Timeline for Why is no one trying to cure the blight?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 26, 2019 at 19:51 | comment | added | Alexander | @Paul D. Waite in the movie, the Blight did not seem to build any biomass on its own - it acted purely as a disease/parasite requiring traditional plants to exist. | |
| Nov 18, 2014 at 0:22 | comment | added | Fatbird3 | I don't know if this is supported in the film, but I thought they planned to leave Earth to find a new planet because space-borne habitats were not possible to create. The only possibility for a "clean start" was a new planet. The space habitat only became possible once Murph finalized the theory on gravity manipulation, which made space travel much easier. | |
| Nov 14, 2014 at 0:50 | comment | added | Royal Canadian Bandit | @PaulD.Waite: Yes. IMO it is also making the point that Sometimes Things Just Happen. The blight wasn't caused by careless genetic manipulation and it can't be cured by our cleverness; it's a natural phenomenon which happens to be about to kill us, like the meteorite which annihilated the dinosaurs. | |
| Nov 13, 2014 at 10:39 | comment | added | Paul D. Waite | I think the line about the earth’s atmospheric composition was meant to emphasise the futility of combating the Blight. The Blight is described as thriving on nitrogen, which makes up 78% of the earth’s atmosphere. The idea seems to be that it’s much better suited to earth than both crops and humans, so there’s no hope of stopping it. | |
| Nov 11, 2014 at 14:41 | comment | added | PointlessSpike | I suppose I'm just resistant to the suspense of disbelief. | |
| Nov 11, 2014 at 14:41 | vote | accept | PointlessSpike | ||
| Nov 17, 2014 at 8:34 | |||||
| Nov 11, 2014 at 13:53 | comment | added | Royal Canadian Bandit | They were already heaving huge chunks of physics at the audience, I think throwing in equally large chunks of biology to explain why they couldn't cure the blight would be overkill. I'm happy to accept "oh no, we can't cure the plague, Earth is dying" as a device to generate dramatic tension. | |
| Nov 11, 2014 at 13:37 | comment | added | PointlessSpike | I agree that from a fiction perspective, "screw the Earth, space is where it's at" is a tempting thing to think, but they went to such lengths to make the physics realistic, you'd expect the same diligence with the writing. It seems odd they'd go "Nope, can't cure it, can't be done IT'S IMPOSSIBRU, off to space!" | |
| Nov 11, 2014 at 12:30 | comment | added | Royal Canadian Bandit | @PointlessSpike: Dramatic licence. It's much cooler to build habitats in space than on the surface of a desolate Earth. And to be fair, the planets on the other side of the wormhole are more promising than artificial habitats, so they want to go there eventually, which requires going to space. | |
| Nov 11, 2014 at 12:18 | comment | added | PointlessSpike | "Might as well" doesn't sound quite the same as their "we're all doomed". | |
| Nov 11, 2014 at 10:17 | history | answered | Royal Canadian Bandit | CC BY-SA 3.0 |