’d actually be
more nervous around a 50% wolf than a 90% wolf – from what I’ve heard,
they’re more “consistent”. Wolf genetics are pretty solid, dog genetics are
wolf genetics inbred for thousands of years. The WORST animals are
fighting dogs, pitbulls, etc. that have been bred from instable lines. Extra
points if they were raised to fight.

It’s not just how dogs are raised. You can take a good dog and raise it to
be bad, but ther’es little you can do to make a really badly bred dog
“safe”. I’ve seen some pit bulls raised with loving care from puppies, then
turn around and kill a bunch of cats they were raised with, or snap at their
owner. My uncle had one that they had to literally chain to the house’s
foundation to keep it from hurting someone.
Most pit bulls are pretty good, friendly dogs. Sad thing is that many many
of them are irresponsibly bred. The breeders breed for aggressive
tendancies and bad dispositions. These little puppies are responsible for a
lot of bad press about pits.

I’v epet wolves, and as long as you act a certain way, they’re cool with
you. I’ve pet pit bulls and other breeds that were ok one minute, then
they’de just change their mind and bite. Wolves have natural instincts,
dogs can have a very confused set of instincts.

Crawled under a fence? Shouldn’t they be better contained? That’s the
kind of thing that gets ingorant people pissed off about exotic animals.

I have no problem with people owning wolves, hybrids, even lions and
tigers (which a few people in our county DO own), but they need to be
contained, even if only for their protection.

Some of our neighbors are a little too lax with with their dogs. Big dogs,
they let them run loose to crap in the neighborhood. If they were to attack
my dog, let alone threaten my family, they’d get at least one, I’ll kill them
on the spot. Nevermind wolves, which have a higher prey-drive than the
average large dog.

Be careful with those suckers, if you **** off your neighbors with them,
you’ll be helping the a$$holes in Peta or the humane Society get them
banned.

We had a guy in Raleigh a few years back. Had a tiger in his backyard.
this guy had no training, no intelligence, and ruined it for the rest of us. It –
unexpectedly – got very large and aggressive ( I know, who’d have
thought?), so he kept it chained up in his backyard, in a small enclosure.
Well, when his little kid got too close, and was killed, he blew it away.
this, expectedly, got the attention of prety much everybody, and now “big
cats” are no longer legal in Wake county. It’s also helped start Bill 1032,
which proposed to ban anything considered “inherently dangerous” , which
includes tigers, bears, wolves, caracals and servals(which we had), and
any snake that is venomous or can exceed 7 feet. It took a lot of bitching
and moaning to stop this bill, and it still might resurface.

They took down a goat? That’s scary… funny in a way, but scary.
Did they have to tear through a rabbit cage to get at the bunny?
determined suckers.