Skynet question(T4 spoilers)

[Samurai8472]

So Skynet apparently knew about the Terminators that have been sent in to the past by Skynet's future/alternate self.

There was some discussion here that Skynet could observe/calculate the alternate realities

Where was the source(book, comic etc) for that?

I think Nx1701g(terminator aficionado) brought that up but I can't find it anymore

 

[nx1701g]

Skynet knew of temporal incursions in the T2 Infiltrator Series of novels. It's been suggested that in the new timeline of Terminator Salvation Skynet knows everything that has happened previously because of the T-X connecting to it.

 

[roguephoenix]

so... knowing all this why didn't they just destroy the environment to get rid of humans? wouldn't that be more efficient?

anyone else think that skynet is actually helena bonham carter's brain? in essence skynet is human. that would explain all of skynet's illogical and inefficient behavior.

 

[nx1701g]

It would stand to reason, to me at least, that nuclear war would do pretty much that and destroy the environment. If you really think about it what does humanity have after the war against the machines is over? Most of the planet is in nuclear winter, Skynet's been stripping the planet of every natural resource, and the number of humans is next to nothing.

Spoiler: The original film

Originally that was the case. Skynet was being led by a group of humans who had taken over Skynet.

 

[roguephoenix]

It would stand to reason, to me at least, that nuclear war would do pretty much that and destroy the environment. If you really think about it what does humanity have after the war against the machines is over? Most of the planet is in nuclear winter, Skynet's been stripping the planet of every natural resource, and the number of humans is next to nothing.

Spoiler: The original film

Originally that was the case. Skynet was being led by a group of humans who had taken over Skynet.

all i know if i was going to be killing humans and i had superior tech and analytical thought i would think that whatever i was doing up to now isn't working. they spend so much time trying to eliminate humans when they can simply flood the world with devastating diseases. i'm machine so it won't harm me but surely anyone who ventures out will get it and could infect others. on top of that i would use the nanotech i have at my arsenal and spread that all over as a sort of technological diseases that could infect, multiply, and destroy from the inside of the body.

by the way, what is the driving logic of skynet? purpose?

 

[nx1701g]

^ We haven't been informed. All we know is that Skynet has a deep desire to survive (sort of like M-5 in TOS). It is suggested that religion may have played a part in Skynet's development.

Skynet has attempted to eliminate humanity using viruses and biotoxins before. In TSCC we saw that very attempt and it nearly worked; however, one person was immune from the disease and the Resistance created an antivirus. Skynet has been shown to be afraid of what nanotechnology can do. It's been suggested in more than one Terminator Expanded Universe book that Skynet believed the T-1000 series would surpass even its abilities and would be a threat to Skynet's survival. Thats why it made so few of them.

 

[Sephiroth]

I theorized once that SKYnet was not truely sentient, note the Cyberdyne branding on everything, and things like marker lights on the flying H/K's, suggesting it still builds things to a set of (human) safety guidelines, i'm compiling a bunch of terminator stories i wrote years ago and putting them on the web, and i am tieing them together by SKYnet having the ability to observe all the timelines (and also there are about 3 trillion SKYnets linked together through the multiverse, creating a truely sentient machine mind)

also I have a comic somewhere that states that the African rainforests were relatively unharmed, and a terminator has built a machine which is killing the ecosystem around it