10,000 Vulcans left?

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

10,000 may be a good estimate of those who had just evacuated Vulcan in their own ships, the Enterprise, etc and therefore are recently late of Vulcan, as opposed to Vulcans travelling through another star system at the time, or Vulcans living on a colony world, or visiting Earth. How accurate would you say Spock's estimate is?

To populate New Vulcan and rebuild (with or without help from other Fed members), you'd need Vulcans doing other jobs, not just science/ambassadorial/philosophical/religious jobs - you need cooks, vocational workers, etc. Does the percentage of those still alive skew science/Vulcan mysticism heavy?

 

[Timo]

I doubt the hero ship managed to evacuate any significant number of Vulcans. We only saw that handful, after all - and trying to get them could well preclude the saving of others, if the ship spent as long time hovering above the local Cheyenne Mountain rather than the local Beijing or Kolkata.

And ships leaving Vulcan would be a bit unlikely overall - after all, Nero was extremely vulnerable to attack by spacecraft, and would be motivated to shoot down anything that tried to lift off. That we see things flying when Spock beams down doesn't mean they made it out intact.

I think 10,000 off-Vulcan Vulcans is quite possible, with perhaps only about a hundred managing to actually escape the planet. The time to evacuate was truly minimal, the possibility of global communications being jammed by Nero's noisy drill high. And Vulcans are notorious about being in denial about approaching death..

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kor]

Spock's line made it sound like 10,000 directly escaped the destruction of the planet, as opposed to including all Vulcans everywhere.

But what about all those Vulcans away from home? If that number included all Vulcans who were already away from the planet Vulcan, including those on diplomatic missions, scientific research, colonists, traders dealing in kevas and trillium, etc., then I think the figure of 10,000 would actually be pretty low.

For a real-world comparison, the US State Department estimates that there are about 9 million US citizens living outside the US.

Kor

 

[Malaika]

I think he was talking about those who escaped from the planet and using the limited info he had in order to make an existimate. Maybe he was being too optimistic or pessimistic, I hope the latter.

 

[Timo]

The average number of Vulcans off-Vulcan would hardly be a variable, I'd think. Spock should have that down pat. Unless it's some very large number in which case the variance is also allowed to be significant, but then the "10,000" thing flies out of the airlock already.

But are the Vulcan colonies of noteworthy size? The P'Jem monastery was supposed to only have a handful of monks, even if that wasn't quite true. We get no data on the "Vulcanis Lunar Colony" (which I think is on Earth's Luna, what with Vulcan having no moon and all) - are there fifty people there, or fifty million? How many of those are even Vulcans?

The in-universe reality always has been that Vulcans are secretive, and that people of Earth and of other UFP worlds rely on myths and rumors regarding the most basic things about the species or the culture. This would work so much better if Vulcans really were homebodies, very seldom venturing offworld for any reason, and virtually never doing so in large groups.

Of course, 10,000 is such a small number that even small groups, such as the crews of individual starships, would affect it rather significantly. Perhaps Spock's estimate indeed is off by nearly 100% (in the pessimistic direction, I hope!)?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Butters]

Yeah. 10k always seemed very low to me. I mean, there are supposedly 300-400k French living in London, its almost inconceivable that a species such as the Vulcans, whose own origins are uncertain, and colonies exist throughout the galaxy, with Sargon's world, Romulus, Mintaka, to name just three instances of Vulcans off world, there aren't billions of Vulcans spread throughout the quadrant.

The loss of Home world would be tragic, but New Vulcan wouldn't be starting from scratch.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Perhaps it was just 10k who survived from the planet, not counting off-worlders. When Spock beams down we do see a Vulcan ship flying in the distance.

Or maybe Vulcans are crazy isolationist and stay on Vulcan in the Kelvin timeline.

 

[Timo]

Or in any timeline.

And why should Mintakans matter? If anything, those semi-animals would be detrimental to the survival of the Vulcan society, dressing all wrong and being emotional and non-Surakian and even theist! Spock could just as well contemplate letting the survival of the Vulcan culture rest on the shoulders of the Romulans...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Leathco]

10k surviving could be right, even with Nero attacking. If Nero is working on one side of the planet, ships on the other side could warp out. Including civilian ships, 10k easy could have left, and I am surprised the number isn't higher. Even if Nero is attacking in orbit, his ship can only be in one spot at a time, leaving a massive blind spot allowing other ships to escape. It might have even been a tactic to sacrifice some ships to attack to buy time for the others to go offworld.

 

[Timo]

But Nero fights an information battle first and foremost. He jams communications, captures codes, and apparently also sends false distress calls. Would Vulcan know enough to start evacuating?

I mean, there are no seismic troubles there, at least nothing a Vulcan would be alarmed of. And Nero is preventing anybody from flying small craft on his side of the planet, or else those would have destroyed his drill already - but for some reason, Vulcan is failing to launch small, medium or large craft, which it no doubt has in abundance. The reason might work to prevent launching any of those craft for evacuation purposes, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[shapeshifter]

The goal was to impart a sense of real peril to the future of Vulcan people. 10K has a more dramatic ring to it than millions or more. Option 2, not your daddy's star trek, trying to make logical sense no longer matters.