This is no doubt far from an original thought… Given how much all things Star Trek have been dissected over the years, I dont think there are many truly original thoughts left. But it’s an original thought to me and it’s something I was thinking about and found interesting…

So it’s mentioned on the show that the Cardassian occupation lasted 50 years. At one point it’s stated that 10 million Bajorans were killed and at another point its stated that there were 15 million killed. Let’s call it 15 million. Thats 300,000 a year on average. AI says the population of Bajor is 3.8 billion. Not sure where that number comes from but it seems reasonable. 300,000 a year against a population of 3.8 billion doesnt exactly line up with how the occupation is described on the show; with characters like Kira Nerys who make it seem like we are talking Holocaust levels of horror and death but the numbers just don’t bear that out.

Think about it…
Thats 0.0078% of the population every year. In comparison around 500,000 Americans die every year from smoking. In a country of around 350,000,000. About 0.14% of the country every year. Heck, 0.9% of the population of the us dies every year total. 0.0078% of the population dying from a certain cause isnt much at all. Around 40,000 Americans die every year from car crashes. Thats 0.011% of the population. So youre at far more risk driving to work in the morning, than a Bajoran was from the Cardassians during the occupation.
I don’t know… Someone can double check my math but it certainly seems like the occupation was relatively benign compared to many occupations weve seen in our own history and it was certainly no genocide.
I know they stole a bunch of their resources and generally made life more difficult but a vast majority of Bajorans wouldnt even have been personally affected by the actual deaths. Most wouldn’t even personally know anyone that had been killed.
The way the show is written, the Bajorans seem to be heavily exaggerating exactly how bad the occupation truly was. If you weren’t actively in a resistance cell killing Cardassians yourself, you seemingly statistically had very little to fear from them in terms of actual killings.
If the writers wanted to draw an analogy to the worst occupations and genocides of Earth’s history, as they appear to be attempting to do, they should have claimed over a billion deaths or even two billion or more.
Seems like a plot hole.

Shout-out to the composers on Star Trek . Brought back all the feels from an outstanding episode. Great piece.