The Ewoks Died?

Oh man, this is the coolest. A website of nerds dedicated to uncovering the technological mysteries unexplained in the Star Wars films. Fuck! Well, I'm not getting any work done today.

This little ditty discusses the Endor Holocaust.

Seriously.

Introduction

This document does not advocate or condone the extinction or betrayal of ewoks, it merely reports upon a physical situation and the acts involved.

The circumstances at the end of Return of the Jedi lead inevitably to an environmental disaster on the Endor moon. The explosion of a small artificial moon in low orbit sends a meteoric rain onto the ewok sanctuary, on a scale unmatched since Endor formed. Through either direct atmospheric injection of small particles, or showers of ejecta from large impacts, the atmosphere will be filled with smoke and fallout causing a gargantuan nuclear-winter effect.

Unless the rebel commandoes on Endor were executing a suicide mission, the rebel fleet was evidently able to intervene to protect their immediate vicinity: probably an area comparable to Luxembourg. Debris fragments amounting to the mass of the rebel fleet might conceivably have been diverted from that particular locality (by the exertion of the fleet's tractor beams) and onto adjacent areas of the Endorian globe. However this is only a tiny fraction of the total mass incident on the moon during an event lasting mere minutes. The mass of the entire debris cloud and fireball is incomparably (inexorably) greater than the combined mass of both fleets over Endor.

A general climatological catastrophe was unavoidable. Averting the disaster would have required physical action on a scale greater than the construction of a Death Star, within minutes of the battle station's explosion.

Immediately following ROTJ the Endor moon has become unliveable, meaning that the ewoks are extinct except for those:

who were already offworld, having taken passage with traders or Imperial sapientologists;
who were subjects in off-world medical or biological research [X-Wing novels];
who were evacuated by the rebels and resettled elsewhere;
who hibernated for a decade or so (assuming that they can survive anoxia and poisoning by nitrogen oxides).
This page is not concerned with environmental amelioration. The New Republic, former-Imperial warlords, the Svivreni or galactic conservationists could make attempts to terraform and repair the moon, but these are long-term measures and cannot stop the immediate damage that occurs within minutes and hours of the explosion. The scope of galactic technology is not great enough to magically restore ecosystems buried beneath dozens of metres of metallic dust or debris, nor resurrect life forms smothered by a chemically-altered atmosphere. Artificial structures, like the urban terrain of Coruscant after Dark Empire, can be replaced or restored globally in a year-long rebuilding project that is comparable to the construction of a Death Star. However trees and living systems are no so quick to restore. At the very least, if all the Endorian species were preserved off-world, the replanted forests would take decades to grow. In any case, amelioration and restoration projects, and the motives of whoever implements them, are in the realm of speculation. The biotic catastrophe itself is a well founded and direct consequence of the observable events of the STAR WARS canon. That is the basis of the discussion below.

NERDS!

He he. This is the best shit ever.