OT: BSG Discussion

[geoschmo]

Something occured to me reading AT's BSG empire description. In the series the population in the fleet is around 50K. As far as they know that's pretty much all that's left of the human race. If the object was to survive as a species, does it make sense for the fleet to remain together like they are? All they can do is run and hope they don't get caught. They can't hope to fight off a serious Cylon offensive if they are found.

Wouldn't it make more sense for them to be seeding every habitable planet they find with small groups of people? Establishing many small self-sufficent colonies all over the place. The colonists would have to severly limit their use of technology, no radios, no structures visable from orbit or easily spotted from the air. Careful argricultural practices like no geometric food plots.

Reverting to a low-tech agricultural lifestyle would be difficult, but it would seem to preferable to a slow death by starvation and disease couped up in ships. These colonies would be sitting ducks if they were found by the cylons, but if you establish enough of them and keep them quiet, the cylons shouldn't be able to find all of them.

I'm thinking around 100 people per planet, and then further spread out in villages of a dozen people or so should be viable. You would lose some genetic diversity over the course of many generations, but if you did some careful screening beforehand you should be able to lessen the worst of the negative effects of that.

Anyway, interesting to think about.