There are always some that never reach the point of desperation, even when everyone else does - and one of the leaders, Megatron, found that to be enough of a waste that he brought that despair upon those that otherwise would not have suffered.
Megatron never said 'never'. This ambition was one of the reasons why he had raised the obscure Decepticon group into a political power that was almost a way of life for many of the members. His method of gaining followers was to destroy and blame.
Realizing the power of flight, Megatron focused most of his efforts on those Transformers who could fly - and in doing so, created the image of land-bot prejudice against those who were able to fly. With telecommunication devices destroyed, the victims had no one else to believe, and nowhere else to direct their anger than to where Megatron pointed.
The Decepticons started attacking the Autobots with fervor, launching aerial assaults and in turn being shot from the sky. The Autobots, led by Prime, knew what Megatron was doing, but the emotions driving the Decepticons made any attempts at explaining the truth end up in redoubled aggression.
Where were the Seekers during the advent of the war?
Starscream had gone on a mission with the renowned scientist Jetfire, to a distant planet dubbed "Earth". The objective was to gather Carbon, a material that Starscream determined to be one of the key factors in the development of renewable Energon sources.
Thundercracker had been off-planet as well, studying the differences between "social" structure of two identical species in two different habitats with differing food availability, and was just about complete with the thesis.
Skywarp had joined the Decepticon cause.
At the brink of full-on war, Skywarp had found favor with Megatron because of his unique abilities. His design, intended to be flexible for future technological advances in scientific instruments, was ideal for weaponry to be attached. His intellect was ideal for manipulation by Megatron. His fascination with violence had the potential to be nurtured into an obsession with cruelty.
The Cybertronian War academy was, by this point, under the control of the Decepticons. Skywarp attended and his capabilities for flight and hit-and-run combat were unparalleled at the time of his early completion. Physics all but forgotten, his pleasure now came from inflicting pain - or at the very least, discomfort - upon anyone and everyone. This, of course, excluded his infallible leader Megatron, whose mastery of rhetoric and catchy phrases hooked Skywarp to the point where he never asked questions.
He didn't even ask questions when ordered to destroy the other two Seekers' labs as well as his own empty one.
Megatron's timing was impeccably calculated - as it should have been, since Shockwave was in charge of refining his plan.
Given the promise of the Seeker Skywarp, Megatron could only assume that the other two from the long-forgotten program had the same potential. Since both were gone from Cybertron, Megatron had their labs destroyed so that when they came back after essentially missing the complete division of Cybertron into two populations, they, too, would have no information to disprove Megatron when he blamed the Autobots for the attack.
The only variables left out were the success rates of the two Seekers' respective projects.
During Starscream's exploration of Earth, his partner Jetfire was lost in a sudden blizzard of incredible strength, and, because of Jetfire's build he was unable to free himself from the storm. One of the premier scientists of Cybertron's Golden Era was lost, as was Starscream's ability to analyze the usefulness of the various substances containing carbon on the savage planet. It was a setback to the discovery and invention that was supposed to make him one of the most famous figures in Cybertronian history, to be praised as the savior of the world for billions of years after his own deactivation!
Such setbacks could be tolerated, however. It wasn't like he was pressed for time; he could wait a million years if he had to.
Thundercracker had watched one section of the species annihilate themselves while the other section of the species had developed a co-operative lifestyle - a proto-culture, he would later name it - that revolved around peace. His reaction was mixed: On one hand, it was further evidence that resource availability influenced the actions of populations on a species-wide scale, but on the other hand he had neither learned nor discovered anything - he had wasted around a million years waiting around for the species. An advantage that made Thundercracker feel lucky to be a transformer was that not only did Transformers have minds quick enough to think of ideas, plans, and solutions with blistering speed, but also that each individual's life spanned a length of time so long that many worlds would change, species would evolve and become extinct, and cycles would spin a thousand times over.
Disheartened by the purposeless waste of time, Thundercracker returned to Cybertron to find it to bear a disturbing resemblance to the annihilated species from his studies about halfway through the species's destruction.
How could his species be so superior in so many ways, yet have an amount of wisdom comparable to species whose life spans were a million times shorter than that of a Transformer? When he found the remains of his home city smelted into a pile of regressive slag, he was only heartened by the fact that his lab was still there - and it wasn't so bad that the destruction of the surrounding area made his return to Cybertron go unnoticed. He had some time to reorganize his theories; regroup his intentions. Part of gathering his bearings included watching transmissions from old newscasts - they were innumerable, and they were filled with reports of attacks on and by both Decepticons and Autobots. The more recent the newscast, the more likely that the attacks were performed by the Autobots - and, disturbingly, the more likely that the attacks were on areas known as having primarily aerial-Transformer populations.
One night, as Thundercracker had finished watching the newscast on the destruction of the city he was sitting right in the middle of, he heard a sliding noise - he was cautious; the area he was in was not as gleaming and safe as it had been a mere million years before, so it could have been someone sneaking around. Checking the sliding door of his lab, it appeared to be nothing and the noise was gone as soon as it came..
Of course, anyone, no matter how stupid, could recognize the beeping noise he now heard as the counter to a time bomb. Turning on the jets that also functioned as his heels, he punched in the code to open the door in a panic. He was able to get out of the lab itself, but not out of the building. The bomb went off.
When Thundercracker woke up, he was mostly unharmed, save for the error messages about his vocals and his engines. He had to get out of here.
Transforming into his jet mode, he turned on his engines to hear them rumbling - no, more like roaring. Muttering to himself about what the slag was wrong, he got caught off guard by his own voice - the explosion had damaged his vocals. His voice, too, had a sort of rumbling quality to it.
Other than that, everything seemed to be normal, except for his entire life which had just been turned upside down by the destruction of his lab and of his research.
A million years was nothing compared to the amount of time, effort, energy, and work Starsceam had put into his project, and when he returned to Cybertron to write up both the log of his fieldwork and an Epitaph for Jetfire, but that turned out to be impossible. All of his work, all of passion, all of his potential fame (and also the hopes of sustainable energon use) - destroyed in an attack on his lab! What idiot would destroy his work? It was essential to the survival of Cybertron! Inflicted with one blow of frustration and personal loss was enough to make a Transformer a little glitched, but having that experience followed up by the complete destruction of his life's planning at the brink of its realization drove Starscream to what can arguably be considered insanity.
Starscream wanted revenge. Skywarp, on behalf of the Decepticons, dutifully informed him of the villainous Autobots that had viciously attacked his lab and effectively destroyed any chance that Starscream had at being the one Transformer to stop the war and solve the Energon problem. He could, however, be known throughout history by eliminating the Autobots by joining the Decepticons.
If Starscream could not be the most brilliant scientist in history, then he would have to settle for being the most powerful warrior in the known universe.
Thundercracker was at a loss. His frustration was also, with the guidance of the Decepticons, aimed towards the Autobots. Thundercracker did not know any better. All he knew was that based on the Autobots' supposed attacks on aerial Transformers, as well as the destruction of not only his lab, but the labs of Starscream and Skywarp, there was sort of a justification to direct his anger towards the Autobots. On top of that, Starscream and Skywarp were now Decepticons, and he, too, desired a place to go. Despite his general wariness towards the direction that war would take the Cybertronians, his desire for the ability to associate with something and with others drove him to also join the Decepticon ranks.