How many Deaths in a population is too many in star trek

[Hunter Zolomon]

Okay this is the first thread i have started ever, so forgive me if i have made any mistakes. I am curious about lives lost in conflicts, particularly the dominion war. It seems to me that after the dominion turned theire ships on cadarssia prime and started razing cities, did it really put a dent in the overall population of cadarssians in cardassian territory. I mean they are a space faring people for a lot of years and i am sure with a lot of colonies, their population should be in the trillions, so why does it seem that number killed by the dominion was so awful. With the bajorans i get how their population is smaller due to only colonizing a few moons so they had to use the resources of a single planet just like in our current earth the death of a few millions would be devastating.
Finally why the hell did weyoun think that destroying earth would end human resistance it made no sense. They are 100s of worlds filled with human colonists that have existed for hundreds of years, that probably dont consider earth their homeworld just the capital of the federation. It just boggles my mind, does anyone also have the problems with population scales in the star trek series?

 

[Bad Thoughts]

I mean they are a space faring people for a lot of years and i am sure with a lot of colonies, their population should be in the trillions, so why does it seem that number killed by the dominion was so awful.

Trillions? I'm not sure that they would all be Cardassians if that were the case. First, it seems that most colonies start out as small endeavors based on limited resources that may or may not grow over time. I can't think of any Federation colony that has millions, let alone billions, of settlers. Perhaps the native population of send colonies would be quite large, but that would be a different matter. If those planet had native populations that were pre-industrial, it is likely that they were less than 1 billion total. They would require significant economic disruption to support a population larger than that.

Second, settler populations tend to be small. Even in the rare instances in which they expand, they aren't always the majority population. Consider that there are only 26 million Americans of English descent in a population of over 300 million.

Third, the genocide that started in WYLB would likely have a larger effect than elsewhere. It clearly started with the leadership and likely worked its way down. People responsible for keeping like running on the planet disappeared. This is easily comparable to the downfall of the Third Reich, the ensuing power vacuum and the mass deprivation in caused.

 

[Hunter Zolomon]

Trillions? I'm not sure that they would all be Cardassians if that were the case. First, it seems that most colonies start out as small endeavors based on limited resources that may or may not grow over time. I can't think of any Federation colony that has millions, let alone billions, of settlers. Perhaps the native population of send colonies would be quite large, but that would be a different matter. If those planet had native populations that were pre-industrial, it is likely that they were less than 1 billion total. They would require significant economic disruption to support a population larger than that.

Second, settler populations tend to be small. Even in the rare instances in which they expand, they aren't always the majority population. Consider that there are only 26 million Americans of English descent in a population of over 300 million.

Third, the genocide that started in WYLB would likely have a larger effect than elsewhere. It clearly started with the leadership and likely worked its way down. People responsible for keeping like running on the planet disappeared. This is easily comparable to the downfall of the Third Reich, the ensuing power vacuum and the mass deprivation in caused.

It all depends on how long they have been colonizing for, it doesnt make any sense that all their colonies will feature just 100s of people, especially if they are an agressive and expansionist people. I mean Look how quickly australia and the us filled up with people. And without the ease of travel that is available in the far future. It makes no sense for the colonies to be small or that colonies established hundreds of years in the past will not have populations in the millions, due to birth and migration due to open and freely available land. I mean is not like cadarssia have just been space travellers for a decade, they have been travelling for hundreds of years. I mean take the earth for example, think of how the population has boomed in the last 50 years despite our smaller space and less resources. Now compare that with a very advanced race that has been colonising other worlds for multiple centuries with waaay more resources and way more avilable land. Their population should be booming, not just due to space but also for security reasons, all that territory has to be filled with cadarssians and to keep expanding you need a bigger population.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

It all depends on how long they have been colonizing for, it doesnt make any sense that all their colonies will feature just 100s of people, especially if they are an agressive and expansionist people. I mean Look how quickly australia and the us filled up with people. And without the ease of travel that is available in the far future. It makes no sense for the colonies to be small or that colonies established hundreds of years in the past will not have populations in the millions, due to birth and migration due to open and freely available land. I mean is not like cadarssia have just been space travellers for a decade, they have been travelling for hundreds of years. I mean take the earth for example, think of how the population has boomed in the last 50 years despite our smaller space and less resources. Now compare that with a very advanced race that has been colonising other worlds for multiple centuries with waaay more resources and way more avilable land. Their population should be booming, not just due to space but also for security reasons, all that territory has to be filled with cadarssians and to keep expanding you need a bigger population.

It makes perfect sense: Cardassian imperialism, according to the dialogue of Chains of Command, started recently enough to be in living memory. They haven't been at it for that long.

And Australia is far from filled up. Really only the coasts have major populations.

 

[Hunter Zolomon]

It makes perfect sense: Cardassian imperialism, according to the dialogue of Chains of Command, started recently enough to be in living memory. They haven't been at it for that long.

And Australia is far from filled up. Really only the coasts have major populations.

but they are in the millions right, what we consider a small population today would have been considered large centuries ago.1 million ppl today is not the same as 1 million 100 years ago or 1 million a thousand years ago. Imperialism or not , cardassians where space faring, you dont need to be imperial to have colonies. so the idea that caddassians can have colonies that are over a century old and not have them populated by millions with the life expentancy provided by their tech is a bit ridiculous. Like i said we have managed to spread all over our planet to acquire new resources and are now in the billions. Our population went over a billion at the turn of the 20th century and within a 1oo years we have increased to about 6 billion with our current technology and just having this one planet.
How the hell are the caadarssians not in the 10s of billions with multiple planets, way more advance technology and being space faring for multiple centuries. It makes no sense.

 

[Timo]

There's exactly one human colony that explicitly features millions of inhabitants: Deneva from TOS "Operation: Annihilate!" was colonized "over a century ago" and considered to have "normal planet development", going from a freight line hub to an apparently forgotten backwater that does some sustenance mining at the local asteroids. Deneva had "almost a million inhabitants", with "more than one hundred thousand" at the city where the Kirk family lived.

What to read of this? That it's "normal" to have human colonies with a population a bit under a million, keeping to their own devices yet having the ability to build lots and lots of spaceships in a heartbeat? In that case, our heroes simply avoided normal human colonies in their frontier adventures, and at most only the ones mentioned but never seen were of this normal type.

DS9 "Statistical Probabilities" confirms a UFP population in the trillions, with projected casualty figures to match. But there's no mention of whether humans are a significant component of this overall population. if Kirk's "we're on a thousand planets and spreading" is to be taken to mean human expansion, then it's possible that each of the hundred or so UFP members of note has a thousand planets with an average of tens of millions of people, possibly with a bias towards both thousand-people planets and ten-billion-people ones.

In contrast, we never hear of a major offworld Cardassian settlement... Those people just aren't into colonization.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nyotarules]

The novels and memory Beta recognise a few Earth colonies in their billions and millions including Mars, Alpha Centauri and Deneva by the 24th century.
And Weyoun was wrong Earth's destruction would galvanise the rest of the Federation especially humans, he should have studied Earth history, the Vietnam war, the French resistance- WW2 and other wars for independence against an oppressor.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

but they are in the millions right, what we consider a small population today would have been considered large centuries ago.1 million ppl today is not the same as 1 million 100 years ago or 1 million a thousand years ago. Imperialism or not , cardassians where space faring, you dont need to be imperial to have colonies. so the idea that caddassians can have colonies that are over a century old and not have them populated by millions with the life expentancy provided by their tech is a bit ridiculous. Like i said we have managed to spread all over our planet to acquire new resources and are now in the billions. Our population went over a billion at the turn of the 20th century and within a 1oo years we have increased to about 6 billion with our current technology and just having this one planet.
How the hell are the caadarssians not in the 10s of billions with multiple planets, way more advance technology and being space faring for multiple centuries. It makes no sense.

OK, what was the population of European descent of the United States in 1800? Canada? Mexico? If you want a model of of imperialism, you must look at examples we have in our past. One of the reasons why some nation's colonies remained small as that their populations felt little economic or political impulse to leave. That fact that some colonies exploded does not mean that all do. Moreover, the populations that are the largest are not those that arrived because of imperialism--they are natives (Han and various Chinese ethnicities and Hindu). Moreover, we see in Star Trek that even in the 24th century, not everyone takes advantage of space travel. Many humans never left Earth and its environs. We never see a huge human colony in the billions. Large populations are the home planets of other species. Finally, human population exploded with the widespread transmission of agricultural and manufacturing industry. It did not simply get bigger naturally; it occurred because of drastic economic changes.

 

[Nyotarules]

How the hell are the caadarssians not in the 10s of billions with multiple planets, way more advance technology and being space faring for multiple centuries. It makes no sense.

Birth control

 

[Hunter Zolomon]

In contrast, we never hear of a major offworld Cardassian settlement... Those people just aren't into colonization.

so what is actually within their space then, apart form the bajoran system, i just thought that the default setting for space faring races was colonisation of other planets unless maybe political or religious (bajorans) reasons stopped that kind of expansion. Maybe the cadarssians just didnt have that many colonies in their territory but that would then make them significantly smaller and weaker than the federation, which begs the question why are they even a threat in the first place.

 

[Timo]

Cardassians want to get rich and famous by pillaging the worlds of others. There never was a sizeable Cardassian population on Bajor to our knowledge, just enough to ensure the strip-mining of the place and the collateral ravaging of the natives.

Vulcans don't seem to believe in colonization much, either. Spock's words in "Balance of Terror" might suggest it used to be popular but then went out of fashion; later events suggest any early Vulcan colonies would be breakaway ones, shunning Surakian unity and founding their own star empires that would further split and re-split.

In contrast, we don't really hear of any other species besides humans believing in "classic" colonization. And even for humans, things like Deneva are in the past, and luddite mini-colonies are all the rage from TOS to TNG. The luddites would not be a UFP asset but a liability, detracting from their ability to make war or produce goods.

Really, breeding in general doesn't sound as if it would be popular at all. We see lots of single kids and single parents, and even the luddites seem to have top-heavy population pyramids going. Perhaps this is a psychological result of everybody already finding the universe taken by others? While there are free Class M worlds for the taking, it looks as if Finns are doing the taking: if there's already half a family there, it's time to move to a more secluded spot...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Hunter Zolomon]

OK, what was the population of European descent of the United States in 1800? Canada? Mexico? If you want a model of of imperialism, you must look at examples we have in our past. One of the reasons why some nation's colonies remained small as that their populations felt little economic or political impulse to leave. That fact that some colonies exploded does not mean that all do. Moreover, the populations that are the largest are not those that arrived because of imperialism--they are natives (Han and various Chinese ethnicities and Hindu). Moreover, we see in Star Trek that even in the 24th century, not everyone takes advantage of space travel. Many humans never left Earth and its environs. We never see a huge human colony in the billions. Large populations are the home planets of other species. Finally, human population exploded with the widespread transmission of agricultural and manufacturing industry. It did not simply get bigger naturally; it occurred because of drastic economic changes.

it doesnt add up, bountiful resources lead to population growth and migration to resource filled territories

The novels and memory Beta recognise a few Earth colonies in their billions and millions including Mars, Alpha Centauri and Deneva by the 24th century.
this proves otherwise.

Like you said some nations colonies stayed small due to economic pressures but we are talking about space here, the final frontier, the most sensible thing space faring ppl will do is grow their population on other habitable worlds, just because its in their best interest to not have a majority of their species located on one planet if it can be helped. But we are talking about a time scale of multiple centuries here and i am supposed to believe that humans just have colonies with a few 100s. Not even millions. one of the things that slows down colonisation in real life is aggressive and numerous local populations but with space travel you can find worlds with no other intelligent life, yet somehow humans who are know for exploration and curiosity decide over all these years that earth is where is at and colonies are nothing but small villages. My point is that we cant even limit ourselves on a planet with finite resources but we decide to limit ourselves in a galaxy with ftl travel and hundreds of habitable worlds and terraforming.

 

[Hunter Zolomon]

Cardassians want to get rich and famous by pillaging the worlds of others. There never was a sizeable Cardassian population on Bajor to our knowledge, just enough to ensure the strip-mining of the place and the collateral ravaging of the natives.

Vulcans don't seem to believe in colonization much, either. Spock's words in "Balance of Terror" might suggest it used to be popular but then went out of fashion; later events suggest any early Vulcan colonies would be breakaway ones, shunning Surakian unity and founding their own star empires that would further split and re-split.

In contrast, we don't really hear of any other species besides humans believing in "classic" colonization. And even for humans, things like Deneva are in the past, and luddite mini-colonies are all the rage from TOS to TNG. The luddites would not be a UFP asset but a liability, detracting from their ability to make war or produce goods.

Really, breeding in general doesn't sound as if it would be popular at all. We see lots of single kids and single parents, and even the luddites seem to have top-heavy population pyramids going. Perhaps this is a psychological result of everybody already finding the universe taken by others? While there are free Class M worlds for the taking, it looks as if Finns are doing the taking: if there's already half a family there, it's time to move to a more secluded spot...

Timo Saloniemi

i am certain that as years passed the human population has stabilised and you wont be seeing much growth, but i am sure there was a point of expansion in the first place and also colonies their where established hundreds of years ago are not just small hamlets. I just think that the reason why most colonial worlds where depicted as having one village was budgetary reasons. In reality those villages will get bigger and expand and new villages will form over the centuries. Eventually the population will stabilise at some point due to maybe emigration and just birth rates just like in our world.

 

[Hunter Zolomon]

Birth control

why would the impose that on themselves, if they are an imperialist society and they are empty worlds in their territory for colonisation, it would be counter productive.

 

[Nyotarules]

why would the impose that on themselves, if they are an imperialist society and they are empty worlds in their territory for colonisation, it would be counter productive.

Even though Star Trek gives the impression humans can live on any planet I doubt in universe that is the case. Cardessians hate the cold so maybe everywhere else is too cold for them. The in unverse reason gives the impression it is not until the miltitary took over that they became imperialistic and invaded Bajor. Prior to that maybe they preferred to keep to themselves?
Back to the OP whether a planet has billions, millions or thousands, killing people en masse should be considered awful.

 

[Hunter Zolomon]

Even though Star Trek gives the impression humans can live on any planet I doubt in universe that is the case. Cardessians hate the cold so maybe everywhere else is too cold for them. The in unverse reason gives the impression it is not until the miltitary took over that they became imperialistic and invaded Bajor. Prior to that maybe they preferred to keep to themselves?
Back to the OP whether a planet has billions, millions or thousands, killing people en masse should be considered awful.

maybe you are right, however i believe people in general want buffer zones, so it makes sense to expand from your core till you something gets in your way, to give as much distance between your capital or homeworld and potential threat, so cololisation makes sense. I am sure they are advance enough to terraform planets or alter their physiology to live in different biospheres. I just think it was budgetary constraints that prevented them from showing advanced colonies instead of small sized hamlets. Also in a galaxy where ppl are aware of other races and nations with multiple star systems you would think it would make sense to secure your home system by colonising nearby star systems around yous so as not to have potential enemies too close to you, or more importantly not having your entire infrastructure recked by just the destruction of your home planet.
As for my original post, i never intended to imply that mass deaths should be considered lawful but just like real life 1000 deaths in a population of 1 million is significantly smaller percentage than 1000 deaths in a population of one billion

 

[Tundra Saint]

I do have a problem with the numbers used for the occupation of Bajor. You have a colonial power strip mining a planet for 50 years, using the native population as expendable slave labor. They destroyed entire areas in retaliation for Guerrilla attacks. Ignored famines that resulted from their pillaging of resources. And only 15 million died. Even if their population is only 1 billion its an absurdly small number.

 

[Timo]

How so? We only ever heard of one actual death camp, the existence of which came as a surprise at its liberation; it apparently had minimal impact on the population. And only one location was famed for the use of slave labor - the orbital refinery. Interestingly enough, we never met any slaves there in the flashbacks, only free workers who got paid, could switch jobs, and seemed to make a profit of it all ("Necessary Evil"); but slaves did die there ("Civil Defense").

The Nazis killed for the purpose of getting people killed. They never managed 15 million in their half a decade. Why should Cardassians who had no genocidal ambitions do any "better"? Half the annual rate of the Nazis is actually pretty "good" going there.

Timo Saloniemi

i am certain that as years passed the human population has stabilised and you wont be seeing much growth

...Why would this be? Future technology could probably support planetary populations growing quite absurdly for century upon century, as Gideon stands proof.

but i am sure there was a point of expansion in the first place

And almost invariably it was to get away from the oppressive central government or stagnated core culture. The counterculture colonies would probably hate growing up!

In reality those villages will get bigger and expand and new villages will form over the centuries.

Or then no planet will be big enough for two villages, and the second group will sail across the stars again to get rid of the oppressive assholes of the first village. Star travel is dirt cheap in Trek, it seems... A splendid solution to the inability to tolerate company.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Hunter Zolomon]

Or then no planet will be big enough for two villages, and the second group will sail across the stars again to get rid of the oppressive assholes of the first village. Star travel is dirt cheap in Trek, it seems... A splendid solution to the inability to tolerate company.

Timo Saloniemi

They might just start another settlement to be closer to another resource of for even a change of scenery. They dont have to move planets or even have a rift with the first settlement. Besides i am sure selecting that planet for settlement was a careful decision and it met some kind of criteria they wanted. If they are all federation colonists i doubt they will be much clashing amongst themselves or with the federation, not all federation colonies are in the neutral zone. My main reason for starting this thread was to address what i felt was the low populations of supposedly space faring civilizations.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Like you said some nations colonies stayed small due to economic pressures but we are talking about space here, the final frontier, the most sensible thing space faring ppl will do is grow their population on other habitable worlds, just because its in their best interest to not have a majority of their species located on one planet if it can be helped. But we are talking about a time scale of multiple centuries here and i am supposed to believe that humans just have colonies with a few 100s. Not even millions. one of the things that slows down colonisation in real life is aggressive and numerous local populations but with space travel you can find worlds with no other intelligent life, yet somehow humans who are know for exploration and curiosity decide over all these years that earth is where is at and colonies are nothing but small villages. My point is that we cant even limit ourselves on a planet with finite resources but we decide to limit ourselves in a galaxy with ftl travel and hundreds of habitable worlds and terraforming.

Sorry, but there is simply to much historical evidence to refute this idea that population will naturally grow ad infinitum. The Myceneans, Hellenes, and Romans all had their periods of expansion and, subsequently, decline. The economic decline that occurred created spaces that, in your theory, should have been filled by new multitudes. They were not. Moreover, we can see that over several millennia that despite fluctuations up and down, the population over every state was more or less stable into the modern era. The population of India, for instance, was reliably between 125-150 million up to 1800. Only with the introduction of agricultural industry did population numbers take off. Moreover, we can see in many European countries that at the state of high capitalism, native populations begin to limit themselves. They must draw more from outside in order to maintain. There is no reason to dismiss the notion that in the Trek future, humans would exercise discipline over reproduction, keeping their numbers low.

Does it make sense to preserve population via immigration? Perhaps, but that would be ideologically driven.