The Eugenics Wars: Earth's Last World war

[dswynne1]

I understand your point, but you cannot ignore the fact that other things were happening, especially in light of the Cold War, or competing geopolitical interests. In fact, with the defeat of the Augments, there would be a power-vacuum of sorts that could very well set the stage for events that would lead to World War III. And besides, other than Khan, we know very little of what the other Augments may or may not have done, other than within the various publications (often contradictory). Then again, as Spock had said in "Space Seed", there is very little in the way of records that could be found pre-First Contact, which is why I gave my own thoughts on this matter.

I'm not denying at all that "other things were happening" nor could I deny at all any sort notion of a power vacuum opening up where there had once been a forty-nation alliance-turn-pissing match between 1993 and 1996. The difference here is that I choose not to consider your points above via the lense of TNG/FC/ENT. I will consider them via the conditions set for this thread. I do not at all denying the veracity of Trek "canon", nor am I incapable of working within that much-lauded framework supposedly established by the Trek powers that be. I simply choose to approach this subject from a techno-literary angle. If you can work with me in that endeavor, I would appreciate it. This thread appears to be wobbling around over what is fed to us and what we can conjecture happened on our own. I have chose to do the latter with this thread.

To each his or her own, then. Simply expanding the other aspects of 'Trek timeline in your extrapolation exercise should not be a problem in your mind, but it is obvious that you do. But, whatever. Have fun with this thread on your own.

 

[T'Girl]

We will approach this subject based on:

Conditions for Discussion ...

As a participant in this discussion, I'm afraid I can not accept your preconditions ... suitable regrets of course.

Star Trek exists in an alternate continuum ..

Unless directly stated as being different, the Trek-verse is identical to our own. Obviously there are differences, for one the manned space program seems to have maintained the pace of the mid-sixties.

Agent 147 “Gary Seven” to Earth. His original task was to sabotage the launch of a suborbital nuclear weapons platform by the United States of America ...

It actually would seem to have been the task of two other agents (201 and 347) to set the rocket to malfunction during accent to orbit, and not "sabotage the launch." Gary Seven's original task was to act as a supervisor, and not to carry out the mission himself.

... in of itself a response to other nations having already launched similar platforms

It wasn't "nations," but nation, meaning one other.

... the vehicles was successfully detonated, and in the process gained the immediate attention of the entire globe.

According to the episode, the incident was "not generally revealed." So no, it did not gained the immediate attention of the entire globe, in fact it sound like the event was never generally known of.

If you would like to include the movie "Space Cowboys" into this discussion, the Russians both successful placed at least one orbital missile satellite in orbit and kept it there for decades.

The platform delivery vehicle exploded 104 miles in the upper atmosphere with debris of varying dimensions raining down upon Earth in undisclosed regions of the planet.

As I understand the events of the episode, the nuclear warhead (or one of them) detonated inside the launch vehicle. There would have been no debris.

... for willfully breaking the terms of the Nuclear Test Ban treaty of 1962 ...

Did you mean the Limited Test Ban Treaty of October 1963? Which the Chinese never signed.

The UN Security Council would vote on a measure to censure the US, USSR and China ...

Russia, the UK, France, China, and the United States are the Security Council's 5 permanent members, and can veto any Security Council resolution. The USSR, US or China would have vetoed the measure.

On top of that France said that when the Limited Test Ban Treaty came into existence that they would ignore it and test as they saw fit to do so.

So who exactly was going to be voting yes to this censure in the first place?

 

[MichaelJCO]

Looking forward to more of the timeline

 

[T'Girl]

Scotty's reaction to the Botany Bay on the other hand is very telling ...

SCOTTY: I think they used to call them...transistor units

Transistors are semiconductor devices. Some present day microprocessors contain billions of transistors. Xilinx's (a tech company) field-programmable gate array has over 20 billion transistors.

... TOS's version of the twentieth century concentrated their technology on space travel and related areas, less concerned about personal computers and microchip miniaturisation.

In 1996, the Botany Bay's computers might have been equiped with the (then) top of the line Pentium Pro microprocessors, each of which contained 5.5 million transistors.

Point of Departure between times and events in our timeline and Star Trek

Instead of 1968, it might have been futher back in history, like the late 1930's.

In The City on the Edge of Forever, Spock said "Germany had time to complete its heavy-water experiments ... Because all this lets them develop the A-bomb first ... With the A-bomb, and with their V2 rockets to carry them, Germany captured the world."

While the Germans did half-heartedly work on a atomic bomb for a few years, there was never a serious effort on their part to carry out the required research. In the Trek-verse apparently this wasn't the case.

In Patterns Of Force, we get this description of Nazi Germany from John Gill, "Most efficient state Earth ever knew." Followed by Spock's conformation; "Quite true, Captain." National Socialism was quite the opposite, it was very inefficient and badly organized. In the Trek-verse (again) apparently this wasn't the case.

Or Spock simply didn't know what he was talking about.

.

 

[Ithekro]

I wonder, Spock did say the records from that era were incomplete. Could Kahn have only been part of the problem and only much later was the era called the Eugenics Wars? He might have been the last "superman" and left in 1996, but perhaps the blood shed and the 37 million lives lost were a result of the aftermath of him and his kind leaving and/or being removed from power. Basically the power vacuum leading to all sorts of problems at the start of the 21st century that continue (in our present) to spiral ever in and out of control. The lives lost being a total over the course of decades as a result of the actions or inaction of Kahn and his supermen and their leaving Asia with a power vacuum that the West was not knowledgable of until many decades later.

So that Kahn is not directly responsible for those 37 million deaths by his word. He commits no massive crime against humanity (so to speak), but does what he said he did in "Space Seed", he offered the world order. Or his area of the world, which if we take our history and inject it as we know it as of 2014 into Star Trek, means he controlled, somehow, the Middle East, Central Asia, or perhaps even the entire Muslim World and kept it in order following the defeat of Iraq in 1991 by the US and allied forces, and following the fall of the Soviet Union by 1992. And yet they managed (probably rightly) to drive him into space by 1996.

Following Kahn's departure, the vacuum of power leads to situations that favor the conditions of our present "War of Terror" and other such conflicts (what I was calling back in 2003 the "Fifth Crusade" before I found out there were more than four historical crusades. There were I think ten historical crusades). The various conflicts result in 37 million dead and later the tensions somehow result in a nuclear exchange of some sort in the 2050s and another estimated 600 million dead.

At least that is sort of how I see things. But then I try to inject real history into Star Trek after the fact when there is no way they could anticipate events back in 1967 or even as late as 2005. And we can't see clearly were it is going any more than they could.

 

[dswynne1]

I wonder, Spock did say the records from that era were incomplete. Could Kahn have only been part of the problem and only much later was the era called the Eugenics Wars? He might have been the last "superman" and left in 1996, but perhaps the blood shed and the 37 million lives lost were a result of the aftermath of him and his kind leaving and/or being removed from power. Basically the power vacuum leading to all sorts of problems at the start of the 21st century that continue (in our present) to spiral ever in and out of control. The lives lost being a total over the course of decades as a result of the actions or inaction of Kahn and his supermen and their leaving Asia with a power vacuum that the West was not knowledgable of until many decades later.

So that Kahn is not directly responsible for those 37 million deaths by his word. He commits no massive crime against humanity (so to speak), but does what he said he did in "Space Seed", he offered the world order. Or his area of the world, which if we take our history and inject it as we know it as of 2014 into Star Trek, means he controlled, somehow, the Middle East, Central Asia, or perhaps even the entire Muslim World and kept it in order following the defeat of Iraq in 1991 by the US and allied forces, and following the fall of the Soviet Union by 1992. And yet they managed (probably rightly) to drive him into space by 1996.

Following Kahn's departure, the vacuum of power leads to situations that favor the conditions of our present "War of Terror" and other such conflicts (what I was calling back in 2003 the "Fifth Crusade" before I found out there were more than four historical crusades. There were I think ten historical crusades). The various conflicts result in 37 million dead and later the tensions somehow result in a nuclear exchange of some sort in the 2050s and another estimated 600 million dead.

At least that is sort of how I see things. But then I try to inject real history into Star Trek after the fact when there is no way they could anticipate events back in 1967 or even as late as 2005. And we can't see clearly were it is going any more than they could.

Exactly what I was trying to say. I would also add that even if the West was not directly affected by the EW, the political atmosphere would be decidedly pro-interventionism to the point that the blow back would be in the form of a massive arms race, one that could lead towards a nuclear holocaust later on. Certainly, a lot of technological leaps via the inevitable military buildup would be on hand.