2005-10-15

A Question about The Matrix Revolutions

So I was watching a few scenes from The Matrix Revolutions last night. As I was watching the scene of the first assault on Zion, I couldn't help but think about the following problem:

Why didn't the machines put a 25 megaton nuclear bomb inside the first digging machine, primed to explode as it fell into Zion?


The bomb would have vapourized every single person in the dock area of Zion. It would also cause major damage, if not total destruction, to the rest of Zion.

When the US and USSR tested massive nuclear bombs in the 1960s (including the 57 megaton Tsar Bomba, tested in 1961), the height of the mushroom cloud reached as high as 64km above ground level. In one test, people 100km away from a massive blast suffered third-degree burns.

So I'm fairly certain that a bomb of such magnitude, hidden in the first digging machine, would have wiped out Zion in one foul swoop.





2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi OSO,
because it was several hundred years in the future, all the uranium in the world had already been used. Also, because of hightened terrorist concerns, it was used in breeder reactors in such a way that the plutonium could not be detonated. Then the waste sealed in glass, buried a km deep, and those locations were forever lost in the massive war which broke out between man and machine.

Remember, there is only enough uranium in the world to last about 10 years with normal nuclear power plant technology... an email from the Greens I received just yesterday said only 3 or 4 years. We just consume too much electricity! Breeder reactors might be able to stretch this out further, but I think that they then process the waste into something different to what is used in bombs? You'd have to clarify that with someone technical.

IE: No uranium = no nukes.

Which raises the question of energy in a world where sunlight is blocked out... raising human beings to be a "battery" is a very energy intensive process, and I am sure it would have a poor ERoEI. The movie just said, "Combined with a form of fusion, it was all the energy they'd ever need." Which begs the REAL question, why didn't the machines just kill all the humans in the first place and just use fusion? What was it about their fusion that needed us as a battery?

This is a big issue for "suspension of disbelief" but just go there, say there are technical reasons we don't understand yet, and enjoy the movie. It's a martial arts flick after all.

Anonymous said...

That would have ruined everything! It didn't happen... because the machines really aren't that clever, and it wasn't in the script!!!