Fall of the Twelve Colonies

This article details the destruction of the Twelve Colonies in the Re-imagined Series. For information on the fall of the Twelve Colonies in the Original Series, see Battle of Cimtar.

Fall of the Twelve Colonies
Cylon nuclear bombs detonating on Caprica
Cylon nuclear bombs detonating on Caprica
Summary
Conflict:	Second Cylon War
Date:	Zero Hour, concurrent with Fall of the Scorpion Fleet Shipyards
Related Episode(s):
Place:	Twelve Colonies of Kobol
Result:	Total Cylon victory, destruction of the Twelve Colonies
Combatants Twelve Colonies of Kobol Cylons Commanders Admiral Nagala † Commander William Adama Many other commanders Basestar command Strength Approx. 120 battlestars, Vipers, Raptors, associated support cruisers Massive number of basestars, Raiders, Heavy Raiders Materiel Losses Virtual destruction of the Colonial Fleet Unknown, minimal Casualties Destruction of major Colonial cities, almost all of the civilian population and military forces Unknown, minimal
Battle Chronology
Previous Next First Cylon War Fall of the Twelve Colonies Fall of the Scorpion Fleet Shipyards

The Fall of the Twelve Colonies (also known as the Cylon attack, Cylon holocaust or Second Cylon War) is a devastating, genocidal attack that re-ignites the conflict between the humans of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and their creations, the robotic Cylons.

The Cylons compromise Colonial defenses by infiltrating their military and civilian society with models that look human. One such Cylon seduces the brilliant Dr. Gaius Baltar, fooling him into contract work that gives her access to the Colonial Defense Mainframe. Her work on the project compromises Baltar's Command Navigation Program, creating countless programmer backdoors.

After Baltar's CNP is sufficiently distributed throughout the Colonial Fleet, the Cylons return from their forty-year exile and launch a devastating attack on the Colonies. The backdoors in the CNP enable the Cylons to use various electronic attacks that completely by-pass Colonial electronic defenses, and inflict varying degrees of damage to Colonial military computers.

Viper squadrons experience complete power loss upon engaging the enemy, while battlestars and other support ships suffer an abnormally-high number of "equipment malfunctions" during their engagement of the enemy. This infiltration of Colonial systems - when combined with the "complete surprise" that they achieve - enables the Cylons to sweep the Colonial Fleet aside with minimal losses; a triumph beyond their most optimistic projections (Downloaded).

Picon Fleet Headquarters are destroyed in the opening wave of the attack, as are 30 battlestars. In response to this, Admiral Nagala takes command of the Colonial Fleet aboard the battlestar Atlantia, and instigates a counter-attack against the enemy. Additionally, the Colonial government orders a full stop on commercial and civilian space-travel, leaving hundreds of non-military vessels stranded in surrounding space-lanes.

After the devastating assault on Picon, Colonial President Richard Adar broadcasts an unconditional surrender to the Cylons, but his gesture is completely ignored. All senior members of the Colonial government, including Adar, are henceforth presumed killed or missing, and an emergency government contingency mechanism activates to seek out surviving government officials. The space-bound Secretary of Education Laura Roslin is the only one to acknowledge this beacon. Sworn in on the government-chartered passenger liner Colonial Heavy 798, she becomes the new President of the Twelve Colonies.

While this exchange of power is taking place, the Cylons proceed to destroy each Colony's population and strategic centers by means of nuclear bombardment. One of the targets - Caprica City - is annihilated in a 50 megaton nuclear detonation. However, not every city on Caprica is destroyed in the attack; much of Delphi remains intact and is occupied by Cylon ground forces a short time later (Bastille Day).

Battlestar Galactica, approximately 300 million miles from Caprica, is unaffected by the Cylons' computer infiltration as its computer systems were never networked or updated with the compromised CNP. This anti-infiltration policy, used in the First Cylon War, was maintained by all of Galactica's commanders, including William Adama, through peacetime and despite advances in Colonial technology.

With the primary fight against the Cylons centering around the orbit of Virgon (as determined by a tactical plot of all ships in the solar system by Lieutenant Gaeta), Galactica prepares itself for a confrontation despite the fact that the ship is unarmed, having destroyed all large munitions as part of its decommissioning ceremony. To complicate matters further, the battlestar has plenty of pilots, but hardly any Vipers left to fly; its last Viper Mark VII squadron was destroyed in a Cylon attack shortly after the decommissioning ceremony.

Fortunately, the battlestar holds 40 Viper Mark IIs on board as part of its expected conversion into a museum. These Vipers are of an old but robust design resistant to Cylon infiltration; many on-board instruments are analog and were never equipped to use the Command Navigation Program that dooms newer Colonial fighters.

Galactica arms and deploys these old Vipers, repelling several attacking Cylon Raiders in its first sortie of the new war. Unable to return fire, the battlestar survives a direct hit from a Raider-launched tactical nuclear missile. However, 85 crew members are lost when damage to the fire suppression system necessitates the venting of the port flight pod's atmosphere to prevent the fuel lines from igniting, and ultimately destroying the ship.

After the skirmish, Galactica receives word that Atlantia has been lost in the counter-offensive against the Cylons. Numerous additional battlestars have been destroyed as well. Commander Adama takes command of the Colonial Fleet, and sends a wireless transmission to any surviving forces to rendezvous at Ragnar Anchorage, a munitions depot that carries desperately needed ordnance for Galactica's point-defense batteries and fighters. It is from Ragnar Anchorage that they will commence a second counter-attack against the Cylons. Galactica successfully jumps to Ragnar, skipping past the bulk of the enemy fleet that stands in her way.

Meanwhile, President Roslin begins clustering stranded Colonial vessels and forms a fleet. Roslin's efforts retrieve at least three Mark VII Vipers and find Lt. Sharon "Boomer" Valerii (the only survivor of Galactica's compromised Mark VII fighter squadron) and her Raptor. Boomer successfully locates additional civilian craft before a scouting Raider finds the convoy. Fearing imminent attack but unable to rescue any passengers from the convoy's sublight ships in time, Roslin orders the FTL-capable ships to jump to Ragnar, where a re-armed Galactica can protect them. Shortly after, the sublight ships and their passengers are destroyed by a Raider squadron.

Aftermath

Few Colonials survive this holocaust and many that do are captured by Cylons for experimentation (The Farm). On Caprica, Samuel Anders and the Caprica Buccaneers escape the devastation while in high altitude training in the mountains at the time of the attack. Together with other survivors, they later form a resistance against the Cylons.

Additionally, Galactica is not the only battlestar to endure the attack. An attack at the Fleet Shipyards at Scorpia destroys several battlestars, but Pegasus, only partially operational at the time, manages to escape. However, Galactica and Pegasus remain unaware of one another's fate until months later.