Easy way to kill the Borg!
- Thread starter cwl
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I'd always wonder why no one thought of beaming a nuke or photon torpedo into the heart of a cube and detonating it by remote. Then, Voyager did it to great effect while stealing a transwarp coil.
That solar flare trick used in Descent (TNG) should still work since those drones weren't in the collective too.
Presumably the tactic would only work once before the Borg adapted. It's also unclear whether a single torpedo or other WMD would have sufficient yield to destroy a cube internally.
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The problem with the borg is that they always adapt. The cube that is destroyed sends information about the new weapon that is used against him to the rest of the collective - and then the collective adapts his defenses.
In order to nullify this advantage, you must cut off all communications between the attacked cube and the rest of the collective - you need to cut off subspace communications.
Several star trek episodes proved this to be feasible with federation technology.
One could also try to reverse engineer the borg adaptation technology - this may take one-two decades, but it's also feasible - considering that the Federation has detailed knowlege about borg technology (thaks to Voyager).
Also, according to the novels ("Destiny" trilogy) PSI weapons are exremely effective against the borg - and the collective cannot adapt to them (in the "Destiny" trilogy, hundreds of thousands of cubes were destroyed in this way during centuries - and after all that, the collective still hadn't adapted)!
In order to nullify this advantage, you must cut off all communications between the attacked cube and the rest of the collective - you need to cut off subspace communications.
Several star trek episodes proved this to be feasible with federation technology.
One could also try to reverse engineer the borg adaptation technology - this may take one-two decades, but it's also feasible - considering that the Federation has detailed knowlege about borg technology (thaks to Voyager).
Also, according to the novels ("Destiny" trilogy) PSI weapons are exremely effective against the borg - and the collective cannot adapt to them (in the "Destiny" trilogy, hundreds of thousands of cubes were destroyed in this way during centuries - and after all that, the collective still hadn't adapted)!
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I'm thinking Computer Virus. Either that or forcibly upload Windows Vista. But I repeat myself.
Yeah, but they might recognize the tactic and use internal force fields capable of absorbing much more energy than a Federation force field, thereby absorbing the energy produced by the anti-matter explosion and saving the cube.
Only if you're able to actually get inside of the cube, penetrate its internal defenses, avoid being assimilated, and then get to the central plexus to destroy it. It's something that's enormously difficult and it can't be done externally. Janeway, Torres, and Tuvok managed to do it in "Unimatrix Zero," but only by taking a special technobabble thing that prevented their minds from being assimilated when their bodies were -- which means the Collective's ready for that trick. And even that failed eventually.
It may take centuries. It's not clear that Borg adaptation technology is a single piece or small collection of pieces of technology.
I don't remember that part, but I skipped part of Book II. But I do remember the part where the Collective still managed to defeat Starfleet in every single military engagement.
ProtoAvatar
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Sci
Interrupting borg communications.
Reaching the central plexus is not necessary in order to cut the communications between a cube and the rest of the collective.
The borg cube communicates via subspace transmissions.
In "both of best worlds" and "i, borg", the federation's ability to interrupt the subspace transmissions between a drone and the collective was proven.
A starfleet ship could do the same with a borg cube. Even the cardassians proved they could disrupt subspace communications in "emissary".
And if the borg cube is destroyed with a new weapon, no information about this weapon will reach the collective, preventing it from adapting.
Reverse-engineering borg adaptation tech.
7 of 9 was described - several times - as possessing all the knowledge of the borg. This knowledge alone can lead to a successful reverse-engineering of any borg tech in record time. When I said decades I was being overly cautious.
About PSI-weapons.
Starfleet never used PSI weapons against the borg.
At the beginning of "Destiny II", there is an alien species - called "children of the storm", I think - that used telekinetic weaponry against the borg - with spectacular results.
Interrupting borg communications.
Reaching the central plexus is not necessary in order to cut the communications between a cube and the rest of the collective.
The borg cube communicates via subspace transmissions.
In "both of best worlds" and "i, borg", the federation's ability to interrupt the subspace transmissions between a drone and the collective was proven.
A starfleet ship could do the same with a borg cube. Even the cardassians proved they could disrupt subspace communications in "emissary".
And if the borg cube is destroyed with a new weapon, no information about this weapon will reach the collective, preventing it from adapting.
Reverse-engineering borg adaptation tech.
7 of 9 was described - several times - as possessing all the knowledge of the borg. This knowledge alone can lead to a successful reverse-engineering of any borg tech in record time. When I said decades I was being overly cautious.
About PSI-weapons.
Starfleet never used PSI weapons against the borg.
At the beginning of "Destiny II", there is an alien species - called "children of the storm", I think - that used telekinetic weaponry against the borg - with spectacular results.
Yeah, between a single drone and any nearby ships. Disrupting the connection between a ship's plexus and a single drone would by definition be much simpler than disrupting the connection between an entire ship and the rest of the Collective. To put it another way, it's much easier to disrupt the connection between an analog television set and the broadcasting station, but that doesn't mean you can disrupt the entire broadcasting station as easily.
Yeah, they could disrupt the subspace communications systems of a single Federation starbase. That's quite different from disrupting the necessarily more-powerful-by-many-orders-of-magnitude connection between a cube and the rest of the Collective.
You might as well try to claim that the fact that you can cut a string with a single pair of scissors means that you can cut a steel cable that way, too.
No, she was described as possessing a great deal of knowledge, not all of the knowledge. If she possessed all of the knowledge of the Borg, then the Borg would never have been able to surprise them.
Fair enough, but I'd be cautious about presuming that any weapon is un-adaptable for the Borg. After all, Arturis's people managed to defeat Borg assimilation attempts for centuries -- but in the end, the Borg still came for them and defeated them. There's no "easy" way to kill the Borg.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
Sci
Disrupting borg communications;
Of course disrupting the communications between a cube and the collective will be harder; but it's doable - these communications are, at the end of the day, still subspace transmissions.
In "best of both worlds", "I, borg", Data&Geordi were able to cut off a drone from the collective with ease - their solution required only hours of preparations - perhaps less. The same can be said about the cardassians in "emissary", and there are probably other relevant examples in star trek canon.
The Federation's best can have years to design specialized pieces of eqiupment for disrupting a cube's subspace messages - a communication blackout of only a minute (and I expect much better than that from the Federation's best engineers) should be enough for transphasic torpedos to take care of the cube.
Reverse-engineering borg adaptation tech;
7 of 9 was described as having all the technological knowledge of the borg several times during Voyager - in "think tank", for example.That's why the borg never surprised Voyager from a technological POV during the entire series. She shold have invaluable information about any borg technology - including the collective's adaptation abilities.
The romulans had no 7 of 9 and they managed to reverse-engineer the borg's adaptation tech (among others) by 2387, as proven by the Narada - Nero's ship from Star Trek XI.
If the romulans could do it, so can the Feds.
PSI-weapons;
How I interpreted the children of the storm's ability to defeat the borg:
The borg are masters of technology, but they have completely forsaken cultural creation or PSI phenomena as irrelevant.
When confrounted with a PSI weapon, they had no response; nothing in their database was helpful, and their "trial and error" adaptation methodology didn't work - in star trek, technology was described as useless when dealing with most PSI phenomena.
Disrupting borg communications;
Of course disrupting the communications between a cube and the collective will be harder; but it's doable - these communications are, at the end of the day, still subspace transmissions.
In "best of both worlds", "I, borg", Data&Geordi were able to cut off a drone from the collective with ease - their solution required only hours of preparations - perhaps less. The same can be said about the cardassians in "emissary", and there are probably other relevant examples in star trek canon.
The Federation's best can have years to design specialized pieces of eqiupment for disrupting a cube's subspace messages - a communication blackout of only a minute (and I expect much better than that from the Federation's best engineers) should be enough for transphasic torpedos to take care of the cube.
Reverse-engineering borg adaptation tech;
7 of 9 was described as having all the technological knowledge of the borg several times during Voyager - in "think tank", for example.That's why the borg never surprised Voyager from a technological POV during the entire series. She shold have invaluable information about any borg technology - including the collective's adaptation abilities.
The romulans had no 7 of 9 and they managed to reverse-engineer the borg's adaptation tech (among others) by 2387, as proven by the Narada - Nero's ship from Star Trek XI.
If the romulans could do it, so can the Feds.
PSI-weapons;
How I interpreted the children of the storm's ability to defeat the borg:
The borg are masters of technology, but they have completely forsaken cultural creation or PSI phenomena as irrelevant.
When confrounted with a PSI weapon, they had no response; nothing in their database was helpful, and their "trial and error" adaptation methodology didn't work - in star trek, technology was described as useless when dealing with most PSI phenomena.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
Pretty much. A convenient never-before-seen god-like alien species took care of the borg collective in the "Destiny" books.
In my opinion, this is a significant shortcoming of the books.
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Not exactly. In a deus ex macina, the entity that enters to resolve all problems does so unexpectedly, with no visible prior motivation. The Caeliar have been there since Book I - they're not so much the deus ex machina descending from the heavens to resolve all problems as they are the gun that Chekov places onstage in Act I so that it can be fired in Act III.
ETA: Hey, you guys. Put a fucking spoiler warning above, could you?
ProtoAvatar
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