What was "The Burn" and what caused it?

It brought down the United Federation of Planets. But what happened? Let's speculate. Maybe...

The Gorn ambassador pointed out that "To boldly go" was a split infinitive and everything went terribly wrong from there.

The most decorated Starfleet captain ever used the Shatner Roll in a ceremonial fight with an alien leader. The stadium roared with laughter, the fight was broadcast throughout the galaxy and the Federation was meme'd to death.

Someone pointed out that the Federation was REALLY human-centric and they had no comeback.

The Klingon chancellor replied to "Live long and prosper" with, "Lol no"

Someone discovers that due to a temporal anomaly, it's still 2020.

 

Trump won the 2020 elections with help from time travelling Tal Shiar.

 

Synth Bruce Maddox finally returned, argued this time for the sentient rights of Tribbles, they were fruitful and multiplied until the galactic flamethrower was called upon, much like the giant vacuum cleaner in Spaceballs. The burn managed to eliminate all but 1 Tribble, leaving the door open for a cute & fluffy revenge arc.

 

A Klingon dignitary was spouting some drawn-out tale of his heroism and bravery in a recent battle, and the bored Federation ambassador replied with, "Cool story, bro."

Kor

 

All the redshirts went on a Federation-wide strike to protest Starfleet's nonexistent workplace safety standards, and everything ground to a halt.

 

Riker uses anti-matter to jazz up a pizza and all hell breaks loose...

 

Burnham obviously. It's always her.

 

Warp 11 threshold was crossed.

 

The ultimate STD. And yes, I do mean sexually transmitted disease. See they're going for meta, people frequently abbreviate this show as STD, and now a sexually transmitted disease will take down the Federation.

 

Feel the Burn.

 

An invasion by the jayn'fonda, a species that enslaves people via a process known as 'aerobicising'

 

I'm not sure,but it probably happened in Eric Forman's basement.

 

Well, this is DISCO after all. So maybe it was just a Disco Inferno?

 

I was thinking of this jokingly, then it occurred to me it could make sense...the burn could be those pesky AIs we've been seeing in contemporary Trek laying waste to some organics.

There is actually something called "The Ash" in Brin's Uplift series, dead planetary systems as evidence of long-gone galactic AIs, either burned by their destroyers or by their scorched earth policy.

Alternatively...



RAMA

 

I hope it's Empress Tilly.

 

If I am to be a little serious, something as noun-tastic as 'The Burn' seems to me, and with their Time-Travel Shenanigans and Time Ships and Temporal Departments, that something got screwed up - MAD, maybe, on a Temporal level, a final stop to the endless warfare by destroying the tech or the records or something like it - maybe burning the literal agents, planets, databases, a galactic-wide reaction.

Of course by 3100? the Federation had been messing with time, hard, since around 2600?, so this is like cutting out half of their own history, maybe even literally. Five hundred years of off-and-on constant warfare and guarding will burn out anyone (pun not intended) and the galaxy went all counter-reformation? on it.

 

I get the feeling from Burnham's comment about ships that whatever it was probably took out Starfleet.

 

I think this guy is involved.

 

The Temporal Cold War got hot. Hot enough to... burn?