Biggest Massacre?

[Teaos]

I was talking to a friend and we were talking about the lose of life in Galactic Battle and wars. How with planetary bombardment and close to 100% casualties when a ship blows up in heated battle the lose of life is far higher than what we have nowadays.

In the past lose of life in war was a fact of life, the huge loss of life in WWI and WWII were shocking, but to an extent they were expected, Generals went into battle expecting X number of casualties.

Looking at modern wars the lose of life is dramatically less. America has lost a few thousand lives in Afghanistan, a war thats stretched a decade. And every life lost is seen as a tragedy that should have been avoided.

Yet in the future we see it reversing, casualties are again seen as more of a fact of life. Sad but unavoidable.

So we got talking and were trying to think what is the single biggest lose of life we see in trek?

My thinking was when species 8472 blew up several Cubes along with that Borg planet. Probably Billions if not maybe trillions dead.

He though the Dominion war primarily because he seems to think cubes and planets run off only a few dozen drones...

[Tinadrin Chelnor]

I would agree with you, the Species 8472 assault against the Borg. We know that Borg cubes have thousands, some more than a hundred-thousands drones. And First Contact, where Earth had been assimilated, had a population of 9 billion Borg, suggesting that Borg maintain large numbers of drones. So the destruction of entire worlds, and numerous cubes would have been a tremendous loss of life.

The Dominion seemed more interested in conquest rather than annihilation, only killing those they felt necessary, when a world's populace was rebellious - the Teplan Blight inflicted upon the Teplans; The massacre on Cardassia Prime only begun after the uprising began. No doubt the Dominion had no qualms about killing millions of solids or more, but they seemed to prefer subjugation.

[Teaos]

I think a Cube could have tens or hundreds of thousands if they had just assimilated something big, but day to day opperations I think would be quite a bit less...

[GrahamKennedy]

What makes you think that?

[Teaos]

Why would you need 10,000 drones on a ship? We've seen them run with far less, having 10,000 drones on a single cube would seem rather wasteful.

[Deepcrush]

8472 easily takes this as I see it. Blowing up whole worlds is a hard measure to beat. This being followed closely by the 800 million of Cardassia.

[GrahamKennedy]

Why would you need 10,000 drones on a ship?

Why wouldn't you?

We've seen them run with far less,

When?

And if so, how do you know that the small number isn't unusually low, rather than the large number being unusually high?

[Deepcrush]

With drones, I would expect large numbers for crew rather then small numbers. It would mean per cube you've transported more drones for work thus requiring fewer cubes to ''gather'' your new ''materials''.

[Coalition]

Why would you need 10,000 drones on a ship? We've seen them run with far less, having 10,000 drones on a single cube would seem rather wasteful.

A cube is 27 cubic kilometers (just over 3 km on a side). 10,000 drones means one per 2.7 million cubic meters, or a cube with sides over 1 football field long.

Here are some other numbers for comparison:
ISS: ~60 cubic meters per person
theoretical rocket: 20 cubic meters per person
Rocketpunk-manifesto

Nimitz: ~60 cubic meters per person
(look for Nimitz)

Ticonderoga cruiser: 75 m^3 per person
Arleigh Burke DD: ~95 m^3 per person
Nimitz CFV: ~87 m^3 per person
Navy ships

(lots of useful reading)
Atomic Rockets

So I'd say that Borg vessels could easily fit in 27 million drones, or 1 drone per 1000 cubic meters.

[Deepcrush]

The problem is that you have to carry a far bigger supply of fuel and other stuff just to make it in space. These ships are going on six month tours where they resupply every few weeks but are out on their own for years at a time.

[Captain Seafort]

Then look at the GCS - volume 5,821,000 m^3, 1000 crew, so about 6000 m^3 per individual. Vastly more than any modern ship, but still enough for a cube to have a crew of 4.5 million drones.

[Teaos]

Im not saying they couldnt have that many, Im saying they wouldnt need that many. In unimatix 00 when we see rebel Borg take over a sphere and presumably other Borg vessels they would have been only a fraction of the total Borg on those vessels, 7 of 9 said only one in a few thousand had the anomoly that let them enter unimatix 00.

[Deepcrush]

But just the one aboard ship, at least the Klingon we saw managed to over take a ship for himself. Its possible that a single one is able to free others since they are parted from the Collective.