Death Counts

[the_dark_light]

^That's a fair point. If the Minbari had ever attacked Earth, casualties would've been much higher.

Narns had been living in pretty miserable conditions since the Centauri occupation ended. I would hazard a guess that the Narn population decreased dramatically during and after the desertification of the planet.

Not to mention Centauri ethnic cleansing (Narn deaths were something the Centauri seemed to take as a source of humour)

[gopher65]

First off I'd like to start by saying that I found the number and type of ships on B5 far easier to swallow than on shows like Star Trek. But since I started with ST in my previous post, I'll do it again here:

Wordsmit2, my point was that their military forces are far to small in comparison to their economic output and their population. Let's use the current US military as an example. The US military is far smaller (and far cheaper) on a per capita basis than the militaries of many other countries on Earth at the present time, and its size is well known, so I thought it would make a good average template.

Since I'm from Canada, I'll mention our military. You know the decrepit and tiny Canadian military? Well the US only spends about 3.5 times as much per capita as Canada does. Canada is on the low end of the scale, Israel and Saudi Arabia are on the high end of the scale. US military spending is pretty much smack in the middle of the pack. The US just has a huge population and a decent economy, so it spends a lot in actual dollar terms (like China), but not on a per capita basis. I thought it was a safe bet to assume that the main federation planets, what with replicators and infinite power generation capacities and all, have at least as much in the way of resources per capita as the US does. Probably a lot more (in B5 this isn't true. There they probably have a smaller per capita resource allotment than the current US does, and thus probably a smaller per capita military).

Anyway, given all of that, and the fact that the Federation sees itself as facing constant annihilation or potential slavery at the hands of ruthless enemies, I thought it would be a decent comparison.

US population: ~300 million
US military size (not including the national guard, state guards, other militias, or police forces, all of which are substantial in and of themselves): ~2,700,000.

2.7/300 = 0.9% of the population is directly involved with the military.

The sources I could find on the internet state that the Federation has a population of about 1 trillion. Now, all of the main 100 to 150 main planets in the federation apparently have to be utopias (or darned close) before they are allowed into the Federation (as we see on numerous episodes), so I think it is safe to say that they won't need much in the way of ground troops, or navies, or airforces. It is also safe to say that the main threats to the security of the Federation would come from outside the Federation in the form of either direct military assault or terrorism. Internal terrorism would be handled by police forces like the "Federation Security" that is occasional seen, so that isn't an issue.

These needs might mean they require a few ground troops and analysts and such things, but if we continue to follow the US template, much of that work would be done by policing agencies (FBI) and intelligence agencies (CIA), whose numbers I didn't include in the 0.9% of the population figure. Still, let's say that half their military forces are ground pounders, just for the heck of it.

0.009*1 trillion = 9 billion troops/2 = 4.5 billion non-ground troops.

(According to Wikipedia) DS9 (as an example) had a permanent population of only 300 people (and several thousand guests at any given time). Apparently that is a pretty decent number for federation bases starbases, as numerous times on the series we hear numbers like "there were 57 people on that station when it blew itself to smithereens even though space stations wouldn't do that in real life!" and other similar figures.

Still, I'm going to up that and say that every single base and starship in the Federation has 1000 people, even though we know this isn't the case, and that the real 'average crew per base/ship' number is far lower.

4.5 billion/1000 people per base/ship = 4.5 millions bases and ships.

In the serieses they numbers their starbases sequentially. AFAIK it never states a number above 4000, and most of the numbers are things like "starbase 53" or "deep space 3" or "K9". Still, lets go safe here and say that 95% of those 4.5 billion people are working on space stations.

4.5 million bases/ships * 0.05 (5% of people working on ships) = 225,000 ships, each with 1000 people on board.

The numbers we were given in TOS and TNG indicated that there around 400 active starships. In DS9 this number jumped to at least 3000. Regardless, 3000 ships is a far cry from the AT LEAST 225000 that they should have, given their population and their level of economic activity.

And this is the Federation we’re talking about here. Like the USA, they are more inclined to spend their resources on infrastructure and Healthcare (the latter of which eats up a surprisingly large percentage of both National and State budgets in the US). What about a warlike civilization like the Romulans, or the Cardiasians or the Klingons. All three of them seem inclined to spend every last penny on military expenditures. Why do they have militaries that are the same size as those in the Federation?

On B5 I could forgive them because each civilization had 1 planet, and maybe, maybe, a few tiny colonies. But basically one major planet. Yet they still had more ships than the entire freaking Federation, with at least 100 planets, and hundreds, if not thousands, of major and minor colony worlds.

This little rant ended up being way longer than I intended it to be.

[gopher65]

If you're looking for it in Babylon 5 (and to a lesser degree Star Trek), the ongoing behind-the-scenes argument gets kind of comical: In some episodes a ship is taken out by disabling its propulsion and weapons. (And there are lifepods.) In others we see fires (e.g. B5's "Severed Dreams"). And in others there are the cliche big explosions and debris clouds.

An offshoot of the "Explosions! We need explosions! Explosions! Whee!" school of entertainment is that everything is equipped with a self-destruct device. Oh my, my unarmed merchant ship is being overrun by pirates. I know, I'll set the self-destruct and blow it up and kill all the pirates! Bwahahaha! --Absolute nonsense. And if people can't figure out five or ten reasons why blowing a ship or building to smithereens is stupid, I despair for them.

Yeah I always found this pretty stupid. I like how B5 did things in "Severed Dreams" and to a lesser extent in "Point of no Return" (I think that is the episode I mean). Ships should be disabled, and maybe catch on fire; if they have oxygen atmospheres a fire would be very dangerous. But explode? Where does that come from? Even if they have dangerous reactors you'd think that they'd put into effect some type of safety precautions. The reason being is that allied ships are likely to be much closer to you than enemy ships. If your ship goes boom during a fleet battle, especially the stupidly pointblank short-range battles they have on Star Trek and Star Wars, you do a lot of damage to your side, and little or nothing to the other guys.

Think of how many civilian freighters a civ like the federation must have.

Not sure what this has to do with the issue.

I mentioned this because of what you said earlier. When you are in a war, especially a war with few military vessels, you go after the *support* ships, not the heavily armed behemoths. If you do your job correctly you will cripple your enemy without ever being in danger yourself. So if, say, the Cardassians really wanted to cripple the Federation they'd go after their civilian supply ships and hope to hit hard and fast enough to stop the Federation dead in its tracks. It just makes sense. In real wars this is what happens.

Given how big the Federation is, they must have to have a ginormous number of freighters hauling stuff around all the time. Each of those freighters has a giant bullseye painted on it, and must be protected by military ships. So the Federation has to have at least enough starships to protect its shipping lanes from both external threats and pirates, thieves, and terrorists (though these last 3 would more likely be police ships, not military).

The Federation is also spread out, and it doesn't exactly have fast ships (at least not compared to B5 or Starwars). This means that in order to protect their shipping lanes they'd need to have ships on patrol along every major route all the time since they are too slow to just dispatch from the nearest base at the first sign of trouble. This greatly ups the number of required military (or at least armed police) ships they'd need to protect themselves.

[EarthandBeyond]

Yeah I always found this pretty stupid. I like how B5 did things in "Severed Dreams" and to a lesser extent in "Point of no Return" (I think that is the episode I mean). Ships should be disabled, and maybe catch on fire; if they have oxygen atmospheres a fire would be very dangerous. But explode? Where does that come from? Even if they have dangerous reactors you'd think that they'd put into effect some type of safety precautions. The reason being is that allied ships are likely to be much closer to you than enemy ships. If your ship goes boom during a fleet battle, especially the stupidly pointblank short-range battles they have on Star Trek and Star Wars, you do a lot of damage to your side, and little or nothing to the other guys.

Big ship. Big reactor. Lots of unstable particals. = Big Boom!
Yes, that how things hapen in real life.
Remember B5 isnt a Stargate univers, with there pocket reactors that can power up the entire Atlantis city.
B5 is a real life simmulation of a possibel future.