Neo-Galactica RAR

[Coyote]

I recently re-watched my box set of neo-Battlestar Galactica, the 2004-08 reboot version. Baltar is a weaselly horndog, Cylons look like us, Cylon civil war, Boomer is an Asian chick, Starbuck's a girl, etc etc etc.

In this RAR, everything happens exactly as it did in the series, right up to the very, very end. The Galactica attacks the Cylon colony, they destroy Brother Cavil and end the Cylon civilization's hopes for Resurection technology. The Galactica jumps away as Starbuck plays "All Along the Watchtower" on the FTL drive's keypad, and the Galactica makes its last jump, at "Real Earth"-- our own home world, 150,000 years ago.

In the series, the Galactica survivors have set up a camp, and are talking about building a new city. Lee "Apollo" Adama pulls his father, Admiral Bill Adama, aside and says, "Let's not build a city. Let's break the cycle, and start again with nothing. A clean slate."

In the series, Admiral Adama agrees. But in this RAR, he says... "Son, that's a cockamamie idea. We'll need, you know, medicine and shit." And the idea dies right there. The Colonial survivors, and their Cylon allies, build a city. They land some ships, scrap the rest and use the materials to build a civilization in what appears to be the Oldouvai Gorge area. They keep a handful of ships for exploration, maybe finding a source of Tylium to maintain FTL ability; they keep Raptors and explore the planet, sounding out new sources of minerals with their scanners.

So, a tiny city of less than 40,000 in mid-north Africa, 150,000 years ago. Now what happens?

And does it make a difference if they free the Centurious and cut them loose with the Baseship? Or keep them, newly freed with free will, as citizens? Or if they try to re-enslave them (an option I see ending with blood and curious natives picking through the "scraps of the gods").

And I must say, it's nice to drop in again. I'll have to do it more often!

[edaw1982]

Certainly the natives won't have much of a chance to evolve their society. Then again the Colonials are modern humans with somewhat better technology (gravity-carpets and a reliable FTL).

At some point, someone like Baltar will cotton on to the idea of using these 'uneducated noble backwards natives' or whatever politically-correct-make-it-not-sound-that-bad-really-double-speak to utilize them as indentured servants whilst allowing them 'access to modern medicine and technology'.

Or the colonials all wind up dying when some native bug sweeps along and makes them all horribly sick. They *are* aliens afterall. Sure they have modern technology, but a few of them are gonna die before they can analyze vaccines and such. Probably the RepliCylons will help out, they're even further outnumbered by the humans; and they find it extremely difficult to procreate.

Maybe in a few generations, the cylon-magical-nanoblood will enable the humans to survive, and who the hell knows what'll happen from there on out.
Probably start to establish mining as soon as they can, considering they don't have an industrial base to maintain their fleet. That would be a rather big priority.

[Metahive]

The Colonials erect a futuristic and advanced society on Earth and enslave the native humans. Years later a massive solar flare wipes them out and afterwards two massive conspiracies, the Templars and the Assassins fight over the scraps.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Good lord does this take me back.

Shoot I remember when the original ending first aired I posted a rather in-depth write up of what needed to be done given how FCKED the colonists were.
The biggest problem people made in THAT Thread, and I am sure people will do they same here... Is everyone seemed to assume that since the colonists HAD high technology, they would be able to rather quickly form a functioning society that would replicate such tech. There were people talking about the colonists in just a few years making new computers again...

My Plan for the furthering of the Colonial Civilization basically boiled down to trying to find a level of civilization that COULD be maintained at the time of the final episode, and slowly build back up from there. I came to the conclusion that they MIGHT just barely be able to pull of a pre-industrial civilization, similar to 18th century England.

Their biggest problem in a word is simply metal. They need Foundries and LOTS of them.
They need forges for making Steam engines, for making molds, casts, machine tools. Everything you need to relaunch a "modern" civilization, let alone a future tech one, is going to be needing lots and LOTS Of forged and poured metal.
Sure you have a mining space ship, and the magical "Factory" ship. But you need to rebuild these things on the Planet. And thats going to be a lot of Hard Work.

Next your going to need LOTS Of paper... Who knows how long the computers are going to continue to function on the ships. 20 years? 100 years? Sooner or later their memory will fail, and countless amounts of information is going to be lost.
One of the next big long term goals is simply to write down EVERYTHING. If there is knowledge that exists only in a digital format, that it is at risk of being lost forever unless you get it down on paper.

There is a lot.. LOT More I came up with I can't recall right now.. But basically it's going to be 50+ years easy before they start having anything like even a 1920's tech on a sustainable level.

[Ahriman238]

I seem to recall them trying to build a home on New Caprica or whatever they called it and that place was a shithole even before the whole Cylon occupation thing. I don't see the Galactica and their crew of refugees taking over the planet, maybe their grandkids.

[Coyote]

I seem to recall them trying to build a home on New Caprica or whatever they called it and that place was a shithole even before the whole Cylon occupation thing. I don't see the Galactica and their crew of refugees taking over the planet, maybe their grandkids.

Good point, but the New Caprica settlement decision was politically controversial, it technically split their government and a lot of people in the Fleet, especially the military, were sure the Cylons would come back. They never scrapped the ships, just landed the ones that could be landed. They never truly dedicated themselves to New Caprica, not the entire population.

In this one, the loss of Galactica means they're pretty much stuck in the system for good, at the least.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Well first off, the Galactica isn't "Lost" It just has it's "Back Broken"
It probably isn't even safe to MOVE it any more… But… the sheer amount of raw materials on bored is going to be a treasure trove of resources for years to come. Plus you basically have a ship "preserved" in space to act as a "how to" for generations down the road.

One of the things I mentioned back in the original thread, was stripping the ship of every last useful thing save the "needed" components (Star drive, Reactor, etc) and then 'soft land' it on the surface of the moon. It can sit there for Centuries and be wonderfully preserved for future generations.

But you are correct about Caprica. It was mostly crappy because no one really "believed" in it, most felt in the back of their heads that the Cylons would come back. Everything was built with a ramshackle temporary feel to it. The situation on Earth would be a lot different.

That brings up another question.. Are the "freed" Cylons staying? they seem to have tech that NEVER "gets old" And having their ship which seemed in 100% working order, would be one hell of a boon to the colonists.

Shoot just Cylons and 'Humans' growing side by side I always felt is the best way to ensure harmony and an end to the whole "all this happened before' nonsense.

[Borgholio]

Assuming they weren't dumb enough to throw away all their advanced tech, knowledge, and MEDICINE...I'd see something like a reverse bell curve as far as average tech level. That is, going from their future tech to something akin to 19th century Earth and then back up to something a bit more advanced than current Earth tech.

First, Cylons are freed. Without feeling like slaves, no need to rebel or take revenge...cycle is broken. Done. Period.

Next, the smart thing to do would be to use the spare parts and scrap metal from the most damaged ships (including Galactica) to rebuild as much of an industrial base as possible. The homes and much of the rest of the city could be made out wood, stone, etc...since those materials are more plentiful. Once they are able to mine and refine common metals and alloys, they should be able to sustain a late 19th century tech base (Electricity, steam engines, etc...) fairly easily. Using whatever factories they still have on the intact fleet ships, they could be able to get a jump start on building more advanced machines, electronics and robotics.

Since at least a few ships would remain (mostly) operational, they'd have working blueprints to guide them beyond modern Earth tech and allow them to return to space.

The whole thing would probably take generations. Setting up a late industrial-era society would be fairly quick I think, perhaps a decade or so. The rest would take progressively longer since even though they would not have to fully re-discover advanced technologies, they would at least have to build the support structure to allow them to actually build those technologies.

Archiving knowledge would be of paramount importance to do this. As others have pointed out, writing books and drawing diagrams would help ensure that all is not lost should there be some kind of massive computer failure. Using their working ships and Raptors, they could spread multiple redundant copies of their knowledge over the entire planet (solar system even) to guarantee that they have backups should they be needed.

Now...that's assuming they start off on their own without any outside help. There is another, simpler possibility. They build a colony on Earth, and use the FTL-capable ships to loot the 12 colonies for any technology they need to build a fully advanced and sustainable civilization without having to re-discover much (if anything). The colonies were not fully destroyed, so there should be plenty for the taking.

In either case, the future of the native humans depends on the goodwill of the Colonials. Apollo wanted to teach them language and educate them...that's a good thing. Bring them up to your level so you have a larger and more diverse population. Baltar appears to have had a change of heart given all the shit he went through near the end of the series so I don't think he'd be the first to want to enslave or take advantage of the native humans, but I'm sure there would be someone who would like that idea. It all depends on who is in charge of the colony over the first few generations..

[Coyote]

I was imagining a situation where the mining ships would be able to scour the asteroids for rare-earth metals, thus preserving computers for awhile (even if they temporarily devolve to "early Pentium" ability level for awhile)-- and the Raptors could search for minerals in the Earth's crust. Coal and whale oil are probably the two easiest and quickest sources of energy to harness (oil --raw petroleum-- can be found on the surface in the area that will become Northern Iraq, but refining would be a pain). For awhile I imagined a strange mix of cultures with coal-fired factories and early 1800's smelting run by DOS computers, from resources discovered by Dradis on FTL-capable ships. The factory managers would ride around on horses or whatever, since they never seemed to have very many ground vehicles. Bicycles could probably be made.

Would they actually enslave the locals? The society has its problems and a lot of these people are seriously damaged psychologically, but they take pride in clinging to their democratic institutions... they may not do overt "whips and cotton" slavery the way we'd see it with distaste today, but I suppose "standard colonialist (heh) exploitation" would be possible. Doc Cottle, in the last episode, mentioned examining their dead, which he said were buried ritualistically, so they've had a chance to note that Colonial humans and Earth humans can probably be inoculated against the same diseases. Contacts from 1492 spread diseases both ways, but the First Nations of America suffered the worst-- probably the Earth natives are in more danger than the new arrivals.

I like the idea of putting Galactica itself on the Moon, so that even if everything is lost on Earth and civilization plummets to primitivism and then painfully rebuilds, they'd eventually see the ship again and spark a period of questioning and rediscovery.

[Replicant]

I seem to recall them trying to build a home on New Caprica or whatever they called it and that place was a shithole even before the whole Cylon occupation thing. I don't see the Galactica and their crew of refugees taking over the planet, maybe their grandkids.

Wasn't New Caprica also a barely habitable planet? That would go a long way in making life there miserable, especially if a large number of people do not even want to be there.

The biggest problem I see if this is the remains of a ragtag fleet of whatever could escape. The people on it are a mix of military and random lucky civilians. Are these people even going to remember about the steam age and have any chance of replicating its technology before their existing tech dies out? Do they know how to mine using primitive tech when their society has been doing it the high tech way for centuries or more?

Their only real chance of survival is if they are able to send a few ships back to the old Colonies and bring back whatever technology and knowledge they can. With the Cylons basically gone the old colonies which they did clean up pretty well are probably sitting empty.

[MondoMage]

The biggest problem I see if this is the remains of a ragtag fleet of whatever could escape. The people on it are a mix of military and random lucky civilians. Are these people even going to remember about the steam age and have any chance of replicating its technology before their existing tech dies out? Do they know how to mine using primitive tech when their society has been doing it the high tech way for centuries or more?

I agree. It's not like they set out to craft a refugee population made of scientists and educators and all those sorts who understand the fundamentals behind their technology. No, you have instead a gaggle of people who were either traveling between planets during the Cylon attack, or who were lucky enough to catch a ride on the few ships to escape from the ground. They may understand what the technology does, and may even understand how it does it, but it's unlikely that there would be a broad enough depth of knowledge to effectively replicate said technology.

For instance, if I were one of the survivors, I don't really think I would have all that much to contribute to the long-term revival of our current technology. I understand how computers work and can fiddle around with one and keep it working, but while I can describe how the individual components that go into one function (ICs, capacitors, diodes, etc) I know diddly-squat about how to actually manufacture them. Same goes for the other technology we take for granted. I can fix a lot of things, but that's the limit of my knowledge.

As for running something like a steam engine? Yes, I know the generalities of how they work. Actually making one work without running a significant risk of it blowing up in the process? That's a whole 'nother layer of complexity that is beyond my ken. And I'm thinking that people who consider flying between planets on spacecraft to be nothing out of the ordinary would be all that much further removed from that level of existence. Unless they luck out and one of the survivors tucked in the bowels of the Cloud 9 happens to be a eccentric tinkerer with a working knowledge of ancient technology, I think the colonists are going to be lucky to be able to maintain a medieval level of technology, at least for a good while.

Their only real chance of survival is if they are able to send a few ships back to the old Colonies and bring back whatever technology and knowledge they can. With the Cylons basically gone the old colonies which they did clean up pretty well are probably sitting empty.

I might want to take my chances going back to the Colonies period. Sure, they're bombed to heck, but there'd at least be outlying settlements and things to scavenge from.

[LadyTevar]

I seem to recall them trying to build a home on New Caprica or whatever they called it and that place was a shithole even before the whole Cylon occupation thing. I don't see the Galactica and their crew of refugees taking over the planet, maybe their grandkids.

Wasn't New Caprica also a barely habitable planet? That would go a long way in making life there miserable, especially if a large number of people do not even want to be there.

You're right. New Caprica was a miserably cold little rock in the middle of a nebula. The only habitable zone on New Caprica was the equatorial zone, which had a temporate climate. From the look of the colony, there was a lack of building materials, as most were still living in tents. It was clear that medicine was a black market item, and the colonists were suffering from disease, malnutrition, and simply living in a cold environment with little shelter. New Caprica had water, but no animals, nothing that the colonists could build upon but what they could bring down themselves. They were trapped in New Caprica City, because they had to spend all their resources on simply staying WARM.

Earth, especially the African plains they seem to have settled upon, does not have that problem. It's fertile ground for humans, with plenty of wood for building, animals for hunting, land for farming; all the things New Caprica did not have. Simply having a friendly climate does wonders for survival, as you're not spending all your resources on simply staying warm and safe, you're able to expand and work on bettering yourself.

[Crossroads Inc.]

For those thinking of going back to the colonies...

Well first, can they? I mean do they have ANY idea how to navigate back? Is there even enough fuel to make it back that far if they did have the navigation?
And IF they could make it back... Aren't the culinary still a threat?
Only a small handful were "freed" and if I recall what's left of the cylons were in the middle of a civil war. Not sure if want to go ANYWHERE near that mess.

[Replicant]

I seem to recall them trying to build a home on New Caprica or whatever they called it and that place was a shithole even before the whole Cylon occupation thing. I don't see the Galactica and their crew of refugees taking over the planet, maybe their grandkids.

Wasn't New Caprica also a barely habitable planet? That would go a long way in making life there miserable, especially if a large number of people do not even want to be there.

You're right. New Caprica was a miserably cold little rock in the middle of a nebula. The only habitable zone on New Caprica was the equatorial zone, which had a temporate climate. From the look of the colony, there was a lack of building materials, as most were still living in tents. It was clear that medicine was a black market item, and the colonists were suffering from disease, malnutrition, and simply living in a cold environment with little shelter. New Caprica had water, but no animals, nothing that the colonists could build upon but what they could bring down themselves. They were trapped in New Caprica City, because they had to spend all their resources on simply staying WARM.

Earth, especially the African plains they seem to have settled upon, does not have that problem. It's fertile ground for humans, with plenty of wood for building, animals for hunting, land for farming; all the things New Caprica did not have. Simply having a friendly climate does wonders for survival, as you're not spending all your resources on simply staying warm and safe, you're able to expand and work on bettering yourself.

Disease will also not be nearly the problem some people think it will be. I doubt the small wandering groups of cavemen/women that the crew spotted lived in anything close to the population density necessary to sustain most diseases.

[Replicant]

For those thinking of going back to the colonies...

Well first, can they? I mean do they have ANY idea how to navigate back? Is there even enough fuel to make it back that far if they did have the navigation?
And IF they could make it back... Aren't the culinary still a threat?
Only a small handful were "freed" and if I recall what's left of the cylons were in the middle of a civil war. Not sure if want to go ANYWHERE near that mess.

Unless the final jump somehow took them to a whole different galaxy they should be able to mark location and project a path home. The question becomes if there are any ships in the fleet capable of the trip. Pick the best, longest ranged ship in the fleet, load it up with as much fuel as possible, and send it to scout to see if tech can be grabbed and used.

As for wholesale return to the colonies. That is still out, even though the Cylons cleaned up the colonies physically there is still the small fact that they are irradiated to shit.

[Borgholio]

Raptors are often used as scouts because they are small and have a long range. Fitted out with Cylon jump drives, they are actually capable of traveling huge distances rather quickly. If the scouts find computer mainframes, factory machinery, robotics, stockpiles of refined metals and fuels, etc... then they can grab one of the bigger ships from the fleet and start hauling that stuff to Earth.

[MondoMage]

Raptors are often used as scouts because they are small and have a long range. Fitted out with Cylon jump drives, they are actually capable of traveling huge distances rather quickly. If the scouts find computer mainframes, factory machinery, robotics, stockpiles of refined metals and fuels, etc... then they can grab one of the bigger ships from the fleet and start hauling that stuff to Earth.

Forgive me if this winds up being a stupid question (I don't remember a lot of technical details from the series), but is the longer distance that Cylons can jump a matter of an improved drive system, or more accurate calculations? I seem to recall that in the miniseries Gaeta was reluctant to plot the jump to Ragnar because he was uncertain he could do it correctly. I don't remember if it was every explicitly stated in the series.

[Eternal_Freedom]

More accurate calculation. In "Lay Down Your Burdens" they rip the nav computer out of the crashed Heavy Raider, use Sharon to extract the numbers, and make the trip (in Raptors) back to Caprica in 10 jumps, whereas earlier in "Pegasus" Kara said it would take 241 jumps to make the return trip.

[Replicant]

More accurate calculation. In "Lay Down Your Burdens" they rip the nav computer out of the crashed Heavy Raider, use Sharon to extract the numbers, and make the trip (in Raptors) back to Caprica in 10 jumps, whereas earlier in "Pegasus" Kara said it would take 241 jumps to make the return trip.

Or it could be that the Cylons were much more inclined to explore during the peace and their nav computers have a lot more data in them, so a more direct path can be calculated while the Colonial system would be stuck basically retracing the near random route they took trying to first escape the Cylons.

During the whole 38 minute episode didn't they say they had spent days or weeks jumping almost twice every hour while being pursued, imagine what that makes their nav charts look like if they had been doing that all through new uncharted space.

[Johonebesus]

Of course if the Cylons don't go off on their own, the regenerating base ship could probably go back and forth between Terra and Caprica without too much trouble. In fact, since it was apparently able to regrow arms that normally contain weapons and raider hangars, it might be a renewable factory on its own. If the Cylons, trans-humans, and four Old Earthlings have a decent understanding of the technology, that might go a long way towards helping them preserve and rebuild advanced civilization.

It just occurred to me that there should still be basestars from Cavil's faction out there. They detected the radiation from a single bomb and traced it back to New Caprica, so there might be a real threat of their finding Terra if the Colonials and Cylons keep using radios. That could be one almost sane reason for abandoning technology.

[LadyTevar]

Now, I hadn't thought of that part. Cavil and his minions are still out there, and we're not sure how far away 'our Earth' is.

[Borgholio]

Are we sure that his faction's basestars would stay loyal even after his death? They didn't have the resurrection hub rebuilt yet so when he put a gun in his mouth it was permanent. Do we know if there were any Cavils left?

[FedRebel]

So, a tiny city of less than 40,000 in mid-north Africa, 150,000 years ago. Now what happens?

I'm thinking they'll split up, dispersing 13+1 settlements to maximize survival, just one city would leave their civilization too vulnerable. The 13 settlements are based on their cultural demographics, with the 14th city being the shared capitol, raptors would maintain commerce and communication, as long as fuel holds out.

I'd imagine the under the scenario space dwellers would remain (after New Caprica, can you blame people for wanting to stay in their FTL ships?) They'd likely be scouting for fuel sources to maintain the civilization. Galactica would only be able to serve as defense station, given her damage.

The small starting population would suit them as it promotes intermingling, the 13 settlements being so small need to go to the capitol for supplies, education, etc. The space dwellers would eventually come down after feeling safe, the cultural settlements being attractive for familiarity sake. Best case is they've established sustaining mining operations keeping the raptors going and the start of spaceborne industrial infrastructure, to build raptor replacements, a primitive Galactica replacement (just in case), etc.)

Best case, in a few centuries a stable unified civilization exists that is largely contemporary to the 12 colonies (but with a population in the low millions...provided they boink with the natives.) And the cycle is broken, as the histories are preserved and a unified culture has been forged

Worst case, a natural disaster or something worse destroys the capitol (or they just run out of fuel, if you're into optimism.) The 13 settlements degenerate without the capitol to bind them, eventually giving rise to 13 empires (or less if the Cylons can't get busy with the natives) whom as a result of centuries (to millennia) of cultural drift, all hate each other. All the history and knowledge are lost to myth and legend...and we get Kobol 2.0. Basically what the '150,000 years later' epilogue implicated...but in a fraction of the time.

[Replicant]

It just occurred to me that there should still be basestars from Cavil's faction out there. They detected the radiation from a single bomb and traced it back to New Caprica, so there might be a real threat of their finding Terra if the Colonials and Cylons keep using radios. That could be one almost sane reason for abandoning technology.

That had to be one of the stupidest moments in the show. The only way this is even vaguely possibly in a timely manner is if the Cylons had seeded thousands of stars around the 12 Colonies with satellites, but if that was the case then it would have made more sense that the Cylons detected them long before just from all the ships in orbit over New Caprica.

It would have made a ton more sense if instead of a nuke they had some extreme faction refusing to accept that everyone on the 12 Colonies was dead and hijacked a communication array and shot some sort of message back that the Cylons received and traced back.

[Replicant]

Now, I hadn't thought of that part. Cavil and his minions are still out there, and we're not sure how far away 'our Earth' is.

But even among the Cavil's not all of them were evil murderous bastards, and while a vast majority followed the same idea it really did appear that the one Cavil that blew his brains out was really the heart and soul of the evil genocide movement. Without him it may all fall apart anyway.

On the original colonies do we know for sure that 100% of humanity was wiped out? We met at least one resistance group that was around, for all we know there are more.

Also we don't know how many other Earth ships are out there. Unless the Colonials were completely xenophobic I would expect some exploring in the other directions away from the Cylon territory.