The elephant in the room

Which color did you choose, and why?

I choose red, and this dialogue from A House Divided in 2 is why:


Shepard:  There's no guarantee they won't come to the same conclusions again, is there?  To worship Reapers and attack organics?
Legion:  There is a non-zero probability of error.
Shepard:  Then blow them up!  I have a chance to end this, I won't waste it!

Red is, IMO, the only way we can be truly sure that the horror of the Reapers is over.  As long as they're out there, there's a possibility.  We can debate how fat or how slim that possibility is, but the possibility is there as long as the Reapers live.  I love the geth.  Legion was my favorite character (especially before they ruined him in 3).  But the Reapers...  let me math it.  The Council said their decisions affect "trillions" of lives so we can be reasonably sure that the current cycle has multiple trillions in population.  And this is a very young cycle, only having been at the Citadel for 6,000 of the 50,0000 years.  So let's say the average cycle population is 25,000,000,000,000.  This is a pretty conservative estimate really.  Now, how long have the Reapers been at it?  The Leviathan of Dis was dated at about a billion.  That's 20,000 cycles.  And that's just the youngest we can assume, they could easily have been at it for 10 billion of the universe's 14 billion year age.

Even at that conservative estimate, the Reapers have killed 5,000,000,000,000,000,000 people.  Could easily be 50 times that.  No price is too high to be absolutely sure they're stopped forever.  Even if it destroyed humanity rather than the geth, I would not hesitate.  It has to be done.  The price is incomprehensible, but it has to be done.

Because the title mentioned elephants and I'll take any opportunity to post animal pictures, have this gif of a baby flappy-stompy playing: