FAQ For New Fans #37: "Why The T-1000 Didn't Melt in the Fire?"

 My websites were always targeted primarily for the hardcore fans who almost know it all. The purpose of my sites was too shine light on some very obscure interviews and facts that aren't accessible in well known books or extras that are still available for purchase. However, times change, and new generations and fans come along - and I realized that a lot of my audience consist of fans who aren't diehards who know every book and interview by memory for decades (like all the fans at the Terminator Files Forum years ago), or just never went outside the films. So this is part of a different type of FAQ section, for those less initiated in Cameronverse.

Let's continue with "Why The T-1000 Didn't Melt in the Fire?"

The answer is simple - fire does not nearly have the same heat as molten steel that melted both the T-1000 and the T-800. Truck/car/gasoline fire reaches temperature maximum up to 1,500 degrees F, and since the truck fire was in an open air fire, the heat would dissipate quickly so it would be much less than that. Actually, the script and novelization says exactly how hot the truck fire is, and clocks it at 1,000 degree Fahrenheit.


In comparison, the temperature of the molten steel is upwards of 2,500 F. And considering how resistant to extreme temperatures  the T-1000 is (he melts much longer than the T-800, and even freezing its nanobots only disrupted it's camouflaging abilities but he could still function nearly perfectly - something a T-800 would not be able to do after having his chip frozen in nitrogen), a fire would not affect it, especially when he is only 33 seconds in it. 

But you don't need to know the melting points to know that, as the movie makes you connect the dots pretty quickly - first of all, we know that neither the truck cabin nor its much smaller debris melted,


 nevermind a futuristic, resistant alloy. Second, we know a tanker fire did not affect an endoskeleton, who was only knocked out temporarily by the impact of the explosion, nevermind a more advanced model who is shown in the film to have a higher melting point and higher resistance to heat than the T-800 (again, he melts much longer than the T-800)

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