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I didn't understand what happened at the sixth episode. Can you explain me the
point listed below?

  * Why did 256 guardians come for the rescue? Why so many, and why 28 of them?
  * Why did the guardians break the law by rescuing them? What is wrong with the rescue? Why does it become unlawful? Why didn't the command center plan the rescue beforehand? Where they abandoned there officially?


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2014-10-05T21:12:19.247
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knights-of-sidonia
What is the significance of the rescue of Nagate and Shizuka by 256 Guardians?


This is speculation.

Point Number 1. Shizuka was already past the point of no return. Which
literally means she went past the point where she and Nagate would have enough
fuel to return to Sidonia. This is a very real and very deadly result for all
of the knights. Even so, Nagate went after her. In addition to him being a
hero, his actions gained the respect of everyone, so they left to rescue him.

Point Number 2. The guardians are supposed to guard, not leave the mother
ship. By leaving to rescue them, they left Sidonia open to attack. Rescue cost
resources, most obviously fuel. Rescue of people past the point of return
opens up the risk to Sidonia even more because of the time the rescuers are
away. The rescuers can get attacked themselves, and it takes time and
resources to replace every knight. So yea, they were officially abandoned
because the risk and cost outweighs promoting a new cadet.

EDIT: the number was because each squad has 4 members, so there were 64 squads
present. I'm not sure if this answers your question because I'm not sure
what's so strange about the number.

EDIT2: The significance of the number 256 according to @krazer:

> That's the the smallest tactical unit in the [Ancient Macedonian
> army](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Macedonian_army#The_Foot_Companions),
> which was the 256 men syntagma/speira. Take note of the parallelism
> structure and organization between Sidonia, it's Garde, and ancient city
> states


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256 is also the amount of numbers that can be represented by 8 bits of data (1
byte) It seems like the japanese like this kind of numbers, in an Evangelion
episode, they claim that the S2 engine could had failed by 32768
possibilities, not considering sabotage. The number 32768 is the amount of
numbers represented in 15 bits of data, or the maximum represented positive
number in 16 bits when using one bit for the sign.


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