Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously)

[Christopher]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

There's a difference between "no defensive plans" and "no plans."

When you're talking about the organization charged with the defense of the Federation? Then it's a difference with no difference.

No; there's a difference between defense as a purpose and defense as a strategy. I'm sure Starfleet has not just defense plans, but attack plans, retreat plans, diplomatic plans, reconstruction plans, emergency plans, disaster plans, a code and two pair of plans -- ahem -- and so on. So I'm sure that their planners have given thought to the possibility of a situation where there is no defensive action Starfleet can successfully wage and all that's left is trying to survive.

What I'm saying is that there's a difference between having no effective way to respond to the ultimate crisis and having never even considered the possibility that such a crisis might occur. There are people whose job it is to imagine the worst possible scenarios and devise response plans. There are governments and institutions today that have contingency plans for alien contact, and no doubt for other farfetched scenarios. So I find it impossible to believe that nobody in the Federation government ever even contemplated the scenario of the Federation's destruction -- especially given how many cosmic-level threats they've encountered over the past couple of decades. The Borg, the Dominion, the Genesis Wave (if those books count in the novel continuity), the whims of the Q or other superbeings, all these things have at least potentially posed existential threats to the Federation. So I'm sure the possibility of the wholesale destruction of the Federation has at least entered the minds of some of the government's or Starfleet's contingency planners. They may not have been able to devise a practical response, but that's not because they never considered the possibility.

 

[captcalhoun]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

Michael Bay claimed that after he worked with the DoD on Transformers, someone was starting to look at how they would handle shapeshifting alien robots showing up.

mind you, that's Michael 'hyperbole' Bay...

 

[Paris]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

Much like Hooch, Michael Bay is crazy.

 

[BrotherBenny]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

As Christopher said upthread. Carla Gugino's character in Threshold was just such a worst case scenario planner, so the US government actually had some form of plan in place, whether it was useful or not.

A government as large as the Federation probably has an entire division dedicated to planning countermeasures to such scenarios, and they would likely take a keen interest in any new technologies brought in by ships like Voyager. I'm sure the slipstream drive was a good idea for such planners as it meant a way for an extremely fast getaway.

 

[William Leisner]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

As Christopher said upthread. Carla Gugino's character in Threshold was just such a worst case scenario planner, so the US government actually had some form of plan in place, whether it was useful or not.

Uumm... Threshold was a fictional program, not a documentary.

 

[DEWLine]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

A government as large as the Federation probably has an entire division dedicated to planning countermeasures to such scenarios, and they would likely take a keen interest in any new technologies brought in by ships like Voyager. I'm sure the slipstream drive was a good idea for such planners as it meant a way for an extremely fast getaway.

Agreed on that score. Now they just need to make sure as much of the Starfleet and Merchant Service is equipped with it as possible as fast as possible...on top of everything else they need to be doing these days.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

As Christopher said upthread. Carla Gugino's character in Threshold was just such a worst case scenario planner, so the US government actually had some form of plan in place, whether it was useful or not.

Uumm... Threshold was a fictional program, not a documentary.

What's your point? Star Trek is fictional too. The point is, it's easy to imagine that a government would hire people to develop contingency plans for any conceivable scenario, not just the ones considered likely. There are people in real life, both in government and corporations, whose job it is to imagine worst-case scenarios and develop crisis management plans for them. And it certainly should've been possible for the Federation to imagine a worst-case scenario in which the Borg succeeded in annihilating most of the Federation. True, it would probably have been based on the assumption that they'd assimilate rather than destroying outright, but the scope of the disaster was certainly conceivable given what was known about the sheer size and power of the Borg Collective.

 

[Cuhl]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

I read an interesting article about how a group of science fiction writers, including Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Greg Bear, advise the Dept. of Homeland Security.

"Bear says the writers offer powerful imaginations that can conjure up not only possible methods of attack, but also ideas about how governments and individuals will respond and what kinds of high-tech tools could prevent attacks. The group's motto is 'Science Fiction in the National Interest.'"

Here's the article: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-05-29-deviant-thinkers-security_N.htm

 

[Sci]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

As Christopher said upthread. Carla Gugino's character in Threshold was just such a worst case scenario planner, so the US government actually had some form of plan in place, whether it was useful or not.

Uumm... Threshold was a fictional program, not a documentary.

What's your point? Star Trek is fictional too. The point is, it's easy to imagine that a government would hire people to develop contingency plans for any conceivable scenario, not just the ones considered likely. There are people in real life, both in government and corporations, whose job it is to imagine worst-case scenarios and develop crisis management plans for them. And it certainly should've been possible for the Federation to imagine a worst-case scenario in which the Borg succeeded in annihilating most of the Federation. True, it would probably have been based on the assumption that they'd assimilate rather than destroying outright, but the scope of the disaster was certainly conceivable given what was known about the sheer size and power of the Borg Collective.

And yet Lost Souls makes it clear that Starfleet had no defensive plans for such a scenario.

 

[JB2005]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

^ Well Seven of Nine suggested that they should pack up the Federation and get the hell out of the Milky Way...but it was laughed out of the room...

 

[Sci]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

^ Well Seven of Nine suggested that they should pack up the Federation and get the hell out of the Milky Way...but it was laughed out of the room...

Of course she was. It's an absurd suggestion. It's incredibly difficult to initiate and control mass migrations today. Can you imagine trying to make a mass migration of an entire Federation of 150 planets work?

 

[Plecostomus]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

The resources do not exist. Asking the Federation to develop a plan, any plan (other than "run away") in response to the destruction of all of known space is like asking the United States Army to develop a plan to defeat God.

You don't send in the Army to do that, you send in the MARINES. Everyone knows that.

Pffft. Give me an aircraft carrier any day of the week.

The Carrier distracts God by bombing churches, giving the Marines enough time to ascend to Heaven. Once there, they storm the gates and start wrecking God's shit. There's nowhere He can hide and the Holy Ghost ain't going to lend a hand no way no how.

...yes we can discuss this here. God doesn't read the internet.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

And yet Lost Souls makes it clear that Starfleet had no defensive plans for such a scenario.

Already addressed above. If you look at the context, Akaar isn't necessarily saying "We've never even considered the possibility and have no idea what to do" -- he could just as well be saying "We've analyzed this scenario and concluded we're incapable of mounting a defense." Those are two different things. Just because you lack a response doesn't mean you never even imagined the possibility.

Specifically, what Akaar is saying is "We're unable to defend all our worlds from simultaneous attack." That's not the same thing as saying "We were so overconfident that we never even imagined the possibility of such a thing." You can imagine a possibility and still be unable to devise an effective response.

Think of the Borg as a natural disaster. If, say, the Yellowstone supervolcano exploded, the US government would surely be unable to prevent death and destruction on an immense scale. But that doesn't mean nobody's ever imagined the possibility. We know it theoretically could happen, and I'm sure the government has people on its payroll whose job it is to evaluate the consequences of such a disaster and come up with contingency plans, not for preventing it, but for cleaning up the mess afterwards and trying to prevent the nation from collapsing altogether in its wake.

So the point is, whether or not you're practically able to respond to a massive disaster or invasion, that's a different question from whether you're capable of imagining the possibility at all. What I find unbelievable is the suggestion that the Federation government never even imagined that the Borg could wreak destruction on this scale.

 

[BrotherBenny]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

*Runs to story idea folder* Another one to add to the list.

I think that the Federation were lucky, they might not be next time. Perhaps in the wake of the Borg attack, they'll move to a new era of behaviour.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

I'm not saying they should change their behavior. I don't want to see the Federation become paranoid and live under a siege mentality, because that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. We already went through that with Admiral Layton and President Zife. All I'm saying is that it's implausible to suggest that they never even imagined the possibility of the Federation's destruction.

 

[captcalhoun]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

isn't it the 'red cell' that's supposed to sit around and dream up terrorist attack plans?

Britain's Guardian newspaper uncannily predicted 9/11. they ran a feature in early 2001 about bad guys in movies and had some joke about how the Taliban'll turn up in a movie trying to blow up the Statue of Liberty after the real-world thing of them blowing up the statues of Buddha in Afghanistan.

 

[William Leisner]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

As Christopher said upthread. Carla Gugino's character in Threshold was just such a worst case scenario planner, so the US government actually had some form of plan in place, whether it was useful or not.

Uumm... Threshold was a fictional program, not a documentary.

What's your point? Star Trek is fictional too. The point is [...]

No, no, not the point. This is your point. Let's get that straight right off the bat, here. Your point is that it's easy to imagine things. (Not exactly a declaration that's going to meet much resistance on a science fiction forum.)

My point is that you cannot point to something imaged in a work of fiction, and say the very real US government does a thing based on that example. Now, maybe I misunderstood the post I quoted from, and BrotherBenny was pointing to evidence in Threshold to say what the fictionalized version of the US government in Threshold did... though that's kind of like pointing out that Jim Phelps got a self-destructing tape every week to prove the IMF existed in Mission: Impossible; it's something inherent to the very concept of the given fictional world.

And, while it may be easy to imagine that our real-life, honest-to-gosh governments have plans for "any conceivable scenario," from an armed alien invasion to a giant prehistoric lizard attack to a replica of the Titanic crashing into Buckingham Palace... y'know, I rather doubt it.

 

[JB2005]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

^ Well Seven of Nine suggested that they should pack up the Federation and get the hell out of the Milky Way...but it was laughed out of the room...

Of course she was. It's an absurd suggestion. It's incredibly difficult to initiate and control mass migrations today. Can you imagine trying to make a mass migration of an entire Federation of 150 planets work?

No, but it would have been a plan had the worst happened.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

And, while it may be easy to imagine that our real-life, honest-to-gosh governments have plans for "any conceivable scenario," from an armed alien invasion to a giant prehistoric lizard attack to a replica of the Titanic crashing into Buckingham Palace... y'know, I rather doubt it.

Okay, that's not the best analogy. The Federation knew the Borg were real. They knew the Borg Collective was more than large and powerful enough to wipe out the Federation easily if it chose to. They knew they'd proven themselves a serious threat to the Collective once they knocked out their transwarp hub. They knew they'd almost been destroyed by the Dominion, so they knew they weren't indestructible.

So from their perspective, "the Borg invade en masse and wipe us all out" was not a remote threat to the degree that "Godzilla rampages through New York" or "the Moon splits in two and rains down meteors" would be, but was more on the level of "Russia launches all its nuclear missiles toward us" -- not a pie-in-the-sky threat, but a very solid, realistic worst-case scenario. It's just not credible to suggest that they never even thought about the possibility.

 

[BrotherBenny]

Re: Some thoughts on Losing the Peace (spoilers for the book obviously

Bill, I was suggesting that your (soon to be my, hopefully) US government probably does have an alien invasion or moon fall countermeasure scenario, because they are credible threats. Credible doesn't mean imminently likely, but tomorrow we could find an extrasolar meteor heading our way which may well be fast and large enough to fracture or split the moon. Or an alien craft could descend and do whatever. Governments are sufficiently paranoid or stupid to get these countermeasures drawn up, whether they're likely to be used or not.

Given a government as large as the Federation, with the number of aggressive enemies as they have on their doorstep, they would have countermeasure plans for various scenarios. In fact, I think that Starfleet Tactical would be the division to create these scenarios. Didn't Commander Shelby come up with a Borg plan which was why Hanson had her along (apart from the fact he wanted her to be exec on the E-D)?? Though hers was probably based on one cube since no one knew the size of the Borg armada.

Which brings me to another point. Did the Borg utilise ALL their forces for the "Federation Offensive" or did they have just as many ships back in the DQ? I would guess that after Janeway blew up their transwarp hub they decided to get rid of the thorn in their side and used their extensive DQ facilities to build a specific invasion fleet, hence the gap between attacks in the AQ. And prior to the invasion, they sent a cube in to assess Starfleet's current strength, but after losing contact with the cube they went ahead with the annihilation.