surviving the wraith

[garhkal]

Not necessarily. It *can* be done.

Only if you allow these guys to have either tech more advanced than the ancients, OR let them be more able to Adapt/modify ancient tech than even the SGC people can..

Au contraire. So far all successful hiding technologies used by the Ancients have required extreme policies to maintain. Using Ancient technology is both difficult (the ancients didn't quite interbreed like they did in the MW, so the ATA gene is scarce) and signals to the Wraith that they're capable of resistance, which is usually the reason such races are exterminated first.

Very true. Look at the kids in "Childhood's end" and the extreme measures THEY were under to keep their society safe..

[thekillman]

Only if you allow these guys to have either tech more advanced than the ancients, OR let them be more able to Adapt/modify ancient tech than even the SGC people can..

Nah, all the ancient tech just makes people blind to better solutions.

The only real trouble is that it would be difficult to ensure a civilization has enough time to set up their survival method.

If a race had access to a star system's resources (probably earth in 100-200 years if we don't nuke ourselves into oblivion) they could construct a series of interstellar STL ships that could carry around half a million each. Making enough to carry 30 million from the start would be difficult. However, it would be difficult to justify both a bunker or a spaceship lasting 10 000 years.

I consider it likely that if a race had a system's worth of resources, they could accompany their generational ships with constructor ships: a few (5 or so initially) ships that can process resources and produce (probably through something like 3d printing) all sorts of machinery to sustain their ships and, in fact, produce more.

Over the course of 10 000 years, even with replacements, this race can then expand their fleet from 10-20 ships initially (5-10 million people) into a much bigger fleet, or preferably a couple of fleets. trade with other races (e.g i imagine the Travellers would be able and willing to find allies across the galaxy) could supply them with the necessary technology like Hyperdrives to stay on the run. Once hyperdrives are achieved they can move from system to system and, when overpopulation becomes a problem, they can periodically unload their people. Staying on a ship forever would be less straining if they could take trips to habitable planets to stretch their legs. After all, for about 5-10 years they need to be vigilant before being safe for another 40-45 (since the wraith feed about once in 50 years but i doubt they'd do it perfectly by the clock).

Other benefits of a space-based escape is that they can mine other star systems for resources, so even if the wraith find traces of intelligent life like stripmining, the nomads will be gone before they do find out.

Over time, the ships would inevitably need replacement and the construction ships can do that. In between this the construction ships would produce parts that the generational ships can't (e.g. too big) and can slowly construct newer generational ships. Even if this takes ~50 years or ~100 years, inevitably it would work.


I imagine this race could even use Von Neumann technology (self replicating robots, but not like the Replicators) to construct further ships, but that would inevitably bring the wrath of the wraith as it would be very dangerous to use wrong.


Specifications:

Each O'neill cylinder would be about 1km long and about 300 meters in diameter, and spin for gravity. Later models can adapt artificial gravity, but it won't be that much more efficient in terms of space or energy.

Each cylinder would, at least initially, have a Nuclear Pulse drive that uses specially-designed nukes to propel itself. It needs about 200 meters of engine section (so total length of a generational ship is ~1200m).

It would take about 30 years of earth's total output to use, but we're talking about a race evading total annihilation one way or another, so it's fair game. This is why it needs the resources of a developed system: With access to stuff like asteroid belts and other planets, a civilization could build about 10-20 depending on how advanced they are exactly.

A 1000x300 cylinder would have about a million square meters of ground (so about a square kilometer) that could be used. Work is provided by the ship and what civil services (e.g. cooks, hairdressers, doctors) are required. Entertainment would be electronic in nature, but each ship could easily have a few large server rooms that hold endless amounts of TV, books etc. Inbetween cullings, time could be made for additional leisure.

[garhkal]

With all those nukes going off though, wouldn't THAT attract the wraith, like the Oddessy did in Pegasus project??

[thekillman]

With all those nukes going off though, wouldn't THAT attract the wraith, like the Oddessy did in Pegasus project??

I'm not entirely sure. If memory serves, in "the Pegasus Project" the nukes were in the gigaton range. I'm talking low-kiloton shaped charges, which would shower (much!) less radiation around. They would also not be naquahdah-enhanced so whatever exotic particles etc may be involved there, it wouldn't be present with nuclear pulse propulsion.

Besides, if such nukes drew the attention of the Wraith, the engines of a Hiveship should alert half the galaxy. So i'm not terribly concerned.

[garhkal]

But if you have 1000s of low kilo ton range nukes going off in rapid succession to get those ships moving up to near light speed, wouldn't that be as 'sensor pinging' as 1 or 2 giga ton explosions??

[thekillman]

But if you have 1000s of low kilo ton range nukes going off in rapid succession to get those ships moving up to near light speed, wouldn't that be as 'sensor pinging' as 1 or 2 giga ton explosions??

No. I believe the rate of release was about one nuke every 3 seconds. To get a gigaton explosion you would need to dump thousands out the back in a second.

[Xaeden]

But so far, the ONLY evidence we have ON his tech, is his device found in his Cave in Glastonbury.. which he only worked on After returning from the Pegasus galaxy..

That it can, but however, do you even KNOW if the shield generators can be removed FROM a city ship? Let alone the ZPM power core...

Yes, but if we're talking about a fan fiction story that he wants to create, (which is what I assumed this was for) he's free to say that Merlin's device was created elsewhere and that the shields can be removed and so on. I find your response here to be a strange one as I'm offering possibilities to the OP that he can work with, not arguing that any of this is definitive. I think that was rather clear from my word choices.

So, they are more uber in making tech than the ancients?

It was a bit of a flip comment, but are the Asgard more uber than the Ancients at making tech just because they perfected site to site teleportation when the Ancients did not? I don't know that the subspace matter leaching technology is even possible but if it is its a matter of resource allocation, not "uberness." If a civilization has the ability to devote more resources to that one technology that the Ancients did what with the walls crumbling down around them in the final hours of the war, then it's possible they could make a breakthrough that the Ancients did not and still be technological deficient in many other areas where the Ancients excelled. However, could they do so while trying to survive under Wraith domination BEFORE they have the means to hide from the Wraith? No, but that was why it was a flip comment (the intent was to express that the only other solution was something not exactly feasible).

And unless they had found out about the switching of the shield to cloak method that WE did, how would they even know how to do it? It would also require they HAVE a shield generator (see above) and working jumpers to do so..

Right. Again, I was putting out possibilities that assume certain things happen.

And where exactly would this 'powerful' weapon come from? SO far we have seen the Lantean langran point satellite.. It was easily destroyed after the wraith hung back.
Then there was that satellite built in Icon, but that was made with Ori knowledge...
So what else do you propose??

The OP is free to invent something or, yes, use the Lantean satellites by saying that some survived over some other planet and were recovered. As to your claim that it was easily destroyed by the Wraith hanging back, in "The Siege," it sounds like you're describing more what happened with Earth's mines. The Wraith hung back while the asteroids they redirected took them out. The satellite was taken out because a circuit they re-routed overloaded after firing, preventing them from destroying the other Wraith Hives before the Hives could move in to take it out.

Do you know how long it would take for a sublight ship to reach a nearby habitable planet? let alone how long it would take a population to rebuild from one kulling, let alone keep their #s on the move??

It depends on how far away the planet is and the sublight capabilities of the civilization in question. It's not out of the bounds of reality that it would be possible to accomplish such a journey within the time frame of a few hundred years (or simply years even if, say, there's a planet ~4 light years away and they can travel at half the speed of light). Rebuilding to such a point between feedings does stretch believably but is consistent with the show semi-modern rebuilding efforts have occurred between feedings, even to the point of space age advancement. So this falls into the camp of; "The millions of years that the Ancients are said to have had an advanced civilization for is not grounded in reality but for the purpose of what is possible within the context of the Stargate universe I'm going to ignore that," or "People don't really use 10% of their brains and can't get superpowers by unlocking non-existence larger portions of their brains, but for the purpose of what is possible within the context of the Stargate universe I'm going to ignore that."

And with how the wraith scan, those would be easily found..

Please provide an example. I recall nothing in the show to suggest the Wraith have the technology to detect sublight ships in the void between solar systems.

And if they ever did exist, why is there no mention of them in the lantean database??

Because... "their ancestors found an out of the way planet without a Stargate to land on." We have no idea what information that Ancients had on advanced humans during their time. There very well could be extensive details about advanced humans in the databse, but if they survived by abandoning the planet that they came from then the Atlantis expedition would have no way of finding them by using the database. The expedition very well could have followed several leads off-screen and found nothing because, again, they abandoned their last known address. There's no way for us to know.

So far all successful hiding technologies used by the Ancients have required extreme policies to maintain. Using Ancient technology is both difficult (the ancients didn't quite interbreed like they did in the MW, so the ATA gene is scarce)

Except, of course, in the case of Earth. For the most part, other instances involved less advanced people surviving within the sphere of Ancient technology. In "Childhood's End" the extreme measures taken were a result of nobody knowing about the device that was protecting them. With some basic technical knowledge Mckay was able to solve their problem rather easily, albeit at the cost of putting a shorter shelf life on their ability to rely on that technology. Perhaps though a group who had that knowledge could also have devised a longer term solution over generations or within a greater period of time than Mckay was allowed to devote to the problem of an outside group.

In "The Tower" the people there relied so much on their ATA gene to solve their problems that they had no idea how the technology that surrounded worked. Once jumpers ran out of juice they couldn't fly them anymore because they didn't know how to recharge them like Earth did and they knew nothing about their energy and drone needs. All they did was sit in a chair and think their problems away and presumed they could do so for generations more if only they had people who were better bred.

My supposition is that this imagined group has some technical knowledge to begin with when they came upon Ancient technology. Maybe they have the ATA gene. You say it's rare, but we have no way of knowing that. We've seen two independent examples of it in the Pegasus galaxy and those cases came to light because there was Ancient technology on those planets that they used. How extensively other such people spread throughout the galaxy is unknown as there was never a test to determine the prevalence of the ATA gene in the broader population. However, maybe they don't. There's still a lot that can be done without the gene and my examples have largely been focused on such efforts. You don't need the gene, for example, to rip out a shield generator and hook it up to your own systems (yes, assuming that's possible for the other person).

The people in "The Inferno" did have advanced technical knowledge and were successfully able to run and interact with the systems of the outpost that they inhabited. Yes, they made a grave mistake keeping the shields on all the time, but Earth has made their own mega follies in their interactions with Ancient technology, as is to be expected as, although they have a degree of technical capability, they're still dealing with technology that is light years ahead of them. The difference is that they managed to come back from every such mistake. They may have destroyed a solar system or lost a ship, but they never lost everything and thus were able to learn from those mistakes. Could a group of similarly advanced humans, ATA gene or not, do the same when there was more Ancient technology in the galaxy (not yet ravaged by time, looted, or destroyed by further Wraith hostility)? I say yes.

[Xaeden]

continued...

Considering we've seen two City Ships and all evidence we have suggests the Ancients had minimal presence in Pegasus (Since the entire point was to ascend, not to restore their civilization). The odds of finding a city ship that hasn't been destroyed is near-zero. Salvaging these shields is about the worst idea (you'd want the entire ship intact), and even if it was all achieved the Wraith were willing to bombard such shields for weeks to destroy them. It won't work.

The assumption behind my suggestion was that the city wasn't intact, but rather damaged by the ravages of time or Wraith attack. And although I used city ship shield generators as the example, obviously Ancient shield generators can come from multiple sources, including outposts and ships. It's just that city shield generators are perhaps more effective for their particular needs.

Also, nowhere was it said that the Ancients did not intend to continue their civilization by moving to Pegasus. Ignoring all the examples of civilization building that they did over the course of 5-10 million years, the most notable contraction to the claim that the Ancients only wanted more time to continue to work toward ascension (which isn't to say it wasn't a goal; I'm arguing only that it wasn't their only purpose) is that it was explicitly stated that the plan behind retreating to the Milky Way was to use recovered Ancient technology found there to rebuild their civilization and it was only when they realized that the surviving Milky Way technology was not sufficient to do this in any reasonable amount of time that they restored to working toward ascension. Below are relevant quotes.

Here it's shown that the goal when leaving Atlantis was for Ancients to return to reclaim it. They seemed shocked that the second evolution of their form would be the one to return so who then did they leave the city for if not themselves and if they left it for themselves how could they do that if they didn't intend to rebuild?

JANIS: Ten thousand years from now. (He smiles.) It should be noted that our actions have succeeded in protecting the city for so many years.

-Letters from Pegasus

That's also something similar that the hologram told:

There, the last survivors of Atlantis lived out the remainder of their lives. This city was left to slumber, in the hope that our kind would one day return.

-Rising

Here Morgan explains that hopes of rebuilding their society were dashed by what they found on Earth and so one of the three paths they took instead involved seeking ascension:

MORGAN LE FAY
When we first abandoned Atlantis all those millennia ago, the Earth was so harsh, its people so primitive by comparison, there was no hope of living among them as Lantians or rebuilding our society. So, instead we spread out to many lands, some of us planting a few small seeds of civilization among the first tribes of man. Others making their way to the Stargate at your southern pole. Still others choosing to live the remainder of our lives in seclusion and meditation. Merlin and I both chose the latter path.

-The Pegasus Project

So if their only purpose in the Pegasus galaxy was to buy more time to work out ascension and not rebuild their civilization, why would they express interest in rebuilding their civilization when leaving the Pegasus galaxy for Earth?

Both energy and technology issues would make this unlikely. Even in The Siege it wasn't believe to work unless both Teyla messaged the wraith AND they fake-nuked the city. The Wraith are aware of ancient cloaking, they wouldn't allow any race with such technology to live.

The Wraith were right on top of them and would have been suspicious if the ship just disappeared without anything to indicate it was destroyed. I'm talking about a scenario where a group uses it to make it look like they vanished between feedings or on a new planet that they colonize. If they can power this (and, yes, that's a big if) locating a group of humans under such conditions means scouring every square inch of a planet by sending darts on a series of search patterns until they stumble through the cloak. However, why would the Wraith think to do that if they had no expectation that that was a possibility? Yes, the Wraith are aware of Ancient cloaking, but are they aware that it can be used to hide an entire population, do they have any reason to believe humans would use it on this way, and do they think of that as enough of a concern to devote resources to carefully checking every abandoned planet they come upon for cloaked pockets?

The only weapons we've seen that worked either defended absolutely nothing (e.g. Trinity) or a minor 10 000-ish people outpost. A 50 million population is -for Pegasus- massive and would most definitely see the Wraith try to get it.

I would argue that the Lantean defense satellites when fully operational and working as a unit could take out a sizable number of Wraith Hives. Back in the day, it would be no problem for them to send scores of Hives to their doom to take them out, but if they have, say, 80 Hives and a comparable number of Cruisers all throughout the galaxy I think there's a problem. First, I would like to say that this number is admittedly a rough estimate from "Underground" where it was said that there were 21 Hives in the one quadrant that they were in and "maybe" an additional 60 elsewhere, but possibly more as well. However, for the sake of argument let's say that's the number. Is it worth losing 40+ Hives and a good number of their Cruisers taking a planet with 50 million people? Sure, if they gain access to that many people and that many people are indeed hard to find in the Pegasus then they can rebuild their own numbers significantly.

However, two main factors need to be considered. One, it's unclear that anywhere near that number would survive the kind of violence needed to quell their opposition if they have any actual military capabilities of their own and are not depending entirely on this weapon alone. In the past, we've seen the Wraith use lethal force against technological opposition (the Satedeans are such an example) presumably because they didn't want to risk the larger number of losses they would have taken if they tried to quell their opposition with less effectively non-lethal, capture tactics. Two, how long exactly would it take the Wraith to rebuild from such loses? Until Todd got his hands on Asuran ZPMs they no longer had access to their cloning technology. How quickly Drones can be grown without that is unknown but we do know that Queens (and presumably scientists as well) age at a normal human rate and we also know that Hives take possibly months to grow using non-Ancient power sources.

Now, if the Wraith are confident in their belief that no other technological opposition exists elsewhere then they may indeed feel that it is worth doing that because, in their over confidence they wouldn't consider the possibility that some outside party would rise to finish them off in their weakened state. I readily concede that is a possibility given previous examples of Wraith arrogance. However, if they were at all smart about it, they might not be willing to open themselves up to the Travelers, Asgard, and anyone else who may be out there, waiting for such an opportunity. Of course, while we know these factions exist (there were also hints in season 5 that there were more advanced groups in hiding and that the vacuum caused by the Wraith Civil War may lead to their coming out of hiding in the future) the Wraith only know that they "could" exist (except perhaps in the case of the Travelers) so that is absolutely something to keep in mind.

Earth's 6 billion is richer than an entire galaxy of people, where according to "Be All My Sins Rememberd" the average population is some 10 000 or so

Could you provide a quote from the episode that proves that?

"the Ark" suggested many human worlds had essentially no warning and even the Asgard did not anticipate the Ancients losing.

"The Ark" people are those who rebuilt between feedings. Nothing about that episode speaks to how much warning humans did or did not have that the Ancients would lose.

Meanwhile, yes, the Asgard did say that the war ended sooner than they expected and, as a result, they were caught off guard. However, the Wraith spent years devoting a significant amount of resources to the siege of Atlantis (during which time the inevitable should have been obvious) and during that time Ancient populations continued to exist throughout the galaxy, as evident by them continually returning to Atlantis up until the last minute so they could join the others leaving for the Milky Way. From this, we know there wasn't a uniform, overnight sweep of the entire Pegasus galaxy by the Wraith. We also know there can't be due the limitation of their hyperdrives.

The Asgard were apparently unlucky. Wherever they were, there were Wraith ships nearby who managed to catch them unaware, possibly at about the same time that other Wraith ships beat back most of the Ancient's offensive capabilities after unleashing their cloned hordes. However, could there have been advanced human allies elsewhere in the galaxy who survived for a little longer under the protection of another Ancient holdout (not necessarily a city/outpost but perhaps mobile ships of which we know that there were at least a couple operating in the last days of the war) or were given forewarning to flee by scouts/their Ancient allies? I would say, there's no reason to think that isn't possible.

[garhkal]

I find your response here to be a strange one as I'm offering possibilities to the OP that he can work with, not arguing that any of this is definitive. I think that was rather clear from my word choices.

Possibilities maybe, but there needs to be at least some logical sense to them...

The satellite was taken out because a circuit they re-routed overloaded after firing, preventing them from destroying the other Wraith Hives before the Hives could move in to take it out.

And how quickly was it taken out once the wraith realized it was a threat (after the first hive got cut in half)? Very quickly.. IMO more quickly than the satellite could have shot a 2nd time even if it was working at 100%..

Please provide an example. I recall nothing in the show to suggest the Wraith have the technology to detect sublight ships in the void between solar systems.

Well they detected the Oddesy doing that nuke thing in Pegasus project... didn't they?

Because... "their ancestors found an out of the way planet without a Stargate to land on."

That might work, if the produce everything they will ever need, so no use of a gate for trade..

They may have destroyed a solar system or lost a ship, but they never lost everything and thus were able to learn from those mistakes. Could a group of similarly advanced humans, ATA gene or not, do the same when there was more Ancient technology in the galaxy (not yet ravaged by time, looted, or destroyed by further Wraith hostility)? I say yes.

And part of the reason we were able imo to get away from those fubars with our necks intact WAS
A) cause we had ships to get out of dodge
B) plot immunity for our heroes
C) a lot more experience with all sorts of alien tech including lantean..

[Bhousden]

What i am on about though is how would they have even gotten TO That level, just on sheer #s of people, let alone tech without ever dinging on the wraith radar???

The same way the Genii shield their nuclear facilities from the wraith, duh

[garhkal]

That might have worked for 1-2 facilities, but all of them?? You are grasping at straws.

[Bhousden]

That might have worked for 1-2 facilities, but all of them?? You are grasping at straws.

So were the Genii if they thought that their plan to blow up all their ships while they slept was going to wipe them out. Unless they could've hit every single ship simultaneously, which would've been impossible considering the ship that Col. Sumner was taken to was only accessible by a space gate. Their plan was pipe dream. I'm more interested in learning how the wraith got access to the tech they had, and finding a way, like the Attero device, and exploiting any weaknesses it had.

[garhkal]

Most of the tech they had seemed to be culled from the ancients they defeated, made by them during the war< or stolen (like gou'ald) from others they were culling.

[Bhousden]

Most of the tech they had seemed to be culled from the ancients they defeated, made by them during the war< or stolen (like gou'ald) from others they were culling.

That don't explain why their language looks so much similar to ancient though. Considering the ancients were in Pegasus for a few millions years prior to the war with the wraith.

[Railgun]

i want to create a civilization of about 50- 100 million people in the Pegasus galaxy , with base tech about 100 years a head of todays earth + reverse engineered lantean tech (shields , energy weapons, hyperdrive etc )

how would such a civilization hide from the wraith ??

i was thinking massive underground cities ( like the genii but way bigger ) about a 1km high and 20km wide with the roof mimicking the sky , or hallowing out an asteroid to the same degree . is that even possible at that tech level ?

how would you do it ?

People are theorising building large underground cities on earth now. Highly likely within 100 years earth tech could build such a city.

If you had Tok'ra tech you could use the tunnelling crystals to make your base.

I'd suggest picking the site carefully to keep out of the way of the Wraith. The planet in childhood's end could be a good candidate. The existing civilisation is protected by an ancient device and only uses a small fraction of the planet within the protective field of the device. That leaves the rest of the land available for farming to support food needs of your base without giving away it's existence.