I just got done watching the “story so far” on Scifi, recapping seasons 1 through 4.0, and during the segment on Earth, they remark that the destruction we’re seeing has happened “thousands of years ago”, direct quote, their words…
so, they’re either;
1; mind-frakking us with more disinformation (most likely)
2; telling the truth, and Earth got nuked “thousands” of years ago (they did it, they finally did it, they blew it up, damn them all to Hell!)
3; some other reason (temporal warp brought the RTF forwards in time?)
4; “alternate reality” or “Unrealized Reality” Earth
5; the Vogons did a poor job of planetary demolition
6; the whole society got wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone
7; Dolman-Saxill put a Shoe Shop Intensifier Ray on the far side of the Moon, and society has passed the Shoe Event Horizon…
8; ???
8; The Original series Cylons (the Walking Chrome Toasters) set off at the end of the First Cylon War, found Earth and true to their programming, EX-TER-MI-NATED (oops, sorry, thinking of Daleks there…) the Thirteenth Colony, it just took the RTF this long to get here
9; Boxey let Muffit outside and Muffit did something to frak up the planet (yes, it’s all Boxey’s fault!)
10; the entire show has been the fever dream of Boxey (again, it’s all Boxey’s fault, he’s the Wesley Crusher of Galactica…)
I believe the original Cylons were created by humans living on Earth. They killed their masters but a few humans (plus some Cylons) fled to Kobol to start again. After a period of time the humans forgot about the Cylons amongst them thus freeing them to create a new generation of Cylons. The new ones rose and killed their masters who fled and started the cycle again on the 12 colonies. Now the humans are finding their original home on Earth and will discover that the final five are the last ones remaining from the very first models.
That humans originated on Earth explains why the 12 colonies use our constellation names. It also explains why the final 5 are “different” from the others - they are the remnants of a previous generation of Cylon.
Nah… the humans in the fleet are the descendants of the ‘cylons’ that were created by humans on earth and then killed them off(who may have been cylons created by previous humans(who may have(ad infinitum))). You’ll remember the whole ‘things keep repeating themselves’ spiel.
Thus, the final cylon will be revealed as everyone else, by virtue of heritage. Much soul searching as they realize they are their own worst enemies, or would have been considered so at one time, and worry about whether the cycle will continue endlessly or if it is finally broken.
Wouldn’t any radioactivity from nukes have disappeared after thousands of years. In the episode where they land on earth, there was signs of radioactivity.
Different Isotopes have different half lives, so some would still be detectable, but not much. The geiger counter shot wouldn’t be entirely accurate(though you can get one to pop that much off of background if you set the sensitivity high enough), but it could be written off as artistic license… It was far better at indicating nukes than someone breaking the mood of that last shot with technical details would have been.
Why is this most likely? I’ve seen a lot of people want to think that the destruction was pretty recent, but the ruins they’re walking around in don’t look that much different than the ruins on Kobol. Kobol’s destruction was obviously much much earlier, thus the plant life and lack of radiation.
This is what happened - the Hubble telescope sighted the human fleet on route to Earth. Earth’s leaders gathered for a conference and debated. They saw a clear shot of the Battlestar Galactica.
World Leader #1: “Wait! Didn’t another battlestar called Galactica arrive at Earth before - about 30 years ago?”
World Leader #2: “29 years ago, to be exact. It happened in '80.”
World Leader #3: “Perhaps some of you in this room are too young to remember the unspeakable abomination that was Galactica '80 - a ragtag fleet fleeing the Apocalyptic destruction of their planet came to Earth, but they were afraid of these giant robotic toasters finding the planet, so they sent two fighter pilots to Earth, where they made friends with a plucky young female reporter.”
World Leader #4: “And there was some nonsense about time travel, then there were was a whole bunch of ‘adorable kids’ with superpowers whom the two fighter pilots and the plucky young female reporter travelled around with. Oh, the horror! The horror!”
World Leader #5: "Gentlemen! We cannot allow such a travesty such as this to occur again. We must annihilate ourselves. It would be a far better fate than to have to endure yet another Galactica '80!
Then there was a grave murmur of assent and nodding of heads, and every superpower with nuclear weapons unleashed their arsenals upon the world… and the world population (in their last moments on Earth) rejoiced that they would not have to face another Galactica '80.
The radioactivity was mild enough for everyone to walk around without any protective gear. Roslin was even touching the soil with her bare hands. Did we even see any living thing (plant, bird, insect, etc) on Earth?