History Headscratchers / TheWarOfTheWorlds

** This may have been a result of StarfishAlien mentality. On the other hand, it may have been entirely-valid Machiavellian social control. Consider: For the first year, you wipe out 80 percent of the human population, including all who resist but plenty who were willing to acknowledge your rule. At the end of that year, once it's established that ResistanceIsFutile, you switch to careful harvesting at a rate the population can sustain indefinitely... reverting to your wholesale slaughter whenever there's a pocket of resistance. The message, of course, is "Resist and all will die; cooperate and there's a good chance that you, individually, will live."

*** This may have been a result of StarfishAlien mentality. On the other hand, it may have been entirely-valid Machiavellian social control. Consider: For the first year, you wipe out 80 percent of the human population, including all who resist but plenty who were willing to acknowledge your rule. At the end of that year, once it's established that ResistanceIsFutile, you switch to careful harvesting at a rate the population can sustain indefinitely... reverting to your wholesale slaughter whenever there's a pocket of resistance. The message, of course, is "Resist and all will die; cooperate and there's a good chance that you, individually, will live."

*** Yeah, I recall that at some point the narrator actually comments the aliens' tactics made no sense. They would absolutely demolish a city block for no real reason but leave the next one intact.

* The invaders send themselves to the already-planted spaceships by traveling via electricity. So how long were the freaking ships there, why did we never find them, and why in the name of Kyle [=MacLachlan=] didn't they just stay on Earth the last time they were here, planting the ships? And on top of this, wouldn't their technology have advanced in the intervening 50,000,000+ years to something infinitely far more devastatingly advanced than the weapons they left behind? And ''then'' there's the matter that the story he made up about help waiting for them, to stop his daughter from crying, turned out to be oh-so-conveniently true, and Robbie, who was last seen running over a hill to join the army right before everything on that side of the hill was blown up, has ''beaten'' them to the imaginary safehouse, and is completely unharmed. This movie is [[WallBanger bad for your walls]].

** I presume that the invaders knew at least enough about the planet Earth to know how overpopulated parts of it are. Since they managed to grow so much on the handful of humans they'd captured, I assume that they didn't need billions of them. As for the crowd, well, what did the invaders ''really care'' if the humans posed a threat or not? They were pretty much shooting to kill at that point, sort of like swatting a bunch of gnats even though they're little more than nuisances. And for the argument about aliens failing at biology, [[{{Signs}} they seem to fail at that more than once.]]

* The news crew. Seeing as the plane is still on fire when Ray comes upstairs it leads us to believe that it is the next morning - but the news crew is already as well informed and hungrily scrounging for food as if it had been ''several days''.

*** The obvious answer about the Tripods is that the invaders aren't the ones who built them, they're just scavenging LostTechnology that had been left on Earth by some other aliens. [[ActorAllusion Probably]] [[ChurchOfTropology Xenu]].
*** It's also been suggested that the Tripods weren't buried at all, but the "lightning" was actually injecting NanoMachines into the ground which built the mechs in-situ using underground mineral deposits as raw materials.
**** That leads to a second layer of FridgeLogic if the aliens are that far advanced in nanotechnology, but still have no apparent grasp of microbiology.
***** Maybe their technology makes a leap from macrotechnology to nanotechnology, and microscales are a bit of a blindspot? In the original novel, Wells explicitly states that the Martians had no immunity or defense against microbes because they eradicated them millennia ago, so something similar may have happened to these aliens. This is complete FanWank, of course.
***** This theory is actually quite realistic. One of the big post-9/11 concerns was that terrorists would reintroduce diseases such as smallpox which had long ago been eradicated in the West, and to which most Westerners had never been vaccinated or developed an immunity.
***** Who knows how the aliens percieve time? To them, thousands of years might be like a few months (both in terms of lifespan and rate of technological development).
***** Bear in mind that the theory of the war machine being buried was presented by a TV reporter that had no other proof than a record of a lighting transporting something underground. For all we know that "capsule" as she calls it WAS the war machine suprecompressed thanks to some unfathomable tech.

* My dad, being the armchair survivalist that he is, owns a "farady case" for his digital camera that claims it can protect any electronics inside it from the effects of EMP. Of coruse, I have no idea if such claim is true or he just bought some expensive crappy case that really does nothing.

***** And...why WOULDN'T he tell his daughter that help would be waiting? She's 10. Not exactly the age where you shrug, look her in the eyes and tell her, "Well, you're screwed. Have fun dying!"

***** Who knows how the aliens percieve time? To them, thousands of years might be like a few months (both in terms of lifespan and rate of technological development).

***** Maybe their technology makes a leap from macrotechnology to nanotechnology, and microscales are a bit of a blindspot? There is speculation about the original novel that the Martians didn't have any immunity or defense against microbes because they eradicated them millennia ago, so something similar may have happened to these aliens. This is complete FanWank, of course.

***** Maybe their technology makes a leap from macrotechnology to nanotechnology, and microscales are a bit of a blindspot? There is speculation about the original novel that the Martians didn't have any immunity or defense against microbes because they eradicated them millennia ago, so something similar may have happened to these aliens. This is complete FanWank, of course.

** The invaders send themselves to the already-planted spaceships by traveling via electricity. So how long were the freaking ships there, why did we never find them, and why in the name of Kyle [=MacLachlan=] didn't they just stay on Earth the last time they were here, planting the ships? And on top of this, wouldn't their technology have advanced in the intervening 50,000,000+ years to something infinitely far more devastatingly advanced than the weapons they left behind? And ''then'' there's the matter that the story he made up about help waiting for them, to stop his daughter from crying, turned out to be oh-so-conveniently true, and Robbie, who was last seen running over a hill to join the army right before everything on that side of the hill was blown up, has ''beaten'' them to the imaginary safehouse, and is completely unharmed. This movie is [[WallBanger bad for your walls]].

**** That leads to a second layer of FridgeLogic if the aliens are that far advanced in nanotechnology, but still have no apparent grasp of microbiology.