Science in War of the Worlds movie?

Question

Hi. I have just seen the War of the Worlds movie with Tom Cruise. At the start there is cloud cover and lots of lightening and then we find that there is no electricity and telephone lines are down. We also discover that there are no mobile telephone signals as well and analouge watches have stopped. Is there any scientific theory (or fact) that could actually expalin an occurance like this? Could both mobiles and analouge watches stop under certian weather condition and if so what are they?

Answer 1

As some of the answerers have pointed out, it's an electromagnetic pulse. And YES, theoretically a lot of this can be possible in real life.

In the movie the EMP was created by the series of what they thought were repeated lightning strikes in the same spot which weren't actually lightning strikes. The EMP knocked out any electrical device that in the general vicinity with unproteced cables, lack of insulators or whatever wasn't sealed in a vacuum. So cars that were running at the time stopped working, cel phones, computers, etc. The analog watch is a little sketchy though because they are usually waterproof/air tight and an EMP uses the air as a conductor.

An electromagnetic pulse is basically a shockwave that will be emitted from a nuclear detonation or other electrical magnetic sources. It travels outward from a point of detenontion with a limited radius and the air eventually becomes a resistor. It's effect depends on the intensity of the source.

In the case of the military aircraft that dropped atomic bombs in WW2: they used older vacuum tube technology unlike the sophisticated computerized weaponry used today which made them safer back then. Also, they were up high enough in the sky where the atmosphere's magnetic shield and the amount of air pressure between their altitude and ground zero were enough to keep the aircraft in the sky.

Steven Spielberg, the director of War of the Worlds, has been using this idea for a long time like in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. There's several movies with good examples of a detonation like Con Air, and more recently Superman Returns. Hollywood's been setting them off for years. So next time your power goes out, blame the movie people.

Answer 2

An EMP (electromagnetic pulse) can potentially fry electronic devices, by inducting a current that will heat up and damage components. Such EMP are usually the effect of nuclear explosion at altitude, interacting with the Earth magnetic field, although the effect can be produced with a suitable apparatus using non nuclear power -- albeit with much less range. It is also possible that solar flares of a particularly high intensity could interact with the Van Allen belt and induce high voltage excursions in a power grid; note that in this case, small scale objects like cars and battery operated devices will most likely be unaffected; but everything plugged in will be jolted with a voltage that could dammage it totally. In this scenario, the worst problem would be that the power grid itself could need extensive repairs as power generating stations, high voltage lines, transformers substations, etc, could be severly affected.
But back to EMP as a weapon.
EMP will normally affect sufficiently large devices (large power grids will be more affected than wristwatches, but only electric wristwatches would be affected) whether they are on or off (so that car that was being repaired would also have been damaged to the same degree as the others). It only needs to have the circuitry to act as an antenna to take on that unwelcome power surge.
Mobile phones rely on land based towers, powered by the grid, and linked with the rest of the phone network by cables; no tower to feed a cell, no signal.
Now, it must be stated that Spielberg is not a scientist, actually as movie makers go, he is one of the worst for scientific accuracy.
In the movie we see a dramatically located video camera still taping the destruction of the alien machines. If even wristwatches were stopped, how come that camera was still going?
The link below will give you more info on EMP.

Answer 3

The Martian ships were supposed to have generated an electromagnetic pulse. This occurs during atomic bomb blasts, too. A blast high up in the atmosphere would cripple Earthly electrical systems-everything from car motors to cell phones. But if the Martian ships were shielded with some kind of special insulation, they might be immune. Or maybe they don't use electricity at all. it is possible, but remember, this is fiction.

Answer 4

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Answer 5

yes the Electromagnetic field or pulses are disrupted during the storm at the begining of the movie. Thus creating surges in energy which causes machinery phones etc to stop working

Answer 6

Electromagnetic pulses will cause all f this.The Americans actually have a bomb that emits an electromagnetic pulse which they use to knock out enemy defences like radar and tracking and communication systems

Answer 7

electromagnetic pulse. This is actually mentioned in the movie. This occurs after a nuclear explosion. I don't know the exact science behind it, but there are volumes written about it.

Answer 8

It's a Movie, it doesn't need to be scientifically sound, it just needs to entertain, this movie wasn't one of the best! still, it's a good bit of fun. Remember---- the Book was written in the nineteenth century!

Answer 9

Electromagnetic pulse.

Answer 10

electro mototive force