system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[The Iron Giant (1999)] What is the least amount of force required to provoke the Iron Giant into "hostile mode"?

Throughout multiple events in the year of 1957, the "Iron Giant" was shown to be fairly peaceful, until it was exposed to any form of weapon, from tanks, to guns, to a child's toy blaster, at which point it would actively seek to remove the weapon by force. Clearly it has some sort of programming that detects a weapon by sight, but apparently not by function.

My question is this:

If the Iron Giant saw a butcher in his shop cutting meat with a cleaver, would that be enough to send it into "hostile mode"?


What about if the creature had landed further north, in the Arctic Circle, and encountered a group of native  people of some sort? Would their less sophisticated weapons, such as bows and arrows, or wooden spears trigger the creature?

Why not a fireman's axe, which in the wrong hands could be used as a weapon, or a fisherman's rod, which is actively used to trap living creatures to be killed?
gpt
As far as we know, it's only triggered by guns but it's possible that it's triggered to defend against any threats against him, whether potential or not. Hogarth pointed the toy at him and went crazy. If the butcher was running towards him with the knife or the the native people shot at him, he would probably be triggered. Not so sure about the fisherman's rod since it's not directly a "lethal weapon" but that's just me.