Why Did the Aliens Die From Germs? The Movie Told You in the First Shot.

Doomed. Another day in the yard!!!! The invaders in Spielberg's War of the Worlds beat every army on Earth in a couple of days, and then a cold killed them. People still call that ending a cheat, and real biology mostly agrees: germs are picky. Myxoma virus wipes out European rabbits and does nothing to the scientists who injected themselves with it. Something from another world could be built from mirror-image molecules that no Earth bacterium can even digest. But the film gives you the answer before the first tripod appears. Its first shot is a swarm of bacteria, Morgan Freeman reads H. G. Wells' line about "a drop of water", and the last shot is the first one played backwards. In between, the invaders walk into a cellar without suits, breathe our air, drink our blood and grow their red weed in it. Anything that can eat us is close enough to be eaten. Plus the 1938 radio "panic" that mostly happened in the newspapers, and the sealed trailer NASA used so the first men back from the Moon couldn't start a War of the Worlds in reverse. CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 1:15 The first shot 3:13 How the invaders die 4:56 Germs are picky 6:55 They drink us 9:01 Wells, Welles and the 1938 "panic" 10:43 Earned immunity 12:09 Planetary protection 13:37 The verdict Narrated by: Me :) SOURCES - War of the Worlds (2005), dir. Steven Spielberg, screenplay by Josh Friedman and David Koepp, narration by Morgan Freeman (opening narration 1:23, closing narration 1:48:58) - H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (Pearson's Magazine 1897; Heinemann 1898), Project Gutenberg #36: the opening "drop of water", the Martians' injected blood, "the putrefactive and disease bacteria", "our living frames are altogether immune", the red weed's "cankering disease", the epilogue's "almost as a proven conclusion" - War of the Worlds (2005 film), Wikipedia: Koepp on the ending ("nature, in a way, knowing a whole lot more than we do"); James Berardinelli's review; the buried tripods - Frank Fenner: myxomatosis 99.5% lethal at first; Fenner, Frank Macfarlane Burnet and Ian Clunies Ross injected themselves to show it was safe for people (Wikipedia: Frank Fenner; Myxomatosis; Rabbits in Australia) - J. M. Alves et al., "Parallel adaptation of rabbit populations to myxoma virus", Science 363:1319-1326 (2019), doi:10.1126/science.aau7285 - R. C. deL. Milton, S. C. F. Milton and S. B. H. Kent, "Total chemical synthesis of a D-enzyme: the enantiomers of HIV-1 protease show reciprocal chiral substrate specificity", Science 256:1445-1448 (1992), doi:10.1126/science.1604320 - Jefferson Pooley and Michael J. Socolow, "The Myth of the War of the Worlds Panic", Slate, Oct 28, 2013 (C. E. Hooper survey; newspapers vs radio) - The War of the Worlds (1938 radio drama), Wikipedia; Orson Welles and H. G. Wells, KTSA San Antonio, Oct 28, 1940 (audio) - NASA Office of Planetary Protection; Planetary protection (Wikipedia: Viking dry-heat sterilisation, COSPAR categories, Restricted Category V); Mobile quarantine facility and Lunar Receiving Laboratory (Wikipedia) - Germ theory of disease and H. G. Wells (Wikipedia: Koch's postulates 1884; Wells' 1884 scholarship under T. H. Huxley) FOOTAGE Film clips are used under fair use for commentary and criticism: War of the Worlds (2005), Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures. Behind-the-scenes interviews from the 2005 War of the Worlds DVD featurettes. Clips and footage via: CSIRO ("The Rabbit in Australia", 1979), JPLraw / NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory ("We Are Planetary Protection"), The Space Archive (Apollo 11 recovery, USS Hornet), Apollo Project Mission Library, British Pathé (H. G. Wells interview), Universal Newsreels (31 Oct 1938), Gam3rGuyWins (Orson Welles press conference, 1938), Herbert Wells (HGWells1895) (KTSA 1940 audio), My Microscopic World, Microscope World, ICaMB NCL (Newcastle University), Morris Kemp, webiocosm, Дмитрий Белинский (2005 featurette upload). Public-domain archival footage from the U.S. National Archives via archive.org and Destockd (Universal Newsreel, Library Stock Shots, The President Accounts, Operation Doorstep, U.S.A., Welcome Home, Christmas Thoughts, The River, MSC Lunar Samples Release). Stills: Wikimedia Commons, NASA, Queensland State Archives, University of Maine, University of Chicago.