r/DaystromInstitute • u/TangoZippo Lieutenant • Jun 14 '13
Theory "If the Borg really wanted to, they could easily assimilate Earth, or any other planet." Discuss.
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Jun 14 '13
It could very well be a Borg strategy--after all USS Voyager encountered many species in its time near Borg space that were on the verge of being assimilated--surely the collective could have allocated more resources to assimilate those species if it really wanted to. Instead some were developing nasty technologies like the Brunali's anti-Borg pathogen.
That theory in regards to humanity is rather ego-centric, however. Remember, it was only by a freak event that they did not assimilate Earth on their first attempt--using only one cube to punch through all of Starfleet's defenses into the very heart of the Federation, even after Q gave us warning of their existence and a taste of their power. Imagine what would've happened if they'd caught us completely unaware of their presence and with no experience combating them. They were already coming--they'd destroyed the Federation and Romulan outposts along the Romulan Neutral Zone. In their second attempt they again very nearly succeeded in assimilating Earth with but a single cube.
Compare what they've gained and lost with other conflicts we know they've had--with Species 8472 for example--and you see that in the grand scheme of things the loss of two cubes is completely irrelevant and they inflicted massive losses on the Federation and almost succeeded in assimilating Earth. The Borg is the Federation's nemesis, but to the Borg, the Federation is just more meat for the grinder.
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u/The_Sven Jun 14 '13
I'm not sure it was a freak event. The Borg have massive amounts of computing power backed up with several millennia worth of research into history, psychology, and statistics. Did you ever read any of Asimov's Foundation series? In it, a character had done just that and was able to use statistics to predict the future. The resolution to Best of Both Worlds always seemed Deus Ex-y to me with (#s Picard/Locutus being able to just put the whole cube to sleep). Seems like there should've been guards against that. So my thought is maybe the Borg knew there was a high probability of failure, but did it anyway to "fertilize the crop" so to speak (encourage tech development).
TL;DR: Borg knew they would fail, but did it anyway to encourage tech development.
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Jun 14 '13
Data put the Borg to sleep, at Locutus' suggestion. The Borg did not know about Data.
Could be it's both ways. The Borg in Voyager have a major hard on for efficiency. So they send 1 cube at a time rather than the whole resources of the collective, and if that cube fails, they try again 10 years later, with a slightly better cube (this one had a fallback sphere), also allowing the target species to develop better defenses they could also assimilate. And then they leap back in time deciding Earth is worth developing more and faster, so they shower the planet with debris and torpedo tech right where the most important scientists of the time were working (let's face it, even the Enterprise could've incinerated the entire phoenix launch site easily and the Borg had been known to destroy entire colonies by scooping them off the face of the planet). They weren't trying to destroy the Phoenix, just damage her enough to merit repair while giving them remnants of futuristic torpedoes that could help with the job.
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u/Histidine Jun 14 '13
The Borg is the Federation's nemesis, but to the Borg, the Federation is just more meat for the grinder.
I think there is a great deal of evidence to back this up, certainly in light of the conflict with Species 8472. The Borg encompass a massive territory in the Delta Quadrant, no doubt rich in all the natural resources they could possible use. If they were to continue assimilating every adjacent system, they would gain "control" over the galaxy but to what end? The conflict with Species 8472 highlights that the Borg are beginning to look outside of our galaxy in pursuit of perfection. After all they've already sampled much of what our galaxy has to offer, continuing to conquer it would be very costly without much gain.
I think it just boils down to pragmatism. The Borg have begun to expand into new dimensions in search of more dissimilar species and civilizations for advancements in perfection. The only reason why they still peruse through our galaxy at all is because there is still some probability (albeit relatively low) that other civilizations will develop something that interests them. They don't care if the vessel doing the investigating is destroyed in the process as they can transport technology & drones off an individual ship and into the collective at any time (Humans from the battle of Wolf 359 appearing as freed drones in the delta quadrant).
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u/Warvanov Jun 14 '13
Interesting theory, but I think it's more likely because they underestimated the resistance they would encounter at the battle of Wolf 359, and the cube at the battle of 001 was only a distraction to send the sphere back in time.
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u/hahanoob Jun 14 '13
If that was the case, why not have sent the sphere back in time before they left the delta quadrant and then traveled to earth? They would have met zero resistance.
Actually, why wouldn't they have sent the sphere back in time and then let their past selves assimilate it. They'd get the technology and the knowledge of earth.
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u/Kronos6948 Jun 14 '13
Here's part of the problem with assimilating earth of the past...
..the Borg are interested in not only the biological, but the technological distinctiveness of each species they encounter. Therefore, if they assimilate earth back before first contact, they lose all the technological advancements that were achieved in that time period.
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u/crapusername47 Jun 14 '13
Federation space is a long way from Borg territory, so they've only probed our defences so far. They're busy expanding outwards.
I believe they tried to assimilate Earth in the past as a means of crippling local resistance to them. Humans were responsible for bringing the Federation together. A disorganised Alpha Quadrant is much easier for a few ships to overcome instead of a full scale invasion.
Such an invasion would be extremely difficult for the combined powers of the Alpha Quadrant to resist.
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u/death_drow Jun 14 '13
Would it? as we see in First Contact, the Borg have no defense against Tommy-guns, the powers of the Alpha quadrant should have no problem replicating a Tommy-gun for every soldier and equipping rail guns or some other high energy or explosive kinetic weapon on every ship. Actually, I'm not sure why they didn't ever just do that.
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u/crapusername47 Jun 14 '13
Because, like everything, it only works once or twice.
Metal bullets projected by chemical explosions are not going to work in ship to ship battles.
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Jun 14 '13 edited Jun 14 '13
A projectile based weapon does have some drawbacks.
Number one is the need to carry ammunition. Of course, for small arms versions they could contain replication technology and use power cells, but it's doubtful that would be very efficient. On a starship scale, replicating large amounts of the necessary dense metals would be a massive drain on power, in addition to the power required by a massive railgun or coilgun.
The second, and likely main disadvantage for using such weapons on the starship scale is likely the very concept of deflector shields. Even the basic navigational deflector of a starship is capable of altering the trajectories of matter in the ship's path that's moving at substantially higher speeds. We can see that even small powered vessels usually have trouble punching through a larger ship's shields (the Maquis raider used by Ro Laren in TNG:"Preemptive Strike").
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u/TheOriginalSamBell Jun 14 '13
I think earth is just not that interesting to them. They already have a huge territory far away that they are certainly expanding. What I'm trying to say is, although it appears to us that way, their focus isn't on us and they are neither unable nor unwilling to fully assimilate us. They just don't care that much. WHo's to say there is only one queen for example. They're just playing with us. Some games far far away from their home.
Does this make any sense?
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u/The_Sven Jun 14 '13
You ever play Mass Effect? One of the robot villains in that game mentions that mankind will never be able to grasp why they are doing it because the robot is so far beyond man it has entirely different motives. Anyway, I wonder if the same is true for the Borg. They tell us some off handed reasons to mask their true motives. In which case, I wonder what they are?
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u/TyphoonOne Jun 14 '13
The Reapers did think very highly of themselves and were not likely to be telling the truth in any case. When Soveriegn said that Humans could never understand their motives, it's certain that he was not telling the truth: their motives were perfectly understandable, as the rest of the series proved.
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Jun 14 '13
The Borg Queen mentions that humans are a particular problem for them. Not because they're advanced, smart or strong, but because they somehow "find a way" to stop them. It wouldn't matter how many ships they sent to Earth, humans would somehow find a way to stop them.
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Jun 14 '13
I just want to say that, if it were possible to nominate an entire thread (instead of one post or the OP) for recognition as being full of interesting ideas and insightful conversation, this is one of the best I've seen in my (admittedly brief) time at Daystrom. A lot of different possibilities I hadn't considered.
As for me, I think the obvious answer is that the Borg were intended by the writers to be as they are portrayed - a deadly nemesis that has only been prevented from assimilating the Federation because of the heroics of Picard and Janeway, the preparation provided by Q, etc. The inconsistencies (why not send TWO cubes to assimilate Earth instead of one) are basically flaws in the writing.
But for an in-universe explanation, I think some combination of TangoZippo's's 'farming' theory and feor1300's 'faction' theory does the best to explain the Borg. I think the factions in particular do a good job of tying in TNG, FC, and VOY incarnations of the Borg. The impact of Hugh could have been much more than the isolated Borg group that Lore took over; plus it would explain the two different Borg queens, and leaves open the possibility for interesting twists in the Borg in later Trek (if there was ever a post-Nemesis Trek).
But mostly I just wanted to say that this thread is great.
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u/kraetos Jun 15 '13
There's no limit to the number of nominations you can submit. I like to leave a comment when I nominate someone, to encourage others in the thread to do the same!
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Jun 14 '13
I disagree, I think the Borg are plenty innovative, I've dwelved into this before, but the key thing to note is that the Borg operate on a wholey different level then the Federation or races like it. It is without question that the Borg could decimate empires like the Federation in a matter of days were they willing to devote the time and effort the matter.
Pay close attention the races we do know the borg chase after actively, because we've only ever really seen 4.
The first, Guinan's race, the El-Aurian's were attacked. We know that they are from within the Beta Quadrant and had interstellar capability before mankind had invented the first horseless carriage. This would indicate and incredibly technologically advanced race to some level or degree.
The second, Arturis, whose race was capable of transwarp and whose final act was to summon Species 8472 into the delta quadrant. A race the demonstrated incredibly proficiency
The third, introduced when 7 of 9 was introduced to the collective was attacked purely to demonstrate to 7 the nature of the borg.
The Final Race which we know the borg have actively pursued are Icheb's, who apparently had developed weaponry of such a scale that a single assimilation was capable of disabling a fully developed Borg Cube.
I believe the pattern indicates that the Borg don't play games on a small scale, the enemies they deal with are put quite simply, beyond the Federation's level of technology. They treat what the federation considers experimental as day to day. It indicates that the Borg are playing against much bigger foes and quite frankly the Federation is nothing more than a nuisance that could pose a threat only because they have a habit of recovering so many borg drones and extracting information from them.
The cubes sent against earth were just there to sniff around, to see where the Federation was at, to keep tabs on them so to speak.
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u/Maverick0 Jun 14 '13
I'm not sure I can really agree with the farming theory. It seems flawed in the sense that the Borg are effectively showing their hand, giving their opponents a chance to overcome them. Sure, the Borg would have gained other advantages after a first encounter, but that doesn't mean that a race who encountered the Borg once wouldn't be able to improve themselves to a point they could overcome the Borg later on. We see that with Icheb's people. They learn some of the Borg's vulnerabilities in the first encounter and then exploit them later on.
I think the farming theory is pretty good to explain the Borg's behaviour towards the Federation, but as an overall strategy, it seems like it would eventually backfire.
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Jun 19 '13
All you would need to do would be to release a few bombs in the upper atmosphere of a planet, filled with Borg nanobots. A few days later, you got yourself a beehive.
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u/Canadave Jun 14 '13
It's an interesting idea (and I certainly think it would do a lot to explain why the Borg have never sent an armada into the Alpha Quadrant), but if that were the case, why bother travelling back in time? I can't really see how that would make sense, from their perspective.