Earth - 2063 Onwards - No Vulcans

[Into Darkness]

How might Earth have grown and gone out into the stars had the Vulcans never made first contact?
I want us to work under the presumption that the Vulcans never and don't exist in this timeline.

So Cochrane has made his warp flight and returned to Earth but no Vulcans were around to detect it and land and make first contact. How does the universe progress from then onwards?

I'd like to imagine that the Vulcans weren't there to hold back humans technologically so Earth progressed faster in technology but not as much socially/domestically.
I think Earth united through a United Nations type organisation specifically for the exploration of space using Cochranes warp technology.

I imagine Earth colonised other worlds faster and the first starships were more powerful and more advanced.

I imagine that Earth and the Andorians may have eventually made first contact and through mutual similarities forged an alliance and this Earth/Andorian alliance was a formidable union against outside aggressors such as the Romulans and Klingons.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

It would have taken a lot of advancement before the Andorians considered Earth viable allies, but they probably would have been on friendly terms.

 

[Into Darkness]

It would have taken a lot of advancement before the Andorians considered Earth viable allies, but they probably would have been on friendly terms.

What kind of advancement? Keep in mind the Vulcans held Earth back at every turn, even held them back from building the warp 5 engine.

 

[C.E. Evans]

How might Earth have grown and gone out into the stars had the Vulcans never made first contact?
I want us to work under the presumption that the Vulcans never and don't exist in this timeline.

IMO, it really wouldn't have changed anything drastically. In ENT, one of the beefs Archer had with Vulcans is that the Vulcans didn't really help Humans that much, forcing them to do things on their own (like develop a Warp 5 engine). Apparently, no one else would help them either.

I think the only things that Vulcans really did was make recommendations, and while some were heeded, others weren't. Without Vulcans, I'm sure Humans would have just found someone else out there that would warn them about certain things that awaited them in the larger interstellar community. If nothing else, Boomers would have filled that role to some extent perhaps.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I find it very likely that the Vulcans helped Earth in the cleanup after World War III (otherwise there's no way Earth could have possibly recovered so quickly, from an all-out nuclear war, after only a hundred years), so if the Vulcans had never made contact, Earth would have taken many centuries to recover from the war. By the time of ST:TNG, it probably still wouldn't have done it - maybe they'd be at Riddley Walker level, or at the very best, Threads.

In fact this may be why Vulcan held Earth back for so long: they considered it payback for Vulcan assistance in cleaning up Earth after the war. I mean, you'd want compensation for that, wouldn't you?

 

[Finn]

I'll say we were better off with Vulcans. Besides, even if the Vulcans weren't passing through the Sol system, they might notice the first warp signatures going to our nearest neighbors. Their star system is only sixteen light years away. It would be hard for Vulcans not to notice us by the time a warp 2 engine was made.

 

[Into Darkness]

I'll say we were better off with Vulcans. Besides, even if the Vulcans weren't passing through the Sol system, they might notice the first warp signatures going to our nearest neighbors. Their star system is only sixteen light years away. It would be hard for Vulcans not to notice us by the time a warp 2 engine was made.

I said in the OP

"I want us to work under the presumption that the Vulcans never and don't exist in this timeline."

There is no Vulcan under this scenario.

Edit: ok let's give the scenario a background story. Some dude from the temporal cold war is about to die, he wants to do one last thing before he dies so he goes back in time and manages to stop life from evolving on Vulcan. He dies moments afterwards. The timeline has now changed and so the temporal police force no longer exist to do anything about it, the timeline is now one where Vulcans never existed.

 

[Finn]

^my apologies

First of all, that would mean no Romulans. This part of space would be completely different. There would be different powers. Perhaps, the Denobulans would control the Sol Sector. Races long oppressed by Romulans may have given rise to empires that may prevent Klingons from spreading out to the stars.

 

[Shawnster]

No Vulcans. No Romulans.

We've still got Klingons, Tellerites and Andorians in this general area. Events of "Broken Bow" with the Klingons and Suliban may still have taken place.

First Contact with the Vulcans may have helped cement the Earth into a united planet-wide government. Without Vulcans, Earth may have continued to have various nation-states (or super nations/blocs) for much further in history.

First Contact with extra terrestrials may have been with Andorians first. They seemed to be closer to Earth than the others, since the Andorians and Vulcans were already in a cold war at the start of Enterprise. As mentioned, maybe Denobulans were among the first encountered. Also, we saw the Orions and the various citizens of Rigel in the neighborhood. Any of these could have met humans first.

Humanity had warp drive and would have continued to push outward. They would have met someone. The Temporal Cold War would still have happened, the Suliban would probably still have chased the Klingon to Earth and subsequently the Klingon would still have been delivered back to Q'onos. The Xindi would have still sent their mini Death Star to slice off the Florida peninsula.

But, without Vulcans holding Humans back, it might have been a more wild and wooly quadrant. Maybe more like Babylon 5.

 

[blssdwlf]

How might Earth have grown and gone out into the stars had the Vulcans never made first contact?
I want us to work under the presumption that the Vulcans never and don't exist in this timeline.

It could look alot like TOS Star Trek where Earth survived their Eugenics Wars (WW3) and then pushed out to the stars in their DY-series ships and encountered the Alpha Centaurians. After a few decades of impulse-powered FTL technology, a plucky guy from Alpha Centauri named Zephram Cochrane discovers Warp drive and things really open up. Vulcans and Romulans optional

 

[Misfit Toy]

I'll say we were better off with Vulcans. Besides, even if the Vulcans weren't passing through the Sol system, they might notice the first warp signatures going to our nearest neighbors. Their star system is only sixteen light years away. It would be hard for Vulcans not to notice us by the time a warp 2 engine was made.

I said in the OP

"I want us to work under the presumption that the Vulcans never and don't exist in this timeline."

There is no Vulcan under this scenario.

Edit: ok let's give the scenario a background story. Some dude from the temporal cold war is about to die, he wants to do one last thing before he dies so he goes back in time and manages to stop life from evolving on Vulcan. He dies moments afterwards. The timeline has now changed and so the temporal police force no longer exist to do anything about it, the timeline is now one where Vulcans never existed.

Perhaps you shouldn't have mentioned Romulans in the OP. As Shawnster points out - no Vulcans means no Romulans.

 

[Shawnster]

Perhaps you shouldn't have mentioned Romulans in the OP. As Shawnster points out - no Vulcans means no Romulans.

Actually, I was only repeating Finn.

^my apologies

First of all, that would mean no Romulans. This part of space would be completely different. There would be different powers. Perhaps, the Denobulans would control the Sol Sector. Races long oppressed by Romulans may have given rise to empires that may prevent Klingons from spreading out to the stars.

 

[T'Girl]

It would have taken a lot of advancement before the Andorians considered Earth viable allies, but they probably would have been on friendly terms.

Without the Vulcans as a interstellar military threat, the Andorians might have been a less hostile to the new comer Humans.

one of the beefs Archer had with Vulcans is that the Vulcans didn't really help Humans that much, forcing them to do things on their own (like develop a Warp 5 engine).

Archer's beef went beyond the Vulcan simply not helping, according to him the Vulcans were actively holding Human advancement back. How much sooner could Humans have achieved warp five without the presence of the Vulcans? Decades, multiple decades?

I find it very likely that the Vulcans helped Earth in the cleanup after World War III (otherwise there's no way Earth could have possibly recovered so quickly, from an all-out nuclear war, after only a hundred years ...

In a conversation between Admiral Forrest and the Vulcan Ambassador, the Ambassador said that the Vulcans were amazed at the speed the Humans recovered from their nuclear war, especially in comparison the Vulcans own lengthly recover from a similar event.

In a conversation between Trip and T'Pol, Trip boasted of Humanities advancements over the previous century, people don't boast to someone else, if the someone else did the work for them.

It sounded like the majority of the Humans recovery was their own doing.

No Vulcans. No Romulans.

That would depend on how we got a "No-Vulcan" galaxy. Did the Vulcans disappear after the Romulans left the homeworld?

First Contact with the Vulcans may have helped cement the Earth into a united planet-wide government. Without Vulcans, Earth may have continued to have various nation-states (or super nations/blocs) for much further in history.

Once warp drive was a fact, competiition between nations and parallel developments easily could have accelerated Humans movements outward into the galaxy.

 

[C.E. Evans]

one of the beefs Archer had with Vulcans is that the Vulcans didn't really help Humans that much, forcing them to do things on their own (like develop a Warp 5 engine).

Archer's beef went beyond the Vulcan simply not helping, according to him the Vulcans were actively holding Human advancement back.

Only because the Vulcans didn't give them more advanced technology. When Archer was a kid, he lamented that they could have had a Warp 5 engine in 2121 if the Vulcans hadn't kept things from them, forcing them to find them out on their own.

How much sooner could Humans have achieved warp five without the presence of the Vulcans? Decades, multiple decades?

Zero sooner. What we saw in ENT were Humans advancing at their own rate (which actually made the Vulcans look extremely slow in comparison and even frightened them).

 

[Into Darkness]

First of all, that would mean no Romulans.

Oh yeh good point. Never occurred to me that. ha.

OK i'll change my no Vulcan scenario to one where Vulcan gets wiped out after the Romulans leave Vulcan.

I should have thought the OP out better shouldn't I. lol

 

[Ethros]

Without the Vulcans to calm down the Klingons after the Broken Bow incident, Earth would probably have been invaded

Soval: Sarcasm aside, Captain, the last thing your people need is to make an enemy of the Klingon Empire.
Tos: If we hadn't convinced them to let us take Klaang's corpse back to Kronos, Earth would most likely be facing a squadron of Warbirds by the end of the week.


So we wouldn't have done that great.

 

[Into Darkness]

Without the Vulcans to calm down the Klingons after the Broken Bow incident, Earth would probably have been invaded

Soval: Sarcasm aside, Captain, the last thing your people need is to make an enemy of the Klingon Empire.
Tos: If we hadn't convinced them to let us take Klaang's corpse back to Kronos, Earth would most likely be facing a squadron of Warbirds by the end of the week.


So we wouldn't have done that great.

The timeline would have changed significantly. The temporal cold war may never take place or if it does it would likely be so drastically different there is no reason to believe the Suliban would even have been manipulated let alone believe Klaang still crash landed on Earth.

 

[Gotham Central]

Without the Vulcans humans would not develop very far and we probably would have destroyed ourselves.

Deanna Troi clearly says that the arrival of the Vulcans changed the way humanity saw itself and its place in the universe. That was the impetus that forced us to get out collective s**t together. Thus by 2113, 50 years after first contact, Earth had fully recovered from WWIII, developed a functioning world government and started moving out into the stars.

Without that realization, its a good bet that the "Post Atomic Horror" would have lasted much longer and might have resulted in an eventual WWIV. Remember, even 10 years after WWIII, Lilly was actively concerned that the E-Con would come back. Plus even with the presence of the Vulcans, the new New United Nations still had to contend with Colonel Green.

We can be fairly certain that in the absense of the Vulcans, humanity would probably not have ventured into space until at least the late 22nd Century. Without the outside motivation humanity would have turned inward and there would have been NO motivation to unite. Thus nation states or alliances would have reemerged allowing the cycle of destruction to start all over again.

On top of all of that its a good bet that at some point the Klingons would have turned up. Enterprise suggested that Earth was reasonably close to Klingon space. Given that Klingons did not turn up on Earth before 2151, and given that we know that Vulcans were at least observing Earth since the 1950s, we can assume that our solar system fell within the Vulcan sphere of influence. Without that sphere of influence, the Klingons move in a lot earlier.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Thus by 2113, 50 years after first contact, Earth had fully recovered from WWIII, developed a functioning world government and started moving out into the stars.

First contact took place only ten years after what was apparently a global nuke war. And then, 50 years after that, Earth is fully recovered? Nah. Not buying it. We all know what a nuclear war would do - it would have destroyed civilization utterly. No way does a planet recover from that in *500* years, let alone 50. They must have had help.

Unless WW III was not fully nuclear, which I suppose is possible. But where's the evidence of that?

 

[Shawnster]

Thus by 2113, 50 years after first contact, Earth had fully recovered from WWIII, developed a functioning world government and started moving out into the stars.

First contact took place only ten years after what was apparently a global nuke war. And then, 50 years after that, Earth is fully recovered? Nah. Not buying it. We all know what a nuclear war would do - it would have destroyed civilization utterly. No way does a planet recover from that in *500* years, let alone 50. They must have had help.

Unless WW III was not fully nuclear, which I suppose is possible. But where's the evidence of that?

How extensive was the nuclear war?