Energy Creatures

[Lord Pounder]

Even humans can kill or seriously injure themselves by overeating when they've been under famine conditions and someone shoves a huge pile of food under their nose.

And an energy creature that normally lives on starship power plants will probably not get to eat very often. If it did, then the energy creature would be a familiar pest that passing starships would know how to deal with because energy creature attacks would happen like once a week. So that is a fairly apt analogy, I'd think.

This was documented at many of the concentration camps at the end of WW2. As the Allies liberated the prisoners, well meaning soldiers gave away their rations. unfortunately after months if not years of near starvation the prisoners couldn't handle the high calorie content of the rations and many more died unable to handle such an influx of rich food.

[Chris Parr]

All right but there are other sources of food for these energy creatures such as radioactive space debris, stars, and nebulas. So a passing starship might be nothing more than an occasional treat and not their main food supply. These energy creatures might be opportunists, snagging any starships that stray into their territory, so they'd still be a danger to unwary Imperials.

Of course Starfleet, having encountered these energy creatures, knows enough to stay off their path. Which is why attacks on Federation starships are so rare, although not unheard of.

[Chris Parr]

Or there could be different kinds of energy creatures—predators and prey—with the prey feeding on radioactive debris and so forth and the predators feeding on the prey energy creatures in turn.

So it is possible that these predators might occasionally mistake a starship for prey. Not often, but it can happen.

[Simon_Jester]

All right but there are other sources of food for these energy creatures such as radioactive space debris, stars, and nebulas. So a passing starship might be nothing more than an occasional treat and not their main food supply. These energy creatures might be opportunists, snagging any starships that stray into their territory, so they'd still be a danger to unwary Imperials.

On the other hand, why would they opportunistically attack starships if they AREN'T hungry? Radioactive debris, stars, and nebulae are 'safe' food sources- they don't move and cannot possibly fight back.

If we think about interstellar 'energy beings'* as being real life forms with an ecology, rather than just random contrived hazards... well.

(i.e. I'm here defining 'energy creatures' as creatures whose internal structure is mostly composed of various fields of force, and perhaps gases or plasmas, rather than being made of solid matter).

On Earth, there are inanimate sources of food for organisms (soil and air for plants, and plants themselves are available to feed animals). And then there are moving, mobile sources of food (animals).

---

Now, on Earth, many many organisms are sessile- they don't move, they just sit there and passively absorb random edible materials from their environment. Some energy creatures might be like that. But such a creature would be adapted to 'eat' the kinds of radiation and force fields naturally occurring in its environment. Because it would be a poor evolutionary strategy to rely on eating things that don't show up very often. ESPECIALLY to be adapted to eat starships, since these energy beings may well have evolved in an era of galactic history where starships did not exist.

To extend the analogy, while there are LOTS of sessile creatures on Earth (the majority of all plants and fungi that I know of, plus quite a number of animals like clams, corals, oysters, and barnacles), very few of them function by waiting for large, mobile prey to come by and attacking it. The only exceptions I can think of are Venus fly-traps (and a handful of other carnivorous plants), and sea anemones.

On top of that are passively 'drifting' organisms that are mobile but have no control over their movement (e.g. algae and seaweed)

Now, sessile organisms that passively feed on whatever is available in their environment make up the vast majority of biomass in pretty much every ecosystem on Earth, especially if you count passively 'drifting' organisms like algae in the sea.

So by analogy, the energy beings you are most likely to encounter are passive ones that live on relatively low-density but reliable energy sources (like sunlight), and either 'anchor' to some specific point in space, or just drift through the void. They are unlikely to attack your ship, just as a random shrub is unlikely to try to eat you for your tasty tasty nitrates. Sure, your body would be the richest chunk of nutrients that shrub had ever encountered, but it doesn't even have the anatomy to be capable of attacking you, let alone any behavioral tendency to do so.

Once in a VERY long while you might encounter the equivalent of a sea anemone- an energy being anchored to a single point in space that survives by snatching up other relatively large discrete pieces of matter, or other energy beings. This would not be a practical survival strategy except in high-traffic regions of space, though- the energy-being equivalent of a coral reef, where there are a great many kinds of different organisms moving around all the time. And I can't recall anyone in Star Trek ever encountering such a place.

---

Now, then you have the more... mobile spacegoing creatures. Some of these would be passive feeders much like the sessile creatures, but with the ability to move around in search of rich concentrations of nutrients. The equivalent of baleen whales or the like. Others would actively prey upon the sessile creatures- the equivalent of herbivores.

Again, analogy to Earthly biology indicates that these are VERY much more common than 'carnivores.' It's a simple matter of mathematics; the total energy available in an energy-being ecology is going to be continuously replenished by passive sources (stars, random spacetime anomalies, etc.), so the organisms that feed on those passive sources will be most numerous. Organisms that feed on those organisms will be less common, and organisms that are two or three links up the food chain from there, less common still.

It would be very rare to encounter an 'energy being' that is even biologically capable and behaviorally inclined to prey on mobile passing objects. Moreover, such a being would probably adapt to prey on threats no larger and 'stronger' than itself. Cheetahs hunt gazelles, but they don't even try to hunt rhinoceroses. Presumably it would have senses capable of determining just how big and nasty a given thing is, in terms of the energy it can generate or store, and in terms of what defensive countermeasures it might enact.

Of course Starfleet, having encountered these energy creatures, knows enough to stay off their path. Which is why attacks on Federation starships are so rare, although not unheard of.

Yes- but in that case they're a well documented navigation hazard: "Stay out of this area, there are squids made of force fields here, and they like to gnaw on your reactor containment field but aren't smart enough to know the exploding reactor core will kill it."

Which means that they present a threat to the Imperials only until the Imperials manage to download or steal navigational charts- not long. Plus, of course, these 'energy being infested spaces' are going to be mostly devoid of habitation, so the Imperials have no reason to go there. Nor do they need to travel through those regions, because Imperial ships go places through hyperspace, which the energy beings cannot access.

So in this case, the Empire conquering the Federation would be like, oh... if China tries to conquer the Bahamas. Now yes, hurricanes are a big threat in the Bahamas. They are a 'problem' for the Chinese, and one the Bahamians have experience dealing with. But the hurricanes aren't ONLY a problem for the Chinese, or a problem the Chinese can't cope with once they observe what the Bahamians do to survive and function in the same environment.

And, to tie back to the stuff I just wrote, these energy beings are mostly nonsentient animals. They would presumably attack things less powerful than themselves, because it would NOT be a good Darwinian mechanism to attempt to "consume an energy field larger than one's head" and attack a larger being that can bring stronger forces to bear and rip you apart. Again, cheetahs attack gazelles. They do not attack a rhinoceros, even though a rhino would be a tremendous tasty windfall for the cheetah! They certainly wouldn't even consider attacking, say, a triceratops... not even if the triceratops were made out of sweet sweet delicious cheetah's-favorite-candy.

Of course, if the organisms in question are as dumb as, say, an amoeba... then maybe they would mindlessly attack something that could easily destroy them. Or, I suppose, they might misgauge the size and power of a potential prey if that prey is not one of the things they evolved to look for (i.e. a starship). But normally, evolved organisms don't knowingly target prey animals that are a serious threat to them physically. It'd be suicide to make a living that way.

So assuming that these things home in on starships because they 'look tasty and bright' and have a lot of energy, if you sent in a really really big and energetic starship, presumably it would go 'crap, too big' and spend the rest of its life bragging about the time it went fishing and hooked 'the one that got away.'

[Chris Parr]

Well, maybe the energy predators wouldn't attack a much bigger energy source alone, but what about animals that hunt in packs, like wolves or wild dogs? If several of the energy predators worked together they might be able to take down something as big and tasty as a Star Destroyer.

[Chris Parr]

And even "plant eaters" can be dangerous, as you said. Bulls and moose and elephants and other large herbivores will charge at anything that wanders into their territory—even vehicles! So that's another danger your Star Destroyers face.

[Lord Revan]

The thing is how ever as stated before these things seem to always cause wonder in Starfleet crews instead of "*sigh* just another energy creature!" reaction which suggests they're very rare and since Stardestroyers won't out of their way to seek these energy creatures ("to seek out new life" isn't part of their mission profile) it's very unlikely that they'd ever encounter one.


To use the moose example (as I'm most familiar with those), there plenty of moose here in Finland still I've yet to see outside of a Zoo (IIRC) simply cause I don't typically wander into places where there would be moose. After all there's few realistic reasons why a Stardestroyer would go to a random uninhabited system (in search of a hiden base for example) and even with those reasons they're most likely to send in probe droids first before hypering in with full sized SD and thus would less likely to just "stumble on" an energy creature.

[Chris Parr]

All right.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, maybe the energy predators wouldn't attack a much bigger energy source alone, but what about animals that hunt in packs, like wolves or wild dogs? If several of the energy predators worked together they might be able to take down something as big and tasty as a Star Destroyer.

Remember, a Star Wars ship can escape into hyperspace, instead of having to flee through slower and easier to intercept warp drive. And it has vastly greater reserves of power. A power drain which would seriously threaten a Star Trek ship, or even prevent it from generating enough power to maintain reactor containment and life support, might be only a minor inconvenience to a Star Wars ship, such that the star destroyer just sails home with this random energy creature frantically gumming at its shields going 'num-num-num.' And the ship captain then goes "sigh, can you scrape this thing off me? It's kind of annoying." It'd be like having a tiny defanged chihuahua clinging frantically to your arm, being unable to even bite through your clothes.

If there WERE any 'energy predator' beings in Star Trek capable of disabling a star destroyer or similar-sized Star Wars ship, even while operating in groups, then any single such predator would probably be able to easily subdue any Star Trek ship. We don't see many of those; usually it takes most of the duration of an episode for any such predator to neutralize the Enterprise or other ships.

It's like, a pack of wolves could take down something as big as a moose. But any of those wolves could easily take down a rabbit, any time it wanted to.

And the difference in power and strength between the Enterprise and a star destroyer is similar to the difference between a rabbit and a moose. If the Enterprise is constantly energy beings that even it can fend off, then even a large pack of similar beings would pose little threat to the star destroyer.

And that's even assuming the star destroyer has reason to explore uncharted or uninhabited space where these beings live. AND assuming the star destroyer does not simply flee into hyperspace as soon as it realizes it's being attacked by some sort of parasite or predator.

Also, even pack hunters often use common sense in deciding what kind of prey to go after. A pack of spotted hyenas might well cheerfully go after, say, a wildebeest. But they wouldn't attack an elephant unless that elephant was already dead of other causes, or very sick.

[Chris Parr]

All right.

Speaking of dangerous herbivores, the USS Voyager encountered one once—a dangerous energy creature, that is. Don't recall the name of the episode because I only caught the last part as I was channel surfing, but I do recall the energy creature in question kept attacking Voyager until the ship assumed a submissive posture. Big herbivores will often attack anything they see as a rival or an intruder in their territory. So they might still prove dangerous to the Imperials.

[Lord Revan]

All right.

Speaking of dangerous herbivores, the USS Voyager encountered one once—a dangerous energy creature, that is. Don't recall the name of the episode because I only caught the last part as I was channel surfing, but I do recall the energy creature in question kept attacking Voyager until the ship assumed a submissive posture. Big herbivores will often attack anything they see as a rival or an intruder in their territory. So they might still prove dangerous to the Imperials.

The thing is that even Voyager went out of their way to research uninhabited systems, that while a "herbivore" style energy eating creature might pose a threat to Stardestroyer they're not like to encounter one as the mission profile of a Stardestroyer doesn't include the line "to seek out new life". Imperials have probe droids (and in legendaries dedicated explorer ships) to do recon in unknown systems they won't have to enter the system themselves, unless they want to.