What happened to the Romulan Empire after Romulus was destroyed

[Timo]

One could argue that Romulan worlds go unmentioned because the Star Empire is a closed state. Our heroes clearly lack access and perhaps also knowledge. In contrast, we learned of Cardassian worlds chiefly in episodes where our heroes traveled in Cardassian space, such as in "Return to Grace"...

And let's not forget that everything between Romulus and the Hobus supernova is toast as well.

...Although this could quite possibly only include one planet - the one whose orbit lies between Romulus and her homestar, as shown in ST:NEM.

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/a...esishd0581.jpg

That is, assuming that the wave from the unnamed supernova propagated at the sublight velocities we saw when it hit Romulus, it must have originated at the homestar and not at any neighboring star.

Timo Saloniemi

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

Visual evidence in cases like this can't be taken as proof of anything. The FTL shockwave in STVI and the warp 7 ion storm in "The Catwalk" were seen to be moving relatively slowly when they stuck Excelsior and Enterprise head-on. And, the Enterprise should have been at matching warp with V'Ger for it's entire approach to Earth, yet appeared to be plodding into it at impulse speed.

Most damning of all to the theory that it was the Romulan sun going supernova at subwarp speeds is this: If Romulus was destroyed and the mission failed, why did Spock deploy the Red Matter at all? Why did he "have little time" once Romulus was gone? How does Romulus' destruction alone "threaten to destroy the galaxy"? (Unless The Galaxy is the name of Spock's favourite pub on Romulus)

[Timo]

To literally threaten the galaxy, the supernova would have to expand beyond its initial system eventually. In which case it would not matter whether this is the Romulan home system or some other system: creation of a black hole would have to be done at the initiating system, and before the shockwave got too big to be swallowed by said black hole.

Whether the threat to neighboring or faraway systems from the shockwave would then be in terms of hours, decades or centuries would be immaterial: Spock would in all the cases only have "little time" to stop the disaster in its tracks.

And natural supernova wavefronts do threaten neighboring star systems to the distance of hundreds of lightyears. Plenty enough to qualify as "the galaxy", as that would encompass all the major Star Trek players in the modern "small UFP" model of Trek cartography. A sublight shockwave that took centuries to do its work would be just as deadly as a FTL one in this respect.

Timo Saloniemi

[EmperorTiberius]

Edit_XYZ wrote:

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A generation being born every 30 years - in 2000 years, at 102% growth rate per generation, after 67 generations, their number would be 683400.

Bye bye romulans.

The scenarists' sense of scale isn't off only with regards to space, but sociology, as well.
Add a few centuries and every rag-tag band with a cool back-story is an empire.
Every conquered people can - and will - inevitably rise and free themselves, overthrowing their conqueror in due time (historic evidence indicating the opposite).

History is fluid - but not that fluid.

T'Girl wrote:

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Going beyond modest growth.

If Romulans arrived on Romulas 2000 years ago and produced another generation on average each 50 years, that would mean that 40 generations have passed since first arrival.

And if they gradually colonized/invaded other surrounding worlds.

If we started with 10,000 people, and each couple in each generation produced an average of 3 children who in turn reproduced, the population of the Empire could be up to 110 billion people.

That about 16 planets with current Earth population, or one planet (Romulas) with Earth population, and 1,000 planets with a hundred million population.

Four children per generation (50 years) gives you 10,995,116,277,000,000 people.

And if they had five children (like my parents did) per couple, that would give them enough people after 2,000 years to populate 1.8 million planets with a current Earth population.

Here's the population calculator I used (kind of cool). http://wardricker.com/timegrowth.php

No my friends. If you use maltusian equation, (althought it's not very accurate predicting long term growth, it will give you approximate idea of what you're dealing with), you get:

N=N(0)*e^growth rate*time
N=(10,000)*(2.71828182846)^(0.02*2000)
N=2,353,852,668,403,270,380,782
Over 2.3 sextillion Romulans.

Lets say tons of them died in wars and some didn't get to procreate etc, and we have only 2 sextillion in time of the movie.

If you divide that by 7 billion (population of today's Earth), you get
2e21/7e9= 285,714,285,714

285 + billion major population centers

Even if you forget about the equation, assume there is something wrong, that there were bottlenecks and slowdowns, you can't escape the very real possibility that there would be millions of earth sized plannets at the very least.


One reason why we see Starfleet not care about a particular colony (ie Alpha Ceti VI where Khan was left) is because there are so many colonies that they can't get to them or even keep track of all of them. If there are millions of colonies, and thousands of ships, one ship would cover hundreds or thousads of colonies and there would be no time to get to all of them on a regular basis. Once you colonize a planet, you have to be self seficient for a long time.

[RPJOB]

Timo wrote:

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To literally threaten the galaxy, the supernova would have to expand beyond its initial system eventually. In which case it would not matter whether this is the Romulan home system or some other system: creation of a black hole would have to be done at the initiating system, and before the shockwave got too big to be swallowed by said black hole.

Whether the threat to neighboring or faraway systems from the shockwave would then be in terms of hours, decades or centuries would be immaterial: Spock would in all the cases only have "little time" to stop the disaster in its tracks.

And natural supernova wavefronts do threaten neighboring star systems to the distance of hundreds of lightyears. Plenty enough to qualify as "the galaxy", as that would encompass all the major Star Trek players in the modern "small UFP" model of Trek cartography. A sublight shockwave that took centuries to do its work would be just as deadly as a FTL one in this respect.

Timo Saloniemi

A sphere a hundred light years in diameter would be an almost insignificant speck within the galaxy. And Spock didn't say the Alpha Quadrant or the Known Galaxy. He spoke of the galaxy as a whole. I fail to see how a black hole could stop the supernova once it's already expanded to engulf other star systems. He did say that he didn't have much time after Romulus had been destroyed.

[Timo]

A sphere a hundred light years in diameter would be an almost insignificant speck within the galaxy.

Not for Spock, or for any of his audience. Essentially, it would amount to All Known Space. And even Spock plays fast and loose with such terminology from our viewpoint, using "world" in the sense of "universe". Commodore Barstow in "Alternative Factor" is happy to consider "the entire galaxy and beyond" his jurisdiction, too, despite this being very unlikely to be factually accurate.

I fail to see how a black hole could stop the supernova once it's already expanded to engulf other star systems.

Indeed, which is why it is natural to assume that it only ever engulfed one star system (thus necessarily the Romulan homesystem) before Spock deployed the red matter.

The question this begs is, what did Spock hope to achieve with his red matter originally? If it can suck in a supernova that has expanded to beyond the orbit of Romulus, wouldn't it then automatically also destroy Romulus if deployed as originally planned? Clearly, Spock did not intend to destroy Romulus to save the rest of the known universe - such destruction was "unthinkable" to him.

Did Spock originally intend to use a lower dosage, perhaps? We see red matter create black holes of varying sizes and strengths, so such fine tuning would probably be possible. Perhaps a smaller drop, administered earlier, would just kill the Romulan homesun and give days or weeks in which to evacuate the planet. Or perhaps a very small droplet would turn an impending supernova into a far more slowly dying type of star, giving an evacuation timespan of decades, centuries or millennia.

Timo Saloniemi

[Edit_XYZ]

EmperorTiberius wrote:

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No my friends. If you use maltusian equation, (althought it's not very accurate predicting long term growth, it will give you approximate idea of what you're dealing with), you get:

N=N(0)*e^growth rate*time
N=(10,000)*(2.71828182846)^(0.02*2000)
N=2,353,852,668,403,270,380,782
Over 2.3 sextillion Romulans.

Lets say tons of them died in wars and some didn't get to procreate etc, and we have only 2 sextillion in time of the movie.

Very well. Let us calculate the malthusian exponential.
initial population 10000
growth rate 0,02 PER GENERATION (30 years).
67 generations (in 2000 years)
N=(10000)*((2,71828182846)^(0,02*67))

Total number of romulans after 2000 years: 38190.

Of course, the malthusian exponential growth has little validity in the real world:
Humans - or romulans - don't grow like bacteria in a petri-dish, EmperorTiberius. They will NEVER ever reach 2.3 sextillion in number in 2000 years (not even close - by a GIGANTIC margin) - so that you can "generously" subtract 0,3 sextillion.
This, real world history abundantly shows.

If you divide that by 7 billion (population of today's Earth), you get
2e21/7e9= 285,714,285,714

285 + billion major population centers

Even if you forget about the equation, assume there is something wrong, that there were bottlenecks and slowdowns, you can't escape the very real possibility that there would be millions of earth sized plannets at the very least.

One reason why we see Starfleet not care about a particular colony (ie Alpha Ceti VI where Khan was left) is because there are so many colonies that they can't get to them or even keep track of all of them. If there are millions of colonies, and thousands of ships, one ship would cover hundreds or thousads of colonies and there would be no time to get to all of them on a regular basis. Once you colonize a planet, you have to be self seficient for a long time.

With a population of 38190 romulans, I'm pretty sure you won't have more than a few VERY SMALL inhabited towns. So much for the star empire.

[T'Girl]

It depend on how large your petri dish is.

Unless Romulas has a Coruscant or Trantor level of population (not my impression based on what we were shown) then Romulas's population would only have risen to several billions.

However, if you expand the size of the dish to include surrounding planets, and then surrounding star systems, this would enable the Romulan population to grow over the course of two millenium into the hundreds of billions. If the Empire encompasses multiple thousands of inhabitable worlds, then most would have (compare to modern Earth) relatively low population density.

The Romulans would have "Lebensraum."

Edit_XYZ wrote:

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With a population of 38190 romulans, I'm pretty sure you won't have more than a few VERY SMALL inhabited towns. So much for the star empire.

Which is a prime reason for the Romulan population not to be under forty thousand. They certainly would not have anything that could be described as a "Star Empire."

It might be possible for the total Romulan population to be in the hundred million range and still have them do all the things we've seen and had suggested through dialog. But getting much below that make their society difficult to image.

[EmperorTiberius]

Edit_XYZ wrote:

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Very well. Let us calculate the malthusian exponential.
initial population 10000
growth rate 0,02 PER GENERATION (30 years).
67 generations (in 2000 years)
N=(10000)*((2,71828182846)^(0,02*67))

Total number of romulans after 2000 years: 38190.

Of course, the malthusian exponential growth has little validity in the real world:
Humans - or romulans - don't grow like bacteria in a petri-dish, EmperorTiberius. They will NEVER ever reach 2.3 sextillion in number in 2000 years (not even close - by a GIGANTIC margin) - so that you can "generously" subtract 0,3 sextillion.
This, real world history abundantly shows.

With a population of 38190 romulans, I'm pretty sure you won't have more than a few VERY SMALL inhabited towns. So much for the star empire.

I don't understand why you have 38k number there, it's nonsense. Growth rate is calculated per year, not 30 years.

Also, our history is useless in Romulan case. They have warp drive, capability to colonize other planets, so territory is not an issue in the beginning . Most likely medical, foods, and other technologies are far beyond our own. This is ripe ground for tremendeous growth. They would have enormous population

[Edit_XYZ]

EmperorTiberius wrote:

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I don't understand why you have 38k number there, it's nonsense. Growth rate is calculated per year, not 30 years.

It's quite simple, actually. Actually, I already explained it above:
It is calculated per 30 years in the case of humans (humanoids) because they need 30 years to mature and reproduce AKA grow in number - NOT 1 year.

And that's why you only have ~40000 romulans, as opposed to your mathematical exponential fantasy number.

PS - really? This is supposed to be 'nonsense'?
Let's see some arguments supporting this assertion.

Also, our history is useless in Romulan case. They have warp drive, capability to colonize other planets, so territory is not an issue in the beginning . Most likely medical, foods, and other technologies are far beyond our own. This is ripe ground for tremendeous growth. They would have enormous population

It's not about space.
For your petri-dish/exponential to be an accurate analogy:
EVERYONE needs to have more than 3+ children; but not just any children. ALL these children need to survive until they have just as many children as their parents had; to find a mate; to have just as many children;
Etc.

This never happened in humanity's history.
Why?
Because it takes a LOT more time, resources and hazard for a human to grow and reproduce than for a bacterium.
Because life was - and is - dangerous and full of hazards (dying, not finding a mate, not having enough children, etc, etc).
Because resources are scarce.

In the trekverse, even more so than in ours. Also true with regards to resources - we have quite a few lines in trek (and politically decided massacres of colonies due to lacking supplies, etc) to attest to this.

All this is especially true for pioneering life (empire building) or war times - which are the romulan national sports.

As such, our history is highly relevant.
Certainly FAR more relevant than a simplistic exponential - Which goes double when one considers that exponential curves are only mathematical abstractions: in the physical world, these curves always stop - sooner, rather than later.

[T'Girl]

Timo wrote:

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The question this begs is, what did Spock hope to achieve with his red matter originally?

My personal theory is that the red matter had a temporal component.

If all the red matter accomplished was to turn the existing supernova remnant into a black hole, it doesn't stop the shock wave from continuing on it's path of destruction. The shock wave is already gone.

However, if red matter has a temporal property, then it would basically reverse all the effects of the original supernova. The shock wave would never have been created and the planet Romulas would be "un-destroyed."

First the star supernovas', which threatens Romulas. Only then does Spock promise to save the planet, after the shockwave is already on it's way, "consuming everything in its path."

After Romulas is destroyed, Spock shoots the red matter into the supernova remnant. I believe what happen next was one of those Star Trek "reset events." As a end result of Spock's actions, Romulas was fine.

This next is from oldSpock's mind meld with nuKirk.

One hundred twenty-nine years from now
A star will explode, and threaten to destroy the galaxy.
That is where I'm from, Jim. The future.
The star went supernova, consuming everything in its path.
I promised the Romulans that I would save their planet...
We outfitted our fastest ship.
Using red matter, I would create a black hole
Which would absorb the exploding star.
I was en route, when the unthinkable happened.
The supernova destroyed Romulus. I had little time.
I had to extract the red matter, and shoot it into the supernova.
As I began my return trip, I was intercepted.

[Edit_XYZ]

T'Girl wrote:

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It depend on how large your petri dish is.

Unless Romulas has a Coruscant or Trantor level of population (not my impression based on what we were shown) then Romulas's population would only have risen to several billions.

However, if you expand the size of the dish to include surrounding planets, and then surrounding star systems, this would enable the Romulan population to grow over the course of two millenium into the hundreds of billions. If the Empire encompasses multiple thousands of inhabitable worlds, then most would have (compare to modern Earth) relatively low population density.

The Romulans would have "Lebensraum."

Mere land does not ensure the survival of the next generation. It needs to be a veritable paradise for this - and, as per what we're shown, it isn't (most planets uninhabitable, etc).

Which is a prime reason for the Romulan population not to be under forty thousand. They certainly would not have anything that could be described as a "Star Empire."

It might be possible for the total Romulan population to be in the hundred million range and still have them do all the things we've seen and had suggested through dialog. But getting much below that make their society difficult to image.

If the romulans were breeding like tribbles, then they could reach ~1-10 billions in 2000 years. Taking into account their pioneering history, wars - or more mundane causes: accidents, crimes, some not finding mates, etc - every single family must have at least 5-6 children.

In which case, the romulan success in ensuring security and reproductive success for the next generation would be impressive; it would be unmatched in the federation, in any case.

[T'Girl]

EmperorTiberius wrote:

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I don't understand why you have 38k number there, it's nonsense. Growth rate is calculated per year, not 30 years.

Edit_XYZ wrote:

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because they need 30 years to mature and reproduce AKA grow in number - NOT 1 year.

But if you using a 0.02 growth rate, that's 2% annually, not 2% every generation. The mistake you're making is you're actually using a 0.00066 annual growth rate, this is why the number you're getting (38,190 people) after 2,000 "annuals" is so incredible small.

0.02 divide by 30 give you 0.00066.

Even if each generation is thirty years, statistically the birth rate for a population group is calculated over the total time period.

Edit_XYZ wrote:

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If the romulans were breeding like tribbles, then they could reach ~1-10 billions in 2000 years.

In one of my previous post I said:

If we started with 10,000 people, and each couple in each generation produced an average of 3 children who in turn reproduced, the population of the Empire could be up to 110 billion people.

Now, I did stipulate three children surviving to reproduce another surviving three children. Not three children born. This statement takes into account children and adults who don't survive to reproduce the average number. So, at that rate of population growth, you don't get "~1 - 10 billion," you get 110 billion people in the current population after two thousand years. This already takes into account illnesses, accidents, warfare and all other causes of "not reproducing the average number."

[Edit_XYZ]

So - every romulan couple has to have 3 children per 30 years:

If you take into account hazards such as pioneering, catastrophe, lack of resources, deaths, not finding mates, not having children, etc then every romulan couple has to have at least ~4 children per 30 years (a few "spares").

Which raises the problem: how does a colony manage to feed/educate/etc a population 3 times as numerous as the preceding one, every 30 years?*
Not by building ships and going somewhere where there's no infrastructure.
And not by having magic tech (as Kirk's childhood colony - and every other failed colony in trek) proves.

Oops. Looks like there's no beating that petri-dish.

In conclusion, 2 conditions are needed:
Romulans must breed like tribbles;
Romulans must hand-wave resources in order to support these next generations.

*In human history, couples could afford 5-6 children only because most didn't make it to adulthoold.

If we started with 10,000 people, and each couple in each generation produced an average of 3 children who in turn reproduced, the population of the Empire could be up to 110 billion people.

Now, I did stipulate three children surviving to reproduce another surviving three children. Not three children born.

This alone is a VERY high order.

This statement takes into account children and adults who don't survive to reproduce the average number. So, at that rate of population growth, you don't get "~1 - 10 billion," you get 110 billion people in the current population after two thousand years. This already takes into account illnesses, accidents, warfare and all other causes of "not reproducing the average number."

What losses due to illnesses, etc? What percentage?

[EmperorTiberius]

Edit_XYZ wrote:

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If you take 0,02 rate of growth per year, then every romulan couple has to have 3 VERY SPECIAL children per 30 years:
Every single one of these children must survive and each have 3 children.

If you take into account hazards such as pioneering, catastrophe, lack of resources, deaths, not finding mates, not having 3 children, etc then every romulan couple has to have at least ~5 children per 30 years (a few "spares").

Which raises the problem: how does a colony manage to feed/educate/etc a population 3 times as numerous as the preceding one, every 30 years?*
Not by building ships and going somewhere where there's no infrastructure.
And not by having magic tech (as Kirk's childhood colony - and every other failed colony in trek) proves.

Oops. Looks like there's no beating that petri-dish.

They don't have to be like bacteria to have a massive population. You do know that a sextillion is, say, a million times more than a quadrillion right? They could be the most unfortunate species in the galaxy, suffer all the catastrophies possible, and could easily reach the quadrillion range. In fact, the more they spread out on other planets, the less impact any kind of catastrophy would have on them. And you keep bringing up human history, like the Romulans are going to suffer from bad teeth, influenza, no food, stroke and heart attacks due to obesity, chicken pox, scarlet fever, mumps, malaria, amscesses, and other 20th century diseases that can be prevented in a society that uses science.
Your estimates of 40k are laughable.