On Mon, 12 May 2008 23:47:01 -0700, Tim Bruening
<tsbrueni@pop.dcn.davis.ca.us> wrote:
>At the start, a Xindi probe attacks Earth with what appears to be a
>super laser, cutting a swath of destruction from mid Florida to
>Venezuela, killing over 7 million. Why didn't the Xini probe hit the
>central U.S. or Asia?
Poor intel. They didn't bother to find out anything about their
enemy; they just programmed it to warp into Earth orbit and start
blasting. Probably didn't think it would only get one shot: it was
supposed to peel the Earth like an onion.
OBTW, that's now how I would attack a planet in the Star Trek
universe. Way too complicated. We know what happens when you beam a
10 gram container of antimatter to the surface and release the
containment field: The planet goes "boom". Xinditech was (will be?)
certainly advanced enough to build antimatter bombs; Pre-Federation
Earth doesn't have deflector shields or transporter scramber
technology. If the prototype had simply warped into Earth orbit and
dumped antimatter bombs into the atmosphere it would have wiped out
the human race.
It looked to me that the Xindi were being used to train the Terrans.
If you want to kill someone you do it fast and quietly with the
minimum amount of fuss. If you want to teach them how to defend
themselves you do the same moves only in slow motion and with
commentary. The first Xindi attack was almost designed to fail and
allow the humans intel about their enemy and time to formuate a
response. Maybe theXindi didn't mean it this way but their "sponsor"
did. The true intent wasn't to destroy the human race, only "nudge"
it into a different path; one where they became xenophobic,
mistrustful of aliens, and so never found the Federation. Thus,
destroying Florida was more like a knock on the door rather than a
serious attempt at extinction.
--
The Stone Age did not end
because we ran out of stones.
Kweeg
Kweeg
