Question: When Arnold is on the shore face down in the mud, the predator then hits the water. Shortly afterward it looks like his cloaking protection is short-circuiting when he is walking to shore. If it did, how could it use the cloaking device again later to cloak itself?
mozeus5
13th Sep 2010
Predator (1987)
11th Sep 2010
Predator (1987)
Question: Why didn't Arnold and the rest of the commandos take thermal goggles or sensitive listening devices with them on the mission; wasn't the technology available?
Chosen answer: It's the jungle: thermal goggles would have too much interference due to the high ambient temperature and sensitive listening devices would have picked up too much ambient noise from the wildlife. When filming the movie they had to hose the area down with ice water just to cool it off enough to get the footage for the Predator's heat vision. Presumably, his technology is more advanced than our own, so the high jungle temps didn't interfere. Plus of course, their original mission was meant to be very straightforward, with no need for high-tech equipment.
Answer: During the 1980's thermal googles worn on the face had not been produced. As far as the team wearing night vision goggles (infrared) that wouldn't have given them an advantage against the predators cloaking device. Infrared works off ambient light and they do not detect heat; there isn't much ambient light at night in triple canopy jungle and they are worthless during the day. The spectrum the predator used in the movie is thermal not infrared.
Infrared and ambient light are different. Night vision goggles use ambient light, amplifying whatever light there is, from the moon, stars, etc. Infrared and thermal are the same thing, working on heat rather than visible light.
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Chosen answer: Well, we don't know exactly what's going on. It may simply be that the cloaking device, for whatever reason, can't cope with water, so it cuts out. When it dries off again, normal function may simply return. Or, if it does actually short out, as opposed to simply shutting down, then some sort of auto-repair mechanism may come into play to restore the cloaking device back to a functional state. Either way it's a reasonable explanation as to why it still works.
Tailkinker ★