The Second Exodus participiants already had survived up until this point, and were in no immediate danger of being wiped out (or even attacked).
It's true that the Second Exodus was in no immediate danger after Operation Klondike. But the survivors of Operation Klondike had endured the deprivations of two multi-year flights to unknown and alien worlds. And they had endured the bloodshed and losses of four of the largest and most destructive military campaigns to date (Periphery uprising, Rim Worlds, retaking the Hegemony and Terra, and retaking the Pentagon Worlds). And, to a large degree, all those decades of suffering were the result of old, Spheroid cultural and political associations.
I'm not saying that the Houses are all evil and that the Clans are all good. They're not.
But in context, it's little wonder that the survivors of Operation Klondike wanted to rip out root and stem the Spheroid culture and associations among themselves and the remaining populations of the Pentagon Worlds. The survivors of Operation Klondike did not want to have to go through a third time what they had already been going through for the past several decades.
The Clans are not a healthy environment for, well, normal people. That's what I mean when I describe their culture as artificial.
Who is to say what is "healthy", "normal", or "artificial"?
Norse (Viking) culture arose out of a societal collapse in Scandinavia where half of the population was lost. Early in its history, Norse society lived alongside Carolingian empire, a state that conducted genocidal campaigns against the Saxons and other cousins of the Norse. Not surprisingly, Norse culture literally worshipped warrior ideals, was stratified into castes, practiced slavery, was very violent and competitive by today's standards, and preyed heavily on the unarmed and defenseless. But the Norse also reached North America, opened trade routes with Islamic and eastern empires, nursed the first democracy since the Greek city-states, created the first legal code since the Roman Empire, laid the foundations for the modern English, French, and Russian states, and stood for 300 years.
Anything in BattleTech has an artificiality to it because it's fictional.
But that doesn't mean that martial societies like the Clans have not arisen before from great suffering and tumult, nor does it mean that they are not normal or healthy by the standards of their time, nor does it mean that they do not have purpose and achievements.
There is cause and effect to how cultures develop, and the Clans reflect that.
And outside of the extreme niche of the Exodus Civil Wars, such a culture wouldn't be able to thrive - what's a warrior people without an enemy to fight?
Like any martial culture not outwardly focused, the Clans fought more limited battles amongst themselves. That's what the Mongols did before and after Ghenghis, the Huns before Attila, any number of Native American cultures, etc., etc.
It's BattleTech, not PeaceTech. We should expect conflict great and small throughout the history of this universe.
To survive isn't enough to mark it a success for me. Because "survival" ought to take into account the terrible price Nicholas made them pay in order go down this path
Nicky K. may or may not have been a nutjob.
But the survivors of Operation Klondike and the Pentagon Worlds -- and the Second Exodus and the First Exodus and the Star League Civil War that came before -- had been paying a terrible price for decades that had little to nothing to do with Nicky K.
Compared to what had come before, the order and security provided by Nicky K.'s societal reengineering was arguably no sacrifice at all to those survivors.
that led them nowhere.
Among many other accomplishments, three Clans stand at the doorstep of the Republic and Terra circa 3145-3150. They are (probably) about to fulfill Nicky K.'s ultimate vision. That doesn't sound like "nowhere".
My 2 Kerenskies... YMMV.
