I re-watched this one yesterday and I realized why I dislike this episode: the utter uselessness of the settlers. They sit around waiting to die.
These people are scientists and technicians, presumably reasonably competent at the jobs they had at Icarus base. They should be in the upper median of the population by IQ and achievement - not the best like Rush, Zelenka and Carter, but certainly in the best of the rest.
Caine clearly knows next to nothing about gardening. Peter was right to be digging over the soil in autumn, traditionally that's what people did so that the frost could break down soil further. Helps in clayish soils particularly. Nowadays there are other theories such as "no dig" but generally what Peter was doing was accepted gardening. Also Caine doesn't know how long winter is going to last or how severe it is going to be. It could be that crops planted in autumn would establish and continue growing through the winter. On Earth several important food crops are exactly this way, such as members of the Brassica family which get you through the "hungry gap" the period in early spring where stored food has run out or spoiled but it's too soon for new harvests. Even if the settlers had survived winter, they'd have died of starvation in spring.
The other stupid thing was them sitting around with "candles for warmth". There's no way that sitting in temperatures either below freezing or close to it with a candle and a few blankets is going to be enough to survive. But they could have built basic shelters that would have been much better than the shuttle with the door open, or at least an alternative to it.
A basic "pit house" can be erected in days. Dig a pit, cut some poles and between the 2-3 foot pit and the 5-6 foot poles you've got a comfortable head height. Weave other, smaller branches between the poles and "plaster" it with mud. Cover the top of the dwelling with other poles at an angle and weave branches between the poles. Cover with as much cut, dried vegetation as possible - a thatch. In "Faith" we saw there's plenty of grassy vegetation, that would make perfect thatching material.
We know they've got military-issue folding shovels with a cutting blade on one or more side. We've seen them in other episodes, and in "Faith" (when digging the latrine).
With how many settlers they had they could have all had a pit house each from a few weeks work. Then they could have had fires to keep themselves warm, and had a door to shut in the warmth.
Beyond that though these are educated modern humans. They should know a bit about insulation, materials science, etc. They could figure out how to make simple bricks with large air gaps inside, or lay two courses with an air gap stuffed with as much straw or hay as they could harvest. They could make a simple machine to sew together sheaths of dried vegetation into "mattresses".
Failing all the above, they could simply have walked out of the "cold" area. At one point they mention they've stripped all the fruit bushes in that area, so why don't they just migrate in search of more food? It's quite literally the oldest and most basic way to avoid winter and the strategy taken by lots of animals on Earth.
I'm just an IT guy, and I would have been able to survive the conditions shown. It seems pretty ridiculous that a group of people with different cultural backgrounds and abilities would all just sit down and wait to die. One of the things I like most about Stargate all the way through SG-1 to SGU is that usually people are resourceful, they MacGyver up solutions all the time. It seems that SGU repeatedly sends the message that the civilians are just dead meat walking, which is a real shame.
These people are scientists and technicians, presumably reasonably competent at the jobs they had at Icarus base. They should be in the upper median of the population by IQ and achievement - not the best like Rush, Zelenka and Carter, but certainly in the best of the rest.
Caine clearly knows next to nothing about gardening. Peter was right to be digging over the soil in autumn, traditionally that's what people did so that the frost could break down soil further. Helps in clayish soils particularly. Nowadays there are other theories such as "no dig" but generally what Peter was doing was accepted gardening. Also Caine doesn't know how long winter is going to last or how severe it is going to be. It could be that crops planted in autumn would establish and continue growing through the winter. On Earth several important food crops are exactly this way, such as members of the Brassica family which get you through the "hungry gap" the period in early spring where stored food has run out or spoiled but it's too soon for new harvests. Even if the settlers had survived winter, they'd have died of starvation in spring.
The other stupid thing was them sitting around with "candles for warmth". There's no way that sitting in temperatures either below freezing or close to it with a candle and a few blankets is going to be enough to survive. But they could have built basic shelters that would have been much better than the shuttle with the door open, or at least an alternative to it.
A basic "pit house" can be erected in days. Dig a pit, cut some poles and between the 2-3 foot pit and the 5-6 foot poles you've got a comfortable head height. Weave other, smaller branches between the poles and "plaster" it with mud. Cover the top of the dwelling with other poles at an angle and weave branches between the poles. Cover with as much cut, dried vegetation as possible - a thatch. In "Faith" we saw there's plenty of grassy vegetation, that would make perfect thatching material.
We know they've got military-issue folding shovels with a cutting blade on one or more side. We've seen them in other episodes, and in "Faith" (when digging the latrine).
With how many settlers they had they could have all had a pit house each from a few weeks work. Then they could have had fires to keep themselves warm, and had a door to shut in the warmth.
Beyond that though these are educated modern humans. They should know a bit about insulation, materials science, etc. They could figure out how to make simple bricks with large air gaps inside, or lay two courses with an air gap stuffed with as much straw or hay as they could harvest. They could make a simple machine to sew together sheaths of dried vegetation into "mattresses".
Failing all the above, they could simply have walked out of the "cold" area. At one point they mention they've stripped all the fruit bushes in that area, so why don't they just migrate in search of more food? It's quite literally the oldest and most basic way to avoid winter and the strategy taken by lots of animals on Earth.
I'm just an IT guy, and I would have been able to survive the conditions shown. It seems pretty ridiculous that a group of people with different cultural backgrounds and abilities would all just sit down and wait to die. One of the things I like most about Stargate all the way through SG-1 to SGU is that usually people are resourceful, they MacGyver up solutions all the time. It seems that SGU repeatedly sends the message that the civilians are just dead meat walking, which is a real shame.