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Realistically, would Klingons as a species be able to survive?
voporak
Member Posts: 5,621 Arc User
Watching through episodes of TNG, it doesn't seem like Klingons would be able to maintain a large enough population. "I hate your house; I'm going to kill you." And so one Klingon would just kill another on the spot. With everyone killing everyone else (not to mention suicide rituals and such), would Klingons be able to survive?
I ask nothing but that you remember me.
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I think they'd be alright. I mean, if you look at the animal kingdom here on Earth, the death rate is pretty bad. Most animals in the wild are lucky to make it out of infancy. Lion males kill baby cubs, alpha males kill each other for domination of packs, injured animals are often killed because they're a hindrance to the others... Yet they thrive.
I guess it really just depends on how often Klingons procreate.
thats just a small glimps of the mititary. not everyone is the same.
some times defeat is enough rather than killing.
TNG era Klingons were movie samurai. Real samurai... as well as real vikings and the other feudal societies the Klingons were based on... had a lot of very strict controls about who can kill who, how to deal with duels, and other societal disruptions like warring clans. If they were the choppity-chop free-for-all like the Klingons were they'd never have made it out of the dark ages.
So if you apply what little we know of the species to the whole, no they couldn't. If you approach what you saw in the shows as the cultural outliers, then they probably could indeed make it into space.
Its something I came across while studying tactics of old Brittish battles, the Zulu history is really cool, you should research it sometime.
This. From what I've seen, the Qo'noS population is as dense as our own, even having completely uninhabited areas on the planet (I got this info from Into Darkness, so the validity of that statement is arguable I suppose). That being said, I think they could survive. In fact, Klingons evolved to be able to handle the harshness of Qo'noS, which explains their increased strength (compared to humans, that is) and their tougher bodies (bony ridges on forehead, anyone?).
Data: Captain, I believe I speak for everyone here, sir, when I say, "To hell with our orders." :cool:
(That's why Dax and Worf hook up - Curzon and Jadzia were heavily into Klingon cosplay, and what better way to be Klingon than have a Klingon lover? Klingon culture didn't really move Ezri, so there wasn't an attraction)
I'm sure there are lots of Klingons who, while they might value their honor and admire the courage of a warrior, are just going about their business day-to-day.
If anything, that would help keep their population in check.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
This is true especially the part about Vikings which I know a lot of.
Klingons would not survive if a civil war broke out between any house.They lack good sources of dilthium.
USS WARRIOR NCC 1720 Commanding Officer
Star Trek Gamers
That's a good point. Humans aren't exactly at a prime population today. We're far beyond what's healthy for an environment. Overpopulation is a big problem with humans. Maybe Klingon society helps keep the population at a healthy level.
I haven't seen any filmed depictions of the surface of Qo'noS, but one of Kahless' metaphors implies that the weather is sufficiently harsh that one can expect not to survive exposure to a storm - it was not described as a "hurricane" or a "tornado", just a "storm". Such an environment might well require the dominant species to evolve the ability to replace lost members quickly.
If this is the case, the culture displayed on TNG and later series might well be a simple adaptation to a situation in which the species had evolved to the point where they could manipulate their environment (organized hunting, safe shelters, farming, that sort of thing), ensuring survival of their young, and soon leading to overpopulation...
While they do apparently kill each other fairly often, the rate at which they do is not significantly worse than the rate at which humans in similar societies do, and it's not the quantity of death that matters, but the amount of disorder it causes: Klingons kill each other in a fairly orderly manner with a minimum of accompanying destruction, since they just stab each other. A single individual dying of multiple stab wounds isn't going to destroy civilized infrastructure. Just look at London, where people are routinely stabbed to death on the streets with far less formal acceptance, and yet British society hasn't collapsed.
Parallels: my second mission for Fed aligned Romulans.
Klingons breed like Tribbles...
(or was that Epohh?)
Anyway...
That's why they hate the so much.
:P
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
I know this may be going slightly off-topic but I look at this federation/Klingon war as I see the Republic/Empire fight in TOR, the Republic being a united front (and canonically slated to win if the events of all the movies are evidence of that) and the Empire built up of powerful individuals and every single person within that empire would fall into one of the power bases of said individuals (the great houses and their vassals and warriors and such.) Plus on a galactic scale, the Klingon Empire is more than just Klingons now, they have the Orions, Gorn and various other species which fall within their borders fighting. There aren't crews of 10,000 Klingons without there being Orions or Gorn aboard. Same goes with all the species within the Federation, it isn't just Humans.
TL;DR: The Klingon empire isn't made up of just Klingons, they have various other subservient species which allow them to front their massive army/navy.
And going with the parallels people have made to Earth cultures - Vikings, Samurai, Zulu, etc. obviously those cultures never died out (although they have outgrown their more violent ways for the most part.)
And as for the losses they're taking in the game... honestly, at this point, every species in the known galaxy ought to be extinct. Including the Borg. You just to play along and assume that every event only occurs once. There is only one Battle of Starbase 24, only one time you (or anyone else) has run Hive and killed the Borg Queen, just like no matter how many times you replay feature episodes or campaign missions, as far as the overall storyline is concerned these things only happened once. Otherwise the deathtoll gets pretty apocalyptic.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
And yet the Klingon Empire has been able to act as a foil to the much larger Federation since day 1. Despite the infighting; despite the size of the Federation; despite Starfleet's strength from such a large, single body of power; despite the Federation's technological arrogance by the timeframe of TNG...
The Klingon Empire still stands. The Klingon military still stands despite the horrific losses they suffered during the Dominion War. There was a time when the KDF bore the full weight of the war until the Romulans and Federation figured out a defense against the Dominion-Breen alliance's energy dampening weapons. Yet despite these losses, the Klingon Empire was a force in the end at the Battle of Cardassia.
And yet after these losses, the Klingon Empire's military is still powerful enough to tie down the much larger Federation and its vaunted Starfleet by the time of STO. If the war ends, too bad. If the war drags on, all the better!!!
Conflict is what MAKES the Klingon Empire. It is the grease that allows the gears to turn. It is what the ideals of their society is based off of. It is what gives the Klingons their purpose and a chance to show their worth to others in the Empire.
Despite the seemingly wasteful nature of the Klingons' infighting, it keeps them sharp for battle. There is something to be said about a military that has grown fat and lazy from long eras of peace, to a military force that has constantly been engaged in fighting.
Despite the "wasteful nature" of the infighting, the Klingons still have more than enough fight to dish out for their Federation and Romulan rivals. The Empire has been fighting itself as well as its neighbors for a long time already. Alliances have shifted, power centers changed, political climates altered over time. Yet one thing is constant: The Klingons in confict with someone.
It all comes down to this slogan from the Klingon Honor Guard, which puts everything in simple perspective as to why conflict works for the Empire:
"Pity the warrior that slays all his foes."