Why death rates after Sisko arrive at Siege of AR-558 go up

[JasonB]

The UFP soldier lost 104 soldiers during five month worth fighting before Sisko arrived. After Sisko left the UFP lost at minimal 1,580. How come UFP death total want up so much just at must few weeks.

[Darth Fanboy]

Not enough Worfzookas.

[Darmalus]

After Sisko left the UFP lost at minimal 1,580. How come UFP death total want up so much just at must few weeks.

Where is this number from? If Memory Alpha is to be believed, the Federation lost 1,730 just during the time around the AR-558 events from the whole Dominion War. 1,580 casualties would be a drop in the death rate, it seems.

Edit: Maybe JasonB just mindlessly subtracted 150 from 1,730, but 107 of those were dead before they got there. Even if all 43 died (spoilers: they didn't) 1,687 died all over the war, having nothing at all to do with Sisko. I wonder how often Sisko gets those casualty lists. If he gets that list daily, it's a pretty minor conflict. I'm pretty sure 150 modern Earths would have more people die in car accidents per day.

[Swindle1984]

Shit, we've had battles where a million men were killed in a single day.

[Darth Tanner]

Shit, we've had battles where a million men were killed in a single day.

What? When

I'm pretty sure 150 modern Earths would have more people die in car accidents per day.

For one earth 2008 death toll was 16,164 dead a day of which about 3835 daily are traffic related.

[Purple]

Shit, we've had battles where a million men were killed in a single day.

What? When

I don't know about millions but if the history channel is to be believed the Somme claimed 60 kilopeople in about 1 hour.

Also, according to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_the_Somme

Allied Losses: 623,907 casualties
German Losses: 465,000 men
Total: 1,088,907

[Metahive]

That's casualties though, wounded, captured and missing as well as dead. Some of the bigger battles in WW2 might have claimed a million lives just on one day, but I'm not sure.

[Serafina]

About the same numbers for the battles of Stalingrad, Leningrad, Berlin and Moscow during WW II.

And about 1.6 million casualties during the Brusilov offensive. That one lasted 108 days, with ~15.000 casualties per day.
The battle of the Somme had about the same casualty rate. The battles of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad were pretty drawn out, so the casualty rate per day is not higher than that.
But the Battle of Berlin takes it all: It only lasted 16 days, which translates into 81.000 casualties PER DAY (including civilian casualites).

Of course, if you got strictly by casualties per day and include civilian losses, you can take the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and go up to 166.000 casualties in a single day. Those numbers were matched in some non-nuclear bombings.

Compared to that, the Siege of AR-558 was an extremely minor skirmish.


Lesson learned: Total war is incredibly brutal and causes immense loss of life. The Federation can be glad it never fought one.

[Sea Skimmer]

I don't know about millions but if the history channel is to be believed the Somme claimed 60 kilopeople in about 1 hour.

The British took 57,000 casualties on the entire first day of which about 19,500 were killed. A million people killed in one day on the battlefield is only realistically going to happen in combat with use of nuclear weapons or a really effective biowarfare attack. Otherwise human beings just won't march into the guns quickly enough to die at that rate even given something truly massive like the fully mobilized Army of the USSR against a fully mobilized Red Chinese War Machine.

AR-558 is a joke. If either side had anything even remotely like a real land army from any point in the 20th century the battle would have been completely different. The fact that the Federation could not even build a decent breastwork in two and half months of defending the place is pretty bad. Never mind how illogical it is that no one used those super rock destroying phasers to blast some trenches into the ground. But that's the limitation of filming on a sound stage with a normal episode budget rather then outdoors.