A question about the germy ending of war of the worlds:?

Perhaps the Martians came from a germ free environment. But that would be a real concern if we were invaded from another planet, that they might bring something “benign” that would actually devastate us.

The Martians would not anticipate a lot of bacteria and viruses here since they only looked at us through telescopes.

The germs killed the Native Americans. So I would say yes.

To some degree, it was a 50–50 chance. What if the Native Americans had smallpox?

The main difference is that the germs would not be able to travel from America to Europe, it could only kill the people who came over to America from Europe.

It’s science fiction.

Not unlike syphilis transmission through Columbus’s sailors.

@ragingloli unless you are not human, it’s “us humans”, not “you humans.”

The whole premise is faulty, of course, since the virus crossed inter-species, to a non-terrestrial species, no less. It’s just as unlikely that a Martian virus would have transmitted to a terrestrial species.

And while it’s not unlikely that a viral infection would spread across species, since that does happen on Earth, after all, it’s pretty unlikely that the most common human virus would be the one to make the cross.

The Human Race had developed resistance to the germs that killed off the aliens, much like the germs from the New World settlers killed off thousands of Indians.

I think you missed the point of the Q, @filmfann… why didn’t the Earth population react like Native Americans (for example) to whatever Martian microbes were brought from that planet with the Martian invaders?

Of course we had adapted to co-exist with terrestrial viruses, more or less (population-wise, at any rate), but didn’t the Martians bring anything with them?

@CWOTUS You are quite right, I missed the point of the question.
The answer is simply that the Martians are a bunch of pussies, and had lived in germ free environments to that point.

”...how did the aliens not see this coming?”

Because aliens are only as intelligent as the human writers create them to be.

Like ghosts.

Maybe that’s what Aydolph thought, “ze Germ -ans vill vule ze verld!!”

The aliens thought they were safe. They assumed no disease found on Earth could jump the species barrier, at least not quickly, but they were wrong.