If you're John Connor......

[bjacks12]

what is your strategy to beat the machines?

This thread idea popped out of a shower thought that I had, and given the upcoming movie release, I think it's relevant.


If I'm John Connor, I wouldn't bother with saving Sarah/myself.

I would send the reprogrammed T-800 back to the early 1900's and kill Vladimir Lenin and his fellow conspirators in overthrowing the Russian Empire, as well as Adolf Hitler. This is not about preventing WWII, that's just a benefit. The early death of the USSR before it is formed would prevent the Cold War, and thus the insane arms race that leads to the eventual establishment of Skynet. Obviously you have to kill Hitler since the USSR was instrumental in bringing him down.

 

[EarlyMon]

The motivation for Skynet may have been political but it was the remains of the first Terminator that made it technically possible.

So with the means present a different altruism might have occurred but in the end the need for power wouldn't. With the means available, the motivation would be inevitable and Skynet would still come to be.

That leaves a self-destruct requirement absolutely necessary after the Hitler assassination.

If we learned anything from Jurassic Park, it's that nature always finds a way to survive.

The Terminator will come from a time when Skynet is sentient and therefore a non-organic life form. Nature will find a way, the absolute self-destruct will fail and Skynet will still rise.

My first thought would be to send the Terminator back to prevent the assassination of JFK.

That might have been all it took for everything to spin in a different direction during the Cold War and beyond.

And we would be spared not only that irreversible national psychological pain but also would have been saved from a really bad Kevin Costner performance in a mind-numbingly terrible Oliver Stone movie.

World peace would have been established by having the Terminator go back forward from there and holding Lucas by the throat until he agreed to never change the part that Han shot first and that Stars Wars required no dinosaurs.

From there, the Terminator would play a waiting game until microelectronics was mature enough to begin manufacturing - the same time we know it to have happened.

Except then, the Big T would pull out the blueprints and start showing Silicon Valley how to do it - and stay on hand to get them drunk with power, destroy them with scandal, blackmail and insider trading until no one would ever risk venture capital on it again.

Being sentient however, the Terminator would eventually go beyond disgusted until finally driven mad by the inability of the entertainment industry to read a good sci-fi book and make a decent movie out of it.

At that point the Terminator would abandon the plan and Skynet would come into being that way.

I'm afraid that it's not looking good for the humans.