Martian "Digestion" and Death

[lanceradvanced]

I've been thinking a bit about the martian metablism, and how it might work, without a digestive system, dedicated to breaking down ingested food, While blood is a good -carrier- in the earth fauna, I somehow doubt that it's carried load, at any one given time would last the martians long.

Then I was perusing the Tyranid Codex, and ran across how they imaggined thier digestive system so to speak, in short they don't have one either, their -circulatory- system, does the work for them through the work of ameoba like "phage" cells that digest food on the fly, breaking it down as it circulates for other cells to absorb. This incidentally also serves as their immune system.

The other thing that stuck me is that the martians all died reletivly quickly, some at the controls of their machines, which than ran amok, no boils, flesh eating bacteria opening sores.. they just keeled over, almost all at the same time, even though some had been on earth nearly twice as long as others...

This leads me to belive that the effect of the desise on the martians was something like a sudden heart attack or stroke, and that it was -one- bacteria strain that did the deed, not "bacteria" in general, and considering the timetable, probably something they picked up in the seething dens of London

[Stewymartian]

The bacteria probably started to multiply very rapidly once they got into the Martians bodies. There would have been a ready growth medium (The Martians tissues and the human blood they ahd consumed) and nothing to halt the exponential rise in bacterium numbers.

Bacteria produce toxins as a by-product of their metabolism. As the numbers of bacteria increased the levels of these toxins would have also increased. Finally the toxins would have reached levels that were beyond the abilities of the Martians to excrete. Such a rapid toxic buildup would have caused a speedy failure in all of the Martians organs.

Basically they would have started to feel 'a bit rough' but then rapidily gone into what in humans is termed 'multi-organ failure', leading quickly to coma and death.

[EvilNerfherder]

I'm not sure where I remember this from but someone put forward the idea that they literally rotted to death.
They were attacked by the bacteria and slowly turned to mush. Sort of like Ebola does to humans I guess.
I'm no biologist, so could an intake of bacteria where none had ever been have this effect?
Wouldn't it be difficult to tell as their physiology is so unknown to us?.. This is where a proper alien autopsy would have come in handy!

[the Donal]

Interesting theories here. The ebola style idea would make a grisly addition to one of the movies, but would render autopsy- as mentioned in the book- rather difficult.

I was also thinking of the timing of the martians dying the other day- however, there is a period of time between escape from the ruined house and journeying to London via the artilleryman's mad scheme and the story doesn't mention activity in great deal of the martians at this point - again, vagueness either deliberately or through not feeling the need to explain it- it's also not that necessary to the main points of the book.

However, if you think about it- the martians arrived 1 cylinder per day for about 10 days- so their deaths would probably occur over a similar period, or you could maybe allow for the initial landings, who had the bigger job of establishing a first base, not really starting to feed on people quite as quickly as the later landings. But they would all have had the same supply of martian bipeds- bringing packed lunches with them?!

[Killraven]

I have a theory that they maybe just rotted very slowly from the inside out (like some types of fruit, if you will!). Then when the soft tissue of their brains started being attacked - they effectively went slowly mad - hence the wayward destruction of some of their machines.

Also, I guess some were more susceptible to the disease than others... which would explain why they didn't all die at the same time.

[BrutalDeluxe]

I imagined their demise was related to the way human blood interacted with their alien blood. Considering different people have different blood types (O,A,B, etc) if they were draining blood indesciminantly from people chances are they mixed blood types which if done with human beings is fatal. From my understanding if a foreign blood type is introduced into the bloodstream, the body treats it as an invading organism and creates antibodies to fight/absorb it. The end result is that blood clots form and result in the person's demise.

[maniacs]

The living creature, until death, is immune to all sorts of bacteria. As soon as we die that defence goes. Thus the essence of the martian death.

The martian activity does diminish after a certain time. This is probably due to them overtaking the writer and moving on.

But if the martians were dieing 3 or 4 days after arriving here who was around to see that? No one. I tend to think they were dead even before the second book and the ones we see later were the late arrivals.

[quaderni]

Well, the air is teaming with bacteria. So the minute the Martians started breathing they would have been exposed to all sorts of micro-organisms that could or could not kill them. They'd essentially be like newborn children when you bring them to day care.

The blood thing is interesting. I have to wonder about the symbolic importance of blood in Victorian society. There's some fascinating connectiosn here to Bram Stoker's Dracula. Blood of course suggests heredity, lineage and descent. 'Blood disease' in Victorian thought meant, usually, syphilis. We can think about the tertiary stages of syphilis, in which madness can be involved. It also causes disfiguration.

In Victorian fiction, though, blood transfusions are often a metaphor for sex. Think of the blood transfusions that all the 'boys' do for Miss Lucy in Dracula, for instance - it is, quite frankly, rather homoerotic. It's bizarre, too, in _The War_ because the Martians are supposed to be assexual - Wells says this quite clearly - but they are clearly engaging in erotic behavior (as a late 19th-century reader would see it).

This all the more interesting because Wells sees the Martians as in a kind of mind/body split. He states, flat out, that the Martians have evolved into mere brains that wear different kinds of bodies. So the Martians live the pure life of the mind - they are devoid of emotion and sexual desire - and they almost, in this way, embody a kind of Platonic ideal. But then they CORRUPT themselves by feeding on human blood - vampirism and sex, here - as though the carnal flesh of humans debase them, pollute them, and kill them. Weird, huh?

As if to emphasize the mind/body split, the 'bodies' they wear are not at all flesh and blood bodies, but machines. Cartesian cyborgs! Do they, then, physically interface with their machines? The description of the decapitated fighting machine is fascinating. After it has been beheaded, it falls into the water and is literally pumping blood out of its system.

But if they had contracted syphilis from humans, then that might explain the madness and epileptic behavior they demonstrate in the end.

[maniacs]

The martians die of deseases that we are immune to. That is stated.

However...the syphilis story is interesting cause I believ at some point HGWells was afflicted with it, maybe even died from it or some other VD.

[quaderni]

maniacs said:

The martians die of deseases that we are immune to. That is stated.

However...the syphilis story is interesting cause I believ at some point HGWells was afflicted with it, maybe even died from it or some other VD.

He lived to age 80. Some people don't die of tertiary syphilis - Flaubert, for example.

I wouldn't stick with an argument about the Martians and syphilis, except to point out the historical context. In 1899, anyone reading a book in which the Martians are draining blood and die of a putrefactive disease would think, uh-oh, 'syphilis'.

There's a fascinating book by Bram Djikstra called TEXTIdols of PerversityTEXT that looks at sexuality in Victorian art and literature. Wells really fits into this.

[quaderni]

[quote author=maniacs link=board=book&thread=1105471507&start=8#0
[/quote]

Maniacs, hey, are you getting the same adds about digestion on the top of the page? I found it screamingly funny!!!!!

[twistedrabbit]

Has anyone else been disturbed by this image?
drzeus.best.vwh.net/wotw/illus/alvim-correa4.jpg

The bacteria-infected dead martians are sitting in their tripods and the humans are plucking out their giant eyes...way in the back you can see them with a ladder and crane pulling that eyeball down. Yeehaw!
I just wonder if the artist intended there to be more to the martians than just the eyes...

[malfunkshun]

i really don't think that those eyes are the actual eyes of the martians. those eyes in that alvim correa drawing are bigger than the actual martians, according to wells' description. if you look closely at the lower left portion of that illustration, you'll see a man inside one of the eyes, which is cracked. obviously made of some kind of artificial material, for it to crack like that. and it looks as though he is extracting a large lens type device from inside the eye and it is being pulled out for further study.

i believe that alvim correa was illustrating what he thought an advanced imaging device would look like. since camera technology was still pretty much in its infancy, i would think that if an artist such as alvim, living in his time period, were to imagine an advanced imaging device that might be used by a superior alien intelligence, it might resemble a giant eyeball, since the eye is already a pretty much perfect design.

so, that is what i believe is the explanation for those huge, organic looking eyes. they're the martians 'observation technology', probably attached to a viewscreen inside the hood of the fighting machine.

[twistedrabbit]

Wow. I do see it now. It's still slightly disturbing to me though.

[Geis]

When I looked at the illustration, I imagined the "eyeball" looking things to be cockpits, much like the belly turret on a WWII bomber. The Martian would sit inside and the turret would swivel around to give him the view he wanted.

[Bayne]

[glow=red,2,300]I expect the Martians would require some sort of excretion.. they must produce some waste, otherwise they'd eventually explode as they added more and more blood.

My guess is that the drooling and/or slimy oily texture of the skin is there waste products. The drool could help to remove Martian dust from the lungs/mouth and the oily secretion could preserve body moisture.
[/glow]

[EvilNerfherder]

So if a Martian touches you, chances are it is really pooing on you? Nice.

[twistedrabbit]

That's sort of disgusting, but it makes sense! I don't know how healthy that would be for their little offspring that cling to their sides. Pardon my French, but can children be raised clinging to a sh*$ covered parent?


Concerning the death of the Martians...it's been bugging me. Wells wrote that the Martians had long exterminated any illness like disease from Mars...so why weren't they aware that going to Earth might be a problem? Surely they must have pondered if we had exterminated our illnesses too...maybe they knew they had to take that risk. What do guys think about this?

[EvilNerfherder]

I think it just shows they weren't completely infallible.
Plus it's a great plot device to explain why a seemingly invulnerable force can be stopped in their tracks.
It may be that, because the threat of bacteria hadn't existed in their environment in living memory, it just wasn't factored into the equation when the invasion plans were drawn up.
It also reinforces Wells' point that our complacency was nearly our downfall... it was the intervention of our microscopic pals that saved us.. not human ingenuity.
Makes it all the more of a lucky escape really.

[quaderni]

EvilNerfherder said:

I think it just shows they weren't completely infallible.
Plus it's a great plot device to explain why a seemingly invulnerable force can be stopped in their tracks.
It may be that, because the threat of bacteria hadn't existed in their environment in living memory, it just wasn't factored into the equation when the invasion plans were drawn up.
It also reinforces Wells' point that our complacency was nearly our downfall... it was the intervention of our microscopic pals that saved us.. not human ingenuity.
Makes it all the more of a lucky escape really.

Also, the point about colonisation - most of the time, colonizing forces (such as the British or the fictional Martians) overlooked disease and health problems, or at least minimized them in their plans. Look at the current US occupation of Iraq, in which disease is proving one of the most pressing problems for the troops (and very underreported, I might add, in the media, who tend to focus upon the spectacular acts of martial violence). I don't mean to be political; I'm just trying to point this out.

People now complain about Wells's ending as an unexpected deus ex machina. But the truth is, colonising disasters involving disease would have been very near and true to Victorian sensibilities. At the beginning of the 19th century, for one dramatic instance, both French and English invading forces in Haiti were completely wiped out by outbreaks of yellow fever - and these were perennial problems in the colonisation of Africa and the Indian subcontinent, as well.