raeting wrote...
Be careful about assumptions on the ability of planets to rebuild. Even without FTL travel the galaxy could recover. If conventional FTL travel (no relays, but ships still work fine), then it is even easier.
So, lets assume, for a moment, that FTL travel is gone entirely.
The damage done during the attack? Well, most every major metropolitan area is flattened. Or, at least looks like it suffered a nasy carbet-bombing. Remember what Anderson said, though. The Reapers were after the major metropolitan areas. Not the countryside. The resistance held out for a long time -- even traveled across an ocean to make it to London. Reapers aren't everywhere.
So, the Earth was overwhelmed by reapers, but not blanketed by them. A lot of people died. But not all of them. Large portions of rural areas, even farmland, likely remained relatively untouched. Shepard only gave them a few months to try and wipe out 57 million square miles of land. The Reapers are strong, but given that they split their effort around most of the galaxy, a good portion of those 57 million square miles is just fine. We are talking about hundreds, maybe low-thousands, of reaper ships. Not millions.
Furthermore, the amount of non-perishable food stored around the world, even today, is far more than you might imagine. It takes time for cereal, canned goods, rice, and so on to make it to your local grocery store. Until then, it sits in a warehouse. Given that the Earth is now supporting a much smaller population, those stores could last a while on their own. Plus what you can scavenge from the cities. Assuming, as well, the oceans aren't overfished by then, a huge source of relatively easy to capture protein is available.
So, yeah, food is an issue, but we aren't looking at mass starvation.
Now, there's good reason to think every space-faring ship was knocked out of orbit. Less reason to think, however, that all technology is gone. Humans have a great deal of shuttles, fighters, and other small ships as logisitical support. Plus, a huge workforce of civilians eager to see some sense of normalcy return to their lives.
All in all, Earth has a good chance to do just fine. It has plenty of farmland to sustain itself -- even with all the aliens. I would be deeply surprised if any krogan females are even on earth, so overpopulation there is probably not a problem.
Just a matter of humans picking themselves up and getting to work. Even with AIs wiped out, it looks like most technology survives, so the re-establishment of a central government shouldn't be a problem. Especially if that government is the one that kicked the reapers out. Stand up, rebuild, get things back to normal, and move on. May take a couple hundred years before Earth is gleaming again, but it will get there. Some cities may remain rubble for a long time, even be abandoned, but not all of them.
There are a few planets, Noveria, for example, that do not have arable land. Those people will starve. But, Earth, Eden Prime, Horizon, and so on should all be just fine. Along with all the homeworlds of the major races and some of their primary colonies. All you need is enough arable land to farm, and some food supplies to last you a couple years and make up for farming shortfalls. Difficult, but not impossible.
The one race I'd put in dire straits is the Quarians. Their liveships took part in the battle. Hopefully they kept enough in reserve to feed their people on Rannoch (assuming they weren't outright destroyed by the mass relays). Otherwise, the Quarians will have to figure out farming very, very quickly.
So, yeah, I can see the galaxy becoming little pockets of rebuilt civilization relatively quickly. The absence of FTL just means it may be a very, very long time before trade between planets resume.
If FTL is available, then it becomes even easier. Take a cruiser, fill it with fuel, now you can run limited supplies and information between the races. Doing so will speed recovery significantly. Someone will figure out there's money to be made in making FTL travel more reasonable. It'll happen and the galaxy will get back to business.
There is no equivelant in human history in regards to what the Reapers did. You're talking destruction of large amounts of the population, infrastructure, trade, communication, and government. It would take thousands of years for society to recover if it ever did.
It's not just the Reaper ships that are killing but the husks too. The husks are probably the main methods for rounding people up as the Reapers can't exactly get everywhere. It's also hard to deduct how long all of ME3 would have taken in real time. My guess is minimum of 6 months going to a year. The reason I'm stating that long is because of the Crucible. The way they described the project would require extreme amounts of time even in ideal situations. Yes there are more available resources than any other project in history but it would still be an enormous undertaking as you can see from the scale when compared to other ships or even the Citadel itself. So let's go with 6 months of the Reapers able to do whatever they want. On Palaven we know the Reapers took 3 million in the first day and 5 million in the second. Palaven wasn't also hit as hard as Earth and had a stronger military and populace protecting it. We know atleast that 9 million died on Earth in a week due to the intro trailer. I would actually argue that the 9 million dead is based solely around the London metropolitan area. The reason I state this is because of the lack of communications that Anderson and Hackett mention in ME3 itself so therefore the sniper in Big Ben would not have had access to the full number and probably neither would have Anderson. So the current London metropolitan population size is 13 million. Now there would obviously be an increase in the size of London but even if it increase to say 20 million(which I doubt just due to congestion issues), 9 million dead in a week is extremely devasting. Either way within two weeks you could state that most metropolitan areas are looking at over 50% dead if not higher. Now this would obviously decrease due to diminishing returns for the Reapers but you're definitely looking at billions dead.
The grocery stores could easily be wrecked due to wreckage from the huge battle that happened right outside the atmosphere or the Reapers themselves destroying buildings simply by walking around. Yes it could possibly support a lower population but I'm sure a good amount of food is simply going to be buried in rubble. Then most of the farmland will be wiped out as well not to mention the people needed to actually farm the remaining the land. Yes it should be survivable but not without an extremely harsh transition period. Here's the kicker though, I was only taking into account humans with the above food calculations. Now Earth and possible nearby habitable planets(which there are pretty few) have to provide for the entire remaining fleet which can comprise of Krogans, Quarians, Turians, Rachni, Asari, Salarians, Drell, Hanar, and Elcor. Let's hope you didn't give those Krogans that genophage cure otherwise that population boom is now happening on Earth. Now since earth is obviously not a dextro-based planet, the Turians and Quarians have two main options. They either come up with some sort of food converter which would put even more of a strain on the limited food supply or they find a planet via FTL that could possibly work for farming purposes. This would also have to be organized relatively quickly due to having to provide for these large populations before they starve to death. Hopefully in regards to water, humans have come up with a more effective means of converting salt water to fresh water otherwise that would become a serious issue as well due to the destruction of transportation centers. It's easy to forget even know how much civilization depends on trade due to specialization of economies.
As for the colonies, they're up **** creek without a paddle. Illium almost certainly depends heavily on trade, Omega definitely does and Noveria obviously. Even if they have the farmable land doesn't mean that a large portion of the population knows how to farm or even has the infrastructure or technology in place to utilize it. That's also excluding the amount of damage that Cerberus and the Reapers themselves did to these colonies. Then you have the lack of communication and government that might make it possible to reorganize in a timely manner. I would assume most of the government leaders are trapped on Earth.
Even with FTL it doesn't make the situation any less grim. This is because the distance is still so large. It would take 25 years to cross from one end of the galaxy to another and that's just a one way trip. Now to an Asari or Krogan that's not that big of a deal, excluding psychological issues of course from long peiods on a space ship, but for a human or Turian whose life span is 150, that's a good chunk. For a Salarian that's obviously a one way trip. Then there is supplying food for that long of a trip, something we in modern times are having issues with in regards to long voyages. It's very hard to plan for a 5 or even 10 year trip in regards to food supplies. Those time frames also only calculate in a direct trip not taking into account problems or temporary pitstops.
Modifié par AlphaJarmel, 10 mars 2012 - 11:42 .
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