User blog comment:Legionwrex/I figured out how many Reapers there are!/@comment-4953843-20120801020755

eh, no.


 * 18,000 capital class reapers. not counting destroyers and their other mechanical flunkies (made from lesser species)
 * you can't assume each cycle they only assimilate ONE race. look how many background races (and destroyers) there are.
 * for that matter, you also can't assume 1 race = just 1 reaper. the population figures can easily run up to the trillions, if not quadrillions, each cycle. EDI speculates "millions" of humans or so = 1 capital-class reaper core. not stated if the entire reaper itself is made up of goo or just their cores, but still the numbers alone would dictate a surplus (even with deaths and unsuitability factors accounted for).
 * and given that each reaper requires a full conventional fleet to kill (with tech before encountering sovereign), even your 18,000 would prove overwhelming across an entire galactic theater.
 * the thanix modifications may have been peashooters compared to the reapers' guns ("scaled down", they said).
 * no race has 100% military mobilization (the turians had military training but not all of them are soldiers). the reapers have no civilians.
 * reapers = zombie apocalypse in space. there are dozens of analyses concerning the numbers in zombie apocalypse settings so i wouldn't even go there.

for what it's worth though you may be right in that the reapers took some casualties during the prothean war (wouldn't agree with "heavy"). they couldn't turn the protheans (javik's race) into reapers but who knows what happened to the others (oravores densorin etc).