How long after WW3 did it take for earth to fully rebuild everything?

[The Rock]

After the nuclear holocaust of WW3 on earth in the Star Trek universe, how long after that did it take for everything to be completely rebuilt into the utopian society it eventually became? Because I can imagine a lot of parts of earth would have massive amounts of radiation that would take hundreds of years to completely go away. So do you think by Kirk's time there were still some parts of earth (or the former United States even) that were still inhabitable due to the radiation levels? Or was the Federation able to build some kind of device to make the radiation go away faster? I've always wondered.....

 

[john titor]

Re: How long after WW3 did it take for earth to fully rebuild everythi

In first contact one of the characters says that disease, poverty etc would be erased in 50 years, assuming that the war at that point had ended about 10-20 years ago, I would say 50-70 years. The Vulcans probably had some radiation scooper device which they lended to them, although Quark in that ds9 episode where they go back in time to earth in the 1940s remarks that humans are crazy using fission bombs on their own planet, so perhaps not, or maybe clean up is really expensive. Or perhaps earth is just the USA, France, Ireland and England.

 

[Timo]

Re: How long after WW3 did it take for earth to fully rebuild everythi

Nuclear wars don't really create long-lasting radiation problems. The fallout would be fairly "shallow", blown away with the winds and rains fairly soon. "Hotter" spots would be fairly localized, and no doubt there would be futuristic methods for dealing with them long before Kirk's time. If nothing else helped, large scale scooping out of contaminated soil would certainly be possible. Transporters to the rescue!

Rebuilding the cities might be a matter of a decade or two, as it was in Germany which in WWII was leveled pretty much as completely as if hit by multiple nukes.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gotham Central]

Re: How long after WW3 did it take for earth to fully rebuild everythi

After the nuclear holocaust of WW3 on earth in the Star Trek universe, how long after that did it take for everything to be completely rebuilt into the utopian society it eventually became? Because I can imagine a lot of parts of earth would have massive amounts of radiation that would take hundreds of years to completely go away. So do you think by Kirk's time there were still some parts of earth (or the former United States even) that were still inhabitable due to the radiation levels? Or was the Federation able to build some kind of device to make the radiation go away faster? I've always wondered.....

Well it depends on who you ask. First Contact suggests that everything will be just peachy by 2113. Of course Encounter At Farpoint suggests that things actually get much worse as late as 2079 and don't get much better soon.

Put it this way, Star Trek is all over the place when it comes to the 21st and early 22nd century. Hell, some kind of way during the turmoil of the Eugenics Wars, WWIII, and the Post Atomic Horror, Earth manages to send a manned mission to Saturn, set up a Martian Colony, send Friendship One and Nomad on their merry way, deploy sleeper ships, and hurl the SS Valiant out of the galaxy (in 2065...only 2 years after Cochrane's warp flight).

 

[Myasishchev]

Re: How long after WW3 did it take for earth to fully rebuild everythi

One thing ENT could have retconned and gotten away with it, I feel, is the inconsistent manner in which the near-future is described. The best way to go about it would be to combine the Eugenics War and World War III. Although this conflicts somewhat with canonical statements, we all know the 21st century has needed a good fix for a long time, even before Voyager made it worse. Ironically, Ronald Moore's "mistake" in Doctor Bashir, I Presume would have cleared things up significantly, by fixing the "new" date of the Eugenics War as practically coincidental with World War III, making them perforce the same conflict.

All the early space exploration stuff like Voyager 6 and what not could easily have been accomplished during the golden age of the Augments. In fact, the Saturn mission referenced Tomorrow is Yesterday, performed by Augments, would be the cutest wink at Gattaca.

As it stands, I ought to start selling "I Survived the Eugenic Wars and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt" t-shirts.

 

[Timo]

Re: How long after WW3 did it take for earth to fully rebuild everythi

Ironically, Ronald Moore's "mistake" in Doctor Bashir, I Presume would have cleared things up significantly, by fixing the "new" date of the Eugenics War as practically coincidental with World War III, making them perforce the same conflict.

Uh, I believe the mistake actually put the Eugenics Wars roughly concurrent with the Xindi strike... That is, the wars were claimed to be 200 years before the 2370s, rather than the 400 years that "Space Seed" established.

Sure, Spock originally equates the Eugenics Wars with Earth's last world war, making it possible that there was a WWIV after WWIII. And if the EW were in the early-to-mid 22nd century, the references to a propulsive breakthrough soon after Khan escaped would nicely coincide with ENT and its Warp Five project.

Khan would then have slept for only one and a half century or less, not two. But Kirk could be rounding up, and the DS9 Admiral could be rounding down, for a slightly better overall match. Of course, all the specific dates in "Space Seed" would be invalidated, then, and we would lose the very entertaining concept of exciting events in the 20th century. Also, it would be even more unbelievable than it is now that Earth technology in Star Trek would reach its TOS-era levels, if we refused to give it a head start in the mid-20th century. But the rest of the continuity wouldn't be much disturbed even if we started to believe in a war during Archer's early years.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Myasishchev]

Re: How long after WW3 did it take for earth to fully rebuild everythi

Oopsie daisy, I guess my arithmetic is as good as Moore's.