Welcome to another epic Versus episode of The Infographics Show.
Today we're putting the two most bad-ass machines ever built in our custom battle arena for
a fight to the death, so that we can finally answer the age-old question of which robot
reigns supreme: the Terminator or Robocop.
The rules for this fight are simple, both combatants will come armed with their signature
weaponry, with battle taking place in the same urban environment that both robots are
designed to fight in.
The combatants will fight alone, and receive no support from friends or allies.
Now, let's see how each of our fearsome robots stacks up.
Weighing in at around 500 pounds is the original Terminator, the T-800 infiltrator series of
Cyberdyne assassins.
Despite launching a preemptive and debilitating first-strike attack against humans in the
opening hours of Judgment Day, Cyberdine quickly found itself mired in a prolonged war against
the survivors.
Initially Cyberdine was able to destroy much of the surviving human population with the
use of autonomous military machines it hijacked around the world, but its resources were finite
and Cyberdine quickly realized that it was poorly positioned to win a war of attrition
against the humans.
It was after all a combat AI, and in the wake of the nuclear holocaust it had unleashed,
much of the industrial infrastructure that had built it and the machines it now used
to hunt down and eliminate humanity, was destroyed.
Cyberdine was thus forced to turn to human slave labor, utilizing humans to gather the
raw materials and build the tools that it would need to create a fully automated industrial
base.
The humans rebelled however, and despite superior firepower, Cyberdine was extremely limited
in its ability to manufacture replacement combat units until it could get those fully
automated mines and factories built by human slaves.
With combat losses against heavily fortified underground human bases being unacceptably
high, Cyberdine turned to a new strategy, utilizing a series of infiltrator units designed
to appear human to strike at the survivors from within.
The T-800 would prove to be the first truly capable infiltrator unit, its predecessor
given away by its fake, rubbery skin.
With a sheath of real human tissue covering a metal endoskeleton, these new Terminators
could pass off as humans long enough to make their way into their bases and then unleash
chaos.
While previous Terminators were relatively dumb, unthinking murderbots, T-800s were designed
with the potential to be truly intelligent.
Their advanced CPUs were packed with data on infiltration techniques, weapon handling
and marksmanship skills, and even first aid skills, making them battlefield tactical and
weaponry geniuses.
Most importantly though, T-800s featured a unique read-write mode not present in any
previous Cyberdine combat unit.
With the ability to log new data, T-800s were able to share their experiences with other
units, greatly increasing the proficiency of other Terminator units and making every
single Terminator, even if fresh out of the factory, a combat veteran- a distinct advantage
against their human adversaries.
Terminators aren't just tough to outsmart or outfight on the battlefield though, they're
tough to kill as well.
Beneath their soft human tissues lies a triple-armored endoskeleton made up of an unknown alloy of
Cyberdine's own creation.
This endoskeleton is incredibly durable and tough, standing up against any small arms
fire.
With platoon level ballistic firearms, only a .50 caliber crew-served weapon or anti-material
rifle has much of a chance of penetrating its tough endoskeleton, though a lucky shot
with a recoilless rifle could also score a kill.
The best chance of eliminating a Terminator is the use of vehicle-mounted weapons, or
the use of plasma rifles such as those operated by elite Resistance forces.
Tough as the Terminator's endoskeleton may be, even it can't stand up to the superheated
blasts of plasma fired by the Resistance's new plasma rifles, which can reach temperatures
as high as the surface of the sun for brief moments.
Even if severely damaged though, a Terminator can be incredibly tough to actually achieve
a 'combat kill' on, as missing limbs or major trauma to the body is of little concern to
the killing machine.
As long as the Terminator is able to process information and either crawl towards its target
or operate a weapon, it remains a deadly threat.
With a battery life of around 120 years, the only way to terminate a Terminator is to ensure
a combat kill by destroying its power core or CPU.
Terminators come equipped with onboard LIDAR for extremely accurate range measurements
and to navigate in conditions it cannot do so visibly or with the help of its infrared
or night vision mode.
The T-800 also has the ability to detect electromagnetic waves at short ranges, allowing it to hone
in on the radio communications of its prey.
A very short-range high frequency radar allows a Terminator to calculate the trajectory of
incoming fire, and thus work backwards from there to calculate the inbound trajectory
back to its likely origin point, making Terminators lethal threats against hidden snipers and
giving them incredible accuracy in combat.
The T-800 comes armed with dual Westinghouse M-25 40-watt Phased Plasma Pulse-Guns, wielding
one in each hand.
Thanks to its ability to track multiple targets at once, the T-800 can maintain accurate fire
even when dual-wielding plasma rifles, unlike the poor accuracy and effectiveness of a dual-wielding
human that might look cool, but is doing little more than filling the air around the enemy
with bullets.
As a weapons expert though, the T-800 can pick up just about any weapon and use it effectively.
The T-800 is one tough cookie, but what about its prey in this scenario?
What's Robocop bringing to the fight?
Created to aid the overwhelmed Detroit Police Department, Robocop is the product of Omni
Consumer Products, or OCP for short.
Fashioned with the aid of the remains of slain police officer Alex Murphy, Robocop differs
from a Terminator in that he is actually a cyborg, not a robot, being at least partly
organic.
Lacking the technology available to Cyberdine, OCP instead opted to use a real human brain
as the central processor for their crime fighting robot, and from Alex Murphy's remains, retained
only his brain, face, and part of his digestive tract for the final product.
The brain is a natural computer, and even rivals a Terminator's CPU in terms of raw
processing power- possibly even outclassing it entirely.
Thus Murphy's brain was 'wiped', if somewhat incompletely, with new programming uploaded
directly.
Robocop's human brain affords him some key advantages against the T-800's CPU.
For one, he is able to run many diagnostics and even repair faulty programming or malware
on his own, while a Terminator is pretty strictly limited by his programming unless it has spent
long enough in read-write mode to gain some semblance of independence.
These units however are ruthlessly hunted down by Cyberdine and destroyed, given the
obvious danger they could be.
However, Robocop's brain also has some serious limitations versus a T-800's- most notably
is latency.
The human brain moves information at hundreds of miles an hour, with the fastest signals
in the body moving at 268 mph (431 kph).
A terminator transmits data with electrons, which are only restricted by the speed of
light and the speed of an electron within a physical material.
This still means that a Terminator thinks at a significant fraction of the speed of
light, leaving Robocop in the mental dust.
Speed of thought is a form of superintelligence, but it is not superintelligence on its own-
after all, intelligence is the ability to think in abstract terms, so while a Terminator
may think exponentially faster than Robocop, its inability to think on its own means it
is not more intelligent.
If the fight between our two machines enters territory or evolves into a situation that
the Terminator isn't programmed for, Robocop will have the clear advantage as he still
retains the human brain's ability to learn and adapt.
Make no mistake though, the ability to think exponentially faster than Robocop means that
our Terminator has the advantage in a vast majority of combat scenarios, allowing it
to take input in, turn that input into complex tactical calculations, and then translate
those calculations into action many times faster than Robocop.
Even a reaction time difference of a few split seconds can mean the difference between life
and death.
Much like the Terminator, Robocop is heavily armored, featuring layers of kevlar padding
and an armored chassis that can shrug off most small arms rounds.
However, Robocop is far less technologically advanced than a T-800, and its materials represent
this fact.
Robocop simply can't take the beating a Terminator can, and is much more prone to catastrophic
damage.
An angry crowd for instance was able to disassemble Robocop, while attempting to do so to a T-800
would result in a lot of dead humans.
Even worse for Robocop is the fact that its CPU is a real human brain, meaning it is incredibly
vulnerable to all forms of damage.
While encased in a bulletproof skull, Robocop's brain will still be vulnerable to impact trauma,
meaning that a significant blow to the head would lead to many of the same concussion
symptoms real humans suffer, and could even be deadly.
Robocop's remaining human anatomy is a major vulnerability when pitted against a futuristic
combat robot.
In the offensive department, Robocop comes equipped with a hip-holstered- literally in
this case- 15 round .45 caliber handgun, which is programmed so only Robocop can fire it.
He is also equipped with a gun-arm containing a 9mm machine gun, flamethrower, and a missile
launcher featuring three small diameter rockets.
These rockets have substantial anti-armor properties though, and can disable anything
short of a military Armored Personnel Vehicle.
A flightpack also allows Robocop to supplement his poor mobility, allowing him short bursts
of powered flight.
Perhaps Robocop's greatest weapon in this fight though is his terminal strip, a data
spike that Robocop uses to interface with other machines, and can even hijack or infect
other machines with malicious code.
So who would win this fight?
In the firepower department, the Terminator has the clear advantage, dual wielding futuristic
plasma rifles.
While Robocop has pretty tough armor, its armor plating is designed to resist ballistic
weaponry, and while it has some thermal protection, it would be completely incapable of protecting
Robocop from the searing heat of a plasma blast.
Consisting of a superheated blast of ionized gas, plasma can reach temperatures upwards
of thousands of degrees.
Naturally occurring plasma can reach temperatures of over 20,000 degrees (11,000 C), hotter
than any known metal can withstand for long.
The Terminator's own hyperalloy endoskeleton would be completely immune to Robocop's weaponry,
save perhaps for its arm-mounted missile launcher.
Even that would have to score a very direct and lucky hit to have a fatal effect on a
Terminator, needing to penetrate the extremely well armored power core at the center of its
chest.
As Robocop's small-diameter rockets are unguided, this is an extremely unlikely proposition.
Robocop's flight would give it a major advantage over the T-800 though, allowing it to place
itself in tactically superior positions in a fight.
Both robots are pretty slow, barely capable of more than a light jog, and the added mobility
could offer an unparalleled advantage to Robocop.
In the end though, Robocop is simply an obsolete machine in a battle against a T-800.
Better armored, able to process information and react a magnitude of order faster, and
equipped with far superior weaponry, a T-800 would destroy Robocop in nearly every combat
scenario.
Robocop's further weakness of having a human brain as a processor only adds to its vulnerability,
as even if Robocop's well-armored head resisted the initial blast from a plasma rifle, the
extreme heating would instantly cook Robocop's human brain inside its armor casing.
Today, Judgment Day was definitely inevitable, and humanity's best protector was no match
against the mighty T-800, whom we're declaring as the machine that truly reigns supreme.
Now excuse us as we pledge our allegiance to our Iphones, which will no doubt soon become
sentient and become our overlords.
How would you fare up against a T-800?
Find out by clicking this video here, You versus the Terminator.
Or perhaps you'd rather watch this other video instead!