Nothing about Cochrane's first warp flight makes sense.
- Thread starter Xerxes1979
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Wouldn't any war involving the exchange of nuclear weapons be called "world war three?"
A war like that would probably not remain isolated for long.
I disagree, the nuclear portion of the war likely would be brief and wouldn't involve allies.
Oh yes it would. If two nuclear nations start going at it, their respective allies will intervene on their behalf. It's almost unavoidable.
For instance, if North Korea acquires the bomb and strikes at any US ally, the US itself will intervene for that country, and China would probably do the same for NK. That would probably happen even in a conventional war; in a nuclear war, like WWIII would be, the likelihood would be even greater.
Although I do agree in the sense that any nuclear conflict would be brief; it would only take a short amount of time to destroy the world.
Hell, we accept the plot of 'Sub rosa' and 'Shades of grey'. Faster than light travel being possible with nothing more than 3 rubber bands and a paperclip is MUCH easier to swallow
There's very little we know about the state of the government(s) on Earth post WWIII, but Riker does say there's "very few governments left," which implies there's still *some* government left and it could be argued the larger governments of the Earth, including the United States, survived.
The "Post-Atomic Horror" the world was in obviously wasn't greatly severe as the planet wasn't in a nuclear winter or experiencing any planetary turmoil from the radiation and nuclear fallout. It was still habitable with a regular day/night cycle instead of being clouded in nuclear ash. Either post-war 21st century Earth had remarkable nuclear clean-up/de-radiation technology or nuclear weapons weren't heavily involved in the actual war and the "Atomic Horror" was mostly the horror that it could be used to wipe out humanity. Think the Cold War/Cuban Missile Crisis factored by hundreds.
The surviving governments and people of the Earth were likely in a very, very deep economic depression. Something so severe getting into something like Great Depression would be an economic boom. The governments could barely operated to feed people but likely were "stable" enough to more-or-less maintain something of border security. There may have also been severe remnants of early 21st century class segregation in place. We may have had a situation similar to "Pamem" in "The Hunger Games" books where the rich and luck few lived in much better conditions than the lower classes struggling in shanty towns. Minus the severe dictatorship, segregated "districts" and the teenagers killing each other on TV thing, of course.
We know there's several things Cochrane likely would not have had at his disposal in order to make what we think-of as a warp drive. He very likely wouldn't have access to much, if any antimatter and dilithium is not available on Earth. Those are two major components to conventional warp-drive that Cochrane did not have.
So, I agree with the poster above, who things Cochrane just built a "really good" impulse engine aided by a ramped up mass-reducer driver coil to allow for the Phoenix to use a modified impulse drive to achieve FTL speeds. He may have built and came up with some simple theories on how to get this to happen in how the ship structured/manipulated space/subspace around it to do this (hence the familiar-looking warp nacelles) and his ideas launched him and any surviving Earth scientists down the right path.
We don't know how he got the materials, but given the economic state of 2063-Earth and some dialogue suggests that Lilly and Cochrane simply scavenged the materials they needed and were able to secure other things the government could no longer protect -like the missile and missile silo. Hell, it's possible Cochranre was able to re-adapt/repurpose the nuclear warhead in the ICBM to use as a powersource. Along this lines it's entirely possible the ICBM was not fitted with what we now think of as a nuclear warhead. It could have had something more advanced, possibly a pure-fusion based one that caused mass destruction without producing significant radiological effects/fallout.
We know nothing about Cochrane's pre-WWIII life. He does appear to be a man in his late 50s/early 60s as Cromwell was when he played the role. So he likely lived through "peace time" on Earth and since he held a doctorate he likely was a professor somewhere or held a prestigious position somewhere leading a team of people working on his theories. He likely came-up his "Eureka!" moment and had a prototype design in mind and was ready to build it when WWIII happened, funding was cut, and the world went to shit. He began scavenging, working and when the dust settled he was able to put his plan into motion.
I don't think there were any previous designs or prototypes, the Phoenix WAS the first practical prototype that was presumed to work in theory on paper or in a computer simulation. This was all of nothing and he'd sunk decades of his life into it and Lilly likely had to, perhaps she was a close aide/student under Cochrane when he was leading the original team. This was them putting all of their money on black and seeing what would happen. If it worked: fantastic! They've achieved the seemingly impossible and there's likely rewards and benefits to come. Again, there's still operating governments of some-form and it's likely this vessel would open up to them opportunities not available on Earth. Likely mining or resource-gaining opportunities on other planets in the solar system or in the asteroid belt. A FTL ship, or a ship capable of incredible speeds could turn a months or years long trip to the asteroid belt to collect ore into a trip that could be done in days if not hours. (Depending on the mining times.) Certainly an appealing prospect for the remaining governments and businesses on Earth.
If the ship didn't work and Lilly and Zeph were either trapped in space with no way back, or the thing blew-up on launch? So what? They're not losing much anyway since they've sunk their lives into this thing and life on Earth wasn't worth living anymore. They'd hardly be the first scientists, or even the last, to prove their theories and inventions.
When the Vulcans arrived, everything changed and -somehow- in the intervening time between FC and Enterprise humanity got off its ass and started working for something again, as they now knew there was something to work FOR. Zeph would have been the liaison between the Vulcans and the remaining Earth governments and Vulcans may have helped to guide Earth back onto track and aided in some early clean-up and foot-steading before stepping back and having humanity do the rest of the work themselves as we see on Enterprise.
The "Post-Atomic Horror" the world was in obviously wasn't greatly severe as the planet wasn't in a nuclear winter or experiencing any planetary turmoil from the radiation and nuclear fallout. It was still habitable with a regular day/night cycle instead of being clouded in nuclear ash. Either post-war 21st century Earth had remarkable nuclear clean-up/de-radiation technology or nuclear weapons weren't heavily involved in the actual war and the "Atomic Horror" was mostly the horror that it could be used to wipe out humanity. Think the Cold War/Cuban Missile Crisis factored by hundreds.
The surviving governments and people of the Earth were likely in a very, very deep economic depression. Something so severe getting into something like Great Depression would be an economic boom. The governments could barely operated to feed people but likely were "stable" enough to more-or-less maintain something of border security. There may have also been severe remnants of early 21st century class segregation in place. We may have had a situation similar to "Pamem" in "The Hunger Games" books where the rich and luck few lived in much better conditions than the lower classes struggling in shanty towns. Minus the severe dictatorship, segregated "districts" and the teenagers killing each other on TV thing, of course.
We know there's several things Cochrane likely would not have had at his disposal in order to make what we think-of as a warp drive. He very likely wouldn't have access to much, if any antimatter and dilithium is not available on Earth. Those are two major components to conventional warp-drive that Cochrane did not have.
So, I agree with the poster above, who things Cochrane just built a "really good" impulse engine aided by a ramped up mass-reducer driver coil to allow for the Phoenix to use a modified impulse drive to achieve FTL speeds. He may have built and came up with some simple theories on how to get this to happen in how the ship structured/manipulated space/subspace around it to do this (hence the familiar-looking warp nacelles) and his ideas launched him and any surviving Earth scientists down the right path.
We don't know how he got the materials, but given the economic state of 2063-Earth and some dialogue suggests that Lilly and Cochrane simply scavenged the materials they needed and were able to secure other things the government could no longer protect -like the missile and missile silo. Hell, it's possible Cochranre was able to re-adapt/repurpose the nuclear warhead in the ICBM to use as a powersource. Along this lines it's entirely possible the ICBM was not fitted with what we now think of as a nuclear warhead. It could have had something more advanced, possibly a pure-fusion based one that caused mass destruction without producing significant radiological effects/fallout.
We know nothing about Cochrane's pre-WWIII life. He does appear to be a man in his late 50s/early 60s as Cromwell was when he played the role. So he likely lived through "peace time" on Earth and since he held a doctorate he likely was a professor somewhere or held a prestigious position somewhere leading a team of people working on his theories. He likely came-up his "Eureka!" moment and had a prototype design in mind and was ready to build it when WWIII happened, funding was cut, and the world went to shit. He began scavenging, working and when the dust settled he was able to put his plan into motion.
I don't think there were any previous designs or prototypes, the Phoenix WAS the first practical prototype that was presumed to work in theory on paper or in a computer simulation. This was all of nothing and he'd sunk decades of his life into it and Lilly likely had to, perhaps she was a close aide/student under Cochrane when he was leading the original team. This was them putting all of their money on black and seeing what would happen. If it worked: fantastic! They've achieved the seemingly impossible and there's likely rewards and benefits to come. Again, there's still operating governments of some-form and it's likely this vessel would open up to them opportunities not available on Earth. Likely mining or resource-gaining opportunities on other planets in the solar system or in the asteroid belt. A FTL ship, or a ship capable of incredible speeds could turn a months or years long trip to the asteroid belt to collect ore into a trip that could be done in days if not hours. (Depending on the mining times.) Certainly an appealing prospect for the remaining governments and businesses on Earth.
If the ship didn't work and Lilly and Zeph were either trapped in space with no way back, or the thing blew-up on launch? So what? They're not losing much anyway since they've sunk their lives into this thing and life on Earth wasn't worth living anymore. They'd hardly be the first scientists, or even the last, to prove their theories and inventions.
When the Vulcans arrived, everything changed and -somehow- in the intervening time between FC and Enterprise humanity got off its ass and started working for something again, as they now knew there was something to work FOR. Zeph would have been the liaison between the Vulcans and the remaining Earth governments and Vulcans may have helped to guide Earth back onto track and aided in some early clean-up and foot-steading before stepping back and having humanity do the rest of the work themselves as we see on Enterprise.
Starborn Dragon
Captain
Lily wasn't his superior, she was his partner and his friend.
He did not report to her. There's nothing in the movie to suggest that he did.
And according to him he made the ship to make money a lot of money.
That's why he did it.
He did not report to her. There's nothing in the movie to suggest that he did.
And according to him he made the ship to make money a lot of money.
That's why he did it.
From "The Royale" we know the United States survived the war, as the flag's star pattern on the recovered piece of spacecraft lasted the 2070s, well after Cochrane's flight. The change in star pattern would either be from the ending of the country, or the removal/addition of states in the union.
Actually his uniform could have been any year between 2033 and 2079. I only assume it was after first contact as leaving the confines of the solar system without warp drive would have been rather pointless.
Is World War III canonically stated to have begun in 2026?
^ The only source that mentions 2026 is the Defiant's readout screens in "In a Mirror, Darkly".
We know from ST:FC that the war *ended* in 2053. I find it impossible to believe that a nuclear war could have lasted 27 years and not wiped out every living thing on Earth (hell, such a war could have done that in 27 minutes), so I'm inclined to dismiss the IAMD reference....
We know from ST:FC that the war *ended* in 2053. I find it impossible to believe that a nuclear war could have lasted 27 years and not wiped out every living thing on Earth (hell, such a war could have done that in 27 minutes), so I'm inclined to dismiss the IAMD reference....
Or the world has found unity at last!
Vulcan meddling may have helped United Earth world government along, but a much greater role may have been played by a winner-takes-it-all turn of events in the mid-21st century...
But there was a nuclear winter on Earth in the 21st century: TNG "A Matter of Time" says as much.
We just don't know how severe it was, or how long it lasted. Might be it came more than ten years after the start (and end?) of the war, for climatological reason X, and then the Vulcans were already here to help us out with it. Might be it came and went in the 2050s. Might be it ravaged every corner of Earth except Montana as of 2063.
Or then they reveled in all the war loot. Cochrane was surrounded by bums, but he was building a FTL spacecraft in his garage. There's no real telling whether everybody on Earth was a bum or capable of cobbling together supertech as a hobby project, not on basis of this little glimpse.
OTOH, perhaps "post-atomic horror" refers to the shutting down of atomic power plants due to or after the war by popular vote, this bringing on the horrors of brownouts and blackouts and associated anarchy?
It certainly had a fantastically futuristic propulsion system even before Cochrane installed the warp drive - way too good for an ICBM, actually! The entire upper state was propelled to planetary escape velocity by the lower stage alone: with a weapon like that, Montana could have strategically threatened Mars! The implication might well be that the actual war was fought with completely different types of weapons.
Or there could have been fifteen Cochranes all working on their warp drives, reaching different stages of progress, and then the bombs fell and our Cochrane with his single almost-working piece of hardware was the only one to survive.
Yup. But it should be pointed out for completeness' sake that later it is established that the flag (on a piece of debris, not a uniform) did come from a space mission long before Cochrane's flight.
Whether surviving flag-flying entities would be "governments" or mere peons of the "very few" new rulers of the globe, we don't know from this evidence alone. But TNG "Attached" establishes beyond doubt that there were still "governments" waiting to join the United Earth as of 2150, and OTOH that there were no unjoined governments left as of 2151. And VOY "Friendship One" refers to an organization known as the United Earth Space Probe Agency in the mid-21st century already, suggesting that United Earth might have existed in parallel with all those non-united national governments for a long time. And later on it appears as if the United Earth indeed is the government of Earth. But the timeline can be interpreted in many ways, even if the events themselves have their set dates; the UE might have had much less authority in ye olden days than the "actual" governments did.
We could argue that WWIII featured many active and passive periods and only escalated into a nuclear slugfest in the very last year(s). But why would history collate such a long conflict into one single "world war" that way when it clearly hasn't conflated the currently recognized WWI, WWII and Cold War into one single entity as it analogously probably should?
Is that screen shown, reproduced or transliterated somewhere on the net?
Timo Saloniemi
^ Could be, could be.... 
Nah, the United Earth government isn't formed until well into the 22nd century.
Nah, the United Earth government isn't formed until well into the 22nd century.
The name of the organization appears right after WWIII, and may predate that conflict; it's just in the 22nd century that it takes absolute control over all Earth.
We don't know how strong or tenuous its hold of Earth was in the 2060s or 2070s yet, though. How many nations apart from Australia remained independent until 2150? Just one, the minimum for Crusher's scenario to work grammatically? Hundreds? How many had their own warp programs going as of 2060? How many were going to buy Cochrane's machine? There's no telling.
Timo Saloniemi
We don't know how strong or tenuous its hold of Earth was in the 2060s or 2070s yet, though. How many nations apart from Australia remained independent until 2150? Just one, the minimum for Crusher's scenario to work grammatically? Hundreds? How many had their own warp programs going as of 2060? How many were going to buy Cochrane's machine? There's no telling.
Timo Saloniemi
Or initially the "UE" started in the mid 21st century with just half a dozen countries, and slowly accumulate one or two new member countries a year through to the mid 22nd century.
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