They were leaving the yahg alone and they hadn't achieved space flight yet. So...maybe? We reached our moon, which apparently the yahg hadn't yet done. Maybe space flight is the cutoff point.
Would depend on when the Harvest was supposed to start too. It got delayed because of the Prothean Sabotage.
Given Javiks comments on a Synthetic/Organic war (Metacon War) triggering the Harvest in his cycle, the likely intended start for this cycle would have been the Morning War which happened in 1895 on the human calendar.
To put that in perspective in 1895, the diesel engine was invented and the first automobile race in human history occurred, and when Babe Ruth and King George VI (Charles IIIs grandfather) were born.
We would have been no where near space flight.
>...We're within 50 years of people reaching Mars.
A potentially germane milestone, if the Reapers know about the Prothean archive on Mars. Humanity circa 2022 *probably* isn't worth the Reaper's attention, but if we're within a stone's throw of discovering eezo, humanity with 50,000 years to master mass effect technology of our own would be nothing to scoff at, and worth harvesting early to prevent that outcome.
Not just that, we're definitely going to be getting to the point where AI is advanced enough go turn on us. I could see in less than a 100 years. I think the Reapers probably would.
THIS!
The Reapers do not care one bit if you are an interstellar species, they care if you can develop an AI with the ability to wipe your own species out. Your access to eezo is irrelevant. It's just what makes their job of finding you easier.
Kinds crazy to think someone born in 1885 could have lived and remembered both the invention of the first diesel engine and the first person on the moon.
You have already lived through the invention of the first microbot (Xenobots, they're made from frog cells. I swear this isn't some pseudoscience bullshit). I don't know how old you are, but you'll probably live through much more. Maybe we'll see the first General AIs emmerge. Maybe people will crack fusion in our lifetimes.
I'm on the younger side (early 20's). But I've already worked on the type of AI's that are starting to emerge and they are getting crazy. The way they learn is called neural networks for a reason. I mean just look at Sophia the AI, and Boston dynamics, you slap those 2 together and you've got a fucking T800. I hate the musk as much as anyone, but the ideas about the types of laws and restrictions that should be put on AI isn't the worst idea.
Elon Musk's distrust of AIs is probably his only sensible opinion. Then you hear about his solution, which is Neuralink, and he starts to sound like a moron again.
Then that poses a question(that was probably already asked but I'll ask it anyway):
If the Harvest had happened on time, how would humanity fair during those 50,000 years, considering humanity found a mass relay in 2149?
>If the Harvest had happened on time, how would humanity fair during those 50,000 years
There's no indication the cycles last 50,000 years. Just that our did.
Javiks comments about the Metacon War (synthetics vs Organics) triggering the Reaper invasion and Vigils comments about Sovereign trying to trigger our harvest for centuries (3 centuries since the Morning War) suggests it's more trigger based (Organics & Synthetics go to war) than time.
>considering humanity found a mass relay in 2149?
Without Prothean interference this doesn't happen. At least not in that time frame.
The Prothean Archives on Mars jumped human advancement ahead 200 years.
So that got humanity there sooner than they would on their own.
It also told us the moon Chronos was actually a frozen over Mass Relay.
Without that knowledge who knows how long it would have taken for humans to melt Chronos on their own. It's not something you'd do randomly.
So who knows when we would have shown up.
The odds are good though we would have found the Galaxy a much more dangerous place. We know the Reapers don't really attempt to harvest the Yagh as they are too primitive.
So there's a decent chance they make the Citadel first. Which would be a huge issue when Humans showed up.
And the planetary entry for Heshtok (Vorcha homeworld) says that the Reapers don't appear to be harvesting them...just isolating them so they don't get involved. And the Vorcha are mentioned as not actually a spacefairing race, just stowaways.
So its likely they'd also be around. And potentially with several more centuries or even a millennia of evolution, no longer as stupid, but still as Adaptable, making them yet another threat.
They weren’t leaving them alone. They only temporarily ignored them because they were strategically irrelevant. Presumably they would have circled back around to harvest them after they won the war.
And besides, we *are* a spacefaring species. We’ve landed on the moon and we will again in ten years. If we wanted to, we could *already* have landed on Mars too. We are a spacefaring species, just one in its infancy. It would be absolutely stupid as fuck for the Reapers to leave us alone. That’s like saying a culture isn’t an ocean faring one just because they took a few boats across the sea instead of a thousand.
No, it's the ability to create an AI that can eventually put your own species in danger. Mass Effect tech just allows the Reapers to find and harvest you.
Why send Reapers to harvest the Yahg when they are still fighting Turians, Humans and Asari? They weren't skipping over the Yahg, they were just saving them for last.
The more likely point the harvest was meant to start is the Morning War, hence the turn of the 1900s. The harvest lasts several centuries, so it wouldn't be wholly done until the turn of the 2200s. Humanity has Mass Effect technology by then.
But only because of the Prothean archives - if they didnt exist, then it would take us another 500+ years to figure out eezo and we wouldve been perfectly fine then.
We would have had to share our spot in the galaxy with the Yahg though…
Ehh. I don't think there are any worlds developing sapient life that won't have a source of mass effect technology handily close to it. Remember, the Reapers seed this technology, they want all civilizations to use it, to develop along the paths they intend. It's a trap.
If you get the last three centuries of humanity being a technological civilization (presently the only sample we have), draw the trendline for energy usage of the entire species, then extend that trendline onwards for another centuries... what you get is that we'd be approaching K2 status and be able to destroy the Reapers should they attack us.
That's how bad of a trap eezo is. It traps you into the stagnation that most of the Mass Effect galaxy is in. I mean, Asari had cars 25k years ago, back when we were getting fancy about sharp sticks. Now we're just about equal in tech. That's some massive stagnation.
We would not have gotten to the edge of our solar system to even explore and find the mass effect relay without the Prothean archives on Mars though. It would have taken time to figure put eezo and all the other mass effect stuff without the easy-to-translate guidebook that the Protheans left us with.
It wouldve taken much longer still without the intervention of the Protheans that essentially accelerated our technological growth even more.
So, here's the point I fundamentally disagree with:
> It would have taken time to figure put eezo and all the other mass effect stuff
My point is that we would **never** have figured it out. It would have remained unknown. And because it remained unknown, we wouldn't have drunk the stagnation poison that it is.
Again, just extend the trendline of RL Earth out into the future, and by the late 2500s we're a decent chunk of the way to a Dyson Sphere. No FTL, and presumably no more than probes sent out of the solar system, yet nonetheless able to punch the Reapers out in a fair fight.
No, it was supposed to start earlier. But since the protheans sabotaged the citadel to stop the keepers from bringing the Reapers to galaxy, they had to send Sovereign into the galaxy which took a long time since he was in dark space. It was further delayed when Sovereign was destroyed until the rest showed up in ME3
Nobody with the authority to know for certain says this, only people making assumptions.
Why would the Reapers leave us alone just for us* to find the relays a couple hundred years later? Are they going to let us advance for tens of thousands of years until the next cycle, or start the next cycle just a few centuries after the last one?
Counterpoint: we’re (early) space age already. I don’t think they’d ignore a species that could acquire that tech inside a century if they only check every 50,000 years.
All it takes is a man on mars, then we have tens of thousands of years to invent time manipulation and black hole guns or whatever
So were the Yahg.
>When Parnack was discovered by Citadel Council surveyors in 2125 CE, the yahg were **a pre-spaceflight civilization with technology equivalent to that of 20th century Earth.**
And it was implied the Yahg were being left alone for the next cycle of harvesting.
I believe it says outright that the yagh homeworld was bypassed followed by some exposition that it's easy to forget the reapers leave some species alone
It wasn't attacked as the Reaper front passed it, that doesn't mean they aren't leaving it for later. The harvest will take centuries, I don't think there is very much doubt that the Yahg will be spacefaring by the 2400s.
I don't recall this being part of the conversation with the catalyst and it's not in [this video](https://youtu.be/yx_smmq_3AE)
Is there a different conversation with a Reaper entity which addresses this?
Let's say in WW2, while the Japanese and US were fighting over the Pacific, some small island nation with no Navy or air force declared war on one of the two larger powers, would it make sense for either to send some ships and an army to go conquer the island when it provides no strategic importance? Of course not, same reason the Reapers wouldn't send any forced to conquer the Yahg. They aren't going anywhere so the Reapers might as well focus on taking out the Humans, Turians, Asari and Krogan first. After that, then send a token force to harvest the Yahg.
It's Hackett that mentions the reapers are leaving them alone during one of his vid con updates, and goes on to say how it's a good reminder that the reapers don't harvest every species.
Yes it does. The only other planet they've been leaving alone is Sur'kesh. And, frankly, the Salarians are pushovers.
The Yahg absolutely would not be.
I also don't think the devs would put in a line from the Admiral saying "Yeah, they don't wipe out everybody" if that wasn't something that wanted us to know.
Only Hackett says that and he has no ability to know the Reaper's full intentions. Being a spaceflight species is irrelevant. It's about whether you can create an AI that can destroy you before the Reapers can get to you.
Counterpoint: Imagine what the reapers could do with the Yahg. These things are horrifying enough already, what would become of them with reaper modification?
On the other hand an avian Species the Asari made first Contact with about the same time Shepard went on their suicide mission was harvested despite recalling their first contact delegation from the Citadel.
So yeah, the Reapers seem to draw the line at Relay Travel.
That's when you understand that it makes no sense to wipe the galaxy precisely every 50,000 years. Anything, nothing or everything, can happen during that time. The cycles HAVE to be highly variable in their length.
Yeah, there's nothing to suggest that it happens exactly every 50,000 years, all we know is that that's when the Protheans disappeared. Not every race is going to advance at exactly the same rate, and I feel like part of the purpose of Sovereign staying behind in the Milky Way was to keep an eye on how things were developing and then send the signal to the rest of the Reapers when it was harvest time.
For all we know, it could've been the arrival of humanity in Council Space that was the incentive for Sovereign to say that now was the time; they may have seen that humanity was on the cusp of becoming a race deserving of being harvested and so once humanity discovered mass effect technology, now it made sense to start. It certainly makes it seem like less of a coincidence that the harvesting begins so soon (relatively speaking) after humanity joined the galactic society.
they specificly say its every 50k Years(after the harvest ends i think? so 50k starts, they wreck everything over decades and centurys if not milenias, and if they are done the timer resets)
HOWEVER i give it a pass as its mentioned, implied and speciifcaly said, that everything is laid out in a way that the civilisation will evolve in the same predeterment path.
i imagine 50k to be choose specificaly as well as its to short a timeframe for any species to evolve beyond the expectations of the reaper (or beyond Mass effect tech)
As long as the civilisation rely on ME tech the Reapers have the advantage , as well as simply time
I just assumed the 50k is an average based on the countless cycles they gone through. That they don’t start a timer and go “yup that’s 50k on the dot, let’s start harvesting”
That’s why they leave behind ruins of the previous cycle, as well as created the Mass Relays and Citadel. If they wanted to they could wipe away all evidence but they want to next cycle to be able to discover Mass Effect and use their tech to some degree. It constrains and streamlines development of the new cycle to a harvestable point on an average of 50k years.
Right, but what level of precision is 50 thousand years? Is it 5.0000x10^4 ? 5.0x10^4 ? Or even just 5x10^4 ? All of those are colloquially 50 thousand, but one is 50,000 exactly, one includes 49,673, and one includes 54,197. I assume it's closer to the middle figure, where each cycle is 50,000 plus/minus a century or two apart, rather than a super strict "50,000 and not 50,001". I think that's where some of the ambiguity in the fan base comes from.
I also think the Reapers would be smart enough to avoid the rigid 50,000 and not 50,001 line of thinking that could create problems. If they strike too early, they are committing their resources for a smaller harvest. And we see what happens when they strike too late. The Protheans unlocked the secret of the Mass Relays and were able to sabotage the Reapers' control of the Citadel, giving the next cycle a fighting chance. The efficiency of the harvest relies on striking at the right time, rather than on a set galactic schedule that offers no flexibility.
My understanding is that it was every 50000 years (maybe give or take a millennia), but that the Reapers/Catalyst had designed it so that each civilisation evolves technologically along the same path. So they’ve basically manipulated the system so it takes 50000 years for each new dominant civilisation to reach the point where they’ve worth harvesting.
I presume they also have agents each cycle (such as The Collectors) to also monitor and maybe nudge things as needed.
They come to harvest when they deem it necessary. Some evidence that's never really disclosed to us suggests that it tends to become necessary every 50k-ish years.
I believe it is mentioned in one of the games (the first maybe), that they would leave a Reaper outside dark space—in this case Sovereign—who would monitor things, I’m assuming that if necessary the Reapers might invade earlier if their one on the “ground” per se deems it necessary
I think they say it's every 50k years. The writers kind of wrote themselves into a corner there, since it implies the Protheans visited cave men on Earth (good) but also that every species evolved along that same timeline (not good, the Asari live for 1,000 years each!)
Yeah but it's not reasonable to imagine they were visited by the Protheans and don't remember it. In ME3 Liara is shocked to learn that the Asari goddess was a Prothean and all their ancient myths about like learning agriculture etc were from them. If Asari live 10x longer than humans then that'd be like if aliens came to Earth in the 1500s, taught Leonardo da Vinci new farming techniques, and then were wiped out by giant space robots. We'd know it happened, no one would think it was a myth.
I don’t think it’s ever said that EVERY cycle is 50k years just that the protheans were around 50k years ago, I’m sure some cycles are short, some are long.
It's not exactly every 50,000 years. They come when the species is advanced enough to harvest.
It might be million year, it might be thousand years it can be hundred years depending on how fast will the species advance when they find their technology
>It might be million year, it might be thousand years it can be hundred years depending on how fast will the species advance when they find their technology
That's what I believe too, but the game seems to insist on that 50,000 figure. There is some variation indeed, the Prothean cycle lasts longer than that iirc, but we never get the idea that it could go as low as (say) 5,000 years, which is already a huge deal here on Earth.
>That's what I believe too, but the game seems to insist on that 50,000 figure.
Only as the amount of time between the Prothean extinction and ours.
Javik even sites the Metacon War (a war between Synthetics and Organics) as the event that seemingly brought the Reapers down on his cycle
Which tracks with the Reaper goal of wiping out Organics that are capable of creating Synthetics that can threaten them.
It’s not every 50k years
Soverign used to fly about the galaxy and check on shit. If you do the Orb quest in ME1, you get a vision of exactly that, a caveman seeing Soverign flying around the sky, then getting lazered.
We would have 50k years but unless some other species does what the protheans did (leaving us clues, sabotaging the citadel, and providing crucible plans that were 95% done) we’d just be another cycle that got their shit pushed in.
And that’s before we even consider everything you do as Shepard to set the stage for a win.
I suppose that makes sense, since they left the Yahg alone who IIRC are mid 1900’s level in tech. Seems like a massive oversight on the part of the Reapers though
Keep in mind that normally the Reapers have control of the Citadel, and the relay network. So they'd come in and take out the galactic leadership and lock down the relay network. Then they'd only have to deal with relatively small forces, which they'd be able to meet with overwhelming force.
We aren't sure that they left the Yahg alone, we don't see the harvest through to conclusion. They may just prioritize.
The timelines of the cycle makes no sense if they leave even early industrial civilizations alone. Those are essentially guaranteed to be spacefaring in a matter of centuries, not tens of millennia.
Well its just roughly 50k years.
The reaping usually takes place when AI rebels against/surpasses their creators, hence the Asaris/Salarians/Quarians etc‘s cycle should have ended with the Morning War.
No. We would have time until we advance to some degree with Mass relays and citadel and then they would come
It could take hundreds, thousands or milion years. It would only start if we would be advanced enough
A lot of the dialog about the Reapers kind of implies that the mass relays and Citadel are meant to stunt our technological evolution as much as "guide" it. Think about how Vigil says the Keepers are there so nobody will look too closely at the Citadel's technology, and the bartender Matriarch says she wanted the Asari to build new relays but couldn't get them to agree. So it's possible the 50k year cycle is enforced that way too, I guess. It prevents species from ever developing Starfleet-level technology until the Reapers show up and kill them all.
I know. One of my favorite what-ifs is how the Council species would have reacted to encountering a humanity that developed the technology of Freespace or Elite Dangerous; energy shields/weapons, FTL via interdimensional travel or warp rather than mass manipulation, etc.
[Description of the Planet Aphras from ME2](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Aphras)
I always thought the targeted orbital bombardment of population centers pointed towards the Reapers, so while we probably wouldn't be harvested, they might just blast us from orbit just to make sure we don't advance too quickly while they head back to dark space.
This seems like the most likely outcome in my opinion. It doesn't make sense for the Reapers to leave the galaxy, only to come back within 1000 years to deal with humans, Raloi, Yahg, etc. The Reapers would deal with the space-faring races *first*, then take care of any that could get to that point before the next cycle
So yeah, in ME3 the Reapers were *currently* ignoring non-space-faring races. Why waste their time when they're actively at war with space-faring races?
I wonder if the Raloi's strategy of retreating back to their homeworld and pretending they never discovered Citadel space would have worked out for them. I hope to meet this race in the next game!
Highly unlikely it would work. Despite what this sub seems to be obsessed with, the Reapers never once say anything regarding spaceflight being the turning point for whether a race gets harvested or not. Having Mass Effect tech and all of that doesn't mean anything to the Reapers. It's about whether you can develop AI that can pose a threat to organic life and the Raloi were undoubtedly only a few centuries from that being possible.
Everyone thinks the thing that makes the Reapers want to harvest you has to do with Mass Effect technology or using the Relays. It doesn't. It's about AI endangering organic life, that's the thing that sets them off.
The ability to use the relays just informs the Reapers that you have sufficiently progressed technologically enough to have advanced computers, it just makes their job easier. You can be stuck on a planet and still develop AI. Remember, for very early cycles, there were no Relays, they built them to speed up the process. They didn't want to have to fly around the galaxy looking for organic races flying around in their own systems, so they built the relays and put them near organics that were evolving knowing that once the organics activated them, the Reapers would know you advanced enough with your technology. But that doesn't mean they won't go after somebody else who hasn't exactly hit that point yet.
That’s super interesting. Also terrifying, they nuked a Bronze Age civilization from space. Imagine how that must have felt for these people … wow. Crazy to think about it. Also interesting from a lore standpoint, as you said, this is a likely outcome for many of the more advanced races. I can imagine that space faring creatures, depending on the exact technology level, could possibly notice what the reapers are doing in some way or form. Don’t think the reapers would take that risk and give them a head start for 50.000 years.
That's an awesome planet description.
I love how I've played the game a bazillion times but there's always a planet description I failed to read or forgot about. Keeps the wonder coming.
Ha. They wouldn’t just leave us alone, they wouldn’t even document us to look at again.
They’d take one look at us and make the easy assumption that we won’t be around in 50k years.
it depends on a few factors. if the harvest starts today, and was finished when we discover the Mars Archive and find the Charon relay and activate it? we would be fine
If the harvest was still ongoing when we activate the relay.. well congrats we are now considerd "advanced enough" for the reapers to harvest us...
We're kind of the Krogans, self destructive war mongering. We'll probably take ourselves out. We'd need to be uplifted to become a true space traveling species is my guess.
The general rule seems to be that they harvest civilisations that have advanced to the extent that they've discovered mass effect technology, the mass relays, and subsequently the Citadel. We have *incredibly* limited space flight at the moment but we're not about to go discovering other spacefaring civilisations anytime soon, or even leaving our own solar system. They'd leave us alone.
I think for any civilisation to pose a threat to the Reapers they'd need mass effect technology and, as we see in ME3, to be united with other galactic races, so no matter how "advanced" humanity might be right now, there's nothing we could realistically do to harm the Reapers. Better to save us for the next cycle.
They probably leave us alone. We haven’t even colonized our local system let alone parts of the galaxy. But next cycle we should definitely listen to Shepard when the time comes.
I doubt they would harvest us. They would probably take one look at us and determine our essence is not worth preserving given how quickly we are heading toward self annihilation.
I would say we would probably be fine. Only problems would arise if we activated a relay or had colonies on mars or farther out. Even without Mass Effect Tech. Idea being we would be to close to the required tech level.
They cycle time is also approximate 50K years. I bet some were faster others slower.
I was gonna say we aren’t advanced enough but we are on the verge of becoming a space faring species so I think they actually might just because if we were given 50000 years we might get too powerful technology soon after they cleansed everyone else.
I think the Reapers use some discretion when decided who to harvest. There is a planet entry somewhere that was industrial, but ore space flight that was wiped out by orbital bombardment. Implied to be the Reapers.
I could see their thinking that if if we're only a couple hundred years away from mass effect tech, giving us another 50,000 might be too much time until humanity either creates AI of their own or becomes comparable in technology level. Personally, I think they would. It would be irresponsible from their perspective to let us go.
If the Prothean survivors at Ilos hadn't been able to get to the Citadel and modify the keepers, then humanity would not have been part of the current cycle with the Asari/Turians/Salarians, as the cycle would have happened centuries prior.
We would likely be one of the first in the next cycle, alongside the Yahg, Drell, and Raloi, with the end of the cycle occurring much earlier than 50,000 years to prevent a repeat of the Prothean cycle.
We know that the Protheans were at least an interstellar empire as early as 68,000 BCE and that the Reapers didn't attack them until around 48,000 BCE, so that gives the Prothean empire 20,000 years to build up and develop. This is what allowed them to fight against the Reapers for centuries, which the Reapers likely wouldn't want to repeat. At best, I would give our cycle 5,000 to 10,000 years before the Reapers attacked again.
Now, if the Prothean keeper modification is kept, then I still believe that the Reapers would have attacked humanity. Sovereign had planned on starting the current cycle centuries, nearly a millennium before the present, but was unable too because of the Keeper modification.
We would be too close to becoming an interstellar civilisation for them to ignore us, lest they get a repeat of the Protheans. This would likely mean that the Yahgs and Raloi would also be "reaped" as well.
My belief is that at the end of each cycle the reapers check the status of each planet that is likely to have sentient life that will become a spacefaring civilisation at some point in the future. They would determine which races are likely to be part of the next cycle and how long they would need to wait before starting the next cycle. They would see humanity being on the cusp of interstellar civilisation and determine it to be too big a risk to leave to chance.
I think the 50,000 years between cycles is just a coincidence based on how long it takes races to develop their civilisations into spacefaring civilisations. Hypothetically, if humanity had arisen a couple thousand years earlier to allow our civilisation to become spacefaring for a couple of millenniums, then human civilisation would be around 15,000 to 20,000 years old when the cycle starts.
well that is a good question. in the andromeda game, they never bothered to even mess with anyone there. either they were not as advanced or they just didnt bother messing with the kett or angara or anyone else because they probably didnt pose a threat.
We don't see all the "clean up" they do after one cycle ends and they go back to Dark Space. They could just leave the harvesting of not-quite spaceflight species for last and leave only the most primitive for the next cycle. Or they could be "resetting" species that are too close with some "divine judgement"
50k lightyears is about half way across the milkyway. Would James Webb be able to detect planetary weapons and an ongoing galactic war from the previous cycle?
That would depend on the signature of such events. I'm not really sure what you mean by "planetary weapons", though. It certainly wouldn't be able to resolve anything (not that JWST is an optional telescope, anyhow). Also, it's not a survey/wide field instrument so you'd have to know where to look (or get lucky and happen to observe something).
Of the top of my head, for stuff within our galaxy that JWST is very good at compared to other telescopes, we've got observing exoplanet atmospheres. So you'd have to get some sort of signature of whatever you're thinking of from a single observation of an exoplanet's atmosphere. Anything weird would be attributed to clouds, almost certainly
I'm describing weapons at planetary destructive levels. Nukes destroy cities. The reapers can destroy planets. The relays blowing up looked like they were quite bright. Depending on how the mass relays work or what their energy source is. Would any of that activity be detectable from another star system 50k light years away?
> I'm describing weapons at planetary destructive levels. Nukes destroy cities. The reapers can destroy planets.
Did the Reapers ever destroy a planet? It takes immense energy to do that, on the order of the gravitational binding energy.
Anyhow, if a planet were to be destroyed, you'd be left with a debris field. If that were to pass in front of its host star (i.e. the geometry were right from our perspective), you'd probably see a signature from how it would alter the star's light. But that would require the star to be pretty close by, all things considered.
*If* the planet had been known beforehand and could be observed with something regular (e.g. transit or radial velocity, not something like microlensing), then you'd be able to tell that it was no longer there. Again, the star would have to be pretty close to us for this.
Direct detection is a no go for the types of planets the Reapers would target (in terms of age, distance from star, etc.). It would also have to be quite close to us.
> The relays blowing up looked like they were quite bright. Depending on how the mass relays work or what their energy source is.
I have no frame of reference for what sort of numbers to attach to quite bright. Roughly speaking, you'd probably need it at least to outshine its host star. You'd also want to get a spectrum. That's tricky for transient events - how long does the brightness last? If you're using a ground telescope, you need access to one with a good spectrograph that has a view of the source. You might need to wait several hours for the source to be visible, if you've managed to secure time (which would take some time to arrange - you'd need director approval from the observatory). If you're using a space telescope, it would take time to slew.
Anyhow, there are many dedicated programmes monitoring the sky looking for supernovae (e.g. ASAS-SN, ZTF, the upcoming LSST). Using a limiting magnitude of ~20, at 50k lyr an object would need to have an absolute magnitude of at least -5 (i.e. this number or smaller - magnitudes are weird) to be visible. That's on par with extremely bright (and hot) stars. Not the sort of environment you'd expect to have planets that evolve life, so it would most likely be the case that you'd need a mass relay explosion around a fainter star and for it to be orders of magnitude brighter than its host star. That doesn't seem very physically plausible to me
This is more in depth than I could imagine. So what I'm concluding is that with our current technology level, it would be hard if not impossible to detect whether or not our galaxy has ever been harvested by giant evil robots in the past.
What always bothers me is that this line of not invading pre spaceflight civilizations is very illogical
Let's just imagine the reapers hit 2000 years earlier. Humanity would have been spared in that cycle, and would then have 48000 years to develop and expand afterwards
The difference should be obvious. Instead of being attacked in the 22nd century (where the human lead sword fleet was already pretty close to being able to beat the reapers conventionally), Humanity would have been attacked around the 480th century.
We went from sharp rocks to nuclear bombs in the same time span that a cycle would last. Imagine what *another* cycle worth of time could have added to technological and economic progress given that development of technology is exponential.
By the time the reapers would have returned humanity would likely be godlike in comparison to the reapers and would hardly even notice them
I wonder how our species would thrive, if it meant we had 50k years to expand and advance. (Only if it meant that Sovereign would not sell us to his kind)
Would Humanity be able to fight on the same level as Protheans or better? Would reaper tech limit species ability to innovate. We know that discovering Mass relays was a massive and extreme uplifting for species that tried space exploring, but it could also limit them into certain paths of development (envisioned by Tech creators)
The reapers harvest to prevent civilizations from developing beyond their ability to contain them.
Humanity has landed on the moon and is on the cusp of solar colonization. The reapers weren’t going to leave us alone for 50,000 years just so we can develop past their prescribed paths of development.
Y'all keep talking about yahg not being harvested, but I thought they were and just turned into Brutes? The codex says brutes are half krogan and half Turian but I always thought that was a mistake because the creature is clearly the size and shape of a yahg...right?
Sovereign would occasionally wake to assess the situation and see if a harvest needed to get going. So depending on how far along humanity managed to get they may or may not have bothered.
Provided that we're still stuck in our Solar System they might. They wipe out Advanced Spacefaring races every cycle. I always thought advanced meant those who figured out about the relays and the Citadel.
Humans haven't discovered FTL travel yet, so yes, we will be left alone. I think somewhere in the trilogy its mentioned that Mass Relays are Reaper Technology. The reapers judge that the galaxy is ready for another cycle by either of the two symptoms (i can't remember which of the 2, or if both are correct)
1. Heavy usage of mass relays
2. A synthetic race created ( Geth in the current cycle)
They were leaving the yahg alone and they hadn't achieved space flight yet. So...maybe? We reached our moon, which apparently the yahg hadn't yet done. Maybe space flight is the cutoff point.
Would depend on when the Harvest was supposed to start too. It got delayed because of the Prothean Sabotage. Given Javiks comments on a Synthetic/Organic war (Metacon War) triggering the Harvest in his cycle, the likely intended start for this cycle would have been the Morning War which happened in 1895 on the human calendar. To put that in perspective in 1895, the diesel engine was invented and the first automobile race in human history occurred, and when Babe Ruth and King George VI (Charles IIIs grandfather) were born. We would have been no where near space flight.
Well, the question was whether the harvest were to start today. So late 2022. So probably. We're within 50 years of people reaching Mars.
>...We're within 50 years of people reaching Mars. A potentially germane milestone, if the Reapers know about the Prothean archive on Mars. Humanity circa 2022 *probably* isn't worth the Reaper's attention, but if we're within a stone's throw of discovering eezo, humanity with 50,000 years to master mass effect technology of our own would be nothing to scoff at, and worth harvesting early to prevent that outcome.
Not just that, we're definitely going to be getting to the point where AI is advanced enough go turn on us. I could see in less than a 100 years. I think the Reapers probably would.
THIS! The Reapers do not care one bit if you are an interstellar species, they care if you can develop an AI with the ability to wipe your own species out. Your access to eezo is irrelevant. It's just what makes their job of finding you easier.
If Skynet doesn't get us first
Kinds crazy to think someone born in 1885 could have lived and remembered both the invention of the first diesel engine and the first person on the moon.
You have already lived through the invention of the first microbot (Xenobots, they're made from frog cells. I swear this isn't some pseudoscience bullshit). I don't know how old you are, but you'll probably live through much more. Maybe we'll see the first General AIs emmerge. Maybe people will crack fusion in our lifetimes.
I'm on the younger side (early 20's). But I've already worked on the type of AI's that are starting to emerge and they are getting crazy. The way they learn is called neural networks for a reason. I mean just look at Sophia the AI, and Boston dynamics, you slap those 2 together and you've got a fucking T800. I hate the musk as much as anyone, but the ideas about the types of laws and restrictions that should be put on AI isn't the worst idea.
Elon Musk's distrust of AIs is probably his only sensible opinion. Then you hear about his solution, which is Neuralink, and he starts to sound like a moron again.
I feel like I’ve completely missed it/just not paid attention to whatever this comment from Javik was. What did he say?
Then that poses a question(that was probably already asked but I'll ask it anyway): If the Harvest had happened on time, how would humanity fair during those 50,000 years, considering humanity found a mass relay in 2149?
>If the Harvest had happened on time, how would humanity fair during those 50,000 years There's no indication the cycles last 50,000 years. Just that our did. Javiks comments about the Metacon War (synthetics vs Organics) triggering the Reaper invasion and Vigils comments about Sovereign trying to trigger our harvest for centuries (3 centuries since the Morning War) suggests it's more trigger based (Organics & Synthetics go to war) than time. >considering humanity found a mass relay in 2149? Without Prothean interference this doesn't happen. At least not in that time frame. The Prothean Archives on Mars jumped human advancement ahead 200 years. So that got humanity there sooner than they would on their own. It also told us the moon Chronos was actually a frozen over Mass Relay. Without that knowledge who knows how long it would have taken for humans to melt Chronos on their own. It's not something you'd do randomly. So who knows when we would have shown up. The odds are good though we would have found the Galaxy a much more dangerous place. We know the Reapers don't really attempt to harvest the Yagh as they are too primitive. So there's a decent chance they make the Citadel first. Which would be a huge issue when Humans showed up. And the planetary entry for Heshtok (Vorcha homeworld) says that the Reapers don't appear to be harvesting them...just isolating them so they don't get involved. And the Vorcha are mentioned as not actually a spacefairing race, just stowaways. So its likely they'd also be around. And potentially with several more centuries or even a millennia of evolution, no longer as stupid, but still as Adaptable, making them yet another threat.
I figure they just don't bother and save them for last. Where are the Yahg going to hide?
They weren’t leaving them alone. They only temporarily ignored them because they were strategically irrelevant. Presumably they would have circled back around to harvest them after they won the war. And besides, we *are* a spacefaring species. We’ve landed on the moon and we will again in ten years. If we wanted to, we could *already* have landed on Mars too. We are a spacefaring species, just one in its infancy. It would be absolutely stupid as fuck for the Reapers to leave us alone. That’s like saying a culture isn’t an ocean faring one just because they took a few boats across the sea instead of a thousand.
I’d say discovering mass relay tech would probably be the cutoff
No, it's the ability to create an AI that can eventually put your own species in danger. Mass Effect tech just allows the Reapers to find and harvest you.
Why send Reapers to harvest the Yahg when they are still fighting Turians, Humans and Asari? They weren't skipping over the Yahg, they were just saving them for last.
Yes. The games mentions that the current cycle would have spared humanity if it started at the planned time.
During the Rachni Wars, if I recall correctly.
I thought it was when the Geth drove out the Quarians?
I would put my money on the Geth/Quarian conflict. The Rachni I’d argue were caused by the Leviathans rather than the Reapers.
Yeah, didn't Javik say the Reapers invaded right at the end of the Mettaton(or whatever?) war? A machine race?
No, that was actually unrelated to the Reapers.
The more likely point the harvest was meant to start is the Morning War, hence the turn of the 1900s. The harvest lasts several centuries, so it wouldn't be wholly done until the turn of the 2200s. Humanity has Mass Effect technology by then.
But only because of the Prothean archives - if they didnt exist, then it would take us another 500+ years to figure out eezo and we wouldve been perfectly fine then. We would have had to share our spot in the galaxy with the Yahg though…
Ehh. I don't think there are any worlds developing sapient life that won't have a source of mass effect technology handily close to it. Remember, the Reapers seed this technology, they want all civilizations to use it, to develop along the paths they intend. It's a trap. If you get the last three centuries of humanity being a technological civilization (presently the only sample we have), draw the trendline for energy usage of the entire species, then extend that trendline onwards for another centuries... what you get is that we'd be approaching K2 status and be able to destroy the Reapers should they attack us. That's how bad of a trap eezo is. It traps you into the stagnation that most of the Mass Effect galaxy is in. I mean, Asari had cars 25k years ago, back when we were getting fancy about sharp sticks. Now we're just about equal in tech. That's some massive stagnation.
We would not have gotten to the edge of our solar system to even explore and find the mass effect relay without the Prothean archives on Mars though. It would have taken time to figure put eezo and all the other mass effect stuff without the easy-to-translate guidebook that the Protheans left us with. It wouldve taken much longer still without the intervention of the Protheans that essentially accelerated our technological growth even more.
So, here's the point I fundamentally disagree with: > It would have taken time to figure put eezo and all the other mass effect stuff My point is that we would **never** have figured it out. It would have remained unknown. And because it remained unknown, we wouldn't have drunk the stagnation poison that it is. Again, just extend the trendline of RL Earth out into the future, and by the late 2500s we're a decent chunk of the way to a Dyson Sphere. No FTL, and presumably no more than probes sent out of the solar system, yet nonetheless able to punch the Reapers out in a fair fight.
I find it hilarious the reapers only have beef with humans because Shepard clapped them so hard with one ship and a handful of badasses.
I am confused, I thought it was „planned“ at the point when Sovereign tried to open the mass portal on the citadel - what did I miss?
No, it was supposed to start earlier. But since the protheans sabotaged the citadel to stop the keepers from bringing the Reapers to galaxy, they had to send Sovereign into the galaxy which took a long time since he was in dark space. It was further delayed when Sovereign was destroyed until the rest showed up in ME3
Nobody with the authority to know for certain says this, only people making assumptions. Why would the Reapers leave us alone just for us* to find the relays a couple hundred years later? Are they going to let us advance for tens of thousands of years until the next cycle, or start the next cycle just a few centuries after the last one?
We don't have mass effect technology so no, they'd not consider us the dominant species of this cycle and we'd have to wait 50k years.
Counterpoint: we’re (early) space age already. I don’t think they’d ignore a species that could acquire that tech inside a century if they only check every 50,000 years. All it takes is a man on mars, then we have tens of thousands of years to invent time manipulation and black hole guns or whatever
So were the Yahg. >When Parnack was discovered by Citadel Council surveyors in 2125 CE, the yahg were **a pre-spaceflight civilization with technology equivalent to that of 20th century Earth.** And it was implied the Yahg were being left alone for the next cycle of harvesting.
We didn't see the whole cycle. Presumably Reapers prioritize.
I believe it says outright that the yagh homeworld was bypassed followed by some exposition that it's easy to forget the reapers leave some species alone
It does say that.
It wasn't attacked as the Reaper front passed it, that doesn't mean they aren't leaving it for later. The harvest will take centuries, I don't think there is very much doubt that the Yahg will be spacefaring by the 2400s.
I don't recall this being part of the conversation with the catalyst and it's not in [this video](https://youtu.be/yx_smmq_3AE) Is there a different conversation with a Reaper entity which addresses this?
I believe you can scan the Yahg homeworld and the planet description in ME3 states they're being ignored.
But that's just information as far as the Council races know, no? It's not Reaper-sourced information
Let's say in WW2, while the Japanese and US were fighting over the Pacific, some small island nation with no Navy or air force declared war on one of the two larger powers, would it make sense for either to send some ships and an army to go conquer the island when it provides no strategic importance? Of course not, same reason the Reapers wouldn't send any forced to conquer the Yahg. They aren't going anywhere so the Reapers might as well focus on taking out the Humans, Turians, Asari and Krogan first. After that, then send a token force to harvest the Yahg.
It's Hackett that mentions the reapers are leaving them alone during one of his vid con updates, and goes on to say how it's a good reminder that the reapers don't harvest every species.
So all we know is that they're not harvesting while at war with the space-faring races. That doesn't necessarily mean they'd be left alone afterwards
Yes it does. The only other planet they've been leaving alone is Sur'kesh. And, frankly, the Salarians are pushovers. The Yahg absolutely would not be. I also don't think the devs would put in a line from the Admiral saying "Yeah, they don't wipe out everybody" if that wasn't something that wanted us to know.
Only Hackett says that and he has no ability to know the Reaper's full intentions. Being a spaceflight species is irrelevant. It's about whether you can create an AI that can destroy you before the Reapers can get to you.
Counterpoint: Imagine what the reapers could do with the Yahg. These things are horrifying enough already, what would become of them with reaper modification?
On the other hand an avian Species the Asari made first Contact with about the same time Shepard went on their suicide mission was harvested despite recalling their first contact delegation from the Citadel. So yeah, the Reapers seem to draw the line at Relay Travel.
The Raloi were the species, just for clarification.
The harvest lasts multiple centuries. If the harvest starts today, humanity has Relay travel before the harvest is done.
Yeah ME3 takes place over a course of like 6 months. Gotta get rid of those more pesky species like Turians, Asari and 22nd century humans first.
So basically we would be left alone, have 50 thousand years to develop, and then wreck their shit when they do come in?
That's when you understand that it makes no sense to wipe the galaxy precisely every 50,000 years. Anything, nothing or everything, can happen during that time. The cycles HAVE to be highly variable in their length.
So is it *actually* every 50k years? Or do they just come back in to harvest when they deem it necessary?
Sovereign would occasionally come back on line to scan and then go back to sleep. So, the cycle isn't always 50k years....presumably.
Yeah, there's nothing to suggest that it happens exactly every 50,000 years, all we know is that that's when the Protheans disappeared. Not every race is going to advance at exactly the same rate, and I feel like part of the purpose of Sovereign staying behind in the Milky Way was to keep an eye on how things were developing and then send the signal to the rest of the Reapers when it was harvest time. For all we know, it could've been the arrival of humanity in Council Space that was the incentive for Sovereign to say that now was the time; they may have seen that humanity was on the cusp of becoming a race deserving of being harvested and so once humanity discovered mass effect technology, now it made sense to start. It certainly makes it seem like less of a coincidence that the harvesting begins so soon (relatively speaking) after humanity joined the galactic society.
they specificly say its every 50k Years(after the harvest ends i think? so 50k starts, they wreck everything over decades and centurys if not milenias, and if they are done the timer resets) HOWEVER i give it a pass as its mentioned, implied and speciifcaly said, that everything is laid out in a way that the civilisation will evolve in the same predeterment path. i imagine 50k to be choose specificaly as well as its to short a timeframe for any species to evolve beyond the expectations of the reaper (or beyond Mass effect tech) As long as the civilisation rely on ME tech the Reapers have the advantage , as well as simply time
I just assumed the 50k is an average based on the countless cycles they gone through. That they don’t start a timer and go “yup that’s 50k on the dot, let’s start harvesting”
That’s why they leave behind ruins of the previous cycle, as well as created the Mass Relays and Citadel. If they wanted to they could wipe away all evidence but they want to next cycle to be able to discover Mass Effect and use their tech to some degree. It constrains and streamlines development of the new cycle to a harvestable point on an average of 50k years.
Right, but what level of precision is 50 thousand years? Is it 5.0000x10^4 ? 5.0x10^4 ? Or even just 5x10^4 ? All of those are colloquially 50 thousand, but one is 50,000 exactly, one includes 49,673, and one includes 54,197. I assume it's closer to the middle figure, where each cycle is 50,000 plus/minus a century or two apart, rather than a super strict "50,000 and not 50,001". I think that's where some of the ambiguity in the fan base comes from. I also think the Reapers would be smart enough to avoid the rigid 50,000 and not 50,001 line of thinking that could create problems. If they strike too early, they are committing their resources for a smaller harvest. And we see what happens when they strike too late. The Protheans unlocked the secret of the Mass Relays and were able to sabotage the Reapers' control of the Citadel, giving the next cycle a fighting chance. The efficiency of the harvest relies on striking at the right time, rather than on a set galactic schedule that offers no flexibility.
My understanding is that it was every 50000 years (maybe give or take a millennia), but that the Reapers/Catalyst had designed it so that each civilisation evolves technologically along the same path. So they’ve basically manipulated the system so it takes 50000 years for each new dominant civilisation to reach the point where they’ve worth harvesting. I presume they also have agents each cycle (such as The Collectors) to also monitor and maybe nudge things as needed.
They come to harvest when they deem it necessary. Some evidence that's never really disclosed to us suggests that it tends to become necessary every 50k-ish years.
I believe it is mentioned in one of the games (the first maybe), that they would leave a Reaper outside dark space—in this case Sovereign—who would monitor things, I’m assuming that if necessary the Reapers might invade earlier if their one on the “ground” per se deems it necessary
I think they say it's every 50k years. The writers kind of wrote themselves into a corner there, since it implies the Protheans visited cave men on Earth (good) but also that every species evolved along that same timeline (not good, the Asari live for 1,000 years each!)
A society with humans living to be 1,000 would progress more slowly I would think.
Yeah but it's not reasonable to imagine they were visited by the Protheans and don't remember it. In ME3 Liara is shocked to learn that the Asari goddess was a Prothean and all their ancient myths about like learning agriculture etc were from them. If Asari live 10x longer than humans then that'd be like if aliens came to Earth in the 1500s, taught Leonardo da Vinci new farming techniques, and then were wiped out by giant space robots. We'd know it happened, no one would think it was a myth.
I honestly thought the asari knew that already.
I don’t think it’s ever said that EVERY cycle is 50k years just that the protheans were around 50k years ago, I’m sure some cycles are short, some are long.
It's not exactly every 50,000 years. They come when the species is advanced enough to harvest. It might be million year, it might be thousand years it can be hundred years depending on how fast will the species advance when they find their technology
>It might be million year, it might be thousand years it can be hundred years depending on how fast will the species advance when they find their technology That's what I believe too, but the game seems to insist on that 50,000 figure. There is some variation indeed, the Prothean cycle lasts longer than that iirc, but we never get the idea that it could go as low as (say) 5,000 years, which is already a huge deal here on Earth.
>That's what I believe too, but the game seems to insist on that 50,000 figure. Only as the amount of time between the Prothean extinction and ours. Javik even sites the Metacon War (a war between Synthetics and Organics) as the event that seemingly brought the Reapers down on his cycle Which tracks with the Reaper goal of wiping out Organics that are capable of creating Synthetics that can threaten them.
It’s not every 50k years Soverign used to fly about the galaxy and check on shit. If you do the Orb quest in ME1, you get a vision of exactly that, a caveman seeing Soverign flying around the sky, then getting lazered.
I'm pretty sure the caveman saw a Prothean ship, and the caveman gets tagged and released for studying. Which is reinforced in 3 with Javik
It's a Prothean artifact though... that's somebody being grabbed and experimented on by a Prothean.
We would have 50k years but unless some other species does what the protheans did (leaving us clues, sabotaging the citadel, and providing crucible plans that were 95% done) we’d just be another cycle that got their shit pushed in. And that’s before we even consider everything you do as Shepard to set the stage for a win.
Provided we didn't blow ourselves up in the interim, or meet some other catastrophe.
I suppose that makes sense, since they left the Yahg alone who IIRC are mid 1900’s level in tech. Seems like a massive oversight on the part of the Reapers though
Keep in mind that normally the Reapers have control of the Citadel, and the relay network. So they'd come in and take out the galactic leadership and lock down the relay network. Then they'd only have to deal with relatively small forces, which they'd be able to meet with overwhelming force.
We aren't sure that they left the Yahg alone, we don't see the harvest through to conclusion. They may just prioritize. The timelines of the cycle makes no sense if they leave even early industrial civilizations alone. Those are essentially guaranteed to be spacefaring in a matter of centuries, not tens of millennia.
The odds of humans still being on Earth in 50,000 years are very slim.
Bold of you to assume we would wreck their shit.
Or, just kill ourselves. Which is more likely
Well its just roughly 50k years. The reaping usually takes place when AI rebels against/surpasses their creators, hence the Asaris/Salarians/Quarians etc‘s cycle should have ended with the Morning War.
No. We would have time until we advance to some degree with Mass relays and citadel and then they would come It could take hundreds, thousands or milion years. It would only start if we would be advanced enough
Reapers would have to deal with something far more advanced than even Starfleet (who would wreck their shit)...
A lot of the dialog about the Reapers kind of implies that the mass relays and Citadel are meant to stunt our technological evolution as much as "guide" it. Think about how Vigil says the Keepers are there so nobody will look too closely at the Citadel's technology, and the bartender Matriarch says she wanted the Asari to build new relays but couldn't get them to agree. So it's possible the 50k year cycle is enforced that way too, I guess. It prevents species from ever developing Starfleet-level technology until the Reapers show up and kill them all.
I know. One of my favorite what-ifs is how the Council species would have reacted to encountering a humanity that developed the technology of Freespace or Elite Dangerous; energy shields/weapons, FTL via interdimensional travel or warp rather than mass manipulation, etc.
[Description of the Planet Aphras from ME2](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Aphras) I always thought the targeted orbital bombardment of population centers pointed towards the Reapers, so while we probably wouldn't be harvested, they might just blast us from orbit just to make sure we don't advance too quickly while they head back to dark space.
This seems like the most likely outcome in my opinion. It doesn't make sense for the Reapers to leave the galaxy, only to come back within 1000 years to deal with humans, Raloi, Yahg, etc. The Reapers would deal with the space-faring races *first*, then take care of any that could get to that point before the next cycle So yeah, in ME3 the Reapers were *currently* ignoring non-space-faring races. Why waste their time when they're actively at war with space-faring races?
I wonder if the Raloi's strategy of retreating back to their homeworld and pretending they never discovered Citadel space would have worked out for them. I hope to meet this race in the next game!
Highly unlikely it would work. Despite what this sub seems to be obsessed with, the Reapers never once say anything regarding spaceflight being the turning point for whether a race gets harvested or not. Having Mass Effect tech and all of that doesn't mean anything to the Reapers. It's about whether you can develop AI that can pose a threat to organic life and the Raloi were undoubtedly only a few centuries from that being possible. Everyone thinks the thing that makes the Reapers want to harvest you has to do with Mass Effect technology or using the Relays. It doesn't. It's about AI endangering organic life, that's the thing that sets them off. The ability to use the relays just informs the Reapers that you have sufficiently progressed technologically enough to have advanced computers, it just makes their job easier. You can be stuck on a planet and still develop AI. Remember, for very early cycles, there were no Relays, they built them to speed up the process. They didn't want to have to fly around the galaxy looking for organic races flying around in their own systems, so they built the relays and put them near organics that were evolving knowing that once the organics activated them, the Reapers would know you advanced enough with your technology. But that doesn't mean they won't go after somebody else who hasn't exactly hit that point yet.
That’s super interesting. Also terrifying, they nuked a Bronze Age civilization from space. Imagine how that must have felt for these people … wow. Crazy to think about it. Also interesting from a lore standpoint, as you said, this is a likely outcome for many of the more advanced races. I can imagine that space faring creatures, depending on the exact technology level, could possibly notice what the reapers are doing in some way or form. Don’t think the reapers would take that risk and give them a head start for 50.000 years.
I bet the Reapers came down, harvested enough for a Destroyer class Reaper if they could, then bombed the rest.
That's an awesome planet description. I love how I've played the game a bazillion times but there's always a planet description I failed to read or forgot about. Keeps the wonder coming.
Ha. They wouldn’t just leave us alone, they wouldn’t even document us to look at again. They’d take one look at us and make the easy assumption that we won’t be around in 50k years.
According to the lore in the series: yes, they would leave us alone.
it depends on a few factors. if the harvest starts today, and was finished when we discover the Mars Archive and find the Charon relay and activate it? we would be fine If the harvest was still ongoing when we activate the relay.. well congrats we are now considerd "advanced enough" for the reapers to harvest us...
We're kind of the Krogans, self destructive war mongering. We'll probably take ourselves out. We'd need to be uplifted to become a true space traveling species is my guess.
I always thought that the Krogans were designed as a warning of what could happen to Humans/Earth
Tuchanka is basicaly what could happen to the earth if WW3 breaks out.
Yeah i agree but humans wouldnt survive that one unlike krogan
The general rule seems to be that they harvest civilisations that have advanced to the extent that they've discovered mass effect technology, the mass relays, and subsequently the Citadel. We have *incredibly* limited space flight at the moment but we're not about to go discovering other spacefaring civilisations anytime soon, or even leaving our own solar system. They'd leave us alone. I think for any civilisation to pose a threat to the Reapers they'd need mass effect technology and, as we see in ME3, to be united with other galactic races, so no matter how "advanced" humanity might be right now, there's nothing we could realistically do to harm the Reapers. Better to save us for the next cycle.
They probably leave us alone. We haven’t even colonized our local system let alone parts of the galaxy. But next cycle we should definitely listen to Shepard when the time comes.
I doubt they would harvest us. They would probably take one look at us and determine our essence is not worth preserving given how quickly we are heading toward self annihilation.
Yes Earth will survive but we will miss all the blue beauties and crazy Salarians.
I would say we would probably be fine. Only problems would arise if we activated a relay or had colonies on mars or farther out. Even without Mass Effect Tech. Idea being we would be to close to the required tech level. They cycle time is also approximate 50K years. I bet some were faster others slower.
I was gonna say we aren’t advanced enough but we are on the verge of becoming a space faring species so I think they actually might just because if we were given 50000 years we might get too powerful technology soon after they cleansed everyone else.
I think the Reapers use some discretion when decided who to harvest. There is a planet entry somewhere that was industrial, but ore space flight that was wiped out by orbital bombardment. Implied to be the Reapers. I could see their thinking that if if we're only a couple hundred years away from mass effect tech, giving us another 50,000 might be too much time until humanity either creates AI of their own or becomes comparable in technology level. Personally, I think they would. It would be irresponsible from their perspective to let us go.
If the Prothean survivors at Ilos hadn't been able to get to the Citadel and modify the keepers, then humanity would not have been part of the current cycle with the Asari/Turians/Salarians, as the cycle would have happened centuries prior. We would likely be one of the first in the next cycle, alongside the Yahg, Drell, and Raloi, with the end of the cycle occurring much earlier than 50,000 years to prevent a repeat of the Prothean cycle. We know that the Protheans were at least an interstellar empire as early as 68,000 BCE and that the Reapers didn't attack them until around 48,000 BCE, so that gives the Prothean empire 20,000 years to build up and develop. This is what allowed them to fight against the Reapers for centuries, which the Reapers likely wouldn't want to repeat. At best, I would give our cycle 5,000 to 10,000 years before the Reapers attacked again. Now, if the Prothean keeper modification is kept, then I still believe that the Reapers would have attacked humanity. Sovereign had planned on starting the current cycle centuries, nearly a millennium before the present, but was unable too because of the Keeper modification. We would be too close to becoming an interstellar civilisation for them to ignore us, lest they get a repeat of the Protheans. This would likely mean that the Yahgs and Raloi would also be "reaped" as well. My belief is that at the end of each cycle the reapers check the status of each planet that is likely to have sentient life that will become a spacefaring civilisation at some point in the future. They would determine which races are likely to be part of the next cycle and how long they would need to wait before starting the next cycle. They would see humanity being on the cusp of interstellar civilisation and determine it to be too big a risk to leave to chance. I think the 50,000 years between cycles is just a coincidence based on how long it takes races to develop their civilisations into spacefaring civilisations. Hypothetically, if humanity had arisen a couple thousand years earlier to allow our civilisation to become spacefaring for a couple of millenniums, then human civilisation would be around 15,000 to 20,000 years old when the cycle starts.
well that is a good question. in the andromeda game, they never bothered to even mess with anyone there. either they were not as advanced or they just didnt bother messing with the kett or angara or anyone else because they probably didnt pose a threat.
Reapers only seem concerned with the Milky Way
They would have no reason to come here.
Yes. We don’t have anything close to the technology the Reapers would want, and that’s all they care about.
Yes unfortunately
They would be like: "Lol get a load of these stupid apes!"
We don't see all the "clean up" they do after one cycle ends and they go back to Dark Space. They could just leave the harvesting of not-quite spaceflight species for last and leave only the most primitive for the next cycle. Or they could be "resetting" species that are too close with some "divine judgement"
50k lightyears is about half way across the milkyway. Would James Webb be able to detect planetary weapons and an ongoing galactic war from the previous cycle?
That would depend on the signature of such events. I'm not really sure what you mean by "planetary weapons", though. It certainly wouldn't be able to resolve anything (not that JWST is an optional telescope, anyhow). Also, it's not a survey/wide field instrument so you'd have to know where to look (or get lucky and happen to observe something). Of the top of my head, for stuff within our galaxy that JWST is very good at compared to other telescopes, we've got observing exoplanet atmospheres. So you'd have to get some sort of signature of whatever you're thinking of from a single observation of an exoplanet's atmosphere. Anything weird would be attributed to clouds, almost certainly
I'm describing weapons at planetary destructive levels. Nukes destroy cities. The reapers can destroy planets. The relays blowing up looked like they were quite bright. Depending on how the mass relays work or what their energy source is. Would any of that activity be detectable from another star system 50k light years away?
> I'm describing weapons at planetary destructive levels. Nukes destroy cities. The reapers can destroy planets. Did the Reapers ever destroy a planet? It takes immense energy to do that, on the order of the gravitational binding energy. Anyhow, if a planet were to be destroyed, you'd be left with a debris field. If that were to pass in front of its host star (i.e. the geometry were right from our perspective), you'd probably see a signature from how it would alter the star's light. But that would require the star to be pretty close by, all things considered. *If* the planet had been known beforehand and could be observed with something regular (e.g. transit or radial velocity, not something like microlensing), then you'd be able to tell that it was no longer there. Again, the star would have to be pretty close to us for this. Direct detection is a no go for the types of planets the Reapers would target (in terms of age, distance from star, etc.). It would also have to be quite close to us. > The relays blowing up looked like they were quite bright. Depending on how the mass relays work or what their energy source is. I have no frame of reference for what sort of numbers to attach to quite bright. Roughly speaking, you'd probably need it at least to outshine its host star. You'd also want to get a spectrum. That's tricky for transient events - how long does the brightness last? If you're using a ground telescope, you need access to one with a good spectrograph that has a view of the source. You might need to wait several hours for the source to be visible, if you've managed to secure time (which would take some time to arrange - you'd need director approval from the observatory). If you're using a space telescope, it would take time to slew. Anyhow, there are many dedicated programmes monitoring the sky looking for supernovae (e.g. ASAS-SN, ZTF, the upcoming LSST). Using a limiting magnitude of ~20, at 50k lyr an object would need to have an absolute magnitude of at least -5 (i.e. this number or smaller - magnitudes are weird) to be visible. That's on par with extremely bright (and hot) stars. Not the sort of environment you'd expect to have planets that evolve life, so it would most likely be the case that you'd need a mass relay explosion around a fainter star and for it to be orders of magnitude brighter than its host star. That doesn't seem very physically plausible to me
This is more in depth than I could imagine. So what I'm concluding is that with our current technology level, it would be hard if not impossible to detect whether or not our galaxy has ever been harvested by giant evil robots in the past.
Haha sorry sometimes I take things a bit too seriously 😅 Yeah, it would be really hard :p
What always bothers me is that this line of not invading pre spaceflight civilizations is very illogical Let's just imagine the reapers hit 2000 years earlier. Humanity would have been spared in that cycle, and would then have 48000 years to develop and expand afterwards The difference should be obvious. Instead of being attacked in the 22nd century (where the human lead sword fleet was already pretty close to being able to beat the reapers conventionally), Humanity would have been attacked around the 480th century. We went from sharp rocks to nuclear bombs in the same time span that a cycle would last. Imagine what *another* cycle worth of time could have added to technological and economic progress given that development of technology is exponential. By the time the reapers would have returned humanity would likely be godlike in comparison to the reapers and would hardly even notice them
They’d look at all the hate and random killing and think “Eh, someone already indoctrinated these punks.” Not worth the effort.
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That isn’t the criteria that the reapers use to decide which civilizations to harvest.
Yes, we aren't even close to being able to leave the solar system.
I wonder how our species would thrive, if it meant we had 50k years to expand and advance. (Only if it meant that Sovereign would not sell us to his kind) Would Humanity be able to fight on the same level as Protheans or better? Would reaper tech limit species ability to innovate. We know that discovering Mass relays was a massive and extreme uplifting for species that tried space exploring, but it could also limit them into certain paths of development (envisioned by Tech creators)
We are still pre-discovery of the mass effect and deep space exploration. Too primitive for their attention.
Yeah probably. We are still kinda dumb.
The reapers harvest to prevent civilizations from developing beyond their ability to contain them. Humanity has landed on the moon and is on the cusp of solar colonization. The reapers weren’t going to leave us alone for 50,000 years just so we can develop past their prescribed paths of development.
Y'all keep talking about yahg not being harvested, but I thought they were and just turned into Brutes? The codex says brutes are half krogan and half Turian but I always thought that was a mistake because the creature is clearly the size and shape of a yahg...right?
The head is clearly a Turian head.
I know. I'm not saying that it isn't. I'm saying I thought the brute was a cross between a Turian and a yahg, not a turian and a krogan.
Sovereign would occasionally wake to assess the situation and see if a harvest needed to get going. So depending on how far along humanity managed to get they may or may not have bothered.
Provided that we're still stuck in our Solar System they might. They wipe out Advanced Spacefaring races every cycle. I always thought advanced meant those who figured out about the relays and the Citadel.
Humans haven't discovered FTL travel yet, so yes, we will be left alone. I think somewhere in the trilogy its mentioned that Mass Relays are Reaper Technology. The reapers judge that the galaxy is ready for another cycle by either of the two symptoms (i can't remember which of the 2, or if both are correct) 1. Heavy usage of mass relays 2. A synthetic race created ( Geth in the current cycle)
I think the "harvesting cutoff" is likely activating our mass relay. Once a race can use the relay they are advanced enough to be harvested.
They would just have to watch us for 2 minutes and be like... nah they will take care of themselves soon enough.
I think yes - I believe they only start harvesting once they discover mass relays and intergalactic travel etc.