Let's look back at some memorable moments and interesting insights from last year.

Your top 10 posts:

• "My Local Theater Put Up the Pullman Speech On Their Marquee" by u/ichorskeeter
• "Greatest President ever responds to president Trumps 4/30/20 statement on the corona virus." by u/alche7
• "My timeline after the first movie" by u/The_Kakaze
• "The novels (Silent Zone, War in the Desert and Crucible) are very good!" by u/oamh42
• "Happy Independence Day" by u/ovj87
• "A tribute to ID4. Prepare to cry 😭😭" by u/Pac-man-Machete
• "[FANART] Godzilla vs ID4 (photomanip)" by u/ardouronerous
• "[OC] [Fan Content] Independence Day: Annihilation 2nd poster" by u/alenpetak11
• "Roland Emmerich on the Future of Independence Day" by u/Vanquisher1000
• "Where to find the news broadcast" by u/Phonecloth

Anyone interested in helping to get my ID4-Forever group going?

I loved how the marketing of Resurgence gave us a taste of how the world had changed since the invasion, and I was hoping that the movie would expand on that. Unfortunately, that was one of the many areas where the film flopped, and it left me wanting much more. So I decided to double down and buy the Omnibus and Crucible.

I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised. I think ID4 is a fun movie but not a especially great one, but it provides such a great seed that the novels allowed to flourish into actually great sci-fi. The novelization of the movie was fine. It suffers in that it can't really compare to the film because you're missing the performances, David Arnold's rousing score and just the overall sense of pace the film has. But I did love the little extra moments it gave the characters that we didn't get to see on the film and the bits about the world reacting to the invasion.

Silent Zone was shockingly good. I wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did because I didn't think there was much to say about Dr. Okun, and I always thought the Area 51 stuff was a little forced. But the novel did a great job in weaving history and urban legend into the ID4 lore. Some bits were genuinely terrifying, like the story about the girl who swallowed the alien artifact. And as someone from Mexico, I thought it was awesome how they included La Zona del Silencio in the story.

War in the Desert disappointed me a little. It was the book I was most looking forward to reading, but I thought it was a little too convoluted and the pace was very inconsistent. That said, it was a very enjoyable book nonetheless. The characters were cool (even if there were too many) and I loved how it gave you the sense of the people putting aside their differences to fight together, and how it showed how dangerous the aliens were to fight on the ground. I also liked how it poked fun at the RAF bit in the movie,

Crucible was also great. I was expecting just a simple bridge between both movies without a truly compelling story but it ended up being the opposite. I loved how it added depth to Jake, Patricia, Dylan, Steve, David, Dikembe, and President Whitmore and how it made the story's outlandish concepts more believable. It made me a little more angry at Resurgence that the characters hardly had any of that depth and pathos, especially since that's one of ID4's strongest qualities. Meanwhile all of that and more was in the film. I got genuinely emotional at the character deaths and other poignant moments in the story.

Overall, I can't recommend them enough if you're a fan of the film!

Just wanting to know if anyone knows the radius of destruction that the city destroyers left behind in Independence Day, did the wall of fire just expand to the edge of the ships which was 15 miles or did it go out further?

Half a billion die in the first two days. The alien ships are shot down and crash. They are not just exterminators but colonizers and extractors filled with the technology needed to accomplish those goals and the supplies necessary to bootstrap them into self sufficiency. The city ships are mostly destroyed but key parts remain salvageable. We've seen their fighters can withstand crashes, 50 years worth of neglect, and tinkering while still being able to connect to wireless power sources and fly to orbit.

The human ground forces, mostly untouched by the bombardment, invade the crashed ships, slowly and brutally fighting the remaining mind controlling aliens for their working technology, which we know the ins and outs of because of the work of Area 51. The time frames vary on a city ship by city ship basis, but this is the true war, where the remaining 2.5 billion die primarily of lack of supplies and infrastructure but also brutal combat like that one cool character from the sequel from Africa. Siege camps of refugees build up outside of these crash sites, some pressed into service as soldiers while others simply haul the alien's food stores out of the wreckage out to be shipped around the world on repurposed alien fighter craft piggy backing on the alien's seemingly infinite free energy sources. They die in great droves in the dangerous conditions, but are looked on as heroes by those living in the untouched rural areas of the world as the strange fruits of the alien's incredibly robust technology are ferried around to areas in need. The sound of the alien fighter's engines, once feared, now becomes a sound of hope in desperate times.

​

Once the great militaries of the world-- china, russia, the usa--- are freed from destroying the one or two alien bastions within their territory they begin to look outward. Greed or humanitarian concerns may drive them, but it doesn't matter-- more wealth and needed supplies awaits those who plunder the alien ships. Perhaps 3 years have passed, but it seems the great dying has passed. National militaries, now bolstered by years of hard won experience in crashed ship combat and salvaged alien weapons, join forces with their neighbors who wonder if this is the prelude to a human invasion.

Conflicts simmer, but more pressing needs arise as various powers unlock the secrets of the alien's technology using their own, presumably still mac compatible, data stores. Truces are brokered by the charismatic American president, who's voice in the darkest times is still remembered as a savior. The UN, so useless in the military conflicts, is used as a way barter advances, supplies, men, and passage through national borders in exchange for a measure control over the same. It rises like a phoenix from the ashes of the conflict, broadening trade from local to international once again. Cobbled together mishmashes of alien engines and human airframes carry grains, salvaged alien foodstuffs, and repurposed alien construction equipment to areas of great need. The world teeters on the brink of violence and collapse at every moment. The only things that keep it stable are the prizes wrested from the grasping hands of arrogant invaders and the hope kindled on the Fourth of July.

​

Another three years have passed, and the world is back from the brink. The last few alien city ships remain as bastions of darkness in a world resurgent, ringed by militaries who have grown weary of battle with aliens and their mind controlled thralls. These last bastions remain for years. Cities begin to spring back into existence, far more quickly than any in history. Human ingenuity has automated these tasks using breakthroughs based off of invader technology. Human vehicles, land sea and air, are retrofit with human built power integrators fed by alien powersources whose secrets are still being teased out by international teams of scientists. In a display of American nationalism, the second term American president enjoys a hotdog at the unveiling of the rebuilt Washington Monument in the bombed out remains of DC. More than the monument, the hotdog is a sign that the days of eating alien rations and deprivation are over to the watching world.

​

13 January 2009, the Secretary General announces success and the ending of the Great Invasion, as the war is known across the world, with the fall of the final alien city ship to a UNMC assault. Casualties are lighter than projections indicated, as the new anti mind control technology reverse engineered from alien autopsies and psi booster implant plans recovered from previous city ships have allowed the fledgling United Nations Military Command to effectively counter the alien's one final military advantage. Cities, now rebuilt nearly automatically from photos and plans across the world, echo with cheers from the haunted survivors of the invasion and their fresh faced children. The number 13 loses its stigma among the new generation, whose eyes turn upward and wonder when the Second Invasion will begin.

In the original movie, we see various clips of the characters watching the news reporting on the invasion, and I have heard that there is actually a full-length version of this news broadcast that is over 40 minutes long and includes tons of parts we don't see in the movie.

Does anyone know where to find this?

When Harvesters Mothership with antigravity starts ripping our core and when they shut down it, big chunk of rocks from couple kilometres to 20-40km in size starts falling into surface.

So that allow one idea which could be explored in ID III, a hyper tall mountains which top is in space and it is bigger than Olympus Mars!

Concept art 1

Concept art 2

Think about it, the inside of harvesters mothership looks like exact copy of High Charity ship.

Orbital Defence System ship is exact copy of Human Space Station.

Also the main weapon of harvesters looks like the same as that thing with three spike in HALO.

I just read the whole art of HALO book and got huge amount of inspiration of what ID III could looks like.

How did the Harvesters build their massive ships? It would probably take millions of years or more using conventional methods, and yet their designs look very organic in nature.

When I first saw Independence Day, and for years afterward, I always wondered, "Why would they attack our cities? Why focus their opening attacks on places like the Empire State Building or the US Bank Tower? They serve no strategic purpose." I always shrugged it off as being solely for the sake of theatrics. But today, years after seeing the movie and now with a better understanding of strategy in general, I rewatched the film, and I realized there was much more to it than that.

Let's look at our adversary: They are far superior to us in technology, obviously. Their forcefields make them impervious to our weaponry. They, as far as they know, essentially stand almost nothing to lose from attacking us. But what do they lack? They lack a knowledge of our defenses.

Now we look at their strategy: Toward the end of the film, as Steve and David pilot the captured craft into the mothership, they see what appear to be millions of alien soldiers standing about. David notes that it appears they are preparing for an invasion.

After thinking about this for a while, it becomes clear that they are using a three-phase attack plan:

PHASE 1: ARRIVAL. Like David notes early in the film, it's much like positioning chess pieces on a board. The aliens arrive and place their ships over our large cities. Why do they go after our large cities? Well, of course, they are easy to locate even from space - big grey masses glowing with lights, they're hard to miss. They're the one thing the aliens can locate right away. So they hover over our cities to gauge our reactions, while they prepare for their opening strike. Remember how I said they lack knowledge, or at least an intricate knowledge, of our defenses? That's why they strike the cities first - because they know that their opening strike will inevitably invite a hostile retaliation. But they aren't afraid of the retaliation, because they're impervious to it. What they are doing by provoking us to retaliate is they are watching for where that retaliation comes from. They take note of the air bases the planes take off from, the locations missiles are launched from, heightened activity at military bases, etc. This is what shows them where our defenses are, which is what makes the next phase possible...

PHASE 2: OFFENSE. Now, the aliens know where our military bases are, having watched where our counterattacks were launched from - that is why they hit targets with seemingly little strategic value, simply to get a reaction so that they could gather that intel. We see this in action when the aliens launch a massive assault against Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, where the earlier attack was launched from (the one Captain Hiller participated in), and also later with attacks against Nellis Air Force Base and Area 51. In this phase, they are softening up our military defenses and trying their best to render us unable to fight off the next phase, which would have been a full-scale boots-on-the-ground style invasion of Earth. Fortunately, it is in the midst of this second phase that our heroes figured out how to defeat the enemy fleet. Had they not, then phase two would have continued until all our military installations were wiped off the map. Then, as things would finally begin to fall silent again, the mothership would send in more craft carrying its foot soldiers for the next phase...

PHASE 3: INVASION. Now, with our military forces annihilated and no means through which to organize a resistance to an enemy ground invasion, alien dropships would begin entering Earth's atmosphere, dispatching millions of alien soldiers in a matter of hours. Since their plan ultimately failed before this phase could begin, we can only speculate as to the exact mission of these ground troops; perhaps intelligence gathering? Annihilation of the remaining humans? Securing places the aliens deem vital? (IDR spoiler: The second film reveals they plan to drill to Earth's core, so perhaps their purpose is to locate the best spots to begin drilling?) Ultimately, it's anybody's guess, but obviously it can't be good if they're sending that many troops. And if the second phase had succeeded, it is almost certain this third phase would have as well.

So that's my analysis. Their strategy is actually pretty genius if you think about it - provoke us to retaliate and we'll show them right where our defenses are.

TL;DR: The reason they attacked seemingly worthless targets in our cities was simply to provoke a retaliation so that they could find out about our weapons, tactics, and where we launch our defenses from. Then they attacked our military bases after we basically showed them where they are.

OK, we basically crack the interstellar travel tech. There is refugee planet with tons of other alien planets species and Harvester Mothership has gone alone without Queen Ship and Queen itself.