Hnau
Banned
I just watched the older black-and-white version for my film history class. It was surprisingly engaging! I loved it. I guess I'm a sucker for Christian allegory in science fiction. Warning: This thread will feature heavy spoilers!
It's October 1951 and in the last few days shocking events have occurred. Klaatu, an extraterrestrial emissary from an interstellar community of advanced alien civilizations, landed an atomic-power flying saucer in Washington's D.C., was shot at while trying to present a gift to humanity and afterward was medically treated and interrogated at a nearby hospital. There is much excitement and agitation because of his arrival. Klaatu desired an international conference to be organized so he could give his message to the leaders of nations of the world, all at one time. Frustrated with political impediments to the organization of such a conference, Klaatu escapes the hospital and masquerades as "Mr. Carpenter" in order to experience human society. He visits with a leading American scientist, Professor Barnhardt, who agrees to help him assemble a meeting of leading world scientists who would listen to his message. In order to convince humanity of the graveness of the situation, Klaatu re-enters his flying saucer and using technology inside is able to shut off electricity all over the world for thirty minutes. Hospitals and airplanes are not effected. This alarms the entire world. Klaatu is discovered by the military, is shot and killed, but his robot Gort retrieves his body and has it rejuvenated in the flying saucer. Klaatu speaks briefly to about a hundred scientists representing the international community and also the soldiers charged in guarding the dormant flying saucer. His message is that the interstellar community has created a number of robots like Gort with amazing destructive power who are charged with patrolling the inhabited worlds in order to identify and eliminate violence. The interstellar community has been observing humanity, and has been content to leave them to their own internal violent conflicts, but if they expand their violent activities into space, the policing robots will be forced to destroy the Earth. Klaatu and Gort re-enter their flying saucer and fly away.
What alternate timeline would this create? Let's look at a few items of interest:
- It has now been proven that probably many sightings of flying saucers and other UFOs are in fact extraterrestrial visitors, most likely the interstellar robotic police force mentioned by Klaatu. It is implied that these robots often navigate the star systems alone, Klaatu is merely there to communicate his message in order to warn humanity. We can also expect these interstellar craft are powered by some atomic process (fusion drives?) and have great destructive power.
- Klaatu may not have had such humanoid body after all. The human doctors examining him remarked that his body was implausibly identical to those of humans. I think its very likely his body was changed in order to communicate more efficiently with the humans, much like in the 2008 remake. But, it must be assumed that those who inhabit the Alpha Centauri system have a similar body plan to humans, evidenced by the humanoid appearance of Gort. Bilateral, bipedal body plans similar to those of humanity must be prevalent for intelligent life throughout the galaxy, a consequence of convergent evolution.
- Klaatu says that it took him five months to travel 250 million miles... very impressive, but at an average speed of 70,000 mph it would take tens of thousands of years to make the journey to the Solar System from Alpha Centauri. This was probably a mistake by the writers, but I don't want to go against canon. What could explain these figures given by Klaatu? One idea is that there could be some kind of "Warp Point" 250 million miles away, maybe an area where the gravitational effects of the Sun would diminish to the point where a FTL drive is possible. Another possibility is that Klaatu was only awake the last five months of his journey during the de-acceleration phase, in which he covered 250 million miles, but that his ship is capable of much faster top speeds. I'd like to keep with the idea, however, that his ship is powered by atomic energy, perhaps even something like antimatter catalyzed fusion, because this gives him a reason to come to Earth: humans are developing atomic energy, which means they could shortly expand into space. However, it seems unlikely that even advanced versions of a fusion drive would push a space craft much faster than 0.1 c for interstellar distances.
Let's see if STL travel is even possible in this scenario. Okay, a cloaked observation probe in the Solar System deduces that humanity has detonated an atomic bomb in 1945. A tight-beam signal is sent towards Alpha Centauri, which arrives in 1950. Klaatu would have at most one year to get to Earth from Alpha Centauri, an impossible voyage with STL travel. So there must be an FTL drive somewhere.
We've got to assume that some kind of FTL drive is possible, that the technology can be created through the utilization of atomic power, and that it is only functional at about 3.7 AUs from our Sun. Stars with larger masses might have even larger no-FTL zones. I'm imagining some kind of gravitometric generator that relies on a high amounts of energy which could be produced only through advanced fusion, which could in turn create not only artificial gravity but a field that would "pop a spaceship out of regular, three-dimensional space itself" in a process that this article hints is somewhat theoretically possible.
So, observation craft picked up evidence that humans had detonated an atomic bomb, they warped to Alpha Centauri, then Klaatu warped back into the Solar System, traveled from 3.7 AU to Earth in five months. The probe leaves in August 1945 after the the Hiroshima explosion confirms findings from the Trinity test that humanity has mastered rudimentary atomic power. It arrives at Alpha Centauri A about April 1948, tight-beams the info to the habitable planet there (~1.25 AU from the star), a decision is made to send Klaatu. Klaatu travels passed no-FTL zone, warps to the Solar System, hibernates on the way there, arrives in-system around April 1951, travels five months to Earth and lands in Washington D.C. around October 1951. What does this all mean? Klaatu's fusion-powered FTL drive can attain average speeds up to perhaps 2 c.
That's coming from a civilization that has mastered the technology. Perhaps humanity's first experiments create engines much less efficient and it must be perfected over long periods of time, but even with spacecraft using engines 10% as efficient, an aggressive humanity could conceivably travel to nearby star systems and take part in violent action. The interstellar community would have good reason to be frightened and send such a rapid response to the Earth after having discovered their development of atomic power. Also, it must be relatively easy to build this drive, perhaps it is just beyond our current 2012 level of technology... otherwise, why wouldn't the aliens take a bit more of their sweet time to give us this warning?
- Interestingly enough, humanity wouldn't be aware of FTL drives or no-FTL zones immediately. I think Klaatu dropped enough hints that scientists could figure it out after some hypothesizing and testing. But initially, it is assumed that Klaatu came from Venus or Mars, according to the American radio. Humanity has no idea these planets are inhabitable. This could create more of a motivation to send probes to these planets to discover if there is life there.
- Only a hundred scientists and some American soldiers were there for Klaatu's Speech. Looking at the footage, it looks unlikely that there were cameras rolling. Would audio-recorders be small enough at this point that they'd be easy to conceal? If so maybe some of the scientists were carrying audio recorders and picked up the speech, but if not, the scientists and soldiers will be incredibly important as witnesses to Klaatu's warning. The scientists were said to be "the best in their fields from the international community", but they arrived very quickly in Washington D.C. Klaatu gave Dr. Barnhardt only two days to assemble the meeting. That's very little time to send invites and organize transportation. I think its likely that only a couple of the scientists were from the Communist bloc, as communication between the scientific communities divided by the Cold War was difficult at that time. Most were probably American scientists. With little corroborating evidence and observation by Russian scientists, Stalinist Russia could deny the speech as a hoax, a capitalist ruse. Even in the United States of America, many will create different theories about Klaatu and his warning. It's undeniable that he arrived here in an advanced interstellar craft and that he stopped electricity worldwide for half an hour, but perhaps the scientists are bluffing about Klaatu's real intentions! With more than a hundred individuals to testify, it would be hard to cast doubt, but doubt will be cast, especially by those outside of the United States and the Western bloc.
I expect that these scientists will organize under the leadership of Dr. Barnhardt to defend their claims and become proponents for world peace and the peaceful development of technology, lest the Earth be destroyed. People will inevitably listen to and heed their message, more and more as time passes, but initially it may not be so.
- How will the visitation of the Earth from beyond affect technology and especially the Space Race? I mentioned before that humanity will be at first more motivated to send exploratory probes to Mars and Venus. What else? Atomic power has been confirmed to be very useful in interstellar travel, so plans for nuclear thermal rockets might be developed sooner and more money would be invested into these projects.
Scientists would be divided on the proper course of action. Should humanity wait until it grows out of its violent tendencies before sending spacecraft out? If humanity remains violent and develops the technology Klaatu's race feared it would, the Earth would be destroyed. It might be a good idea to stall space technology development until political problems are solved. Others, however, will point to the visitation as proof that space travel is possible and other civilizations are doing it rather easily, so we should get into space as soon as possible! They would argue that these robotic police patrols will only destroy the Earth if they take violent action against other worlds... as long as we keep our space craft from going to other systems, we should be fine. Heck, we could even fight wars between each other in our own solar system, after all, didn't Klaatu say that his civilization wasn't concerned with their own internal violent squabbles? And shouldn't space be militarized as soon as possible to defend from possible threats by these robotic police patrols?
The result, I believe, would be a polarizing effect on those scientists that believe in Klaatu's message. The majority faction would advocate peaceful development in space but would hold back against nuclear propulsion and even manned exploration of the planets until violence on Earth has been eliminated. The minority faction, still influential I would assume, would believe it is more important to build up defenses against this new threat, just in case, to give humanity a fighting chance, and that there is no reason why they should hold back on technological development as long as they don't send ships to other inhabited worlds.
More students would be interested in space-based technologies, too, because of the events of The Day the Earth Stood Still. That would whip up the public imagination like the Apollo landings never did. More scientists would thus enter those fields. If the government devotes more attention to these technologies, and more funding, then there will be more drawing hearts and minds to the industry.
The development of space exploration technologies will no doubt be accelerated in whatever case following the 1951 visitation, at first mostly in the United States, followed eventually by the rest of the world.
- What political developments would occur because of Klaatu's message? Most of the scientists who heard it were American, Klaatu visited the capital the United States of America, and was interrogated by Americans. Americans, as such, will be influenced by this message earlier and to more of a degree than any other country. There is now a group of a hundred individuals, the best minds of Western civilization and a few other cultures, who are active proponents of world peace... lest we all be destroyed. That's a powerful message. How might this affect the ongoing Korean War? What about this period of the Cold War? How would this influence future elections?
There's no doubt in my mind that, if anything, the 1951 visitation of Earth by Klaatu will encourage pacifistic government policies and pacifistic movements. If anything, we can assume that American policy will eventually start leaning towards more pacifism and conciliation with others. Eventually, the whole world will be influenced to one degree or another to be more critical of wars and violent activity. The Cold War will cool off faster and detente will begin sooner and most likely be longer lasting, perhaps even permanent. Perhaps when Kruschev begins the period of de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union, he might throw light on the issue of Klaatu's message and accept it for more than an American trick. Who knows what might be possible because of this, but I think the results can only be positive for world peace.
Any other ideas? Would anyone like to see a timeline made from this?
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Have you guys seen the original film? For early sci-fi it is really quite good, even sixty years after its production.
