368 réponses à ce sujet

[Null_]

wulf3n wrote...

Null_ wrote...
or just call Shepard-Commander and ask him to give the phone to Legion.
Probe could get same threatment as manned ships

potentially, but without the loss of life, and less threatening. Geth understand electronics, they'll find out if it's bugged or booby-trapped, but organics are insidious, hard to comprehend.

Ramirez Wolfen wrote...
2) That would more than likely be percieved as a trap to kill people, given the events that have occured in ME.

Possibly, but geth don't "die" like we do, so even if it did destroy the physical platforms it wouldn't technically kill the geth, so there's not as much risk.

Also, if they're monitoring communications like legion said, any internal dialogue about peace within the fleet might be intercepted by the geth, giving them reason to initiate communication.

I dont think they monitor migrant fleet. They only monitor extranet, news and so on. Otherwise they would know that one of the admirals actually wants peace (Korris was his name I think) and thats pretty major considering Admirality board can even overrule decision of rest of the fleet. Even if you take legion on tali's loyalty quest and talk with korris and ask Legion about possibility of peace he wont mention that Quarian homeworld is beign repaired/cleansed so Quarians can live on it one day. If he said that then it would surely improve the chances of peace... but then again not many people brought legion on that mission. Would be weird if only people who brought legion there (0.1% of players) could achieve Quarian/Geth peace in ME3

Modifié par Null_, 06 février 2011 - 03:08 .

[General User]

Pro_Consul wrote...
But what if they don't want any of what we have to offer them? Don't they retain the right to keep to themselves? In fact, wouldn't it be greatly to our benefit if they not only did, but did an even more thorough job of it (by taking action themselves to prevent any more instances of heretics attacking organics.)

Like I said, the option to be left alone is something the Heretics took away from them. They can interact peaceably with the rest of the galaxy or violently, but interact they will.

The peoples of the Milky Way cannot in good conscience allow the return of the pre-Nazara status quo.

Pro_Consul wrote...
No, actually it doesn't. If two major nations went to war today, and one of them escalated to using WMDs and the other retaliated with nukes, both sides aiming only at targets of military significance of course....and so on....it would not be at all surprising if 100% of the human species and over 90% of all other land-based species were completely extinct from direct and secondary effects of nuclear winter in rather short order. And that could happen with the nations that represent 80% of humanity remaining neutral through the whole thing. They wouldn't be any less dead for having been non-combatants, nor would anyone have ever targeted them for systematic extermination. They would just be a tragic side effect of their planet having been rendered uninhabitable by a war they weren't even party to that quickly got way out of hand.

Fortunately, our planet has never played host to a full scale nuclear exchange, so the actual effects of such remain speculative. 

But fear not! Mass Effect provides us with an example of a world that features multiple nuclear and kinetic exchanges of all scales in its past, along with millennia of constant warfare. And Tuchanka is still inhabited in the billions.

Pro_Consul wrote...
You keep running into, and then around, the same problem: centuries. It has taken centuries of work for the Geth to make Rannoch habitable once more, and we cannot even be sure the job is even finished yet - Legion seemed to be implying work was still ongoing. If the planet was so screwed up that it took centuries of labor by tireless Geth platforms in order to make it habitable again, then the condition of the planet near the war's end was sufficient to account for the scale of Quarian deaths all by itself. After all, uninhabitable is uninhabitable...it doesn't matter much initial population you have on such a world, you will end up with zero pretty quickly...cuz the planet is uninhabitable.

Then let's take it head on!  CENTURIES and counting.

Many industrial toxins are persistant in the environment, they would remain in Rannoch's biosphere/hydrosphere/etc. no matter how diligent the geth were in their cleanup efforts.  What whould the geth consider 'complete?' 

And are they even going for 'complete?'  If the geth truely are mainting Rannoch as a memorial, then the work would be perpetualy ongoing, no matter how great or slight the damage was.  But that only brings up the question of what the geth consider a memorial to be?

Are cities being rebuilt?  And, if so, in what detail?  Are buildings and other structures unrelated to the geth being rebuilt, autoparks and theatres and houses and such?  Are broken dishes being mended?  Clothes washed, folded and placed in drawers, then replaced once they wither away as the years go by?  Are lawns being mowed?  Pools being cleaned?  Stairs being mended?

Is natural landscape being restored?  And at what level that? Are species thought extinct in the war being brought back through cloning and such?  If a redwood-analogue is cut down, and a sapling planted in it's place, would the geth consider the restoration complete until the sapling had grown?

Assumptions, ain't they grand?




On a related matter. If the purely incidental effects of the war left Rannoch uninhabitable (ie an order of magnitude worse than Tuchanka) then any quarian survivors after the fighting stopped would have been entirely at the geth’s mercy and the failure to provide that mercy constitutes collective punishment. If Rannoch was not rendered uninhabitable (ie ‘Tuchanka’ or better) then there is no reason the quarians survivors would have died out unless the geth took steps to ensure that they did.

Pro_Consul wrote...
Collective punishment and collective responsibility are not the same thing. The Geneva Conventions and Protocols prohibit the former and employ the latter within the core of their primary enforcement mechanism. Sorry, but you are the one who brought up the GCs without realizing they are based on the same ethos I was professing.

Collective punishment is a war crime, and collective responsibility the morally repugnant idea that leads to that particular variety of atrocity.

I told you, your beef is with the ICJ, not me! 

Modifié par General User, 06 février 2011 - 03:28 .

[Slayer299]

Pro_Consul wrote...

Slayer299 wrote...

Pro_Consul wrote...
Why do you keep harping on this as if it were established fact, when in truth we have no information on this at all? You are assuming that the Geth performed systematic genocide, and then taking your assumption and presenting it as if it were established fact. And THEN you are taking that so-called "fact" and using it as the basis for a sweeping condemnation of the VICTIMS of a genocidal attack and accusing them of being genocidal monsters themselves for having the temerity to NOT just die when the Quarians were actively and with firm determination trying to exterminate them.

Maybe I'm wrong then, about the Geth systematically wiping the Quarians out. So why don't you explain to me how 17 million are left out of 8 or 10 billion? Because somewhere along there 90% of the Quarians were killed off.

See, you didn't pay attention to what I said earlier about the MW, which was that the Geth *were* justified in defending themselves when the Quarians attacked. I am saying that I cannot see how over 90% of the Quarians were killed off and it wasn't because those 90% were all military forces.

Asked and answered several pages ago in this thread. Apparently you missed those postings. Look here. Also touched on it further in a few more postings after that point. In addition went into even more detail on it in this thread.

Those are nice scenarios there, but they don't answer my question. Because unless all of those things happened together I don't see that explaining away the loss of 8 - 10 billion Quarians. 

1. WMD's were dropped on all the major population centers to wipe out the Geth? Or at all?? I don't see that as likely at all because the Geth were everywhere, not in localized areas and bombing your own population makes about as much sense as walking around with a live handgrenade. Besides, what politician would ever authorize that boondoggle of an idea?

2. Famine? I can see that being a problem, but again, not to the point where you lose over 3/4 of the planetary population.

3. A pandemic just randomly occurring *just* in time for the MW?? That's just grasping a straws there. Unless of course you were suggesting that the Geth actually released a virus to create such an incident throughout the Quarian populace.

I can see major problems arising for the Quarians, but unless all of those happened at once I find them more suspect than overall likely reasons for the loss of 8-10 billion quarians.

I checked the the other link but I found no useful information.

[James2912]

Nuclear winter has been proven a myth. There are not nearly enough nuclear weapons to wipe out all life on Earth or even all humans. But whatever this thread is pointless anyways, people are always going to disagree about who is the bigger bad guy and I guess that just goes to show the stellar writing of Bioware.

[Ramirez Wolfen]

James2912 wrote...

Nuclear winter has been proven a myth. There are not nearly enough nuclear weapons to wipe out all life on Earth or even all humans. But whatever this thread is pointless anyways, people are always going to disagree about who is the bigger bad guy and I guess that just goes to show the stellar writing of Bioware.

This

[Fortlowe]

James2912 wrote...

Nuclear winter has been proven a myth. There are not nearly enough nuclear weapons to wipe out all life on Earth or even all humans. But whatever this thread is pointless anyways, people are always going to disagree about who is the bigger bad guy and I guess that just goes to show the stellar writing of Bioware.

There are more than enough. Radiation doesn't just evaporate or 'blow away'. See Chernobyl.

[James2912]

Nuclear winter is the theory that the sun would be blocked by the ash created by many nuclear weapon explosions everybody would die according to the theory because there would be no food. Look up Nuclear winter it mostly has nothing to do with radiation. 


Radiation would kill hundreds of millions and eventually billions. But it doesn't kill you overnight most people would not live past 30 because they would die of cancer in a major nuclear exchange. However there would be people still alive. The question is would you want to live? 

The whole nuclear winter myth was created by the same people who created the myth that by now the whole world would be in an ice age (Al Gore). Then people like Al Gore decided that wait a second Global Warming sounds better so now thats what everybody is afraid of. Its called controlling a society through fear. Notice how we always have to be afraid of something? Global warming, terrorism, communism, drugs, Mexican so on and so forth. Fear makes people easier to control. But whatever I really don't care if you believe in what I am saying or not. I know I will be attacked but really I don't have the time or the patience to defend every little thing I say. So just take what I said or leave it I don't care.

Modifié par James2912, 06 février 2011 - 04:27 .

[008Zulu]

The Geth would probably give back the Quarrian homeworld if the Quarrians apologised for the attempted genocide. It would be a fun surprise if it were revealed that in the 300 years since the exile, that the Geth have altered the planet's biosphere so Quarrians could live there without their suits.



Since it has been established that the law forbidding AIs is the result of what happened with the Geth, I can only wonder;

What led the Quarrians to think that the Geth would rise up and overthrow them.



Is the only reason people are truly afraid of AIs is because of movie franchises such as Terminator and The Matrix?

[General User]

James2912 wrote...

Fortlowe wrote...

James2912 wrote...

Nuclear winter has been proven a myth. There are not nearly enough nuclear weapons to wipe out all life on Earth or even all humans. But whatever this thread is pointless anyways, people are always going to disagree about who is the bigger bad guy and I guess that just goes to show the stellar writing of Bioware.

There are more than enough. Radiation doesn't just evaporate or 'blow away'. See Chernobyl.

Radiation would kill hundreds of millions and eventually billions. But it doesn't kill you overnight most people would not live past 30 because they would die of cancer in a major nuclear exchange. However there would be people still alive. The question is would you want to live? 

It’s  worth noting that the Chernobyl incident was a meltdown at a civilian power plant, not a nuclear weapon. 

[atheelogos]

shoggoth1890 wrote...

Yep. The quarians should no more have expected geth to go quietly into that sweet night than they should have expected a propped up boulder to not fall on them after kicking out its support.

this. Geth are life forms and they deserve certain rights respect. The act solely in self defence. Sry to say this, but it's hard for me to feel much sympathy for the ancient Quarians since they tried to commet genocide on thier own children. They didn't even try for peace. They just attacked. That imo is wrong.

[Pro_Consul]

James2912 wrote...

Nuclear winter has been proven a myth. There are not nearly enough nuclear weapons to wipe out all life on Earth or even all humans.

Actually you are quite wrong. Studies performed with state of the art global climate modelling from NASA's Goddard Institute found that as few as 100 Hiroshima sized weapons could put enough smoke and ash into the upper atmosphere to have "catastrophic" effects. They also found that earlier studies done back in the mid '80s were overly optimistic, since they did not yet understand the persistent effects of upper atmospheric residue accumulations. And those overly optimistic studies mostly predicted the extinction of the human species due primarily to starvation within the first year of the nuclear winter.

A study published in 2007 in the Journal of Geophysical Research, a peer reviewed publication, found that even with today's much reduced (since the Cold War) nuclear arsenals that we have more than enough nukes to cause catastrophic environmental damage to this planet. Here is an excerpt that describes some of the affects a large scale nuclear exchange based on current (as of 2007) arsenals:

A global average surface cooling of –7°C to –8°C persists for years, and after a decade the cooling is still –4°C (Fig. 2). Considering that the global average cooling at the depth of the last ice age 18,000 yr ago was about –5°C, this would be a climate change unprecedented in speed and amplitude in the history of the human race. The temperature changes are largest over land ... Cooling of more than –20°C occurs over large areas of North America and of more than –30°C over much of Eurasia, including all agricultural regions.

Basically agriculture would become impossible over more or less the entire globe, and would remain so for years, probably at least a decade. Most land based vertibrate species would become extinct almost immediately due to inability to survive in the drastically lower temperatures. Of those few which somehow survived the initial days and weeks of changed climate, many more would soon die off anyway due to the sudden extinction of their food sources, be they herbivores or predators. This would of course include every single species of food animal bred by humans, except those relatively very few which could be moved to indoor shelters and fed from already stored grains (chickens mostly). Of course nobody would be able to justify feeding precious grain calories to chickens anymore, so it would be a moot point. Every single calorie of human-digestible food would immediately become the most precious commodity around, rivalled only by heat sources, since temperatures on land in the "tropics" would generally remain below freezing all summer long for years, and would drop into bitter sub-zero regions for the rest of each year.

Of course with no real agriculture possible anywhere, we would no longer be able to feed a population of 6.5 billion humans (not that that many would have survived the nuclear strikes in the first place). In fact it is entirely possible that our population would quickly be reduced to scatterings of very small communities attempting to subsist on hoarded canned foods and other long term preservable foodstuffs, wherever such hoards already existed pre-war. The rest would either starve to death or die from complications arising from extreme cold weather, severe malnutrition and lack of sanitation. If we were very, very lucky a relative handful of humans might survive long enough to see the end of the nuclear winter and might even still number high enough to maintain sufficient genetic diversity to avoid extinction. And hopefully they would have sense enough to ingather in order to share those genes before genetic homogeneity resulted in too much irreversible damage. But it isn't really very likely that enough humans would survive that long and still number enough to maintain a viable population, particularly when you factor in worldwide fallout patterns spreading radiation-induced cancers and other pathogenic mutations to virtually every corner of the planet.

Of course life on planet Earth would go on. The planet would shake us off like a bad dream, the surviving life forms in the oceans and those few land based forms (mostly invertebrates) which survived would begin the long task of rebuilding species diversity and spreading back out to fill the myriad empty niches left in the new environment. And who knows, perhaps in another 100 million years a new race of sentient snails might be examining the paleontological and climatic records of Earths most recent eon and wonder if some kind of widespread shower of radioactive asteroid impacts had been responsible for the massive species dieback that wiped out the age of the predominant land based race from 100M yrs ago: that artificial lifeform known as Automobiles.

So apply this nuclear winter scenario to Rannoch, now. And factor in even more powerful WMDs than we have. (Only logical, right?) Now factor in the Quarians' lame immune systems, the fact that their war did NOT end when the WMDs flew, and the fact that they could only evacuate so many even using every spaceworthy tub they could muster. In all likelihood it was that one factor, the availability of evacuation space aboard the flotilla, that determined how many survived the war. Because everyone left behind was going to starve to death, freeze to death, die from disease or die from toxic exposure in pretty short order anyway. And it is pretty darned unlikely that there would have been anything the Quarians OR the Geth could have done to change it by that point. The Geth cannot grow food in frozen ground any more than the Quarians, after all. In any case, this scenario is entirely plausible, and far more consistent with the lore we have that portrays how relentlessly the Quarians prosecuted this war right up to the bitter end when the only option they had left was evacuation.

Modifié par Pro_Consul, 06 février 2011 - 08:21 .

[DarthSliver]

008Zulu wrote...

The Geth would probably give back the Quarrian homeworld if the Quarrians apologised for the attempted genocide. It would be a fun surprise if it were revealed that in the 300 years since the exile, that the Geth have altered the planet's biosphere so Quarrians could live there without their suits.

Since it has been established that the law forbidding AIs is the result of what happened with the Geth, I can only wonder;
What led the Quarrians to think that the Geth would rise up and overthrow them.

Is the only reason people are truly afraid of AIs is because of movie franchises such as Terminator and The Matrix?

I believe they attacked the Geth trying to stop them before they became AI. I believe it stated that in Wikia and maybe the codex of ME1. Just they waited too long and the Geth were rapidly evolving. Remember there were quite a few Geths that ask if they had a soul. The recording we hear from Legion is the first known incident where the creator was frighten or something like that. 

But estentially they wanted to get rid of the Geth, a potential AI so they wouldnt get in trouble from the Council. At least if i remember right, but the Geth had already reached sentience long before than. Why do you think the Council took their embrassy away when the Quarians went to beg them for help after fleeing with all their ships and the survivors.  The Council wasnt being mean either by denying them Embrassy or denying them the help the Quarians needed. The Quarians after all created an AI in the Councils eye, which was against Council law. This is also why clanless Quarians are consider criminals i am sure too. 

[282xvl]

It is not the nuclear weapons themselves that cause the nuclear winter. Its the burning cities. Oh good god almighty damn do cities throw up a hell of a lot of dust when they burn.



Check out Manhattan on 9/11 orbital photos. That was TWO buildings. If we burned up 1000 major cities I have faith that it would produce enough atmospheric dust to cause at least a 2-3 degree adjustment in climate for a year or more.

[Fayfel]

If the quarians went to the geth offering peace, the geth would not accept the offer. It's not enough for the quarians to say they want peace, they must also provide proof that peace is in their own best interest.

[EternalPink]

Slayer299 wrote...

Pro_Consul wrote...

Slayer299 wrote...

Pro_Consul wrote...
Why do you keep harping on this as if it were established fact, when in truth we have no information on this at all? You are assuming that the Geth performed systematic genocide, and then taking your assumption and presenting it as if it were established fact. And THEN you are taking that so-called "fact" and using it as the basis for a sweeping condemnation of the VICTIMS of a genocidal attack and accusing them of being genocidal monsters themselves for having the temerity to NOT just die when the Quarians were actively and with firm determination trying to exterminate them.

Maybe I'm wrong then, about the Geth systematically wiping the Quarians out. So why don't you explain to me how 17 million are left out of 8 or 10 billion? Because somewhere along there 90% of the Quarians were killed off.

See, you didn't pay attention to what I said earlier about the MW, which was that the Geth *were* justified in defending themselves when the Quarians attacked. I am saying that I cannot see how over 90% of the Quarians were killed off and it wasn't because those 90% were all military forces.

Asked and answered several pages ago in this thread. Apparently you missed those postings. Look here. Also touched on it further in a few more postings after that point. In addition went into even more detail on it in this thread.

Those are nice scenarios there, but they don't answer my question. Because unless all of those things happened together I don't see that explaining away the loss of 8 - 10 billion Quarians. 

1. WMD's were dropped on all the major population centers to wipe out the Geth? Or at all?? I don't see that as likely at all because the Geth were everywhere, not in localized areas and bombing your own population makes about as much sense as walking around with a live handgrenade. Besides, what politician would ever authorize that boondoggle of an idea?

2. Famine? I can see that being a problem, but again, not to the point where you lose over 3/4 of the planetary population.

3. A pandemic just randomly occurring *just* in time for the MW?? That's just grasping a straws there. Unless of course you were suggesting that the Geth actually released a virus to create such an incident throughout the Quarian populace.

I can see major problems arising for the Quarians, but unless all of those happened at once I find them more suspect than overall likely reasons for the loss of 8-10 billion quarians.

I checked the the other link but I found no useful information.

The geth killed them all most likely.

We are told they are only smart in large numbers so how smart would they have to have been to consider not killing quarians? and once we have that number how many quarrians could afford a geth? If we treat them like sports cars, well lets say theres 5 of those down my street. If the sports cars suddenly developed networked bases sentience would 5 be enough for them to raise above merely executing instructions to questioning instructions?

The geth were build as servants, menial labour and hazadous labour units but if it requires a large amount of the original geth to reach that magic number of network sentience its only places that required a large number of servants, menial labour, hazadour labour units that would reach sentience.

As we live now we do not place labour intensive or hazadous industries in large population centers for obvious reasons so we are down to servants and if only every 20th quarrian could afford one of those shiny geth servants it means you'd have lots of almost mindless geth wandering around looking to network to "smart" up

So mindless geth wandering around, bumps into a quarrian that shoots/attempts to de-activate/moves in a threatening manner/moves in a manner confusing to our rudimentary intelligence and probability from the last three you bumped into says they will shoot you (probability comparison easy (excel), attempting to decipher organics intentions hard) the logical action is to render organic safe and i highly doubt geth come programmed with non-fatal methods for disarming quarrians.

What we really need to actually move this debate forward is the information on how many geth it takes to achieve sentience and how long it took the geth to start acting as a collective, i.e the 255 in one area talking to the 367 in another area and so on, legion tells us they talk with FTL buoys etc now but i highly doubt the quarrians rsearched and created that sort of infrastrure for the geth.

[Dean_the_Young]

General User wrote...

James2912 wrote...

Fortlowe wrote...

James2912 wrote...

Nuclear winter has been proven a myth. There are not nearly enough nuclear weapons to wipe out all life on Earth or even all humans. But whatever this thread is pointless anyways, people are always going to disagree about who is the bigger bad guy and I guess that just goes to show the stellar writing of Bioware.

There are more than enough. Radiation doesn't just evaporate or 'blow away'. See Chernobyl.

Radiation would kill hundreds of millions and eventually billions. But it doesn't kill you overnight most people would not live past 30 because they would die of cancer in a major nuclear exchange. However there would be people still alive. The question is would you want to live? 

It’s  worth noting that the Chernobyl incident was a meltdown at a civilian power plant, not a nuclear weapon. 

There's also the point that nuclear radiation, even from weapons, hasn't been all that. Hiroshima and Nagasaki aren't ruined for all time by killer radiation, and even among the bomb survivors, radiation wasn't all that compared to the other complications from the bomb blast itself.

Radiation is scary, but not eternal or all-enduring.

[General User]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

General User wrote...

James2912 wrote...

Fortlowe wrote...

James2912 wrote...

Nuclear winter has been proven a myth. There are not nearly enough nuclear weapons to wipe out all life on Earth or even all humans. But whatever this thread is pointless anyways, people are always going to disagree about who is the bigger bad guy and I guess that just goes to show the stellar writing of Bioware.

There are more than enough. Radiation doesn't just evaporate or 'blow away'. See Chernobyl.

Radiation would kill hundreds of millions and eventually billions. But it doesn't kill you overnight most people would not live past 30 because they would die of cancer in a major nuclear exchange. However there would be people still alive. The question is would you want to live? 

It’s  worth noting that the Chernobyl incident was a meltdown at a civilian power plant, not a nuclear weapon. 

There's also the point that nuclear radiation, even from weapons, hasn't been all that. Hiroshima and Nagasaki aren't ruined for all time by killer radiation, and even among the bomb survivors, radiation wasn't all that compared to the other complications from the bomb blast itself.

Radiation is scary, but not eternal or all-enduring.

That is a good point also.
 
We should also remember that there have been more than 500 above-ground nuclear detonations on Earth since 1945 (+450 of them between 1945 and 1962), without any noticeable effect on the global climate.

Modifié par General User, 06 février 2011 - 04:22 .

[James2912]

Yes but I think its a lot more fun for some people to just be afraid of everything. OMG Nuclear winter is going to kill us all! OMG terrorists are going to kill us all! OMG just heard from my local politician that now we have to be careful of all brown people! Lets all be afraid! Its bs. Science is about making observations in real life and coming up with a theory to explain this science that is testable. All this other so called science that is based on theoretical computer models is so easily faked. Hundreds of nuclear weapons have gone off on this planet in New Mexico alone, yet I have traveled throughout that state and it is still the Land of Enchantment.Remember NASA were the same people that during GWs term said global warming did not exist! And now under Obama they talk about global warming and how its such a big threat! I would never trust a so called "scientific organization" that changes itsscientific opinion based on the politics of its its boss.

Modifié par James2912, 06 février 2011 - 05:45 .

[Pacifien]

Reacquaint yourselves with the Site Rules of Conduct. Real world sociopolitical discussions are discouraged on what is essentially a gaming forum. There are other venues with which you can discuss such topics. As this is my second warning for this thread, it is now closed. If people would like to continue discussing the geth, start a new thread.