Did the Cylons Really Exterminate All the Remaining Colonials?

[Aeneas]

What do you think?(Me= No.)

[jewels]

If they managed to do it before Imperious Leader #1 for the series was killed: YES. There were such things as small outposts and colonies that were too little to worry about or Garrison commanders like Spectre, weaseled there way out of.

I think they tried to kill all of the surviving Colonists. There may have been pockets of survivors that escaped the Cylon patrols. In the Marvel comics series, the Cylons released bio-weapons in the atmosphere of Caprica to kill anyone they missed. Once they had the twelve colonies secured, it is resonable to assume the Cylons exploited the planets for their natural resources. In any event, if you didn't make it to a ship that was leaving to join the Galactica, you would probably meet a sad fate.

[Aeneas]

I look @ it like this:
The Cylons are pretty powerful. They have the upper hand as far as numbers and resources are concerned. If you destroy a Raider there are @ least anywhere from 2 to 200 to take its place. Ditto for Centurions and Basestars. It's never been established openly via TOS but everyone pretty much figures that the Cylons have an assembly line process on 1 or more planets within the Empire.
They probably have a further reach in the Cyrannus Galaxy.
Plus, although they are as-- a whole--terrible tacticians(they needed Baltar for Sagan's sake!), they have learned from humanity and others(the darker aspects anyway--sneak attacks, treachery, using hostages and the like) and they do have allies(Ovions...)

But...,
Even with the suprise attack and the destruction of the (main)Fleet and Colonial civilization as a whole...
the Cylons probably didn't complete the job of wiping out all Humans in the Cyrannus System and outlying areas.

more(reasons why) to come...

[larocque6689]

The longterm goal of the Cylon empire with respect to the Twelve Tribes of Man is its extermination. The human race - with its love of freedom - has always been a threat to the empire. Even plant-of-the-week episodes like "Young Warriors" bears this out. Humans (or clones) were kept alive only so that they could fulfil the logical ends of their programming. In the end, the human race must die for the Cylons to extend their rule.

[Aeneas]

Still here(whew, long reply) Okay.
Here's why.
I. Cylon flaws
First and foremost, as great and terrible as they are, the Cylons are still
just machines. An advanced society of advanced machines, but still just machines. And as a whole (most) of them aren't very bright. Only two types are running the show: I.L.s like Lucifer and Spectre and the Imperious Leader himself. But these are the politician/diplomatic types. In most cases they are not on the front lines, the Centurions and Command Centurions(First, Capts., Golds, 2 brains, etc.) are. And we don't have to get into a litany about the limitations of the Centurions--everybody knows 'em.(The Golds may have 2 brains but their proven combat record is pretty shoddy!)
That means the I.L.s and Impy are coordinating the "final assault."
And I think we can all testify as to how an I.L. will "elaborate" if things don't go according to plan. That plus the overall confusion of having the head of your Empire suddenly taken off line

[Aeneas]

leaves a perfect opportunity for the remaining humans to elude destruction(for a while). The Imperious Leader to whom we are first introduced seems to be a hands on fanatical micromanager-- it's not enough to eliminate Humanity, he's got to be there to witness it firsthand. Novels,fanfic adapts, and comics point this out as a character flaw--of all the Leaders, he's the most obsessed. Yet, once the initial dirt is done, he doesn't stick around in system; he's somewhere else awaiting 17's report on the final assault. Why?
It's speculated that once the Raiders eliminate the remaining defenses, the Basestars warp out and let their planet killers("Attackstars, troopships,etc--thanx SFB) arrive and finish the messy details. That's an awful long time to leave enemy territory unsecured, particularly once you find out that @ least 1 warship escaped your trap.
What about system patrol ships? Remote outposts? Smugglers and pirates--they are still human?! Colonial allies?
more later

[Aeneas]

What I'm saying(and I'm about to get off and let other speak their piece for a while) is that the Cylons are hardly all powerful and infallible. Yes they've got number, tenacity,and sheer ruthlessness on their side. They've probably had their run on any number of races be they conquered subjects(Ovions,?) to departed memories(Delphians, Hassaris?).
But they're up against the one species that didn't just lie down and let themselves be beaten.
Think about... why did the Thousand Yahren War well... take a thousand yahrens? Human tenacity and unpredictability.
It's is easy to predict the overall shock and awe of a terrible attack on a people. But is it just a given that after a millenium of exploiting the chinks in the Empire's armor, after seeing all one's hopes and dreams vanish, after witnessing so many loved ones killed, that the remaining survivors will just give up... BECAUSE WE SAY SO
back for more later...

[shiningstar]

I believe that YES they did do in the last survivors of the
colonies. In other words ......... the colonist who were
stranded ................. died and the ones who weren't ...
survived ........ pure and simple.

[shiningstar]

Aeneas welcome to the fleets! Good post by the way

[cobrastrikelead]

having survivors would make for many interesting plot-twists. Such as what would semi-intelligent machines think of humanity had they had both Starbuck and Apollo at different times as captives?

I pretty much agree that if you were on a planet you were pretty much toast, depending on your locale.

Since space travel is so common, you have to factor people flying around from here to there. So they could easily have seen the danger coming and flee.

They would only be limited to the food and fuel they brought with them though so you'd be running and gunning all the way.

[TommyBoy70]

Humans are incredibly adaptable species. Another poster mentioned the Young Warriors. This is a prime example. The Cylons were unable to eliminate a small band of humans. This caused a minor outpost to become the largest consumer of fuel in the system.

These type of harrasing tactics would have played out on the colonies as well. The Cylons having destroyed the 12 colonies ability to wage war would have then turned their primary attention to Galactica and even more so to Cain and Pegasus. Cain was causing enough damage as to prevent the Cylons from bringing their full military might against Galactica.

This demonstrates that the Cylons, despite early suprise tactical success could not follow up due to overextended supply lines.

This means the colonies would likely have been bypassed as it would take huge amounts of resources to exterminate the millions of survivors. Much as McArthur bypassed certain isolated Japanese strongholds in the phillipines in WW2.

At some point the pursuit of Galactica would have resulted in the type of overextended supply lines that Hitler and Napoleon experianced. This would have opened the door to a counterstrike and the possible liberation of the surviving colonials.

Comments?

[Sci-Fi]

Originally posted by TommyBoy70

At some point the pursuit of Galactica would have resulted in the type of overextended supply lines that Hitler and Napoleon experienced. This would have opened the door to a counterstrike and the possible liberation of the surviving colonials.

Comments?

Only problem with that theory is that the Galactica doesn't have any supply lines itself. With the exception of a few episodes, and correct me if I don't remember exactly, the only time I saw the fleet refuel was in the Living Legend episodes. And besides, the Cylon outposts appear to be well established everywhere the Galactica went, so there shouldn't be any supply problems for the base ships. The Galactica and the fleet must have been like an economy car to travel so far when compared to their fuel guzzling Cylon counterparts. BTW: according to the tech manual, http://www.tecr.com/galactica/capships/basestar.htm , basestars do not use any fuel since they use an Inertialess gravity drive system.

Following or finding the Galactica fleet shouldn't be a problem, there are only so many habitable planets to find/trade for food and find/process/refine fuel (the agro ships could only support so many people, esp if one or more had to raise animals for meat), waste products from humans/animals and manufacturing would leave a telltale trail to follow (even if you could recycle most of it), explosives signatures from mining, etc. It would just a matter for the Cylons to monitor those planets or establish a base/outpost and install a planetary defense system (space or ground). They could also just place mines and monitoring systems around or in potential raw resources, like those found in an asteroid field.

Any planet with survivors could be easily dealt with by using the "scorched earth" method or even nuke the planet, since the Cylons have no use for food and can operate in almost any condition. It would be just a matter of time before the surviving Colonials died from starvation/radiation or if allowed, become slaves.

[Aeneas]

Briefly, I think the scenario on the former Colonies would be akin to "the Terminator" ala "Young Lords" on a larger scale. There's no doubt that the Cylons did a significant amount of damage to the population of the 12 worlds. But there's the rub--how much was never really touched upon in TOS(the mini handled the subject a bit better ) because the major focus was on the survivors that escaped with the Galactica. We get the gist of possible pluton poisoning in the fleet's food supply and of course there is the infamous "EXTERMINATION" answer to the problem of the humans who sell the Cylons infomation on the escapees in exchange for life. But even with their numbers and a distraught, demoralized populace could the Cylons really have carried out mass extermination on a global scale--12 times? Think about it, bomb from orbit, people can hide in shelters. Go on the ground--well I'm pretty sure Starbuck, Boomer and co. weren't the only Warriors on furlon celebrating.