Destiny Why did they not... BEWARE Spoilers
- Thread starter PhotoM
- Start date
Yes. Those options including contacting the Q, contacting the Organians, contacting the Metron, and contacting the Prophets. Why? Because no conventional method works. At all. It is a waste of time and resources to pursue conventional warfare against the Borg -- you might as well just line up and say, "Here, kill me at 5 o'clock."
No, not no guarantee it would work. An absolute guarantee that it would not work.
And my original point stands: If you're gonna sell your soul to the Devil, don't do it for a defective product.
So when was a good time to contact the species you listed above? Before or after sixty-three billion were dead? Before or after the transphasic torpedoes stopped working. The Borg were eight minutes from Earth!
There are no guarantees in life, pro or con in any given situation. I can admit it may not have worked. Guess it's to much that you consider it could?
Any deal with the devil has drawbacks... if it didn't, everyone would be dealing with him.
Which is all the more reason that the Federation should have pursued a vigorous policy of soliciting the intervention of powerful extra-dimensional entities like the Q for a very long time before the invasion.
No. I have considered it. The problem is that violence doesn't work against the Borg: They just adapt and turn their weapon against you. I'm sorry if that fact hurts your feelings, but it is a fact. That's why almost every time they've been defeated, they've been defeated through asymmetrical means.
Any deal with the devil has drawbacks... if it didn't, everyone would be dealing with him.
Sure. The major drawback being, of course, that the Devil owns you afterwords because you owe him big -- a debt that will one day be repaid with interest at a cost that you're never gonna like. In this case, the drawback to a thalaron deal with the Devil would be the political instability it would wreck throughout local space.
But at least if you're gonna sell your soul to the Devil, you should sell it in return for something that accomplishes your objective. A thalaron weapon wouldn't even do that. At best, it would just postpone the extinction of the Federation by a few years. And that's assuming that the Enterprise had somehow managed to turn it on 7,000 ships at once and destroy them all.
Hell, it's an established fact that the Collective can maintain control of a Borg ship even if there are no drones aboard. It's entirely possible that had they used a thalaron successfully, the cubes would simply have continued attacking the Enterprise until they could board it and assimilate the crew. So there's no particular reason to even think that vaporizing all organic compounds aboard Borg cubes would be effective.
So when was a good time to contact the species you listed above? Before or after sixty-three billion were dead? Before or after the transphasic torpedoes stopped working. The Borg were eight minutes from Earth!
There are no guarantees in life, pro or con in any given situation. I can admit it may not have worked. Guess it's to much that you consider it could?
Any deal with the devil has drawbacks... if it didn't, everyone would be dealing with him.
It. would. Never. Work.
The Borg control an entire QUADRANT.The entire alpha quad powers combined don't even compare to the Borg's military stamina.
Let me be clear:There is NO conventional weapon ,illegal or legal ,that would defeat the Borg.
Since the Alpha Quadrant does not possess enough ships to destroy the Borg simultaneously,all a thalaron/subspace weapon/biogas would do is give the Borg another way to kill us:and to soil our conciences in civilizations last hour.
The Caliear were our ONLY option.If they said no,game over.No backup,no fail-save,no plan B.
So when was a good time to contact the species you listed above? Before or after sixty-three billion were dead? Before or after the transphasic torpedoes stopped working. The Borg were eight minutes from Earth!
There are no guarantees in life, pro or con in any given situation. I can admit it may not have worked. Guess it's to much that you consider it could?
Any deal with the devil has drawbacks... if it didn't, everyone would be dealing with him.
It. would. Never. Work.
The Borg control an entire QUADRANT.The entire alpha quad powers combined don't even compare to the Borg's military stamina.
Let me be clear:There is NO conventional weapon ,illegal or legal ,that would defeat the Borg.
Since the Alpha Quadrant does not possess enough ships to destroy the Borg simultaneously,all a thalaron/subspace weapon/biogas would do is give the Borg another way to kill us:and to soil our conciences in civilizations last hour.
The Caliear were our ONLY option.If they said no,game over.No backup,no fail-save,no plan B.
Exactly. It's pursuing the thalaron weapon that is tantamount to giving up, not soliciting the intervention of the Caeliar.
/\ Pardon me,but horseshit.
In a life and death struggle(and the federation will never be in a bigger one) you do what you must to survive.
The whole "moral triumph" of not resorting to thalaron tech. is bunkum.
Develop the weapon,use it,survive another day.As to what might occur years from now,well as Castillo said "You never know".
As for facing the wrath of the greater galactic community for developing thalaron devices,well ask Senator Tal Aura how much she was punished...they only made her Proconsol.
Puhleez!
In a life and death struggle(and the federation will never be in a bigger one) you do what you must to survive.
The whole "moral triumph" of not resorting to thalaron tech. is bunkum.
Develop the weapon,use it,survive another day.As to what might occur years from now,well as Castillo said "You never know".
As for facing the wrath of the greater galactic community for developing thalaron devices,well ask Senator Tal Aura how much she was punished...they only made her Proconsol.
Puhleez!
Right back at ya.The moral debate is irrelevant,because the Thaleron weapon would not work.
In point of fact,if the Caeliar left us to die that's exactly what would happen.
The only sensible course of action when military force fails is to flee.
That's why Jellico ordered Picard to forget about Earth if the Borg got that far.
Regardless of policy,law,weaponry,or starship capabilities the Borg were gonna win, ending the Federation as we knew it.
And NOTHING becides the Caeliar could change that.
Not a thaleron weapon.
Not a fight to the death.
Not a heroic 'last stand'
You can either adapt to an Alpha quadrant ruled by the Borg,or be crushed.And if you go out fighting there won't even be anyone left to build a memorial.
What happens next?I guess Enterprise ,and what's left of the alpha quadrant could convoy Battlestar Galactica style to the wormhole,and kick it in the Gamma quadrant.Or maybe just high-warp it to deep in the gamma quad,who knows.
But staying and fighting to the death is a waste against the Borg.
You know, I would probably agree with you if it was any foe other than the Borg. But with the Borg? You do know, and Castillo is wrong. They will come back, and they will adapt to whatever weapon you develop, and you will die. That's all there is to it. Even under a best-case scenario? You defeat 7,000 cubes.... but you've suffered the lost of 63 billion people and 40% of Starfleet. So your ability to rebuild your defenses is depleted. And then? The Borg show up again, with 7,000 or more cubes, and now your thalaron weapon doesn't work against them, and so you and everyone you love dies. And that's assuming that a major war doesn't break out in the meantime and deplete your forces even further.
Trying to find a better gun to use against the Borg is tantamount to suicide, because it will never work in the long run. Not ever. Period. Full stop. This is not an unknown variable, this is not a matter of opinion, this is not something that cannot be predicted. It is known, and it is reliable: The Borg were intent on wiping out the Federation, they were the most powerful space force in the known galaxy, and they were more than capable of killing every last Federate in the Milky Way Galaxy.
Trying to find a better weapon to use against the Borg is suicide; you might as well just kill yourself for all the good it will do at actually stopping them.
That is why they needed the Caeliar or, barring them, some other extra-dimensional entity: There was no other real option at that point. Starfleet was simply never going to be capable of defeating the Borg in a conventional war under any circumstances whatsoever. This isn't a matter of having enough courage to fight, or of being willing to do something immoral to survive. Even doing something immoral wouldn't let you survive. Even doing the morally wrong thing in the name of survival would inevitably fail at ensuring your survival. You'd be selling your soul to the Devil in return for a weapon that's about as useful as a slingshot.
That's why to resist the Borg, to defeat the Borg, they had to appeal to, well, a higher power. Because it was simply never going to be within their power to defeat the enemy. You might as well expect Pharoah's Army to defeat the United States Armed Forces.
Maybe. Or maybe the next time the Borg arrived and the thalaron weapons aren't working, Starfleet would appeal to the Caeliar, or the Metron, or the Organians, or the Prophets, or the Q. Or all of them. And all of them might then refuse out of disgust that Starfleet had used a thalaron weapon against the Borg and decide not to help. Who knows?
What we do know is that the thalaron weapon was never going to save the Federation. It would, at best, have been a stopgap, and that's assuming it worked at all. Only appealing to the Caeliar or a similarly-powerful species could ever have worked.
Now, if you're fighting a fight you know you cannot win because you know you have no other options, that's a different thing. That's honorable. But fighting a fight you know you cannot win and not pursing other options that would work? That's treason.
So, in all of the hundreds of planets,star-systems and starships assimilated by the Borg over the course of centuries,nobody had the bright idea of calling on "supernatural" assistance?
Just what the hell makes the Federation any more worthy of salvation than all those other civilizations?
TBH,the deus-ex-machina resolution probably was the only solution to the Borg question,but I guess it just leaves me feeling impotent on behalf of the Federation.
Just what the hell makes the Federation any more worthy of salvation than all those other civilizations?
TBH,the deus-ex-machina resolution probably was the only solution to the Borg question,but I guess it just leaves me feeling impotent on behalf of the Federation.
I agree that the thalaron weapon was only a stopgap measure at best. Even if the weapon did successfully wipe out all the Borg cubes that had surrounded the Caeliar ship, the Borg would have sent more cubes from the DQ. And the Borg would be even more pissed off than before considering that the Federation just wiped out over 7000 cubes. The Borg could send 10,000 cubes the next time and wipe out entire star systems with their own version of a thalaron weapon.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
First, the Star Trek Universe differs from the Real World.
The trekverse has an moral substrate, it has philosophical relevance. In the trekverse, Picard can afford to discard the only weapon that can postpone the complete destruction of his civilization, of the entire Alpha Quadrant - the thalaron emitter - because, inevitably, another option will present itself. This solution - The Caeliar - is ridiculously improbable.
In the real world, any warrior who would choose not to use such an wepon, in such circumstances, deserves to be called an fool and an traitor.
Why?
Because the universe in which we live is ruled only by blind probability. It sucks, but it is so. There will be no deux ex machina Caeliar to save the day. Only death.
I invite anyone who disagrees with me to read some history. How many wars were stopped by divine intervention? Because that's what the Caeliar, Q, Oraganians, Metron are - gods. I'm sure that, throughout history, many prayed to God to save them because they're the "good guys", because they believe in Him, etc. How many times were their prayers answered?
Picard made the strategically correct decision when he chose not to use the thalaron weapon?
I disagree.
The war was lost the second the borg sent 7400 ships in the Alpha Quadrant and the Allied fleet didn't have an thalaron weapon to destroy them when they exited the subspace tunnel - an disastrous mistake on the part of the allied powers. There was only one queston left: how many will survive?
Yes, in the trekwerse the good guys win so you have Caeliar or Q or whatever - but i'm speaking from an realistic perspective.
Picard miraculously gets another chance to use the weapon - let's say he uses it.
In the worst case scenario, the thalaron radiation would have destroyed only part of the borg armada. This would have bought the Alpha Quadrant powers a few months before they were annihilated.
A few months - a gift from God. Billions of refugees could have escaped in these months - humans, vulcans, andorians, klingons, romulans, etc. They could have fled through the bajoran wormhole, or ventured in the intergalactic void.
Best case scenario - all borg ships are destroyed. The subspace tunnels don't exist anymore and the Alpha Quadrant has decades, perhaps as long as an century, to prepare for the next invasion - as established in "Mere Mortals". Furthermore, the borg from the Alpha Quadrant can't contact the ones from the Delta Quadrant to tell them how to adapt to thalaron radiation or transphasic torpedos - not that it matters. If, after an century, the Alpha Quadrant still only has these weapons, it's doomed.
I heard on this board that the borg can't be defeated by conventional means, and unconventional ideas only work once.
As far as current Federation&all capabilities go, this is true. However, I can think of at least two weapons who should be effective against the borg - in other words, the collective shouldn't be able to adapt against them.
One - telekinetics. In "Gods of Night", the so-called "children of the storm" destroyed hundreds of thousands of borg ships
via telekinetic means - and the borg didn't adapt. And there are other established facts that suggest that such weapons are beyond the borg's ability to adapt.
Two - fight fire with fire. The borg adapt through trial and error - hardly an creative endeavor. You want an effective weapon against them - copy this remarcable military technology. They adapt to your weapons - you adapt to their adaptations. Species 8472 probably used something similar (evolution through trial and error is inherent to living organisms and 8472's technology was organic) - and they came very close to destroying the collective.
The Federation prides itself with its great minds, its creativity - and it would have an century at its disposal. Plenty of time to develop such weapons.
And the "aftermath" of the use of the thalaron weapon - an arms race between the Alpha Quadrant powers - an joke compared to the borg apocalypse.
It was repeatedly stated that the borg will adapt to thalaron radiation. This means, of course, that such defenses are possible - and that the Federation&all will eventually develop them, as they developed energy shiels to counter matter-antimatter explosions.
Not to mention that everyone in the Alpha Quadrant will be highly motivated to work together in order to prepare for the next, inevitable, borg invasion.
And nobody in their right mind will blame the Federation because it saved trillions, including their civilization.
Now - let's say Picard doesn't use the weapon and the Caeliar are either uninclined or incapable of stopping the borg. I know, in the idealized Star Trek universe, this will never happen - there, an moral, perfect solution will exist for every problem - not very realistic. Nevertheless, let's see what hapens:
The borg "sterilize" the Alpha Quadrant, killing trillions. And Picard has his hollow "moral" victory. Moral - Pfft - there's nothing moral in condemning trillions to death because you don't want to use an weapon, to kill the genocidal sociopats that are the borg.
The trekverse has an moral substrate, it has philosophical relevance. In the trekverse, Picard can afford to discard the only weapon that can postpone the complete destruction of his civilization, of the entire Alpha Quadrant - the thalaron emitter - because, inevitably, another option will present itself. This solution - The Caeliar - is ridiculously improbable.
In the real world, any warrior who would choose not to use such an wepon, in such circumstances, deserves to be called an fool and an traitor.
Why?
Because the universe in which we live is ruled only by blind probability. It sucks, but it is so. There will be no deux ex machina Caeliar to save the day. Only death.
I invite anyone who disagrees with me to read some history. How many wars were stopped by divine intervention? Because that's what the Caeliar, Q, Oraganians, Metron are - gods. I'm sure that, throughout history, many prayed to God to save them because they're the "good guys", because they believe in Him, etc. How many times were their prayers answered?
Picard made the strategically correct decision when he chose not to use the thalaron weapon?
I disagree.
The war was lost the second the borg sent 7400 ships in the Alpha Quadrant and the Allied fleet didn't have an thalaron weapon to destroy them when they exited the subspace tunnel - an disastrous mistake on the part of the allied powers. There was only one queston left: how many will survive?
Yes, in the trekwerse the good guys win so you have Caeliar or Q or whatever - but i'm speaking from an realistic perspective.
Picard miraculously gets another chance to use the weapon - let's say he uses it.
In the worst case scenario, the thalaron radiation would have destroyed only part of the borg armada. This would have bought the Alpha Quadrant powers a few months before they were annihilated.
A few months - a gift from God. Billions of refugees could have escaped in these months - humans, vulcans, andorians, klingons, romulans, etc. They could have fled through the bajoran wormhole, or ventured in the intergalactic void.
Best case scenario - all borg ships are destroyed. The subspace tunnels don't exist anymore and the Alpha Quadrant has decades, perhaps as long as an century, to prepare for the next invasion - as established in "Mere Mortals". Furthermore, the borg from the Alpha Quadrant can't contact the ones from the Delta Quadrant to tell them how to adapt to thalaron radiation or transphasic torpedos - not that it matters. If, after an century, the Alpha Quadrant still only has these weapons, it's doomed.
I heard on this board that the borg can't be defeated by conventional means, and unconventional ideas only work once.
As far as current Federation&all capabilities go, this is true. However, I can think of at least two weapons who should be effective against the borg - in other words, the collective shouldn't be able to adapt against them.
One - telekinetics. In "Gods of Night", the so-called "children of the storm" destroyed hundreds of thousands of borg ships
via telekinetic means - and the borg didn't adapt. And there are other established facts that suggest that such weapons are beyond the borg's ability to adapt.Two - fight fire with fire. The borg adapt through trial and error - hardly an creative endeavor. You want an effective weapon against them - copy this remarcable military technology. They adapt to your weapons - you adapt to their adaptations. Species 8472 probably used something similar (evolution through trial and error is inherent to living organisms and 8472's technology was organic) - and they came very close to destroying the collective.
The Federation prides itself with its great minds, its creativity - and it would have an century at its disposal. Plenty of time to develop such weapons.
And the "aftermath" of the use of the thalaron weapon - an arms race between the Alpha Quadrant powers - an joke compared to the borg apocalypse.
It was repeatedly stated that the borg will adapt to thalaron radiation. This means, of course, that such defenses are possible - and that the Federation&all will eventually develop them, as they developed energy shiels to counter matter-antimatter explosions.
Not to mention that everyone in the Alpha Quadrant will be highly motivated to work together in order to prepare for the next, inevitable, borg invasion.
And nobody in their right mind will blame the Federation because it saved trillions, including their civilization.
Now - let's say Picard doesn't use the weapon and the Caeliar are either uninclined or incapable of stopping the borg. I know, in the idealized Star Trek universe, this will never happen - there, an moral, perfect solution will exist for every problem - not very realistic. Nevertheless, let's see what hapens:
The borg "sterilize" the Alpha Quadrant, killing trillions. And Picard has his hollow "moral" victory. Moral - Pfft - there's nothing moral in condemning trillions to death because you don't want to use an weapon, to kill the genocidal sociopats that are the borg.
No more so than the existence of the Borg themselves, or of FTL drive, or of phasers, or of transporters. The Star Trek universe is full of highly improbable things, and making use of them does not automatically constitute a deus ex machina.
I'd call them a traitor if they did, for reasons I've outlined above.
How many wars were fought against genocidal cyborgs?
No, the war was lost the day the Borg Collective decided that it wanted to exterminate the Federation and its neighbors. Barring "divine" intervention, the extermination of the Federation became inevitable when the Collective decided to devote significant resources to that task. There was never any possibility of a traditional military victory.
No. In the worst case scenario, the thalaron weapon wouldn't have worked at all because the Borg had already encountered it.
Destroying part but not all of the Borg fleet was a medium-case scenario. But even in a scenario where it destroys 75% of the Borg fleet, that would leave the Borg with 1,750 cubes -- which is, quite frankly, hundreds more ships than they actually needed to bring about the extinction of all life in local space.
The best-case scenario of it destroying every single Borg ship in local space is itself highly improbable -- how would they deliver that much radiation to that many ships spread across a large area? Even if it was accomplished, it would only be a stop-gap; the Borg would just send reinforcements -- reinforcements that would probably arrive many years earlier than Federation estimates, given as how VOY established that individual Borg ships are capable of generating transwarp speeds without need of the galactic network Voyager destroyed in 2377.
And then been hunted down by the newly-aggressive Borg and been either exterminated or assimilated. And either way, you've brought about the end of the Federation, Romulan Star Empire, Klingon Empire, Imperial Romulan State, Cardassian Union, Ferengi Alliance, Breen Confederacy, Tzenkethi Coalition, Tholian Assembly, and Talarian Republic as viable states.
No, let's get real here: They were doomed from the start. Only by soliciting the intervention of extra-dimensional lifeforms did they EVER have a snowball's chance in hell of survival.
I heard on this board that the borg can't be defeated by conventional means, and unconventional ideas only work once.
As far as current Federation&all capabilities go, this is true. However, I can think of at least two weapons who should be effective against the borg - in other words, the collective shouldn't be able to adapt against them.
One - telekinetics. In "Gods of Night", the so-called "children of the storm" destroyed hundreds of thousands of borg ships
Not really. All you've demonstrated is that one weapon worked once. And, BTW, I've read Gods of Night and don't remember that -- could you point me to the page it happens on?
What makes you think the Federation had the technological capacity to adapt to Borg adaptations as rapidly as Species 8472 did? Don't you think they were probably trying their damnedest to do just that during the war? It was obviously something that was just beyond the Federation's means.
There comes a point where a realistic assessment of military capacity means accepting that defeat is inevitable and that the good guys are not militarily omnipotent.
It would be foolhardy in the extreme to assume that. The Federation had almost twenty years between first contact with the Borg in 2364 and the invasion of 2381, and they never managed to develop effective enough weaponry to avoid total defeat. What makes you think anything would change in the intervening years, especially since it's not as though the Borg -- who were already centuries ahead of the Federation in technological power -- would hardly be static in the meantime? To say nothing of the fact that it's ridiculously optimistic to presume that the Borg would be unable to find another way to the Alpha Quadrant than conventional warp.
Actually, such an arms race could itself give rise to an apocalypse. Some Romulans get pissed at the Federation, equip a few stolen Federation ships with a hidden thalaron weapon, arrive in orbit of Earth, Vulcan, Andor, Tellar, and Alpha Centauri? Boom; there go the core worlds.
What makes you think the Federation will develop anti-thalaron defenses as swiftly as the Borg, or that they'll have the capacity to deploy them on planet-wide scales?
The states of the Alpha Quadrant already had that motivation, and they still bickered like there was no tomorrow.
I would completely agree if there was any damn reason to think that the thalaron weapon would actually work. But there isn't. It would fail, and the Federation would be destroyed. Anyone placing their bets on conventional military strategy is begging for defeat. A true patriot would search of a way to defeat the Borg that would actually work and that would end the Borg threat once and for all.
I think what Sci is trying to say, is that no matter what kind of military solution people come up with IT WILL NOT WORK, so IT IS POINTLESS to even bother wasting time trying to come up with more. Besides, coming up with more military solutions would only help the Borg in the end, since all it would do is give them even more weapons to use against us.
One - telekinetics. In "Gods of Night", the so-called "children of the storm" destroyed hundreds of thousands of borg ships
The Federation prides itself with its great minds, its creativity - and it would have an century at its disposal. Plenty of time to develop such weapons.
.
Sorry ,but telekenesis won't work either.If you recall,the 'Children of the Storm' said it took them CENTURIES to '...purge these systems of Borg'
Obviously Picard and co. don't have that kind of time.
And the Federation DID use that 20 year time to make new weapons.
Prometheus,Akira,and Soverign class ships were designed to combat the Borg,and were sucessful in keeping Borg Cubes off of Starfleet's hindquarters.
Unfortunately,Starfleet doesn't have the resources to make 3000 Soverigns,2000 Promethii and 2000 Akiras.
Ironically,to reinforce the point that an arms race with the Borg is suicide,it was the ass-kicking Starfleet handed to the Borg via those starships that convinced the Collective to eliminate us in the first place!
I don't say that to disparage my 3 favorite starships.As the above poster mentioned the war was lost the moment the Borg decided to crush us.
BLASPHEMY!!!!
You forgot one. The Defiant-class was designed as a Borg killer.
That's the problem, actually. It's said that militaries fight the next war by refighting the last war. Starfleet, obviously, is no different. Starfleet fought its wars with massive capital ships, and its enemies fought its wars with massive capital ships. Symmetric warfare. The Dominion War reinforced the lessons that symmetric warfare is the right tactical mindset.
That was the wrong lesson.
The Borg resemble capital ships, because their ships are capital sized. Which meant that Starfleet applied the lesson that capital ships are necessarily for fighting capital ships when it came to the Borg... and they nearly lost.
They never made the conceptual leap to asymmetric warfare, because they never had a need to use the Defiant for what it was designed for. Worse, because they never used it, they never developed it.
The Defiant was designed as a Borg-killer. It was small, fast, agile, and heavily armored.
Want to improve it? Mate each one to an M-5 computer core. It's going to be faster at the helm than any living being. It doesn't need life-support. It can handle high-speed turns without turning to goo from the inertial forces.
Will the Borg adapt to swarms of M-5-driven Defiants battering each cube? I'm doubtful. The difference in processing power between an M-5 and the Borg Collective is probably similar, perhaps even weighted toward the Borg, but I'd give the edge to each individual M-5 because its nervous system isn't spread out over interstellar distances the way the Borg is. M-5 Defiant is going to have faster reaction times.
Unleash that on the Borg, and you've unleashed Hell itself.
Which, actually, is the problem.
Because what you've just done is create something that could very easily be perverted. You've created something that could turn into a dangerous threat against its creators. It could be like Fred Saberhagen's Berserkers.
So, on the one hand, you've created the thing that will destroy the Borg. On the other hand, it could destroy you, too.
Maybe some conceptual leaps should just remain concepts.
Great debate going here. The Children of the Storm appear in Mere Mortals from pages 213-226 (except for a brief interlude on the E-E).
No, the Borg are not merely criminals, as you said, "they are a force of nature," that is coming not only to destroy you and your family, but coming to destroy an entire civilization. You're also right, they cannot be killed, subdued, or captured. They are something to be STOPPED by any force or means you have available. If one compares a criminal to a Borg, dealing with a criminal 99% of time has more flexibility and malleability than an invading army sent out for destruction. Of course, it's that one percent of the time, when you don't have that flexibility and malleability in a situation to weigh your options.
It is life or death.
However you equate the situation, either man vs man, or civilization vs civilization, both are life and death struggles. Both have uncertain outcomes, and with that, both require utilizing whatever force is IMMEDIATELY at your disposal in your attempt to preserve your life.
In either the example of the law enforcement officer, or the Federation in this life and death struggle, neither is assured that they will be aided by an outside force yet both require that you do whatever should be done to preserve your life.
There are situations where drawing your weapon on someone or an aggressor may not work, yet you still draw your weapon as a last line of defense and continue the fight for survival regardless of the outcome.
Whether you use a thalaron emitter to attempt to stop a tidal wave, or a firearm to take the LIFE of another man, both result in death.
Would the Federation really have considered themselves monsters if they had used the thalaron emitter to stop the Borg intrusion? Is the police officer a monster and "not any better than the enemy" when he has to potentially use the same weapons and final measure of force to stop an agressor who threatens innocents?
Just something to ponder and food for thought grim as it may be.
When you're in a life and death situation, you don't think "Gee, if I draw my weapon and stop the threat, am I making it worse for my fellow officers or myself in the future when the aggressor's friends better arm themselves and start wearing vests? Am I setting a precendent?" or "If I draw and shoot this guy with the same type of weapon he's aiming at me, does that mean I'm no better than he is? After all, I'm going to use the same devastating means and weapons that he is going to use to kill me. Hmm, maybe I can hope that I can prevent the inevitable agression that will surely come in the future regardless of this outcome. I'll let him kill me and save myself any quilt that may come from preserving my OWN life or those I'm lawfully protecting."
No. These thoughts don't enter your mind. That man is there to kill you NOW and he has NO excusses for his actions when there is coldness in his eyes. There is no time for a philosophical debate about taking HIS life. There is no time to wait and hope for backup and assistance. There is no time to think about the future and how you'll be judged. This man, and others like him are going to kill you now, and you know without a doubt, that others are going to try and kill you in the future simply because you wear that uniform. You ACT and the only future you have, is what you do in the next few seconds.
Everyone talks about the Borg being this irresistible force of nature. Let me tell you, there are people out there in the darkness that are more depraved, more violent, and ultimately more evil than can ever be truly discussed or described. It's chilling to think about the barbarity of their acts and it's heartbreaking to meet the grieving families who exposed to it.
I guess, I was merely trying to say, that the resolution laid out in Destiny works for a life and death situation in FICTION. The good guys have the luxury of philosophical debate. The authors have the ability to instill these characters with the morality tales we ALL try and uphold and emulate when life allows us the luxury of doing so. For all that, a life or death struggle is quite different in REALITY.
As I said, you all have great points. I don't know of anyone who truly does their duty who doesn't try and emulate the nobility exemplified in these characters. In the end, this is just one man, lol, expressing his views and adding to the conversation.
With all that said, I CAN NOT wait for "A Singular Destiny" to arrive. I'm eager to see what comes next!
Last edited:
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
EXACTLY. In the real world, you won't have the luxury of warp drive or transporters or Caeliar when the barbarians come knocking on the door. A weapon who has half the thalaron emitter's chance of delaying or stopping bloodthirsty invaders is a GODSEND.
The enemy doesn't have to be part machine. Only genocidal. This has happened enough times in our history - and there never was an rosy solution. Many times, there was no solution.
You - and others - repeatedly said the thalaron technology - or any other technology - won't work against the borg.
Seven of Nine and Picard disagree - according to them, the thalaron weapon will work at least once - their words and actions in the Destiny trilogy confirm this. And, since they have intimate knowledge of borg and borg technology and you only have unfounded speculations based on an ludicrously thin layer of information about the borg, I shall beleive them.
If Picard only managed to destroy an part of the borg's genocidal fleet:
You want an perfect solution for the borg crisis. So do I, but not at the cost of surrendering realism.
And Caeliar or praying to the Q or whatever is not realistic. Prayers never worked in the real world. And, until The Caeliar, they didn't work in the trekverse against the borg - the thousands of species the borg assimilated can testify to that. Q, Organians et all didn't care about what happened on our side of the mirror. It's as simple as that.
The scenario currently being analysed is far from ideal. But things could be worse. If BILLIONS of Federation citizens, Klingons, Romulans survive, then their civilizations survive.
Sure, they'll be hunted by the borg, but you know what? Space is big. It's mind-boggingly BIG. The borg have to find the refugees. If multiple convoys flee, they'll never find them all.
And it might take tens of thousands of years, but there will be an rematch. And that war will not be as onesided as the "Destiny Trilogy" one. You want divine intervention against the borg? Wait a few millenia until humans or vulcans or any other Alpha Quadrant secies transcends and you'll have it.
Bye bye borg.If all borg ships in the Alpha Quadrant are destroyed by the thalaron radiation, The federation has AN CENTURY to develop new weapons to fight the borg
Seven of Nine - in Mere Mortals - claimed that the borg will need 70-100 years to reach the Alpha Quadrant, if their 7400 cubes were destroyed. And she was trying to alarm Starfleet Admiralty when she said that. Again, I trust her word over yours.
And what could the Federation develop during that century?
In my above post, I explained the workings of two weapons that will be consistently effective against the borg.
About telekineticks:
The Children of the Storm appear in Mere Mortals from pages 213-226 (except for a brief interlude on the E-E). Thanks, destro.
And telekinesis worked more than once. It worked HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of times.
EXACTLY. The children of the storm fought the borg for centuries. They employed telekinetic weapons HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF TIMES. And after all this time and all these battles, the borg DIDN'T ADAPT. They couldn't evolve an defense no matter how long or hard they tried. We're seeing the limits of the borg's adaptive abilities.
Telekinesis will definitely work against the borg.
And about evolutionary algorithms - something similar to what the borg use to adapt:
Currently, the Federation definitely does not have the ability to adapt as fast as the borg.
It couldn't gain the ability in 20 years singe the first contact with the borg.
But in 70 to 100 years, it will develop that ability. Seven of Nine has at least an ideea about the workings of this technology. In general, the Federation has acquired an wealth of information about borg technology - which will definitely prove useful.
Talk about extremly unlikely scenarios.
Even if, by some aberration, some violent militant faction loses all sanity AND manages to pull it off ( it didn't work so well for Shinzon ) we're still looking at 20 billion deaths. Still mild casualties, compared to the TRILLIONS the borg were about to kill. Could you reiterate these reasons, in an concise form?
Last edited:
Similar threads
