Where did SkyNet amass all the metal to make machines and make them look all shiny and clean looking in the future? Especially the HK's and T800s.
Is there something I am missing here?
Isn't the world completely f***ed by a nuclear holocaust? So where did they get all their metals from?
There would still be mineral deposits in the earth regardless of if the machines nuked the world’s population and military centers. The machine could still mine iron ore and other minerals from the earth. The ore/mineral deposits would have been protected from the radiation since they are buried deep within the earth. And even if the machine found caches of metals left behind by humans in industrial areas that were exposed to radiation, it wouldn’t really matter to them anyway, they could still use the metal. It’s not like a healthy ecosystem is necessary for there to be minerals buried within the earth, or that nuclear bombs being detonated around the world would make them disappear or become unusable. Maybe I misunderstood your question, but nuclear bombs killing the vast majority of human life would not impact the machines’ ability to extract metals from the earth, or destroy all of the ore/minerals inside the earth’s crust. And skynet already had control over lots of facilities and factories to produce more machines, and continued to produce more/different types of robots after the war started.
When you look at the scenes from the future, it looks like a war zone though, with all the infrastructure destroyed. The factories that built the machines - where are they?