Dating the Eugenics Wars

[T'Girl]

If that were the case, Lily would not have had to spend six months scrounging for enough titanium to build a four-meter cockpit

Oh, I'll agree that this makes no sense. Titanium isn't really all that hard to find, especially if Lily were willing to assemble scrap titanium for her construction. Sponge titanium currently goes for about $10,250 per metric ton.

Pacific Steel & Recycling of Great Falls, Montana carries scrap titanium. They're located just six miles from the main gate of Malmstrom AFB.

Episodes of ENT explicitly established that the community seen in First Contact was Bozeman, Montana.

And the movie clearly establishes the missile complex that the Borg fired upon as being in central Montana, later the movie clearly establishes that the first warp ship lifted off from said location. The term "missile complex" refers to hundreds of isolated silos, spread over thousands of square miles. Bozeman, Montana is located up in the Rocky Mountains, bad place for a missile complex.

If Bozeman is in real life in southwest Montana,

If?

or that Data misspoke.

Between Data, with his positronic brain, looking at a readout on the bridge of the Enterprise E, and T'Pol remembering something off the top of her head, whom shall we believe?

Radiation from the Japanese power plant that was damaged in the tsunami a few months ago appeared on the west coast of America within days,

Yeah -- in such miniscule amounts as to be utterly meaningless.

The actual point Sci is that connecting Asia and America, there exist this thing call "The Wind."
A nuclear war capable of killing six hundred million people is not going to produce fallout in (as you put it) minuscule amounts. People (and food supplies) far outside any target zone are still going to be irradiated.

The problem with that is that we saw that the silo had no perimeter guards early in the film, and we saw Our Heroes violating the perimeter from the ground numerous times.

But missile complexes have hundreds of silos scattered over thousands of square miles, perimeter guards would be on the, you know, perimeter. Out by the fences. Once the warhead was removed from the missile, close in security might have been provided by private/corporate employees, armed but casually dressed to "blend in." Any military guards could have been hundreds of yards away from the silo to prevent Cochrane crew of geniuses from being disturbed.

The only time Starfleet personnel were endanger of encountering any military "perimeter guards" was when they were chasing Cochrane through the forest, on grounds of the missile base.

No well-organized national defense force would leave a missile silo in civilian, non-governmental control without someone else around to supervise, constantly.

If there were any military personnel supervising, they would have been down inside the silo. Off duty, they would have driven back down the access road to the main base. Of the people killed inside the silo, we only saw a relative few.

If the Borg were firing at all the silos, and perhaps the main base as well, this might explain the subsequent absent of military presents in Cochrane's area. We don't know if the Borg knew the exact location of the particular silo that Cochrane was using, nor how long the Borg were in the past prior to the Enterprise's arrival.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

See, this is why I keep hoping for a series of novels about Trek's WW III. To take this question right to bed and see how it creases the sheets.

 

[Sci]

If that were the case, Lily would not have had to spend six months scrounging for enough titanium to build a four-meter cockpit

Oh, I'll agree that this makes no sense. Titanium isn't really all that hard to find, especially if Lily were willing to assemble scrap titanium for her construction. Sponge titanium currently goes for about $10,250 per metric ton.

Pacific Steel & Recycling of Great Falls, Montana carries scrap titanium. They're located just six miles from the main gate of Malmstrom AFB.

Sounds to me like a strong indication that the entire United States economy of the mid-21st Century has collapsed, probably as a result of the war.

Episodes of ENT explicitly established that the community seen in First Contact was Bozeman, Montana.

And the movie clearly establishes the missile complex that the Borg fired upon as being in central Montana, later the movie clearly establishes that the first warp ship lifted off from said location. The term "missile complex" refers to hundreds of isolated silos, spread over thousands of square miles. Bozeman, Montana is located up in the Rocky Mountains, bad place for a missile complex.

Which does not change the fact that it was canonically established to have happened in Bozeman. It's far more probable that Riker -- and it was Riker who spoke, not Data -- misspoke about whether it was central or southwestern Montana than that characters in ENT and the "Voice-of-God" Subtitled in "In A Mirror, Darkly" were all wrong.

If Bozeman is in real life in southwest Montana,

If?

Yes, "If." I'm not contesting Bozeman's location in real life, I'm creating a conditional statement. "If X, then Y."

Between Data, with his positronic brain, looking at a readout on the bridge of the Enterprise E,

It was Riker who spoke, not Data. See above re: probability of error.

and T'Pol remembering something off the top of her head,

From "Desert Crossing:"

HOSHI: Why Montana? Of all the places the Vulcans could have landed they chose Bozeman, Montana.

T'POL: Humanity's first warp drive was developed there. It seemed a logical place to begin.

HOSHI: Well, how did they know it wouldn't alarm other nations? An alien species makes contact with the United States. It could have made a lot of other countries nervous.

T'POL: What's your point?

HOSHI: It seems to me that we're going to run into similar problems. We get invited to dinner, and before you know it we're accused of taking sides in a war.

From "Carbon Creek:"

T'POL: I went to Carbon Creek because I wanted to visit the site of First Contact between humans and Vulcans.

ARCHER: Then you were about three thousand kilometers off. That took place in Montana.

T'POL: Actually, it didn't.

TUCKER: Every school kid knows that Zefram Cochrane met the Vulcans in Bozeman, Montana, on April 5th, 2063. I've been there. There's a statue.

This is not just T'Pol mis-remembering something off the top of her head. This is two separate characters, in completely separate circumstances, both reciting a basic historical fact that has been drilled into their heads as surely as that Columbus led his expedition in 1492, or that the English established Jamestown in Virginia and the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts, or that George Washington was the first President of the United States of America.

whom shall we believe?

See above re: probability of error.

The actual point Sci is that connecting Asia and America, there exist this thing call "The Wind."
A nuclear war capable of killing six hundred million people is not going to produce fallout in (as you put it) minuscule amounts. People (and food supplies) far outside any target zone are still going to be irradiated.

Which is why I argued that the preponderance of accumulated evidence is that the United States was a combatant in World War III and its federal government rendered at least partially impotent as a result of the war, not that any one particular piece of evidence was sufficient to indicate those two things.

The problem with that is that we saw that the silo had no perimeter guards early in the film, and we saw Our Heroes violating the perimeter from the ground numerous times.

But missile complexes have hundreds of silos scattered over thousands of square miles, perimeter guards would be on the, you know, perimeter. Out by the fences. Once the warhead was removed from the missile, close in security might have been provided by private/corporate employees, armed but casually dressed to "blend in." Any military guards could have been hundreds of yards away from the silo to prevent Cochrane crew of geniuses from being disturbed.

Then they would have been swarming the place after the Borg attack! Instead, all we saw were some random people who looked like they hadn't been able to bathe in five months shrugging and going about drinking in a ramshackle permanent refugee camp.

No well-organized national defense force would leave a missile silo in civilian, non-governmental control without someone else around to supervise, constantly.

If there were any military personnel supervising, they would have been down inside the silo.

In the middle of the night? No, there would be plenty in the settlement, too. They'd be taking shifts, and when the attack came, they would all have been woken up and would be swamping the Phoenix silo. Our Heroes wouldn't have had to substitute for anyone, because dozens and dozens of people would be on the scene.

If the Borg were firing at all the silos, and perhaps the main base as well,

We saw every single shot the Borg managed to get out. It only affected the silo we saw, and it didn't even affect most of the surrounding settlement.

Let's face it: The most probable scenario is that the United States government either collapsed or lost effective control of parts of North America, that there was a missile silo just outside of Bozeman, Montana, which the United States Air Force personnel abandoned after the war, and that Zefram Cochrane and his gang took over the abandoned silo and ICBM because there was no government left to stop them.

ETA:

There's another piece of evidence I had forgotten:

Lily, thinking Picard is allied with the Eastern Coalition, demands of him why the ECON broke the cease-fire. Why would there be a cease-fire if the United States had not been a combatant in World War III?

 

[blssdwlf]

Other than a difference in dating, was there any discussion of Spock's line about 37 million dead in World War 3 ("Breads and Circuses") and Riker's line about 600 million dead in World War 3 ("First Contact")?

 

[Timo]

It has been pointed out that estimating "war dead" is a rather arbitrary business because 100% of the people involved in a war die. Eventually. And some people die within a given time period regardless of whether there's a war on or not.

We can pick and choose quite arbitrarily to end up with whatever figures we want for, say, WWII dead. Those killed while wearing a uniform? Those killed within an hour of being hit by a weapon of war? Those killed within a year? Those killed before the statistically likely age of natural death? Those killed because the railroad or aqueduct was cut and they starved or got ill?

For WWIII, the figures are going to have an extra step of arbitrariness since we know that nuclear weapons were involved, with all the classic scifi add-ons: besides the blast, there was radiation sickness, short-term climate change, at least local total collapse of infrastructure - and, for all we know, rampaging hordes of mutants to boot! Deaths from a two-hour-long nuclear exchange in 2052 might have continued accumulating for the next fifty years, and Spock and Riker would simply set their time windows differently.

Spock's figures are low for both WWI and WWII in terms of total dead from weapons hits and immediate war zone disease and starvation. They are a bit high in terms of mere fallen soldiers, though. One would think Spock would not differentiate between soldier and civilian, and that he'd go for high figures rather than low ones for the case of the argument at hand. Perhaps he was quoting United States dead for McCoy's benefit, and including certain kinds of dead no human historian would?

However, to be sure, Spock is not speaking simply of dead tolls there. Spock is specifically speaking of people who suffered the effects of "slavery, gladiatorial games, despotism". Perhaps only six million died because of slavery and despotism in WWI, and only 11 million died of slavery and despotism in WWII? There was a lot of slavery going on in WWII, which was a prolonged struggle where POWs and other captives kept the war effort going with their labor. WWIII might have been of a completely different nature, with few captives in relation to those who gave their lives because righteous democracies rained death on them.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

@Timo -

from "Breads and Circuses"

MCCOY: Next he'll be telling us he prefers it over Earth history.
SPOCK: They do seem to have escaped the carnage of your first three world wars, Doctor.
MCCOY: They have slavery, gladiatorial games, despotism.
SPOCK: Situations quite familiar to the six million who died in your first world war, the eleven million who died in your second, the thirty seven million who died in your third. Shall I go on?

So it would seem that Spock's numbers are quite a bit ways off even for WW1 and 2. I went and pulled an encyclopedia from 1968 to see what the writers were looking at and the WW1 death toll is 1/2 to 1/3 too low from Spock. Ditto on WW2. And that's even just using soldiers or civilians as a reference point. Perhaps TOS' history started splitting off alot earlier than ours and that resulted in a faster tech tree since the global powers were already deploying orbital nuclear weapons already in 1968 ("Assignment:Earth").

Also I wonder if in "Space Seed" that World War 3 either occurred before the mid-1990's or was the same as the Eugenics Wars. They aren't directly tied to each other from what I can tell. Perhaps the "Eugenics Wars" was the last World War that resulted from World War 3 that preceded it? In "Breads and Circuses" it sounded like Spock had another figure waiting to deliver to McCoy that might've been the Eugenics Wars

SPOCK: No such vessel listed. Records of that period are fragmentary, however. The mid-1990s was the era of your last so-called World War.
MCCOY: The Eugenics Wars.

 

[Timo]

...And again it's important to remember that Spock has already selected "mid-nineties" as his timepoint of interest because of what he knows about the strange spacecraft, and not because the events he and McCoy then proceed to list (WWIII, Eugenics Wars) would be specific to the mid-nineties. WWIII might cover a lot of time and terrain, and McCoy might be mentioning the Eugenics Wars as a specific subset of WWIII that covers slightly less time and terrain and better fits the "mid-nineties" slot of interest.

The longer we assume WWIII took, the easier time we have. A long war could be subdivided into distinct chapters or campaigns more easily. A chaptered war could be given wildly varying death toll estimates more easily. A drawn-out conflict would see many leaders, many heroes and villains, and the identity of the bad guys could change.

Personally, I think we're best off if we see the 1990s as the beginnings of WWIII already, the same way Japan's occupation of Manchuria started out WWII (even though the starting date in the west is usually set at Hitler's invasion of Poland, and sometimes at Pearl Harbor); if we then assume a brief stabilizing of the situation, much like Japanese rule in Manchuria was stabilized; and if we then introduce all-new villains who take the war to the next level, like Hitler did halfway around the globe.

We could then have a WWIII that turns Earth into a dismal dystopia for the entire 1990s-2050s period, and reaches a catharsis in the 2050s when the superpowers decide to create some order and end up torching the planet instead. Prior to that torching, the World War would touch some nations as little as WWII touched the United States, while others would undergo cataclysms that put the Bolshevik Revolution to shame.

Certainly WWIII is still considered a big deal in the 24th century, and the Eugenics Wars a significant part of that big deal. Giving the war a lot of scope would be beneficial for drama, then.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Other than a difference in dating, was there any discussion of Spock's line about 37 million dead in World War 3 ("Breads and Circuses") and Riker's line about 600 million dead in World War 3 ("First Contact")?

ENT retroactively explained the 37 Million as being the direct result of *Colonel Green*'s actions. Green is (in the computer bio screens shown in "In a Mirror, Darkly") explained to be a radical environmental terrorist.

Which is, IMHO, entirely compatible with what little was ever shown of Green onscreen.

 

[Timo]

...And with the idea that the 37 million were specifically the victims of a situation akin to that of the pseudo-Roman planet: barbaric actions of despotic leaders. 150 million others might have been killed for various other reasons that had nothing to do with that sort of barbarism, and were viewed as "inevitable" or even "noble" by our heroes.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

I dunno. Spock doesn't say that World War 3 was the last "So called World War". He only states that the mid-1990s was when it happened and McCoy named it the "Eugenics Wars" which Spock does not dispute. The things we can get from Spock's dialogue was that the last of Earth's "World Wars" occurred decades before TNG's World War 3 was stated to happen and that the death total (aka "carnage") are quite different for all 3 wars compared to "real history" and quite different between TOS and TNG.

As to Colonel Green - isn't NATO in real life going after a certain Colonel to prevent genocide among his own people? Seems to me that Colonel Green in TOS could also easily be an early 21st century dictator and fit the description: "And Colonel Green, who led a genocidal war early in the 21st century on Earth."

Jump to a different quantum universe and boom, Colonel Green's a eco-terrorist

I do agree that it's fertile ground for wide interpretation

 

[Timo]

And IMHO we have every excuse to choose and believe that McCoy was contradicting Spock rather than agreeing with him on the name of the war that was going on in the mid-1990s.

The entire teaser for "Space Seed" consists of our heroes contradicting each other, after all. First, Kirk doubts Spock's sensor readings (!). Then, Spock insists it's not an Earth vessel, and seconds later Uhura tells that it's sending in Earth Morse code. Kirk says it's a DY-500 and Spock contradicts him with his DY-100 knowledge. Kirk insists it must be on automatic and McCoy detects heartbeats. He says those can't be human and we know how that turns out...

Early on in this chain of contradictions, Spock asks if Kirk takes pleasure in contradicting, and Kirk admits to it. But when Spock in turn defeats Kirk in the DY-whatever argument, he admits to no pleasure (the big fake!); if McCoy caught him on fumbling his Earth history, he would obviously display no displeasure beyond the obligatory eyebrow-lifting, which we do get.

Significantly, this single exchange in "Space Seed" is the only bit connecting WWIII "directly" with the Eugenics Wars. By dismissing it, we are free to define WWIII as we please.

The idea that Colonel Green was also doing eugenics is a less direct connection, and may be interpreted as indicating that Eugenics Wars spanned several centuries (and included WWII as a leading conflict, even if Khan's war is quoted equally often) rather than suggesting that they were the same as WWIII.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Avon]

does it matter if they said it was in the 90's, being 60's fiction and all?

in 50 years or so will there be massive arguements about when the film First Contact took place due to the lack of Vulcans landing here/Warp drive being invented/Time travelling gimps?

 

[Timo]

Well, this poll went 13/8 in favor of accepting Khan's war as an alternate past instead of a putative future...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

Significantly, this single exchange in "Space Seed" is the only bit connecting WWIII "directly" with the Eugenics Wars. By dismissing it, we are free to define WWIII as we please.

That exchange sounded more like the Eugenics Wars was the last World War on Earth but doesn't directly connect WW3 and the Eugenics Wars. It could be also interpreted that WW3 occurred before and the Eugenics Wars was WW4 or 5, etc. All McCoy did was name that last World War as the Eugenics Wars which concluded with the defeat of Khan.

If we go back to Spock's exchange with McCoy in "Breads and Circuses", he implies there is more than the "first three World Wars".

 

[Timo]

For all we know, McCoy is saying that there were no "World Wars" at all - that the politically correct human name for them all now is Eugenics Wars. Or that WWI has become something else (perhaps the Great War again) while WWII and Khan's war and WWIII are included in the Eugenics Wars.

The mid-1990s would certainly fall within "the time of the World Wars", now possibly known as the time of the Eugenics Wars, quite regardless of how many of those wars there were exactly.

Regarding Spock's "Bread and Circuses" remarks, it would appear that if there were any World Wars beyond number three, they were free of what Spock calls "carnage". Which makes things curiouser and curiouser, because supposedly the 1990s conflicts still involved carnage, and/or were considered to be a lead-in to an era of carnage. That'd basically mean that the last carnage war would also have to be the last world war, which logically makes WWIII the last of the lot!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

That doesn't follow. Spock started with the "first three world wars" as an example but clearly there would be more, or as he put it, "shall I go on"? However the LAST World War was in the 1990s that was called the Eugenics Wars. Connecting the last World War in TOS to World War 3 in TNG doesn't work given the dates.

TOS
World War 3 (or more) occurs between 1970s - mid 1990s
Eugenics War (the last World War) occurs in mid 1990s
Colonel Green from early 21st century

TOS Movies
Likely pushes World War 3 and/or Eugenics Wars time frame to after TVH

TNG / Voyager
World War 3 occurs anytime between 1996 - 2053 "mid 21st century"
Subspace technology developed after 2096

from "Breads and Circuses"

MCCOY: Next he'll be telling us he prefers it over Earth history.
SPOCK: They do seem to have escaped the carnage of your first three world wars, Doctor.
MCCOY: They have slavery, gladiatorial games, despotism.
SPOCK: Situations quite familiar to the six million who died in your first world war, the eleven million who died in your second, the thirty seven million who died in your third. Shall I go on?

 

[Timo]

TOS
World War 3 occurs between 1970s - mid 1990s

Not stated quite like that. What's stated in "Space Seed" is that it's ongoing in mid-1990s; there's no data on the closing date. Or the starting date, for that matter.

TOS Movies
Squeezes World War 3 and/or Eugenics Wars time frame to after TVH

Possibly. OTOH, San Francisco would probably have looked much the same even if there had been a World War on...

TNG / Voyager
Subspace technology developed after 2096

Huh?

McCoy: "Next he'll be telling us he prefers it over Earth history."
Spock: "They do seem to have escaped the carnage of your first three world wars, Doctor."

So there must be a reason why Spock would specifically limit himself to discussing just the three wars.

I guess the most logical interpretation would be that the first three world wars of Earth happened before the 1960s, which is the closest analogy to the era the pseudo-Romans are living. They escaped that, but they haven't yet explicitly escaped the carnage of a later world war that would coincide with "their" 1990s or 2050s which still lie in "their" future.

The second alternative is that only the first three involved carnage, or that the fourth and later wars otherwise fail to apply to the pseudo-Roman situation. Perhaps any world could have wars sparkled by the reasons of Earth's WWI through III, but only Earth could ever have a war ignited by the reasons that ignited WWIV. Or perhaps only Earth could have the specific type of carnage that was characteristic of WWIV.

A third possibility is that there are only three World Wars to go by. Spock is merely implying that a fourth might lie in the future of the 2260s Earth, considering how quarrelsome the Earthlings are.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

TOS
World War 3 occurs between 1970s - mid 1990s

Not stated quite like that. What's stated in "Space Seed" is that it's ongoing in mid-1990s; there's no data on the closing date. Or the starting date, for that matter.

Not exactly. You can narrow down to the end of the war to approx 1996 when Khan was overthrown.

Spock: The mid-1990s was the era of your last so-called World War.

SPOCK: There is that possibility, Captain. His age would be correct. In 1993, a group of these young supermen did seize
power simultaneously in over forty nations.

SPOCK: There was the war to end tyranny. Many considered that a noble effort.

SPOCK: From 1992 through 1996, absolute ruler of more than a quarter of your world. From Asia through the Middle East.
MCCOY: The last of the tyrants to be overthrown.

TOS Movies
Squeezes World War 3 and/or Eugenics Wars time frame to after TVH

Possibly. OTOH, San Francisco would probably have looked much the same even if there had been a World War on...

True. The TOS Movies can fit either way now.

TNG / Voyager
Subspace technology developed after 2096

Huh?

From "Future's End":

It's 1996 (but we'll party like it's 2063)

CHAKOTAY: Sub-space technology shouldn't exist for another hundred years or so.

Which is curious since I thought for TNG that warp drive (2063) is subspace technology. I guess not?

McCoy: "Next he'll be telling us he prefers it over Earth history."
Spock: "They do seem to have escaped the carnage of your first three world wars, Doctor."

So there must be a reason why Spock would specifically limit himself to discussing just the three wars.

I guess the most logical interpretation would be that the first three world wars of Earth happened before the 1960s, which is the closest analogy to the era the pseudo-Romans are living. They escaped that, but they haven't yet explicitly escaped the carnage of a later world war that would coincide with "their" 1990s or 2050s which still lie in "their" future.

That first interpretation does sound the most logical.

 

[Timo]

You can narrow down to the end of the war to approx 1996 when Khan was overthrown.

The end of Khan's war, sure. But the overthrowing of Mussolini didn't actually end any wars. Or the (first) overthrowing of Napoleon, for that matter. The superman business might have been a fairly small part of the bigger conflict.

CHAKOTAY: Sub-space technology shouldn't exist for another hundred years or so. Which is curious since I thought for TNG that warp drive (2063) is subspace technology. I guess not?

I guess 70 years is "100 or so".

Which would still mean that Cochrane's first flight would not be preceded by lesser experiments in subspace technology. And that's a bit strange.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ The word 'subspace' is a bit vague. It could mean almost anything. It doesn't have to be synonymous with warp drive, does it?