Borg Assimilation

[Praetor]

The way everybody is talking in this thread, it sounds like the Borg assimilate a planet use all the resources and then pick up and leave. For some reason this just doesn't sound right.

James

IDK... to me anything but that doesn't sound right. I think about those colonies from TNG that the Borg scooped up, leaving craters. They didn't bother to assimilate the planet.

It does make them sound more like Space Locusts, but I think they'd keep the planets after assimilation. At least SOME of them, to use as launching points for further assimilation of that area of space.

I tend to agree with this. Perhaps it depends on how much of a given planet is deemed assimilation-worthy, combined with how 'strategic' the planet is as to whether the Borg establish a more permanent residence?

 

[James Wright]

Don't you think the Federation establishes "COLONIES" on planets because of the mineral resources? Maybe at the time the Borg scooped up the colony was because they wanted the people and weren't in need of any of the planet's resources. When they need both people and mineral resources they go to a developed planet, like Earth!

James

 

[Anwar]

Well, in "Q Who?" it was implied that they had just finished assimilating an industrialized developed world but they did so by scooping up all the cities and not by taking over the planet.

So maybe it's just a situational thing, if the civilization is advanced enough they'll assimilate the planet but if not they just scoop the place.

 

[James Wright]

I wonder how advanced a planet has to be to be assimilated by the Borg?

James

 

[Deks]

There is a good possibility to explain it in a following fashion:

If a civilization exists on a specific planet that is sufficiently developed to peak Borg interest, they could probably swoop up the cities and just convert them to energy for example and 'consume' them while leaving the rest of the planet.

If a planet on which a sufficiently advanced civilization exists and has properties of interest to the Borg, they could assimilate the entire planet.
They would likely convert the entire planet to a suitable environment for them and use it as efficiently as possible using their nano-probes (effectively speaking, terraform the planet to cater the Borg).

They could probably do this with planets with no civilization on it.
Technological and biological interests may not be the only significant aspects to the Borg ... if it's a suitable environment the Borg could use for themselves in one way or the other, then they will assimilate it and adapt it for whatever it is they want to use it for.

Should the Borg decide to assimilate a planet that contains both a highly and less advanced civilization ... they will either assimilate everything and everyone, or just assimilate the majority and exterminate the ones they don't perceive as worthy (although there were Trek episodes with 2 races evolving on one planet with the less advanced one being more suitable for survival and having sufficiently developed cerebral abilities that can be used for the entire collective as processing units ... they can easily convert a villager with no technology or anything into a skilled person via assimilation ... have access to the collective knowledge/understanding of thousands of species ... and after potential 'liberation' from the hive, this individual would be one of the smartest ones in the Trek galaxy likely).

Any number of extra drones could be beneficial to the collective.
If they assimilate existing planetary culture, they newly converted drones there can finish up the assimilation process of the planet and use it for Collective's purposes.

 

[Anwar]

I had my own idea for how a land war of fighting with the Borg would go (if they had to send their Cube somewhere else and couldn't just bombard the planet). It's kind of kooky since it just floated into my brain, but I imagined them sending a nanoprobe bomb down into the wilderness to explode and assimilated a lot of the wildlife. Then they'd use these assimilated animals (mostly predators already evolved to hunt and kill anyways) to slowly encroach on the inhabited areas and start assimilating the populace.

 

[Deks]

Remember that in Dark frontier, the Queen was developing a new form of assimilation.
Essentially a virus-like approach.
Inefficient because it takes more time, but over time, the Borg could easily modify the system to adapt to the planet's environment and spread itself more quickly throughout the population.

The assimilation of wildlife though is an interesting approach if a cube is not available.
But I doubt the Borg would find it efficient.
It's much simpler to detonate a nano-probe bomb that would carry the nano-probes throughout the planet, multiply themselves after the detonation and assimilate everyone and everything gradually.

Sort of like a multi-kinetic neutronic mine mentioned in Scorpion but on a smaller scale.
The mine was design with the following premise: when exploded, it would spread out nano-probes in a radius of 5 LY's.

I'm sure the Borg can come up with a smaller scale approach if they want to contain it to a single planet ... although affecting an entire star system would probably be prudent.