ClaytonForrester
Full Member
This kind of defense is useless against THAT kind of power!
Posts: 112
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Post by ClaytonForrester on Jul 30, 2005 5:42:24 GMT
In popular Ufology,the so-called ''greys'' take in nourishment through injection/osmosis,and excrete waste products back out through the skin.And like the Martians ,they too are a dying race.
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Post by Lensman on Aug 5, 2005 9:30:25 GMT
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? That's brilliant, Nerfy! I had never considered that. Yes, Ebola-like symptoms would go along very well with a disease described as a "rotting death," and as Charles points out decay and rot is a theme that is associated with the Martians thruout the novel. What we have to remember is that the human body teems with a large number of many different kinds of bacteria, and that we're only susceptible to a relatively small number of those. Therefore it's almost certain that whatever laid low the Martians doesn't affect humans at all. Ebola and similar diseases are rare (thank goodness!) but since we know they do exist, surely we can hypothesize that there was one which affected the Martians that way. Why did all the Martians die within a short time of each other? Let me suggest conditions making this possible. What is necessary for the Martians to all die within a day or so of each other is for them all to be infected within a few hours or so of each other, and for the disease to spread with equal rapidity in all victims. Let us assume: 1. Whatever bacteria killed them was rare; in fact, it came from just one of their human victims. (A rare tropical disease, perhaps?) 2. The draining of blood from the human carrying the lethal strain came rather late during the invasion; after most or all the cylinders had landed. 3. Some of the Martians' victims (including the source of the disease) have their blood drained and mixed into a central holding container. This blood is later distributed to the various Martians for their individual use. 4. That all the Martians on earth were genetically identical. Remember, they reproduce by budding; essentially the "children" are clones of the "parent". It is quite reasonable to assume the Martians picked a single genetic strain as being the best able to survive Earth conditions. The idea they are genetically identical also goes along with the analogy of Martians as ants or bees; all ants or bees within a single anthill or hive are sisters (aside from the occasional rare male drone). 5. That once infected, the disease progresses rapidly in the Martians, resulting in death within a very short time; perhaps (like Ebola) within 24 hours. ~~~~~~~~~ Of course my assumption #3 above is not what is described in the novel. For this explanation to fly we must assume the Martians do not always feed in exactly the same manner. You may prefer some other disease vector, but this seems best to me because the Martians have so directly exposed themselves to the diseases we carry by directly mixing our blood with theirs. I can't think of any other disease vector so certain to result in infection following exposure. A disease spreading with equal rapidity in all victims never happens in human populations because of genetic diversity; some people are naturally more resistant to any given disease than are others. But if we assume all the Martians are genetically identical-- and I have demonstrated why this may be the case-- then they will all have very similar or identical resistance (or lack thereof) to any particular disease. However, as Wells specifies that none of them has any resistance to disease whatsoever-- suggesting an atrophied immune system-- then perhaps it's not necessary for them to be genetically identical. Now admittedly some of what I suggest is at variance with what Wells wrote. He says in II-8 that the Martians were "slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared". This suggests a number of diseases attacking them simultaneously. If that were the case, then those landing in the first cylinders should have succumbed before those landing in the later ones. I am reluctant to label anything Wells wrote as "wrong"-- I prefer to assume there are additional factors which the novel left out that justify what Wells wrote-- but unfortunately I know rather too much biology to find everything in the novel believable. And certainly I'd rather suggest that the Narrator misinterpreted certain things or was mistaken in his speculations-- and some things in the novel are indeed presented as speculations-- than to flatly state that the Martians couldn't have all died within a short period of time.
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Post by lanceradvanced on Aug 5, 2005 11:55:45 GMT
You don't nesc need a central holding tank for #3 to happen, Given the martian callousness about diesese, an infection could have spread through their food pens, in Primrose Hill in fairly short order, if they had snatched a few carriers, while hunting, the natural spread through the cages would have done the rest...
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Post by Lensman on Aug 5, 2005 22:24:32 GMT
[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. They had no digestive system and thus had no opening to excrete solid waste (he said, euphemistically). But there's no reason to suspect they did not have organs that clean waste and remove excess water from the bloodstream. In other words, they likely had kidneys, a bladder, and urinated their waste. In fact, if they "fed" by injecting foreign material directly into their bloodstream, they would need more powerful kidneys than do we. 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. Actually if you read up on blood types you'll find that the incompatibility of blood types is an immune reaction; the body is rejecting foreign material in the bloodstream. If the Martians had bred (or genetically engineered) themselves to be able to "feed" by injecting a different species' blood directly into their own bloodstream, they must have suppressed their immune system, or at least that part of it. And a weak or nonexistant immune system fits hand-in-glove with what Wells said killed the Martians, now doesn't it?
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Post by Lensman on Aug 5, 2005 22:56:29 GMT
You don't nesc need a central holding tank for #3 to happen, Given the martian callousness about diesese, an infection could have spread through their food pens, in Primrose Hill in fairly short order, if they had snatched a few carriers, while hunting, the natural spread through the cages would have done the rest... A disease that humans are immune to wouldn't spread rapidly from one human to another, even if packed into close quarters. Only communicable diseases spread that way. There are other scenarios we can construct by which the disease was delayed in establishing itself amongst the Martians but then spread rapidly once it did. If, let us say, only one Martian was initially exposed to the disease which killed them (again, from the blood of a single human carrying a rare disease), but the disease was highly communicable among the Martians, and we assume the Martians gathered in close proximity on a regular basis-- possibly when feeding-- then that scenario might fly. As has been pointed out more than once during this thread, we don't actually know all the Martians died within a day or two of each other. They may have died out over a more protracted period of time. In fact, this scenario seems more likely than the scenario in my earlier post; it doesn't require an "artificial" method of spreading the disease such as the distribution of blood from a central point that I suggested in my earlier scenario. But it's not as emotionally satisfying. One of the reasons we enjoy story-telling is that stories make it seem as though the world makes sense. Justice should happen in stories whereas in real life it often does not. Characters should *earn* the fate they receive at the end of the story. (And if they don't, the reader/viewer feels cheated.) The Martians' hubris and arrogance at invading the Earth prestages their downfall at the end. I find it more emotionally satisfying to think that all the Martians injected whatever eventually killed them into their own bodies. Having just one Martian infected this way and the others getting the disease from the one is not as emotionally satisfying a way for their fate to be handed to them.
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Post by Lensman on Aug 6, 2005 0:05:37 GMT
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? This question has been raised many times. It is most definitely a weak point in the novel. It's a weak point not because it can't be justified, but because Wells did not justify it, or at least did not do a good job of justifying it. Wells' Narrator says (II-2) "Micro-organisms, which cause so much disease and pain on earth, have either never appeared on Mars, or Martian sanitary science eliminated them ages ago." Suggesting micro-organisms never appeared on Mars is absurd. What was the origin of life there? Did multi-cellular organisms spontaneously appear fully developed, like Athena from the brow of Zeus? Considering Wells' interest in evolution-- another of this novel's themes-- it's amazing that he'd suggest life on Mars could have evolved without micro-organisms playing a part. OTOH perhaps I'm being unfair to Wells. Darwinian evolution was still very much a new concept in 1898, and perhaps it wasn't clear then that all life evolved from microbes. At any rate, since Wells fell down on the job, we are left with having to make our own justification. There are several ways we can look at this: FORGETTING THE PROBLEM Now you wouldn't think a scientifically advanced race would "forget" about diseases even if they conquered them so long ago it's ancient history for them, now would you? I mean, NASA worried about getting germs from the moon during the first couple of Apollo moon landings. However, keep in mind the Victorian view that an old race would suffer from racial senility. The Martians were an old, dying race. So maybe they just forgot this might be a problem. DESPERATION Arguably, launching themselves in a mere double-handful of capsules in an attempt to conquer and colonize a world with gravity much too heavy for them was an act of desperation. The Martians knew they'd have to fight all the world's industrialized nations to win; did they think their chances were very good? Perhaps they were aware of the potential disease problem. But perhaps they didn't have the time or the expertise to research the old records and produce a supply of antibiotics. THE UNEXPECTED Perhaps the Narrator was wrong. Maybe the Martians did supply themselves with broad-spectrum antibiotics. And maybe Earth handed them something particularly nasty and virulent, like Ebola, which their antibiotics couldn't stop. This would be quite in keeping with the Victorian idea of Earth as a younger, more virile world, with vigorous life, as compared to the weakened, worn out and dying Mars. It would also be in keeping with the problems the British had with tropical diseases. Malaria was so widespread and debilitating that it blunted their efforts to take over some tropical areas. Malaria also defeated at least one early attempt to build the Panama Canal. HUBRIS AND COMPLACENCY But actually, this is the answer I prefer. Hubris, complacency and arrogance together form one of the main themes of WotW. (Charles persuasively argues that complacency is the main theme.) In the Iliad, the Trojans ignored Cassandra's warnings not to bring the giant wooden horse within their walls. Rather more recently, the "baby" Bush administration ignored repeated warnings that we'd need significantly more troops to occupy Iraq than it took to overthrow Saddam's regime. We see the result of that hubris on the news every day. Sure the Martians were smart. But being smart is not the same as being wise. I suggest they simply thought "Oh, we don't need to worry about germs. We conquered disease so long ago it's ancient history!"
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Post by lanceradvanced on Aug 6, 2005 1:44:40 GMT
A disease that humans are immune to wouldn't spread rapidly from one human to another, even if packed into close quarters. Only communicable diseases spread that way. Imuunity and communicability are two diffrent things, just because we suffer no ill effects from a particular strain, doesn't mean we can't pass it on to one another. People with deficient immune systems have to be protected agains not only those strains that could harm a healthy person, but those that would not as well. We swim in a virtual sea of bacteria, and pass them from one to another with every breath, every touch, we are -immune- to the vast majority of them, but in a way, they are also immune to us, they cause us no harm, so we do not react to them.
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Post by Lensman on Aug 6, 2005 6:46:35 GMT
If a disease doesn't affect you then the bacteria don't grow, don't multiply exponentially, and don't increase their chance of spreading from one person to another. Sure we may pass around a small number of many different dormant bacteria from casual contact, but the number of germs passed around that way is an extremely tiny fraction of the number spread around during the outbreak of a communicable disease.
If whatever affected the Martians was ubiquitous in the manner you suggest, it would have affected the first Martians that landed 9 days before the last. This does not appear to be the case.
I don't know exactly how many days the period of the novel covers, but from conversation with the Artilleryman in II-7 I'd estimate it to be about 3 weeks. The tenth and last cylinder landed, we presume, 9 days after the first. Nine days is a rather large percentage of 3 weeks, and I don't think that much of a difference can be reconciled with the novel. As Nerfy said or implied in a post near the start of this thread, it does not appear that if each Martian was infected the first time it fed upon human blood that they would all have died within the short period the novel suggests.
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Post by lanceradvanced on Aug 6, 2005 12:38:13 GMT
My suggestions was that it -became- ubuitqus in a particular enviroment that didn't really exist untill toward the end of the invasion, that of where ever the martians were keeping their foodstocks once the built their permement base, and started collecting humans on a larger level, like the hundred or so decribed as being grabbed in the circus, as opposed to the small group nabbed back in kew,
I'm not entirely sure we can rule out a strain that we are entirely immune to, starvation, stress and overcrowding such as you might find in the martian cages -can- supress our immune systems, and give bactiera enough of a foothold to become communicable, even if a healthy person wouldn't be affected...
As for the time frame, we know the martians died, at least a day before the Narrator found them, but they were active 5 days before the Narrator met the Artilleryman and that about a dozen apparently died first, and were laid out by their comrades, while others were not recovered when they were stuck down outside the redoubt (the smashed handling machine for instance)
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Post by Lensman on Aug 6, 2005 19:38:19 GMT
My suggestions was that it -became- ubuitqus in a particular enviroment that didn't really exist untill toward the end of the invasion <snip> starvation, stress and overcrowding such as you might find in the martian cages -can- supress our immune systems, and give bactiera enough of a foothold to become communicable, even if a healthy person wouldn't be affected... I agree this is a plausible scenario, and it's better (that is, it fits the text better) than my earlier suggestion which requires a central storage vat for blood, which the text does not support. As for the time frame, we know the martians died, at least a day before the Narrator found them, but they were active 5 days before the Narrator met the Artilleryman Actually the Artilleryman (in II-7) merely said he hadn't seen them coming near to where he was for the five days previous to his reunion with the Narrator, but he saw them moving at night in their camp. We can't be sure he had seen them the previous night as he doesn't specify this, but he says he saw their flying machine in the air "the night before last" so at least some of the Martains were still healthy enough to be working at that time. From the end of II-7 and the beginning of II-8 it would appear it's the next day (after his reunion with the Artilleryman) that the Narrator enters "Dead London" and it becomes apparent that all the Martians are dead or dying. and that about a dozen apparently died first, and were laid out by their comrades From II-8: "...and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians-- dead!" Thanx for pointing this out Lancer. It hadn't occurred to me when I read this that the Martians had laid out their comrades' dead bodies in a row, but I think you're right.
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Post by Leatherhead on Aug 22, 2005 22:00:24 GMT
Perhaps the Martians knew about disease on earth and ignored it for what might be considered religious reasons. Maybe they belived it would not effect them since they are obviously in their own eyes a "higher power" than us.
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Post by Bayne on Aug 23, 2005 0:55:04 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]There is still a debate over whether extraterrestrial bacteria or viruses would be a threat to man, some argue that as they would have spent millions of years adapting to infecting alien life/environments then they would be unable to attack a species that they had not evolved to overcome the basic defences of....
I look at the super-colonies of Argentine Ants appearing on every continent of Earth bar Antarctica, threatening every other ant species with extinction, then I hear requests for the army to help stamp out Fire Ant infestations and I look at Cane Toads....
I think that the Martians simply held the same argument, and clearly they made a mistake. [/glow]
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