War of the Worlds WI

[Doctor What]

Ok--most of you have seen the new movie. There's been some mixed reviews about it but I personally rather enjoyed it.

A few have complained about how ridiculous the 'energy shields' were or how the aliens were stupid enough to expose themselves to bacteria.

Sooooo...

WI WotW Scenario:

Same as the movie--aliens invade Earth and start trashing the place. Two differences:

-No Indestructable Energy Shields. They're heavily armoured and still have all the weapons that they have in the movie, but they CAN be destroyed (albeit not without a LOT of firepower)

-They don't die from disease. They're going to keep fighting down to the last Tripod.

Numbers: Assume that one Tripod shows up for every 500,000 population that exists in your country. Also assume that major cities and military bases are the primary targets (at least during the first few days of the attack).

Questions:
-How does your country/state/province/city do?
-Does the world survive?
-Will all the tripods be destroyed eventually?
-Can some countries/regions become a foothold for the aliens?
-What happens afterwards?

 

[zoomar]

OK, there would be about 5-6 tripods in Oklahoma. We are home to two major air bases with some combat aircraft always present- usually B52s, B1s and a few B2s undergoing routine maintenance at Tinker AFB in OKC, as well as ANG F-16's. The army's main artillery training base is also in the state. I think there is enough military hardware in Oklahoma to handle a handful of tripods if they are only heavily armored. I'd guess about 100,000-300,000 immediate civilian casualties, mostly in the two main cities, Oklahoma City and Tulsa. I would presume that, without force fields, the tripods would have to spend most of their time actually fighting planes and tanks for the first few days rather than methodically exterminating people.

There would be about 600 tripods in the USA. I suspect that most of the smaller states - which often are over-represented with military basis would survive, but the losses on both coasts would be horrible. But the USA certainly has enough weaponry (assuming it's over here and not in Iraq!) to survive.

I'd suspect that most developed nations with efficient and effective modern militaries would do as well as the USA (Europe, Japan, Russia, etc), as would low-populated but advanced nations like Australia and Canada.. Other countries with effective militaries like China and India might have real problems, given the huge number of tripods they'd be up against. Underdeveloped countries with armies limited mainly to infantry and light armor with a few helicopters and old soviet jets (read "Africa and most of south and central America") would devastated. They might not survive until the bigger countries could mop up the tripods in their own countries and lend an hand. Or, alien losses might be so low in these areas that they would have enough reserves to defeat the remaining planes, tanks, and ships of the developed world and still win the war.

It would be a close thing, unless the major powers were willing to use nukes -very likely they would in the last scenario - the detonations would not be in Europe, North America or much of Asia and the local populations might already be largely destroyed by the aliens. If we use nukes, the Aliens are toast. There are plenty to go around and the tripods are likely to be deployed in close enough proximity to each other (they seemed to work in groups in the movie) that a single blast would probably take out several at a time. Also, it is almost certain that smaller powers with nukes, or overpopulated powers like China and India which may not have enough conventional forces to kill all the tripods attacking them will use nukes as things get desperate.

My head hurts trying to imagine what the aftermath would be like - probably a huge decline in civilization, mass starvation, and maybe the extinction of humanity anyway. But we'll have killed those blood sucking body mashing bastards first! I don't think any sort of coexistence with these aliens would be on the table anywhere. They are most decidedly NOT the Race.

 

[Count Dearborn]

According to the book, the "Martians" were blood drinkers. When their "cattle" started to die, they started into the sampling the native flora, us. Weren't the shields in the original book? It just meant that one had to fire more then one volley of cannon at the Tripods. They just have to make sure that the cattle don't get sick, and stay away from the humans.

 

[Doctor What]

It's been a very long while since I read the book but I distinctly remember that the Tripods in the book didn't have shields but were still nevertheless very tough to kill--although not impossible.

The Thunder Child ship managed to take out two (three?) of the tripods before getting destroyed and there were a few scenes IIRC where the British forces were actually destroying a few--but it was with appalling losses-- a la for every tripod they killed, they lost ~10,000 soldiers.

Zoomar: I like your analysis. I suspect that the bulk of the casulaties (at least in the more militarily advanced countries) will occur during the initial attack when everyone's caught off-guard. Once a few of the bases figure out what's going on, the message to 'Take out the bastards at all costs' will be very quickly transmitted to the rest of the forces.

What I'm curious about is just how effective the counterattacks are going to be--it's going to take a while to mobilize and coordinate all the surviving forces. Add in the literally millions of panicky refugees and the communication and power disruptions from those EMPs and I suspect that there are going to be some areas of the country where the Tripods could run around unopposed for days....

 

[Justin Pickard]

Okay, this might seem too obvious, but couldn't you just string some wire cables between two trees, then lure them and trip them over?

 

[Fellatio Nelson]

What did they do in the BBC series Tripods?

All I remember from that was a chap called Beanpole, people were 'capped' and they ended up in France.

I assume this was a bit of a rip-off from WotW?

 

[Superdude]

It was actually a trilogy of books first, and yes it seems that it was a rip-off of War of the Worlds.

However, the aliens were more like: We need the population under our control, not to exterminate them and eat them.

Those books were not as good as the HG Wells.

 

[Nik]

'Elephant Traps' ??

Culverts, sewers, utility 'manholes' etc, even drain gratings would be a problem for anything perched on three legs.

Exceed the covers' loading, and break a leg...

Or, can we assume they'll add ground-penetrating radar after a few dozen losses ??

There's lots of geology that would be impassable due miring, sink-holes, old mine-fields etc etc.

Medieval defence tactics may work: to protect against siege towers, you'd bury large pots, old barrels etc outside wall. Hmm: Improvised explosive devices could be a nuisance underfoot.

I don't relish getting close enough to fire 'chain shot', but tangle-foot nets could prove a nuisance. Walking with a great square of re-bar mesh on your leg is bound to be clumsy...

 

[Civilizer]

hmmm, we'd (Chile) have some 30 tripods, and most will be near Santiago (10 of them), so the ones in the regions would be more easily dealt with, considering most of our military is there. Enough of our popultation is on the coast, so our navy will be able to help, and although our army and air force is small, its pretty modern (that's the balance against the peruvians and argentines at least, they out number us like 3 to 1, but we have more quality. Our armed forces prefer quality over quantity). However, the capital with 10 tripods will be dead, maybe we can get some 2 or 3 out, but i dont think we'd have enough forces there. We could escape to the mountains, and hide behind our luckily placed costal range. The north would win quickly, becaus of large concentration of military but little population.

 

[Justin Pickard]

Culverts, sewers, utility 'manholes' etc, even drain gratings would be a problem for anything perched on three legs.

Exceed the covers' loading, and break a leg...

Or, can we assume they'll add ground-penetrating radar after a few dozen losses ??

There's lots of geology that would be impassable due miring, sink-holes, old mine-fields etc etc.

Medieval defence tactics may work: to protect against siege towers, you'd bury large pots, old barrels etc outside wall. Hmm: Improvised explosive devices could be a nuisance underfoot.

I don't relish getting close enough to fire 'chain shot', but tangle-foot nets could prove a nuisance. Walking with a great square of re-bar mesh on your leg is bound to be clumsy...

So, we'd all end up living on houses on stilts in the middle of swampland.

 

[DominusNovus]

Culverts, sewers, utility 'manholes' etc, even drain gratings would be a problem for anything perched on three legs.

Exceed the covers' loading, and break a leg...

Or, can we assume they'll add ground-penetrating radar after a few dozen losses ??

There's lots of geology that would be impassable due miring, sink-holes, old mine-fields etc etc.

Medieval defence tactics may work: to protect against siege towers, you'd bury large pots, old barrels etc outside wall. Hmm: Improvised explosive devices could be a nuisance underfoot.

I don't relish getting close enough to fire 'chain shot', but tangle-foot nets could prove a nuisance. Walking with a great square of re-bar mesh on your leg is bound to be clumsy...

Well, the feet are a bit larger than a manhole cover. They're larger than your average automobile, IIRC.

If they're well armored, improvised explosives probably won't be enough.

As for re-bar, the tentacles could probably just take it off.

 

[DominusNovus]

Okay, this might seem too obvious, but couldn't you just string some wire cables between two trees, then lure them and trip them over?

I'm guessing the trees or the wire would just snap. Assuming the tripods didn't see them.

 

[Codeman]

no offense but suicide bombers would be very useful against them...

 

[Superdude]

Do I know you from somehwere, Codeman?

And yes, suicide bombers would be massively effective.

 

[Codeman]

lol not that i know of

 

[Diamond]

We could escape to the mountains, and hide behind our luckily placed costal range.

That's a very good thought. It seems like the Tripods would be a lot more unwieldy walking up jagged mountainsides. Probably apply the same situation to the Rockies, Alps, Himalayas, etc.

My home, southern California, would be screwed. I'm not going to crunch numbers, but there'd be hundreds of Tripods. We've got a lot of military bases here, but anymore it seems that most of them are reserves bases, with less-than up-to-date materiel. The civilian casualties would be... staggering. My youngest brother is stationed at Edwards AFB; I think he'd die pretty quickly.

 

[Pax Britannia]

Its never clear in the film whether this is just an attack on america or on the whole world. In the book the Maritans simply attack Britain as a way to bring down the world superpower. Maybe the aliens in the 2005 film have simply targeted america for similar reasons.

 

[Matt]

The news established that the EMP attacks were causing power outs in areas worldwide. In addition the CBS 2(my local affliate!) crew said that comm was lost with London, Paris, Tokyo, etc.... so I think we have enough to go on that it was world wide.

 

[DominusNovus]

Its never clear in the film whether this is just an attack on america or on the whole world. In the book the Maritans simply attack Britain as a way to bring down the world superpower. Maybe the aliens in the 2005 film have simply targeted america for similar reasons.

The first storm hits the Ukraine. Hardly a Superpower.

I'm reminded of the episode of Seinfeld where they were playing Risk.

 

[NapoleonXIV]

Tactical nukes would be used almost immediately and pretty much wipe them out before they caused any very extensive damage. There would be losses, yes, depending on how much damage they could do to cities in the initial attacks but once they are in open country, TN are almost tailor made for them.