The truth about S-8472.

LordShaithis · Post by **LordShaithis** » 2002-07-20 04:07am

Species 8472 has millions of ships? Let's call it two million, the minimum by which the term "millions" can apply. Let's also assume that 8472 is lazy and only sent ten percent of it's forces to attack the Borg. That's two hundred-thousand ships. It takes, what, nine ships to do the planet-buster attack? Let's round that up to ten for the sake of simplicity.

By these calculations, if Trekkie "estimates" were correct, Species 8472 should have been able to destroy twenty thousand Borg worlds right off the bat, even with only the small allocation of forces listed above.

Someone tell me how many Borg worlds they DID destroy, and we can scale down from Trekkie "estimates" accordingly.

LMSx · Post by **LMSx** » 2002-07-20 05:33am

Don't count out the fact that multiple planets can be destroyed with multiple ships, assuming that S-8472 is smart and their ships don't blow up with the charge of the planet-buster shot. Assuming that one "special set" of 9 vessels comes out of Fluidic Space, charges up, and then leaves, that's about 30 seconds, total. Factor in 3 hours of reasonable FTL transportation to the next planet, (assuming they have FTL

) then it takes about 3 hours 1 minute to destroy 2 planets. It would take 30166 hours to destroy 20,000 planets, 1257 days, or 3.44 years. Obviously, one set isn't enough to destroy 20,000 worlds in an reasonable frame of time. We would need to know how long the Borg and S-8472 have been fighting to get an accurate glimpse.

However, assuming that they have been fighting for "a few months" as one poster said, we could say 3 months.

So.....2160 hours in 3 months, so that gives us 8 planets a day, or 720 planets after 3 months.

Hrm.......So the "every ship a hero" theory for S-8472 doesn't work, otherwise they'rd be no Borg planets left if 20,000 planets were dying each day.

So if the center ship of the 9 was special in some way, like the Death Star, then 8 planets a day.......Seems more reasonable, especially considering how large Borg space is, and it would account for how unique the planetary detonation was. (Notice no "Destroy Federation with Planet Killer" backup plan at the Federation faux station)

Darth Garden Gnome · Post by **Darth Garden Gnome** » 2002-07-20 05:46am

wanna no the real truth behind S-8472? We know squat about let. Like all other Voyager Alien Bad Dude of the Week (TM) they come and they go in what? 2-3 eps so we learn precisley jack about them save:

1.) They come from an unexplained dimension reffered to as "fluidic space" that they can phase in and out of.

2.) They use ridiculous uber bio-ships that are immune to attack and defy physics to damn well whatever they please.

3.) They have planet-busting tech, whether the ships we saw were common, or were one of a kind super weapons is debated.

4.) They have claws and like to scratch Borgs to death.

5.) Some sketchy dialouge pronouncing "millions of ships" or something.

Now what does all this tell you?S-8472 was simply desinged to be a Borg-rival and for us to ohh and ahh at, they were poorly developed, not well thought out and came and left like all of Voyagers plots.

End of story.

LordShaithis · Post by **LordShaithis** » 2002-07-20 07:23am

The number of Borg planets destroyed by 8472 should provide at least a rough idea of how many planet-busters they have, since if they had "millions" they would have used them, and there would be no more Borg.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2002-07-20 08:23am

They use ridiculous uber bio-ships that are immune to attack and defy physics to damn well whatever they please

Immune to attack?
Not kinitic and the Federation can't touch them due to the idiotic desgin of Phasers

WHY if they have a million ships and no one can get into Fludic Space do they only send a few at a time?

I'ts not like anyones going to attack thier home Turf anytime soon so why only send a few?

Oh and 8472 are wimps. They lost what 3-4 ships and ran away not something a million ship enemy would DO

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-07-20 11:50am

No, a fleet of a million ships would see the threat if it lost six ships and then send in a larger group to eliminate the threat. I should also point out that many Trekkies have attempted to claim that navigational deflectors are immune to laser fire(or nearly so), and now there's a species that is immune (or nearly so) to phasers! My how the tables have turned....

In any case, S8472's bioships do not seem to be orders of magnitude more powerful than Borg cubes. I think that in a conflict with the Empire, the Borg's ability to slowly adapt would eventually make them MORE dangerous to Imperial ships than S8472. In short, I think both would be crushed quickly.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2002-07-20 12:01pm

A single Bioship, once adapted to, does not destroy Cubes outright.

So..

Bioship < Borg Cube, but
Federation Fleet at Sector 001 > Borg Cube.

We can make estimates from this, but it comes down to the beam of a single bioship not being vastly more powerful than a few gigatons.(You know you're debating SW too long when you refer to GT's as minor)

As for the planetbuster beam, I don't know. Scaling keeps coming out funky, like there was less than 2.1e32J imparted to the world.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2002-07-20 12:11pm

Like I said Nitrim its not a true Planet Buster rather just a realy big shot, More like half a BDZ because those planets they *killed?
Had Survivors
Sure they might have *killed the planet IE carved a big hole, set of earth-quakes and burned of the atomsphere but they still had survivers indicated it was not a true planet DESTROYer

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2002-07-20 12:19pm

Mr Bean wrote:Like I said Nitrim its not a true Planet Buster rather just a realy big shot, More like half a BDZ because those planets they *killed?
Had Survivors
Sure they might have *killed the planet IE carved a big hole, set of earth-quakes and burned of the atomsphere but they still had survivers indicated it was not a true planet DESTROYer

Survivors? When are they mentioned, perchance?

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2002-07-20 12:45pm

The first time they mention the Planet Killing Mighty-Morphing Bio Ships I belive

Shadow knows the specfc name of the Epsoide

TheDarkling · Post by **TheDarkling** » 2002-07-20 12:52pm

The planet blew up - I dont see how anyone could have survived that.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2002-07-20 12:57pm

Mr Bean wrote:The first time they mention the Planet Killing Mighty-Morphing Bio Ships I belive

Shadow knows the specfc name of the Epsoide

That would put a crimp on it's power, yes.

It may be a chain-reaction.. Unless I'm scaling wrong, there simply isn't enough power put into the planet to make it explode.

Patrick Ogaard · Post by **Patrick Ogaard** » 2002-07-20 01:25pm

SirNitram wrote:
Mr Bean wrote:The first time they mention the Planet Killing Mighty-Morphing Bio Ships I belive

Shadow knows the specfc name of the Epsoide
That would put a crimp on it's power, yes.

It may be a chain-reaction.. Unless I'm scaling wrong, there simply isn't enough power put into the planet to make it explode.

Pretty much all of the worlds blown up were Borg colony worlds. Like most ST civilizations, the Borg almost certainly rely on antimatter-based power generation systems for really big power requirements. Since the Borg seem to have no concern for the potential lack of safety, and a very definite need for massive power generation (if just for direct nutrient synthesis), they likely make extensive use of ground-based matter/antimatter power stations where more sensible folk would make do with fusion systems.

That paragraph above has a point: What if the massive beam weapon was in fact nothing more than a massive but hardly planetbusting mix of standard bioship energy beam scaled up quite a bit and mixed with a powerful EMP discharge? The damage caused by the beam's transferred energy would be damaging to the surface installations but hardly world-ending, while the EMP effect is designed specifically to destabilize magnetic antimatter confinement systems. Within a second or two, all magnetic antimatter confinements on the planet are destabilized ... boom.

Similarly, the performance of bioships against Borg cubes may well be based on the same principle: a concentrated energy beam component to punch a small hole in the shields of the target combined with an EMP pulse to destabilize the target's antimatter containment. The cube blows itself up with its own energy storage systems. The penetrating beam would likely have to act as a waveguide for the EMP pulse.

Of course, were the Borg to use gravity-based antimatter containment systems, the advantage of 8472 would disappear. Note that even though the Federation has extensive gravity control, its ships all appear to still use magnetic bottles to contain antimatter, so the Borg may be similarly conservative and incapable of coming up with an alternate containment technique themselves.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2002-07-20 01:54pm

As Nitrum stated an I noted it does not seem to be a True Planet Busting Weapon, Borg Worlds had no survivers and now that I look at it the world that DID have Surviros on it was not a Borg controled one Ogaard I think you hit this one right on the nose its not a TRUE planet killer, Its more of a very very Heavy Weapon, somthing that changes things quite a bit

Patrick Ogaard · Post by **Patrick Ogaard** » 2002-07-20 02:12pm

Mr Bean wrote:As Nitrum stated an I noted it does not seem to be a True Planet Busting Weapon, Borg Worlds had no survivers and now that I look at it the world that DID have Surviros on it was not a Borg controled one Ogaard I think you hit this one right on the nose its not a TRUE planet killer, Its more of a very very Heavy Weapon, somthing that changes things quite a bit

Mr. Bean: thanks.

Patrick Ogaard · Post by **Patrick Ogaard** » 2002-07-20 02:20pm

Big question: what other effects could more or less reasonably lead to a bioship cluster being able to blast a Borg-held planet to bits? What manner of chain reaction or energy transfer could produce that effect of a planet blowing up and still match what we see on screen?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-07-20 02:25pm

Unknown. However, there is an extremely long delay between the weapon impact and the planet's sudden explosion.

Quite literally, they shoot the planet, there is a surface eruption consistent with a planet-killer yield (but not a planet-destroying yield), and then many seconds after that, the planet suddenly blows up.

There is a critical problem here: where is all of the planet-destroying energy during those seconds? A few seconds may not sound like a lot, but 2.4E32 joules of energy does not simply disappear for even 1 seconds, never mind several seconds, and then suddenly reappear again.

From a thermodynamic perspective, the problem is clear: we compare
"before" and "after" states. Immediately after the planet-killer blast, the planet is still intact. Ergo, not enough energy to destroy the planet from a thermodynamic analysis. Then, many seconds later, the planet abruptly explodes, as if the beam triggered some other reaction.

Any ideas?

Mr. B · Post by **Mr. B** » 2002-07-20 02:48pm

Truth is these species of the week ain't got NOTHIN on the EMPIRE!!

LordShaithis · Post by **LordShaithis** » 2002-07-20 03:17pm

Could I get two pieces of information from someone who's seen the episode?

1 - Exactly where is it stated that 8472 has "millions" of ships? Because the relatively small number of ships they used, and the small number of casualties it took to make them flee, suggest that their forces are much less numerous.

2 - Describe the exact situation in which a planet hit with an 8472 planet-buster had survivors.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2002-07-20 03:26pm

2. Other Specisih World I belive Voyager arives after the fact and in overtons tells of picking up survives, no planets shots are ever show

Second does anyone have any video of this? HDS is always good for SW stuff, anyone else have a clip of this?

Patrick Ogaard · Post by **Patrick Ogaard** » 2002-07-20 06:22pm

So, then, let's try my little hypothesis again, once with a bioship against a cube, once with a bioship cluster against a Borg-held planet:

1. Bioship against cube:
The bioship comes into range and fires on the cube. The bioship's energy beam strikes the shields of the Borg ship and manages to burn through them in a relatively modest way. The energy beam acts as a waveguide for the EMP burst, and the Borg apparently use an A/M and EPS system similar to that of Starfleet vessels, it being almost universal technology and all. The EMP burst propagates through the EPS conduits, blowing out nodes and links and alcoves and drones and anything else hooked up to the cube's power systems. If the burst travels far enough, it blows out shield generators, weapons, and, ultimately, the A/M systems. Ergo, the Borg ships gut themselves in a rapidly progessing wave of explosions propagating from the impact site of the beam until the cube loses structural cohesion and, to put it scientifically, goes kablooey.

2. Bioship cluster against Borg planet:
The cluster comes into range and fires on the planet. The cluster's beam lances down to strike the crust of the planet, doing some really serious damage, enough to cause an extinction event on the target planet. If, as is likely the case on a Borg world, the planet is basically one giant, interconnected factory warren festooned with linked EPS grids and antimatter reactors, the beam is almost certain to strike into the EPS grid. Once again, the burst propagates, but the sheer difference in size between a planet and a cube, as well as the likely greater size of the antimatter reactors used by a planet populated by 12 billion or so drones (if I'm remembering the figure for Earth assimilated in ST:First Conttact), together with greater safeguards, means that it takes several seconds for the burst to propagate to the large antimatter reactors and burn through their safety systems. End result: the entire crust and pieces of the upper mantle of the planet are blown into assorted orbital trajectories, from whence they will eventually fall back onto the planet and evolution begins again in a few hundred millin years.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2002-07-20 06:27pm

Mostly Correct Ogaard except by the Visual we know the planet goes Kablooie to meaning no Evolution any time soon

Also as I said before this is a nice theory for why the non-Borg worlds have survirors on them while the Borgs go kaboooie

TheDarkling · Post by **TheDarkling** » 2002-07-20 06:31pm

Mr Bean: This episode with the non-destroyed planet - what happened in it?

Patrick Ogaard · Post by **Patrick Ogaard** » 2002-07-20 06:33pm

I'm sure the planet will accrete back into something resembling a sphere in a few million years at most, then it will cool off once the Nebraska-sized meteors stop falling back, then vulcanism may start again, and water begins to gather, and pretty soon we've got weird and wonderful bacteria and gloppy bits of slime everywhere, and inevitably (since it's late-model Trek) a humanoid civilization will arise.

And maybe some nanoprobes survive and multiply and have little nanoprobes that incorporate themselves in the growing biological life as nanotech organelles ...

Patrick Ogaard · Post by **Patrick Ogaard** » 2002-07-20 06:41pm

My concept of the EMP pulse propagating through an EPS grid would have radically different effects against a world without the dense grid coverage and inherently dangerous groundside antimatter reactors I expect of a Borg planet.

Basically, the beam strikes and has its primary effect of cutting a huge flaming hole in the crust, complete with shockwaves, ejecta and all that neat stuff. After that, though, secondary effects result only if the EMP burst manages to propagate through an EPS grid. Even then, it would not result in more than a long string of nasty but hardly planet-busting explosions, most likely limited to a discrete geographic area. The effect would still render the planet ultimately uninhabitable, though.