It's been a long time since I've watched the movie (or the series), but maybe they just periodically switch over to the ships of their victims? So theirs wouldn't have to last as long.

It's possible the idea of a hunt gets them all frenzied up, and they're quite different when normal folks (our only eyes) aren't around. But man, I would have loved the chance to maybe find out. =/

My main issue with the Reavers is that they're spelled wrong.

The name's fairly obviously derived from the Reivers who operated in the Scottish borders so why not keep the original spelling, dammit?

I vnethes thinke we shovd all spell as couth as Spenser.

I saw a couple of fics that addressed this, basically taking the stance that crazy != incompetent. The Reavers do seem to be able to work together a little, after all.

Assuming that we accept the premise of Reavers initially being created by pharmacological means, while simultaneously accepting the events of "Bushwhacked", this implies there are actually two types of Reavers. Original Reavers, of which there are no more being created, and converted Reavers, normal humans who take on Reaver characteristics in order to survive.

The two types of Reavers could potentially have very different behavioral characteristics, and while no interactions between the two have been observed, I think it's quite plausible that they would separate into a cowed and slave-like underclass that anticipates and enables the Primary Reavers murder-boff-cannibalize lifestyle, in order to keep from being victimized themselves.

Of course, more fascinatingly, as no more Prime Reavers are being created, the ratio of Prime to converted Reavers will only tend to increase, potentially leading to converted Reavers masquerading as Prime Reavers (depending on whether Reavers have any unusual abilities from their origin, superhuman strength or psychic abilities being difficult to fake).

In any case, this seems like a natural way for the inconsistencies of the plot and canon facts to be resolved, and also lends itself to a fairly fascinating internal dynamic to Reaver organization.

given their berserker tactics, I'd be surprised if there were any left. Although I guess the Alliance hasn't actually been around that long. Was the origin in Firefly shown to be before or after the Alliance was formed? I guess the winners of the Unification War would be considered the same as the current Alliance, since they won.

Is it fair of Mal to blame the current government for actions of the government before the Unification War? Seems like it would have to be considered a different entity, but old rebels don't make distinctions like that.

That was the biggest killer for my suspension of disbelief, too. Although the government's idiotic method of handling the Reaver situation was hard to swallow, too, as I said in my LJ entry here: http://mkcs.livejournal.com/26017.html

Why on earth wouldn't a nasty-minded bureaucracy use the Reavers as an enemy to focus their newly conquered empire's minds on external problems, not internal lacks of freedom? It's not like they couldn't just bomb hell out of the planet and destroy the evidence. They could probably even have blamed the losing side in the recent war.

But why allow even minor unrest when you have such a fantastic enemy? Surely any unscrupulous regime should be delighted to have actual bloodthirsty zombies available to direct dissent at?

Even when there isn't a lot of dissent, any is less good than none, surely.

And if you spun it right, you could convince the Mals that it was their side that created the situation, thus causing them to lose their faith in the cause they'd fought for.

who says they didn't? Nobody in the movie said they were a /loyal/ world. Or that the research time video they found were people who knew everything.

The rebels couldn't have all been scruffy. Someone was paying their bills. At least one nice world opposed Unification. Or some very rich space-based organization.

Don't you get it? Reavers are Orks. They yell WAAAGH! at the zoom-zoom things and they go. Painting them red (with the blood of victims) really *does* make them go faster.

Skip to the last paragraph of that section.