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How would Thalaron Radiation affect the Borg?
tilarta
Member Posts: 1,799 Arc User
While I was smacking the 100th Borg in the face on Defera, I had a random thought:
What if you used a Thalaron Weapon on the Borg?
I know the Romulan NPCs use a weapon I've never been able to identify which uses Thalaron radiation and one shots anyone unfortunate enough to standing in the target area.
A particular vulnerability of the Borg is that specific energy forms which are highly destructive to organic tissue will terminate them.
Since Thalaron Radiation has this effect on all organic tissue, the Borg should be incredibly vulnerable to it.
It would also bypass their shields, since Thalaron radiation particles permeates the air and Borg shields don't stop attacks of that nature.
But realistically, if I was able to obtain a Thalaron ground weapon and use it on the Borg, I'd discover the problem I keep running into when I use a non-standard energy weapon.
The Borg adapt!
The one I have the most experience with is Cryogenics, either via Elite Cryo Full Auto Rifle or Cryoimbolizer module.
This is in direct contradiction to canon, because when the the Borg are exposed to freezing temperatures, their organic systems, prosthetics and borg nanites shut down.
Yes, I've heard the argument because the weapon uses energy, that's what the Borg are adapting to, but that energy is just lowering the temperature of the environment as a secondary effect.
So even if the Borg adapt to the energy pulse, it still doesn't change the fact that the air around them is dropping to sub-zero temperatures and freezing them solid!
I assume this is because the game treats all non-kinetic damages as energy, so the Borg
universally adapt, even when they should not!
And they adapt to electrical damage too apparently, I punched a Elite Tac drone to death, triggering my electrical passive attack and next thing I knew, they'd adapted to that as well!
But I have no canon information on how the Borg react to externally applied electrical shocks,
so I can't say if that's an abnormality or not.
I do know that if you short circuit Borg implants with an electrical shock, the Borg will pass out from the pain/system disruption, but those shocks were a result of someone tampering with the internal implants, not from an external source.
What if you used a Thalaron Weapon on the Borg?
I know the Romulan NPCs use a weapon I've never been able to identify which uses Thalaron radiation and one shots anyone unfortunate enough to standing in the target area.
A particular vulnerability of the Borg is that specific energy forms which are highly destructive to organic tissue will terminate them.
Since Thalaron Radiation has this effect on all organic tissue, the Borg should be incredibly vulnerable to it.
It would also bypass their shields, since Thalaron radiation particles permeates the air and Borg shields don't stop attacks of that nature.
But realistically, if I was able to obtain a Thalaron ground weapon and use it on the Borg, I'd discover the problem I keep running into when I use a non-standard energy weapon.
The Borg adapt!
The one I have the most experience with is Cryogenics, either via Elite Cryo Full Auto Rifle or Cryoimbolizer module.
This is in direct contradiction to canon, because when the the Borg are exposed to freezing temperatures, their organic systems, prosthetics and borg nanites shut down.
Yes, I've heard the argument because the weapon uses energy, that's what the Borg are adapting to, but that energy is just lowering the temperature of the environment as a secondary effect.
So even if the Borg adapt to the energy pulse, it still doesn't change the fact that the air around them is dropping to sub-zero temperatures and freezing them solid!
I assume this is because the game treats all non-kinetic damages as energy, so the Borg
universally adapt, even when they should not!
And they adapt to electrical damage too apparently, I punched a Elite Tac drone to death, triggering my electrical passive attack and next thing I knew, they'd adapted to that as well!
But I have no canon information on how the Borg react to externally applied electrical shocks,
so I can't say if that's an abnormality or not.
I do know that if you short circuit Borg implants with an electrical shock, the Borg will pass out from the pain/system disruption, but those shocks were a result of someone tampering with the internal implants, not from an external source.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
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I kept getting an illegal message to update Flash player!
I hope it's an honest mistake on your part.
Otherwise you're posting a malware link and well, TOS violations aren't amusing.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Relax, you can take the aluminium hat off. It's a YouTube link to the Borg Queen getting her skin torn off by warp coolant.
I think it's conceivable that the Borg could adapt to something like compressed bolts of liquid nitrogen launched at them. Borg adaptation is clever; maybe they're heating up the bolt with their personal shields or otherwise dispersing it before it reaches their skin. And maybe they modulate an oscillating electric field that can prevent their being damaged by a particular electric voltage source.
That said, thalaron weapons in space don't seem to follow canon rules anyway. I figure our ships are equipped with an emergency radiation shield that draws its power from the SIF system, even if conventional shields are down. So a powerful thalaron blast wouldn't kill all the crew, but protecting from it would render a starship unable to hold itself together.
Conjoined, Re-emergence, and . . .
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
And to be honest, if the Borg had the ability to heat themselves up, they wouldn't have "died" in the aforementioned scenario I described.
I think that's a particular achilles heel of the Borg, that they need to stay warm to function, as they once say onscreen that a Borg environment configures the heat level to go higher.
I don't fully understand it, but Thalaron radiation is unsually invasive.
I assume if you target an enemy vessel, the radiation seeps through the shield, irradiates the hull and then kills the crew.
The ship remains structurally sound, but everyone inside is dead.
And I just did update my flash before trying to view that video again!
It kept saying it regardless.
To explain why I don't trust flash upgrade messages now, I keep getting spammed with some bogus message to upgrade flash.
I'm no expert, but I think someone slipped in some malevolent code that is causing it.
I think it's based on websites, because it's not always predictable.
And yes, STO forums is one of those websites triggering the fake upgrade message.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
I know the secret to killing borg being a computer tech for many years anyways.....
Rub your socks on the carpet really good, then touch them with your finger.....they'll die.
I thought WoW's forums had angry elitist snobs, but I never could have imagined the level STO forums has.
The 24/25'th century uses ODN systems, Optical chips and Plasma based power distribution.
So in essence: Glass, Crystals and Ionized Gas.
Basically theres nothing that would be affected by EMP. Last time we saw traditional electronics was in Enterprise, and by the 22'nd century they've switched to Duotronics Wich seem to operate on similar, yet more effective than electronics.
During the 'Republic Day' mission, if you'd try to thalaron blast the dormant Undine ships meant for target practice of the new torpedo - they activate, fly out of the thalaron's arc and start shooting at you.
Personally I hate the way people including the writers have come to use adapting as a be all and end all for the Borg, its pretty clear that by first contact they were having a much harder time adapting to starship weapons at least and it showed that they can't magically adapt to a environmental hazard like the warp core coolant.
I figure the Borg would eventually adapt to Thalaron, but probably not fast enough to avoid a lot of casualties.
My character Tsin'xing
The Borg are more than likely not going to attempt to adapt to it, the weapon isnt in mass use and the loss of a few cubes to it is a drop in the collective ocean, they can always assimilate more folks to replace their losses.
My character Tsin'xing
And if forcefields could protect against that the scimitar in Nemesis wouldn't have been such a big issue...
did you even watch nemesis at all? the answer is in the clue as to why the enterprise fought to say in a fight it was clearly no match for, and why data sacrificed himself, borg or not, anything organic will be vaporized by thalaron radiation.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Why don't you actually try watching the show, and pay closer attention this time?
What the Borg have demonstrated the ability to adapt to is directed energy weapons. Period. And even that ability can still be overcome by attrition and brute force. Anything else, they apparently have to assimilate people with knowledge of how to deal with it.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Except bullets from a TR-116A.
My Foundry missions | My STO Wiki page | My Twitter home page
Well that particular scenario has never been proven in canon... And still, one would think that if they can create personal forcefields that defend against space, they could adjust that to resist a certain amount of kinetic force as well. Even the tommy-gun from FC (Remember... Picard only shot 2 borg...)
Holographic tommy-gun bullets impacting with the force of a real one. Kinetic energy. (Because how else is a force field supposed to feel like the real thing?)
Data beat Borg to death with his bare hands. Kinetic energy.
Worf chopped Borg up with a bat'leth. Kinetic energy.
Undine killed Borg with their claws. Kinetic energy.
Borg cubes rammed much smaller Undine bioships, resulting in mutual kills. Kinetic energy.
Seriously, how much more evidence do you need?
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
I suspect that the bare hand / melee weapon thing is actually just possible because Borg shields would get in the way of everyday Borg Drone interaction if they blocked such physical contact. And even the Borg's own combat would be blocked - assimilation requires physical contact, too.
This also applies against the Undine - the goal of the Borg was to assimilate them, so they may just not stop trying, even if it's risky and failed so far. Drones are expendable, and one drone might just have the right trick to do it (basically "applied evolution").
What is more suprising is that the Borg usually (except the liberated Borg) don't use ranged weapons. Though maybe they don't because they want to assimilate enemies and a few lost drones is worth the risk of gaining additional insight.
Considering the liberated Borg around Hugh and Lore had ranged weapons, it may be that we've never really seen the Collective engaged in a purely destructive attack.
The fleet of ships in Sector 001 was capable of inflicting damage to the Cube, too, so I would say that you can produce energy at starship level to overcome their shields, and adaptation has its limits.
Lots...
It's, as you not surprisingly point out, not uncommon to see kinetic energy destroy borg, but as you may have forgotten, space is filled with different kinds of debris (from microscopic particles, to asteroid fragments and ship debris from destroyed ships). These seem to have no effect on borg ships... Yet: Kinetic energy.
When Borg encounter advanced species, they are probably 99.999% of the time met with regular energy weapons, and as such would most likely focus their efforts on resisting that, rather than expecting the enemy to just slam their fleets into the ships.
Because of this, it stands to reason to assume that their shields would first and foremost be designed to resist that kind of attacks, and as we have seen in BoBW, the borg shields DO allow a shuttle to pass through their shields.
Eventually, if species decided to start using kinetic energy as their primary weapon, the borg would have to adapt to that, and they would, but would likely sacrifice some of their resistance towards energy weapons in the process.
Now... "Why would they have to sacrifice one to get the other"? The answer to that is: I have no clue, but if they could adapt to everything at the same time, don't you think they would?
They travel to other galaxies and dimensional planes and are at least alomst a thousand years old... You'd think they have a defense against everything by now?
However surely they can't keep on doing that indefinitely else they would just set their shields to block everything from the start.
So if they suddenly adapted to MHz shots, couldn't you just set your phasers to GHz?
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
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a lot of what is written here makes next to no sense.
some things in the galaxy you just cant overcome, borg cant adapt to what they do not know, thats why they assimilate to gain knowledge, even if the borg had a skin tight forcefield all one person with a tr rifle would need to do is to adjust the transport location from just outside the body to just inside and its game over. it would be like stating from your point of view that the borg can walk through molten rock or warp plasma, better still anti matter because they assimilated anti matter into the collective and understand its thoughts... dont be silly.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Trying to bring our real world science and technology into this discussion is rather pointless. Star Trek employs space magic, things work because they are supposed to, there is nothing more to it.
Obviously there are ways to safely store and shield antimatter, otherwise most starships would explode before leaving space dock. Therefore, in theory, it's possible to have a personal anti-antimatter shield !
Heat is also energy, so of course, again in theory, it's possible to walk through molten lava.
Although I do think the Borg can't do it on the fly, and maybe not all modifications are possible without major overhauls.