Hey DW,
Long time no see!
That’s pretty good advice about the computer…
haha … Phil… yeah, I pop in now and again… There is so much discussion, that I usually have nothing to add after reading it all… so I have become more of a lurker then anything else. 
I’m with Phil. I just don’t see how they’d go about finding, extracting, and processing the raw materials to power and provide upkeep for the technology they brought with them, let alone rebuild a whole modern civilization. This ain’t Trek. No replicators. Even if everyone in the fleet were engineers, programmers and chemists, my guess is they’d run out of fuel to power the repurposed engines now doubling as electric generators way before they were able to create factories for the production of everything from mining, drilling and smelting tools to the micro electronics and magnetics of computer chips and hard drives. I think it would just be a long, painful wait for each bit of technology to wear out, and once that last lightbulb burned out, they’d be in the same position they’re in now.
Great Frakking finale. I just have one issue with it. The way Cavil went out. I don’t think that he would have killed himself. I would have thought that he would go down fighting or more likely ran away after all the other cylons where killed in CIC. He strikes me as someone who always has a way out. And someone who would use the way out
I loved the ending. The only part I didn’t like was that Lee was left all alone. He lost Kara and his Dad all at once. My only hope is that all the main folks decided to settle somewhere near each other and that they maybe got together for a card game once in a while…
I don’t think they ever had the intention to rebuild a whole modern civilization. They knew that they would simply die out and fade away in history, and were OK with that. And considering that their universe had the same chronology as ours, that happened, because our civilization is less that 10-20,000 years old, considering the invention of agriculture as the starting point.
Hard to believe they would give up all modern tech, sure, but then again maybe I would think differently if I had been living in a bunker in space for years after a humongous holocaust.
So I don’t think the colonists went to Earth to “build” or “start” anything civilization-wise, just to live the rest of their lives in peace.
Not sure I agree, I’m afraid.
There are about 35,000 humans, plus some Cylons. There’s a whole fleet of super-advanced space ships. There is all the technology contained within that fleet, as well as Cylon technology.
It is arguable whether 35,000 may be a long-term viable population base from which to thrive, given the exigencies of disease, natural disaster, small gene pool, etc. But I reckon they’d make a pretty good fist of it.
These are space-faring people. There would be lots of engineering, agricultural, chemical, etc, skills in their numbers. Besides, just knowing what can be done would be sufficient to set in process methods to do it.
I am no mega-brain, and have no special education in metallurgy or mechanical engineering, but I think with enough time, enough effort, and enough support, I could find and mine iron ore, determine a means to smelt it and work it, essentially establishing a small industry. Likewise with construction, or paper making, or water purification, whatever. And I’m a pretty useless ‘handyman’. Imagine a Tyrol, or a Doc Cottle, or Baltar.
Of course they could not sustain an equivalent technological level immediately on settlement. But given some time and effort a sustaining technological society could easily be achieved within a few generations.
[Haven’t you played Civilization???]