Oh? Says who?
Those are different. They were part of pilot episodes. Pilots are always different from the regular series. That's a ready-made excuse for any inconsistencies.
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Was World War III a full nuclear exchange or a limited conflict?
- Thread starter Citiprime
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Oh? Says who?
Those are different. They were part of pilot episodes. Pilots are always different from the regular series. That's a ready-made excuse for any inconsistencies.
Fictional franchises for centures.
They're the same thing, details that changed in later stories.
If they changed the dates of the EW and WW3, it would not decanonize all of Space Seed or Wrath of Khan, it would only just retcon the relevant dialogue.
An explanation would still be nice. You can't just say "Oh, everything is different now" and not explain why.
Assuming, of course, that we are still expected to believe that SNW is in the same timeline as TOS and its ilk.
Akiva keeps saying they will try and line up with TOS before the end
Yes you can. It’s a fictional series not a historical documentary.
Anyways, we're not going to see eye to eye on this, so let's just stop. It's off topic anyways.
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Or just don't talk about when either occurred, discuss them in detail sure, simply don't mention dates.
Neutron bomb style. What we see in Europe now is a type of WWIII-by-proxy
The worst time for a “nuclear exchange” was late 60’s-early 70’s pre SALT/START when the bloody things were both at their largest and most numerous.
Cuban Missile Crisis wasn’t actually as bad as some recorded.
The smaller missiles aimed at the U.S. were not ready, and the only ICBMs Russia had were a couple of the ponderous R-7 Sputnik/Soyuz deals. Tactical nukes were another matter, Kometas and FROGs aimed at Gitmo…atomic tipped torps, etc. Outside of the end of WWII, it was the only time an atom war could ever remotely be called “winnable.”
Still—-it would have been a tactical nuclear hell south of Florida—-for an invasion force would have sailed into a wall of fireballs.
Rumor has it that Castro and others were only too willing to be incinerated, giving the Russians pause…as per a C-SPAN lecture I can only dimly recall.
One or two R-7 warheads may or may not have found their marks before the USSR was glassed.
Unlike the Soviet R-12 and R-14 MRBMs, the Jupiters in Turkey were at the ready: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGM-19_Jupiter
That’s why Nikita “blinked.”
JFK was actually all alone in resisting the call for invasion—and war.
He and a Soviet sub captain or two.
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If I remember correctly, the northern and southern hemispheres exchange very little air at the equator, the northern could be heavily irradiated, and the southern would see only a small transfer.
If a country had few cities nuked, would that result in "no governement" (Rikers words) in that country. If Washington DC was nuked, after some disorganization the American people would simply create a new capital, probably in a existing surviving city. At different points both New York City, and the city of Philadelphia were the nation's capital.
Data mentioned residual fallout in the atmosphere.
Memory Alpha says that Earth had fusion reactors as early as the 20th century.
The use of fission bombs over fusion bombs is a question.
The first world countries would have had to run out of fusion bombs, then lose the ability to make fusion bombs, as if one was more extremely harder than the other to make, that a dumbed down anti science country, or failing supply issues, would revert to fission.
Smaller less developed countries, or not countries, may never have moved on from fission reactors, or may have never have had a talent for either and just bought what ever weapons, fission or fusion, were available on the black market.
Meanwhile Nihilists or Assholes may like radioactive fallout. See it as an amusing weapon of prolonged extermination. Like how the Romans would salt the Earth, so that when they killed a country it stayed dead, and nothing would grow.
The destruction of major cities would be a blessing in disguise, honestly, since it means a lot more farmland and so would be more unaffected, allowing for farming and small towns and bunkers to emerge and rebuild a base asap. I think the deepest of the British documents that Thatcher buried basically wanted the urban population to stock up and stay put. If they die, less people to worry about, if they survive, they'll have enough to huff it until forces arrive and lock them down for a harvest or two hopefully (and keep dying off in the cities, and leave the farmland alone).
But a big thing is most people, especially in the 80s, gave every which what prediction for nuclear war, majoring into the fear mongering. They also tend to underestimate or outright forget the global south, which yes, while tied to the north for food and finished goods, isn't wholly incompetent, especially in agriculture and each nation having some corps of technical personnel...
Sagan and Nuclear Winter seems to be a wrong conclusion, as Sagan admitted after the ecocide in Kuwait in miniature. This does not mean there wouldn't be cooling, but just that human technological civilization, and most importantly, our agriculture, is more likely than not going to survive an exchange.
We also don't know how many nukes went off or their yield, just enough to kill 2 billion, which if you incinerate the major cities, wouldn't be amiss but still leave 6 billion around. At worst, half of those might starve before the carrying capacity and agriculture recoups, less if nations were actively working on stockpiling fertilizers and farming equipment et al. Or, even, in trek the 2 bil is both those killed in the exchange plus the rough number that died due to the collapse afterwards, in which case woo! What a light nuclear war. Especially if stockpiles were light in number, even if their individual yield kills a city, that's still better than the utter saturation the 80s stockpiles threatened. Add: it also seems that Trek implies it's Econ, not the West/NUN/Nato, that takes the hit more...if India and China are taking most of that 2 billion, while still, of course, a tragedy, it sort of regionalizes the damage. The US and Europe seem to get on their feet fast enough and be big players post-war, after all....
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of course they can.
after spocks comment about 92-96 there were many travels in time back to that period - including Spock himself going to 1968 and causing a kerfuffle with Gary seven, and going to 1986 and stealing whales and a biologist.
These could and would have changed things.
look at Gabriel bell, did he look like Sisko or not? Before Sisko went back he didn’t, but after Sisko went back he did.
trek has shown history as malleable for decades. Spock May have been right about khan in space seed, but time travel cups then have changed certain details - including changing all of khans crew members between Soace Seed and Wrath of Khan, shifting dates, etc
or of course spock could have been wrong. After all records from the time were fragmentary.
That's definitely one thing that's now actively in play--the existence of different accounts of events, either due to how they're perceived at different times or to actual alterations of history itself, even if minor. This does result in contradictory accounts that are all true at the time they were discussed.
The problem may be in trying to reconcile everything into one perfectly neat & cohesive box of continuity that doesn't exist and quite frankly, never did, IMO.
The problem may be in trying to reconcile everything into one perfectly neat & cohesive box of continuity that doesn't exist and quite frankly, never did, IMO.
In the Star Trek Adventures table top RPG, they tried to explain the low death count it by having ECON developing an AI anti-missile defence system that got too smart and decided to protect everyone, and so it destroyed both incoming and outgoing missiles, until the ECON blew it up themselves.
I stopped reading there. I went with the concept of 'canon' for a time, but now I think it's very limiting and unnecessary
First Contact said 600 million died from World War III, and "A Matter of Time" (TNG) referenced "Nuclear winters on 21st Century Earth". So there had to be full nuclear exchanges.
But if the war lasted from 2026 to 2053, I find it impossible to believe that it was a nuclear war for the entire time. As bad as 600 million is (and it's pretty bad!), that's nothing compared to what 27 years of nuclear conflict would be. Humanity would go extinct. So, I think there were periods of higher tension and periods of lower tension. Similar to the Cold War, where it lasted from 1945 to 1991, but it was worse in the 1950s and, to a lesser extent, the 1980s.
But if the war lasted from 2026 to 2053, I find it impossible to believe that it was a nuclear war for the entire time. As bad as 600 million is (and it's pretty bad!), that's nothing compared to what 27 years of nuclear conflict would be. Humanity would go extinct. So, I think there were periods of higher tension and periods of lower tension. Similar to the Cold War, where it lasted from 1945 to 1991, but it was worse in the 1950s and, to a lesser extent, the 1980s.
No, for sure, most surmise it ended with a nuclear exchange. Maybe two smaller parties (IND and PAK?) had a smaller, earlier exchange, but yea.
I said it in an earlier post, but I don't think [World War III] would really need many nukes and that the devastation doesn't have to be complete & total ruin everywhere. I could see major cities and governments collapsing during the post-atomic horror, but perhaps most fell more from the destruction of infrastructures and control than from direct nuclear hits. Earth was scarred, yes, but it wasn't a total wasteland from pole to pole. There may have been far more land that wasn't irradiated or ravaged by fallout than the areas that were.
In such a scenario, Earth going from a post-World War III society to launching warp-capable starships across the Quadrant in just a couple of generations is more plausible, IMO.
In such a scenario, Earth going from a post-World War III society to launching warp-capable starships across the Quadrant in just a couple of generations is more plausible, IMO.
Resent events, first the diplomats were sent (and they were), when that didn't work the planes are sent (soon).
That’s actually not incorrect.
Since the dialogue where that came from goes by the idea that TOS took place from 2196-99 and TNG takes place a century later in 2290s. There's a 70 year gap between TOS and when Data graduates in 2278. That 70 year gap does not change significantly (only by 3 years tops) when TOS is retconned as occurring in the 2260s and TNG occurring in 2360s. Data’s graduation date of 2278 get moved forwards to 2345.
My head canon has always been under the impression that there was a change in the timeline during TNG that shifted TOS and the first couple of years of TNG forwards and no one noticed.
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