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.

[Renegade 13]

You might be right, but the problem is the Cylon spies aboard. Would they not inform their leaders where every single defenseless colony was?

[geoschmo]

Hmmm, that's a point. I was thinking if they could do that then they should be able to catch the fleet easy anyway. But I guess it's easier going back later and picking off stationary colonies then finding a fleet jumping around and never staying too long in one place.

This whole infiltrator thing is really a drag!

[ZeroAdunn]

Actually, they have yet to find a habitable planet excluding kobol. Remember earth like planets are pretty rare in the BSG verse. From what I understand the season finale will deal with the issue of finding a habitable planet and whether to settle down or not.

Of course, like renegade said, the cylon spies aboard are the problem. Is all it takes is for them to get a message out with the location of every planet the humans are on, and its orbital bombardment for the poor souls who aren't in the fleet.

[Black_Knyght]

A thought that occurs to me here - Both the Cylons and the Colonials seem to have the technology to detect and identify life on a planet, at least to a limited degree.

You start droppin' off folks to colonize new worlds, a few here and some there, and sooner or later along comes the Cylons and start pickin' 'em off in small groups. The Cylons are following, however distant or discreetly. They would more than likely take notice of efforts to " seed " humanity.

Now, given that's the last thing they want, even if they only discovered one or two groups they'd more than likely keep hunting down the main fleet but send reserve units out to mop up and clean out any humans they find, and maybe even search likely worlds for more.

Just a thought.......

[Suicide Junkie]

Set up a fake settlement scene, and bury the dead from the ship on the planet?

Nice little distraction... and they can watch for anyone trying to leak word that its a setup.

[geoschmo]

The cylons following them isn't so much of a problem. You don't need to bring the whole fleet. Once you've scouted the planet with raptors or whatever, you simply have one ship jump a different distance and off a few degrees. The ship drops off a hundred or so people and rejoins the fleet at a predetermined coordinate later on. Anyone tailing the fleet isn't likely to notice anything.

Space is really big after all. It should be very difficult for the cylons to find these colonies. Unless they can simply jump into a system and listen for radio signals or something. If they have to look for habitable planets and then carefully survey each planet it would take forever to find them. Even if they found the planets they might not find the people.

The concern about infiltrators is valid though. If someone is feeding them info about where to look it would be quite easy to go after them.

[Atrocities]

In a recent episode, (SPOILER) Baltar provided some info about the expected survival rates of man kind. It was not good. I think they would all need to find a planet, a safe one, and then all settle it in order to give rebirth to humanity.

Ideally, I suspect that at some point it will become a virus war or simular. It is really the only option to beat the organic based machines of the cylon empire now.

Also it could be written in that they find other human occupied worlds, like they did in the origal series, and spark off a little side war. No one wants to take on an enemy of someone they don't know especially if that enemy has big powerful nukes and wants to purge the galaxy of man kind.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

They could run into a galaxy far, far away and not so long ago!

[Atrocities]

Oh great give Lucas another excuse to shut down yet another sci-fi show.