Starship Troopers/WMG

The movie is Bug propaganda.

It's too Anvilicious not to be.

The Bugs were genetically engineered by the military.

At least in the movie & the various TV series, their physiology is too specialized & deliberate to have evolved naturally. It is also too similar to Earth insects to be alien.

The Military created the creatures through bioengineering to create an eternal enemy for Earth to justify their continued stranglehold on the government.

• Similar? Earth insects can shoot bolts of superheated plasma, walk around on Pluto, and fly faster than light?
  • The abilities are there[1][2]. The genetic engineering could pump up them up to the extreme.
  • Humans can't shoot metal projectiles out of their hands, breathe in space, or run at several hundred miles per hour — but we have technology to do that. Genetic engineering has made the bugs their own technology.
• In the TV series, it's explained by the genetic bonding process that lets them pick and choose the most Badass biological features from a galaxy full of Bizarre Alien Biology to add to their species. They are "specialized and deliberate" because that's how they've made themselves.
  • If the government did create the Bugs, then they goofed. The Bugs can indeed destroy humanity, by outbreeding us if nothing else. They can adapt far more rapidly than we can. They are something no government run with enlightened self-interest (the only kind that could pull off such an elaborate longterm conspiracy and keep it secret) would dare unleash.
    • Exactly.

The Bugs were genetically engineered by a corporation that does genetic engineering.

Places like Monsanto have the exact right mix of long-term planning, ability to keep secrets, and absence of enlightened self-interest needed to pull off this sort of project. The end result of this project is a society in which almost no one is a citizen with voting rights — only people who have served, past tense, have the vote, and there are very few of those. The corporations in this society can steer the few people who are in charge to guide anyone who isn't in the military to outright hedonism, which is good for business and which is possible if the leadership is sufficiently far from Heinlein standards. Note that those seen outside the military are living in luxury if they have not been directly affected by a Bug attack.

Starship Troopers takes place in the Warhammer 40000 universe

• It seems pretty straightforward if you ask me. You have your quasi-fascist society which places a great deal of emphasis on military service. Said society is spread throughout at least half of the known galaxy and finds itself besieged by an insectoid alien menace. Replace the Mobile Infantry with the Imperial Guard, the Bugs with the Tyranids, and every fourth line with something involving the Emperor, and you can hardly tell the difference.
  • The Guard have better tactics though.
    • Obviously, they've developed better tactics sometime in the 37,000 years after 'Starship Troopers' and before 'Warhammer 40,000'.
    • And worse weapons. Although they at least have tanks.
    • Worse weapons? Regardless of how they function in-game, Lasguns are far superior to the shitty Moritas the MI are equipped with. It takes six MI firing on semi-auto nearly 10 seconds to kill a single bug. Statistically, it takes 2 Guardsmen firing on semi-auto less than a second to drop a Hormagaunt.
    • Hormaguants are a lot smaller than a Bug, a nid warroir would be closer, which takes about 3-4 guardsmen to drop one.
      • So, a lasgun is still better than a Moritas.
• Note that despite inspiring the Space Marine's the Book most definitely does not take place in the 40k 'verse. Know why? Because the MI values human life, and not as a resource.

The asteroid destroying Buenos Aires was dropped by the military.

Here is what happened: when the spaceship got hit by the asteroid, they wondered if the message they sent made it to earth in time to warn them. It DID make it to earth, but it should've taken years for the asteroid to make it there, since they were in deep space and nowhere near earth when they sent the message. So another section of the military sent out a ship, picked an asteroid, carried it past the defense forces, and dropped it on Buenos Aires. The destruction of a whole city and the death of thousands (that few?) is enough propaganda fuel to start a full scale war; and if anyone else picked up the message of the approaching asteroid, they'd have a justification. In fact, this can make EVERY asteroid attack pure propaganda fuel. There is no reasonable way to catapult them all the way across the galaxy to a specific planet because it would take millions of years. Asteroids should not go FTL.

• Well, if you try to look at the movie seriously, which is impossible, there is no way the bugs could send asteroids to Earth anyway. So it would have to be some other race...and the only other race in the movie is humans.
  • That we KNOW of. If a third species could arrange a convenient war, it would be in their best interest to remain hidden and let the competitors kill each other off. However, it could just be that the Bugs had FTL but hid it from humans; it would, after all, be to their advantage to conceal their true capacity from their enemies.
    • Clearly, that third species is the Protoss.
  • They must have some form of space travel, considering they're encountered on multiple planets. The question is, if they have FTL, why not invade Earth?
    • In the scene where they're dissecting the big beetle-like creature in biology class the professor says that Arachnids can "colonize planets, by hurling their spore into space". They wouldn't necessarily have to have FTL to colonize other star systems this way. We have no idea how long they've existed, so it's quite possible they've been spreading through the galaxy for many millions of years at low STL speeds.

The asteroid was a random act of nature.

Earth just seized the opportunity to blame it on the Bugs.

The M.I.s suck because their doctrine was deliberately designed to make them suck

The entire war was a gigantic Wag The Dog gambit by the fascist government to rally the populace to them by giving them an enemy to be afraid of and hate, so they'd look to the fascist government for safety. The Arachnids were perfect for this purpose because they were technologically primitive and incapable of being any actual threat (the "Bug Meteoroids" were being secretly thrown at Earth by the fascist government - see previous WMG). However, the fascist government wanted to make them look like an actual threat to the populace, and this involved deliberately designing the weapons, tactics, doctrine, and training of the MI so they'd just barely be able to defeat the Arachnids, instead of utterly crushing them in a month like they would if they were actually fighting to win. Hence why the MI don't just kill the screaming hordes of Arachnids with machine guns and tanks and avoid all those unnecessary casualties.

• • And in the unlikely event that things got south (Aka Earth and the leadership is going to get killed), a real regiment of the Federation's military will come in and mop things up with actual military equipment from tanks, Marauders and plenty of air support
    • It is also a means to prune out any prospective citizen.

The Arachnids are innocent victims who are just trying to defend themselves

If we run with the two above theories, it means the Arachnids are an innocent technologically primitive race that simply had the misfortune of being perfect for the Earth government's Wag the Dog gambit. From their perspective they're being attacked by scary genocidal aliens with superior technology who are planning to exterminate their entire species. Sure, you had the possessed general's "and this madness cannot be allowed to spread" speech in the second movie, but really, under the circumstances, can you blame them for thinking we're a crazy, evil species that should be destroyed?

• Word of God supports this one.

The humans are controlled by another intelligent race - hyper-intelligent cows

When the in-movie news is talking about the bugs, they show a cow being eaten by a bug. However, the violence is censored. Immediately afterward, they follow it up with uncensored video of humans ripped limb from limb. The hyper-intelligent cows don't see too much of a problem with letting their non-intelligent kin get killed, but they'd rather not see it as it hits a bit too close to home. Combining this with some above theories, it becomes obvious that the hyper-intelligent cows genetically engineered the bugs, perhaps because their human servitors had reached the limit of their evolution and the hyper-intelligent cows wanted new minions, especially ones which are psychically pliable (did I mention that the hyper-intelligent cows are also psychics?).

• Does that make Carl half-cow?
• This isn't Star Control 3.

The Movie was in-universe propoganda

That's why it's so over the top, why the good guys are seemingly in no pain at the end despite their injuries and walk away smiling and cheerful despite the massive death surrounding them. There are no "psychics", that's just to make humans seem like we have a cool advantage over the Bugs' Hive Mind. The classified details have been replaced with war-film cliches, and they used Hollywood Tactics exclusively because depictions of real-world military tactics are classified or even illegal in that totalitarian society in order to prevent potential rebels from learning to fight.

• And the book is the real account of the war where the Bugs have technology rivaling humanity's and the Mobile Infantry needs to outfit all their troops with Marauder suits to compete.
• Perhaps the film is a documentary of the Dark Age of Technology meant to be shown in the Schola Progenium.

There are no Bugs.

The asteroid was a natural event that the government needed to blame on someone (since they should have detected the rock and deflected it long before it hit). The events of the film are pure fiction, there was no military action taken at all-- records were altered to make some of the people whose bodies were lost in the strike into "war heroes" who "joined up" after the "attack".

• But, if there are no Bugs, what is the government sending thousands of soldiers out for?

The Xenomorphs are the descendants of the Bugs.

After losing their first war with Humans, they adapted. They got rid of the Brain Bug (which was clearly an idiot anyway). They developed a more streamlined shape somewhat similar to their foes (jaws, hands, bipedalism), acid blood for close defence, and a method of reproduction that involved using their enemies to their own advantage. Meanwhile, humanity spread further out into space until they had to use coldsleep chambers on long-range starships. Earth's world government dissolved into national governments; the resulting wars caused their military forces to re-acquire tactical skills.

Neither the Bugs or the Federation sent the asteroid

The plasma bursts that blast the rocks out of Klendathu's orbit are natural phernomina like volcanos. So basicley the Federation wen't to war for nothing!

• Or even better, there was no bug plasma involved. It was just a rogue asteroid that happened to slam into Earth. The Bug War was going to happen anyways, for unrelated reasons (the humans encroaching into Bug Territory being a big one), and this was simply a sort of Havana Harbour incident that set things off.

The film was made as a straight action film

Starship Troopers was actually meant to be a straight, campy action flick; it was only re-labelled as a parody when people pointed out that the film was an awful action film.

Birth control has been perfected for teens and STDs have been wiped out. People can choose to become reproductively viable when they feel they are ready.

They certainly don't seem to mind teens sleeping around.

• • And as it seems only citizens have the right to breed, people know they won't ever have to deal with actually having children.
    • Rico's father wasn't a citizen, but may have been given the right through his lucrative business.
  • One woman says that getting a license to breed is easier if you're a citizen, not that it's the only way.

The Skinnies were manipulating both sides of the Bug War.

The Skinnies, in an undoubtedly complex Xanatos Gambit , got the 2 largest galactic empires (and thus, the 2 greatest threats against any plan concerning the galaxy) to go at each other. Once the Men and the Bugs destroy each other, the Skinnies will swoop in and "pick up the pieces". It doesn't matter who wins, the Skinnies will be the final winner.

Humanity is doomed.

The clearest evidence of this is that, while the Federation is clearly a militaristic society, the government has imposed population controls by requiring people to get licenses in order to have children. It's easier to get one if you're a citizen, meaning that they attract people who want to have lots of children into a career where they're likely to get killed or maimed before they can. They treat their soldiers like expendable resources, and their training and tactics are virtually worthless. A combination of constant war dead without replacements being born means that humanity will wear itself out in a few decades.

• Not everybody who is a citizen was in the military. At any given moment, only 5-10% of the Federal Service is military. And you aren't a citizen until after you LEAVE the Federal Service.
• The feds probably relaxed the birth control after they started taking such heavy casualties in the war. There's not a mention of the license needed when the woman gets pregant in the second film. Plus the war probably isn't goign to last much longer not the feds have their planet busting Q bomb and their Humungas Mecha that can kill hundreds of bugs each and are impervious to their attacks.

Secretly, women are assigned according to their stature and toughness.

The pretty, waifish girls get assigned to fleet (Carmen, and that blonde with her friends). Tough girls get put in Mobile Infantry (Dizz, etc). This is so the real beauties don't get killed in Mobile Infantry and are thus more likely to pass on their genes. Of course fleet's dangerous, too - but not as much front-line danger.