Anyone who has seen any of the series of Terminator movies knows that these resilient robots are terribly difficult to eliminate. Even in my dreams, it takes sheer luck and a nonexistent gun to survive a terminator programmed to kill me. This writeup is intended to aid those whose lives have been or will be plagued by these tenacious cybernetic-organisms.
Terminator anatomy, while complex and more technologically advanced than anything this world has encountered thus far, is organised in ridiculously predictable and vulnerable ways. The team responsible for the creation of the terminators suffered obviously from functional fixedness, which most likely ruined many of their camping trips. A terminator's sensory organs are uncreatively located in its head, thus making it a logical candidate for the location of your attack. The power cells are located mid-torso, and ideally should be victimized only after the destruction of the head.
A large quantity of homemade napalm, a sticky incendiary which burns at over 5000F, is a possible solution to your problem, perhaps even on those tricky liquid metal models. Napalm can be made in many different ways with many varying degrees of complexity and respective efficiency. For the hardcore chemists who are frantically reading this while their families are being murdered by metallic assassins, it is not necessary to locate any aluminum naphthenate or aluminum palmitate. The 15-year old pyro's version will suffice. This method involves feeding styrofoam into gasoline until the mixture is thick and unable to hold anymore dissolved styrofoam. A moment of silence for the innocent Vietnamese who were burned to death by your crude, yet lethal concoction, and you are just about ready to take on a terminator. Your gelatinous weapon is not too easy to ignite, and it is up to you to figure out how you plan to accomplish this without getting "terminated" by the future's most advanced AI. Now don't get too cocky just because you have some napalm, we're still dealing with terminators. Divine intervention may be necessary for successful placement and ignition of the malicious death goo. Provided the unlikely situation that the terminator is thoroughly saturated by the napalm AND you ignite it before a frustrating robotic death, the surreal flame should confuse and torture the poor digital creature while it is reduced to a useless puddle which you've earned the right to keep on display in a jar.
An electromagnetic pulse is a fail-proof method of terminator disengagement, and less stressful if one can be obtained, as face-to-face encounters with a terminator rarely work out in favor of the human. I admit to knowing next-to-nothing about the creation of an EMP and really don't feel like doing the research, but due to its ease of use and successrate, i would recommend reading up on it in case you ever need to. You remember what the giant magnet did to the T-X, don't you? I would still run, I don't know if any of you saw Arnold's power cell explode in T3, but it looked something like the detonation of a small nuclear weapon.
Many people suggest the use of nuclear weaponry. Ignoring the obvious fact that you will never obtain a nuke in your life (yes, there are ways, but let's be practical, not that killing terminators is practical), you must remember that there is no point in killing the terminator if you don't live through the ordeal to have a wife and kids. I'm assuming few of you are Pentagon officials or highly ranked military officers, so i would stick to the napalm or the EMP.
Early-model terminators can be crushed, but only with an unreliable amount of luck. Again, please stick to the napalm or EMP.
Thermite could work, but napalm has the advantage of its gluelike consistency, and I don't think you're going to be able to throw volatile powders with any hope of survival.
Godspeed my friends.