They blew up. A f***ing. Sun. Fear is a powerful motivator, and hence i'm thinking Command wouldn't have even waited for the surviving civilian ships to exit the node before they bloody collapsed it! There is no doubt in my mind the Security Council and Command ordered the Neried deployed...
...Of course, given the potential scientific benefits of having access to a freshly-formed Nebula, as well as the economic prospects a nigh-on infinite supply Nebular gasses would hold, it wouldn't surprise me if a group, possibly the GTVI or some such, faked the deployment and then kept the site, and the still-open node, under lockdown to any non-GTVI personnel. Mmmm, I love the smell of conspiracy in the morning. 
I guess there was no point in waiting, as any civilian ship there would be doomed anyway. They would have probably waited for the ones already in subspace though, considering Petrarch's comment that "command is committed to getting every last Terran out of the system" (I won't get into why he didn't include Vasudans though, probably used to work for the NTF or something
).
Fear is certainly a powerful motivator for an individual, but for the whole Security Council organization? It's a good thing they have the GTVI to keep their heads for them.
Good point. GTVA didn't really know what the hell shivans are capable of. As statet earlier, they blew up a ****ing star! How could they know what would start coming trought the node next? Even without the juggernauts, I doubt GTVA fleet would have been able to stop the shivans after Capella. You just can't take that kind of chances when there are two civilizations at stake. No matter how much pink swirling smoke you could get by leaving the node open.
No one in GTVA really knew what the hell was going on when Capella blew up. But they knew that blowing up the node was their only effective way of stopping the shivans.
Not exactly, considering that they are known to be capable of making jumps without nodes. Although I think if the Shivans can indeed move around in the system after the explosion, then it makes sense to close off the node. A "temporary measure" is better than nothing. The question was really whether the Shivans could do that even if they wanted to, but I think the answer to that could be in the affirmative if that nebula density thing is taken into account.
