The Day of the Triffids discussion

I've always had one major issue with this book. I'm happy to posit a world which has Triffids in it. I'm happy to posit a world where most of the population are suddenly struck down with blindness. But to jam them both in the same book is stretching my suspense of disbelief towards breaking point.
On this read-through I was struck by the section where it is briefly considered how suspiciously fast the Triffids were in taking advantage of the situation. As soon as the blindness occurred they were apparently breaking free of their tethers to cause mayhem.
So is there a reading of this book where we can interpret it as not a case of the Russians engineering the Triffids, but simply finding the first ones to fall to Earth? Then when they are numerous enough, the Triffids are able to summon or cause the green lights which gives them superiority over animal life.
What do the rest of you think? Yes, I'm basing it on not very much from the actual text - but there's not much in the text that disproves it either. and it would help me get past the problem of having to accept too many impossible things before breakfast.

I've always kind of thought the same thing - that the triffids and the blindness were related and that the triffids somehow made it happen, maybe as a catalyst only, or maybe in some other more active way. Because I agree - triffids and world-wide blindness in one book is a big bite to chew! Having said that, I have a real liking for this story and always have.

I didn't consider the two as related when I read it. I see what you're saying that it is a fantastic coincidence, but it didn't diminish my enjoyment of the story.

I like your theory, but in the tradition of SF it's all about suspending reality just enough to allow the exploration of an exciting scenario or idea. I'm willing to give an author, especially John Wyndham, a certain amount leeway to get there. Maybe he went too far in Triffids to make that possible, I agree in hindsight. I wonder what other ideas he came up with along the way. He certainly wasn't short of them!

I think Wyndham would have gone into more detail if your theory was his intention, but I can't remember how much detail he used to explain the blindness now either.

Wyndham tried the plant warfare thing before in Puffball Menace, which I thought was a more interesting and less fantastical idea. I guess it had less legs. I never liked the concept of the Triffids themselves, but I did really enjoy the book as a whole.

I thought that Wyndham was making the story a 'warning about technology'. Both the triffids and the 'comets' were caused by humankind getting too creative with, respectively, genetic engineering and satellites. There's also a bit of a warning against wars, even cold ones, because the technology race is caused by the competitive hostility between Russia and the USA.

So in his vision, both new plant forms and dangerous light-inducing explosives are 'out there' at the same time, along with a bunch of other things, and it's just human's bad luck that they get triffids and comets at the same time.

It's a very interesting question to pose though because I don't think you'd set out to feature two original new dangers for mankind in one book. Why not use them for two different books? An entirely different possibility is that the author started with the triffids but realised they were not threatening enough if you could see them coming (they move too slowly, like zombies) so he needed to turn his population blind. If so, that was a pretty drastic solution!

The other way round, the blindness would have worked perfectly well on its own without the triffids. But then he would have needed a new title. Day of the .... Blindness?

I always saw it as the triffids caused the blindness somehow, they were just waiting until they had become a part of society before they unleashed the comets. And when you consider that the triffids sneak attack was blinding you, it would be way too convenient that there just happen to be comets that turn everyone blind which just happens to be exactly what the triffids need to take over.

Also, the triffids knew exactly when to attack, if they hadn't caused it then they would have been slower on the whole take over the world thing.

ARGHHHH! No, the two events were quite separate. First, or should I say, "last" because at the end of the book, the protagonist is thankful for the triffids because had they not existed after the meteor shower that blinded most of the population, society would have fallen back into feudalism and serfdom... but the triffids finished off the would be "lords" while the truly socialist minded found refuge and a base from which to fight back against the triffids, on an island that the triffids couldn't reach.

Funny story, the evening after I finished reading the story, I stood outside my home looking at a lovely sunset, when as it got just past the gloaming, a brilliant green bolide crossed the darnened sky and exploded. I was SO spooked !!!

We knew from the attempts to factory-farm triffids that they're like velociraptors, always testing for weaknesses in the system, so once people were unable to respond effectively to their aggressions, it would not take long for them to run entirely amok.

It was also established that the arms race had resulted in all manner of satellite weapons systems, the capabilities of which were largely unknown, so it was inevitable, or at least everyone had it in the backs of their minds, that some unimaginable horror was going to rain down from the sky one day. Since the 'comet debris' appeared to affect the entire earth, it seems plausible that it was the result of a malfunctioning weapons system rather than an intentional and targeted attack.

So triffids may simply represent all the things that we take for granted man has dominion over but in fact could easily destroy us if even one ability we also take for granted were taken from us (say, through the malfunctioning of technology we assumed we had dominion over!). England's eradicated its large predators, so Wyndham's biological threat kind of had to be fictional (aside from the disease that swept through the survivors, but disease doesn't elicit quite the same visceral response as being hunted for your flesh). In other parts of the world, we could just imagine how long we'd last against tigers and polar bears if the entire human population suddenly went blind and society (and food production and manufacturing and distribution) fell into chaos. The one state of affairs would be bad enough without having a ravenous horde of predators stalking you in your own garden.

I just finished this book. And yes, I understand the scientific/arms race theories posited in the book about the origin of the light storm, but I couldn't shake the idea that it was really the Triffids that had caused it. Maybe they were just waiting until they were numerous enough (and humans perceived them as totally innocuous) before (here's my theory) having all the mature ones shoot out micro-spores that once they got high enough into the atmosphere would get all glowy and blindy.

The blindness was caused by a comet hitting some satellite(s) that contained some kind of biological weapon. It said in the book that there were many such satellites up there. It was just bad luck that the weapon had been set off during a time when nearly everyone was watching the sky.

It *was* suspicious that the triffids took advantage of the widespread blindness so quickly, but not for the reason you suggest. We know for a fact that the blindness was not caused by them, so that's not it.

As CluckingBell said, the triffids were always testing for weaknesses, and would start exploiting a weakness as soon as they saw one. When they realized that humans could no longer keep them contained, and could no longer run away effectively, they immediately took advantage of it. That part is not strange; what's strange is that they *all* seemed to know, and they all start breaking out at once, as if it was coordinated. The answer is given, but most of the characters don't realize it: One character had a hypothesis that triffids communicate by tapping their sticks. This character dies early on, so his hypothesis never becomes common knowledge, and others only think of it much later on. So yes, the triffids seem to know more than they should, not because they planned it, but because they have a form of language that lets them send messages quickly among their kind, and the humans never knew until it was too late.

Simon wrote: "I've always had one major issue with this book. I'm happy to posit a world which has Triffids in it. I'm happy to posit a world where most of the population are suddenly struck down with blindness...."

The Russians did it would go over easily with American readers. I am thinking the reader had a flawed pov moment, and attributed the cause of the rise of the Triffids wrongly, as in fact they were spores from outer space that filtered down with the comet dust, and enabled the Triffids to activate.

When Bill and Josella go to her house at the beginning of the book, Bill gets hit by a triffid, but nothing happens to him. So he kills the triffid, examines its sting and says: "I’ve never seen one with the poison-sacs quite empty like this before. It must have been doing a hell of a lot of stinging.’"

Add to this the fact that the triffids always go for the eyes, trying to blind their enemies.

Add the unusual intelligence of the triffids and the possibility of a sort of hive mind.

The result was that I felt throughout the book if the triffids released an unholy amount of poison in the atmosphere by some means, and had it fall down to kill their predators. If it truly were a Russian satellite of some sort, those who had created it would know not to look at the 'meteor shower' and you'd have a fairly large number of scientists and military people who would survive in the new world. There's no sign of that, though.

In my mind, it was definitely the triffids and the Russians were the survivors trying to explain things away ("Russia caused this, the US is above falling prey to it" seems to be the general mindset).

Of course, it might just be a coincidence and I'm reading too much into it...

Simon wrote: "I've always had one major issue with this book. I'm happy to posit a world which has Triffids in it. I'm happy to posit a world where most of the population are suddenly struck down with blindness...."

Well Simon, I believe it would be difficult to have the book at all without the blindness and the triffids, they are integral to the plot. On one hand most of the human race is blinded after watching a spectacular meteorite shower Nobody knew, in Russia or anywhere else. that the meteorite shower would cause blindness and the news casts of the day even suggested that people go out and look at it. Coincidentally triffid seeds are released, by accident, high into the atmosphere and when they come down they grow into triffids which required dead biological life to sustain them. The triffids are equipped with a sting which kills humans and being blind the humans cannot see where the triffids are laying in wait for them - Worse still the triffids have the ability to relocate. The triffids do not enjoy higher intelligence, just enough to sense a prey and to ambush it. The two scenarios are interdependent. Then, well supplied with the nutrients from decaying human the triffids multiply in their billions, and the slaughter of the blind becomes an outright annihilation of the human race. Little by little the remaining sighted humans, those who had worked in mines etc, thus could not see the meteorite, storm began to organise. Initially the countryside and the towns was so infested with triffids that the sighted humans could not sustain all round defence so they eventually opted to set up on small islands and clear them of triffids and spread out from there. My thinking is that the book has plot, cause, effect, innovation and an ending, and you have to go back to The War Of The Worlds to find anything similar

No the Triffids did not cause the blindness. Those very few people who did not see the meteorite shower retained their eyesight. As with the hero of the book who was in hospital. If I recall correctly he had bandages over his eyes

I watched the movie based on the book and can't remember if they changed to be so or if I'm just remembering incorrectly but i definitely got the impression the triffids were the cause however i think it's quite clear in the book that it was unrelated and the blindness was just a catalyst for the story of the triffids it couldn't have worked without it!