What would have happened to Earth and the Human race if Vulcans never made first contact with Humani

[Nyotarules]

I also guess the interesting question here is, what kept Earth safe in the years before the warp discovery?

Great question. Is there an intergalactic agreement the major players ignore all worlds that do not have warp drive and do not know there is life on other planets? There is a whole galaxy out there trading and fighting each other and each one decides little old Earth etc, despite all its many resources is not worth the time of day?
Or maybe they were waiting for us to destroy ourselves so they can land and literally 'inherit the Earth?'
Its weird the Andorians had never heard of our solar system, are they that far away, but close enough to Vulcan to stage wars? Maybe each planet stayed in their own backyard, until Humans came along and decided to explore the galaxy?

 

[Timo]

Vulcans might be relatively powerful players, capable of keeping all competitors out of their space, and willing to do that aggressively and effectively. They could have been at it for centuries for all we know.

But then we have "Carbon Creek" where a Tellarite ship is close enough to pick up the Vulcans' distress call. And ENT paints the Tellarites of the day as opportunists and mercenaries, and as folks in contact with Andorians, making it risky for Vulcans to allow them to travel through space that is important to Vulcan interests... Or are Tellarites trusted allies or clients, as they are seen to be at odds with Andorians later on?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Orphalesion]

If they ever reboot First Contact or the idea of a WW3 in the franchise, stating the number in the billions would be more realistic than in the millions, 600 million dead is less than the population of Europe, if everyone in Europe died after a global war, the rest of the world would still keep going.

I mean scifi is famous for under-estimating population numbers, distances etc. Also I'm kinda wondering whether the "hundreds of thousands" of radiation damaged people Colonel Green murdered after the war are included in that 600 million figure, or any other causalities that died due to radiation, sickness or starvation in the years after the war. Because if those are included, then the number of causalities from bombardment or battle itself would be even lower... and now that I mentioned it, do those 600 million include combatants?

 

[BillJ]

Specifically, the Vulcans not detecting the warp signature from Cochrane's Phoenix Warpship.

Would Humanity go extinct from environmental damage? Would their civilization (permanently) regress back to a pre-industrial society and likely continue it's legacy of barbarism and savagery ad infinitum?

I'll second the nod to "Star Trek: Federation" by Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens. Much more engaging story than we were given in First Contact. "Strangers from the Sky" by Margaret Wander-Bonnano is another great read about first contact with the Vulcans. The first has no Vulcan influence in events that led to warp drive, the second is about first contact with the Vulcans.

Or there's the version of First Contact from the novel "Federation" where Cochrane himself went to the stars and met with the inhabitants of Alpha Centauri. Even though this story is non-canon I feel something similar would have happened eventually in the Trekverse whether Cochrane or people inspired by him years of decades after.

 

[Shawnster]

I much preferred Strangers from the Sky to ST:FC

 

[Timo]

The two don't exactly exclude each other. We already know Vulcans were messing with Earth since the 1950s at the very least, and humans had varying levels of contact with them, without the fact ever becoming public. So the bit in ST:FC about the Vulcans there just "passing by" was a filthy lie all along: they were there to spy on us, to varying degrees of interest. And would have been throughout Strangers, too - but the left hand would never be told what the right was doing.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Jayson1]

Their would be no earth at all. With no first contact then the Federation doesn't get created. Voyager doesn't exist to be sent back to the Big Bang by Q2 and thus the entire universe is changed at it's very core. Or lets say that was always suppose to have happened. It's likely that people would have used warp drive to leave earth and settle elsewhere as opposed to rebuilding because they wouldn't have the tech and resources of the Vulcans to relay on. Maybe they colonize Mars or one of those planets in season 1 of Enterprise. One with the people living underground or the one where they camp out and Trip and T'Pol and others go kind of crazy because of something in the air kicked down on them from the storms.

Some people would of course stay behind on Earth and I think they would do fine for the most part with a smaller population not being a drain on resources and eventually the Vulcans would make first contact anyways or the Andorians or maybe even the Klingons but if it was the Klingons humans would basically be enslaved. Same case also if they run into Orion Slavers.


Jason

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

Cochrane sells warp drive just as he was planning on doing, and likewise goes and retires to some tropical island populated by beautiful scantily clad women.
#genesvision

Or in very tight onesies #ricksvision

 

[at Quark's]

Just a stray thought here, without any conclusion.

The Borg seemed to have placed significant emphasis on this particular "first contact" event, as they targeted this event very specifically by time traveling back to the very day before. The idea of preventing the Federation from forming in the first place is clear, but why pick this specific event? If they had traveled back to, say, 2062, they could have assimilated earth at their leisure, too, with the same result. Or even if they traveled back to 2100 ... it's not as if Earth then could have put up any significant resistance.... or the Vulcans, for that matter. (Their defeat in Regeneration was only possible as the collective was still in the very early stages of re-establishing itself, limited in both numbers and resources -their sphere ship might have been significantly stronger than their converted shuttle).

So, what is it the Borg know about the importance of First Contact that we still don't even though we understand the 'Federation never forms'- part ? Or did they just need to pick any date in a certain time interval and they just happened to pick that precise day?

 

[Xhiandra]

Maybe they wanted to assimilate an earth with a sufficient level of technology.
These are still Borg, they'd still ignore civilisations they consider too primitive.

At least, that's my flimsy justification for why the Borg don't assimilate the earth in, say, 1455.
In truth, it's probably just an obvious plot hole. Everything has plot holes.

 

[Timo]

If the bad guys say "We want to stop the UFP from being created", our first assumption probably ought to be "Oh, they're out to make sure the UFP gets created!".

And for that purpose, 2063 is ideal. Vulcans at that point seem to have given up hope of making Earth a valuable client. But suddenly a team of engineers arrives from the future, with the blueprints for the first warp testbed loaded into their tricorders, and make this testbed fly, resulting in renewed Vulcan interest and, ultimately, the Federation. Those engineers were invited in by the Borg. Would the warpship ever have flown if not for LaForge and Barclay?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

I would expect the Earth would get rebuilt slower than if the Vulcans helped. Humans would travel and colonize nearby ecoplanets. Whichever race ran into humans would determine the level of contact.

 

[Timo]

It would seem likely, though, that everybody has already run into humans, and simply turned away, perhaps in disgust, perhaps out of fear of our guardian angels or the big boys who have the superior claim even if they aren't making anything of it yet.

We have Vulcans galore at Earth before our space age. We have the Xindi. We have Tellarites nearby. Previously, we got Platonians, Apollo's folks, Kukulkan's, probably also Sargon's. Earth appears robust in face of such contacts: actual gods voluntarily leave us to our own devices!

It would be a bit odd for anything truly bad to happen to Earth in such a setup. Except perhaps by sheer chance, with a conqueror entering just after one guardian angel leaves and the next is yet to arrive.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

Around the tune of FC, more likely that humanity would do itself in versus a different spacefaring race.

 

[Qonundrum]

The two don't exactly exclude each other. We already know Vulcans were messing with Earth since the 1950s at the very least, and humans had varying levels of contact with them, without the fact ever becoming public. So the bit in ST:FC about the Vulcans there just "passing by" was a filthy lie all along: they were there to spy on us, to varying degrees of interest. And would have been throughout Strangers, too - but the left hand would never be told what the right was doing.

Timo Saloniemi

There's a fun irony: Alien species fiddles with humanity, just to meet later on to see what's up, then said humanity creates "prime directive" that says "don't fiddle with less developed planets". The Vulcans promptly proved how illogical the humans are... again. (Though I may have missed an episode or chapter in the whole franchise...)

 

[Tenacity]

^ That does suggest that Humans (and others?) came up with the prime directive without the advocacy of the Vulcans.

I much preferred Strangers from the Sky to ST:FC

I prefer the Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology version of first contact. It's the Humans helping the Vulcans, and the two are quickly on a even footing.

 

[Morgan Primus]

Current thoughts, terrans wouldn’t have been as important in the federation.

 

[Nyotarules]

Current thoughts, terrans wouldn’t have been as important in the federation.

They are not important, the other planets just make them think they are...

 

[Dukhat]

Specifically, the Vulcans not detecting the warp signature from Cochrane's Phoenix Warpship.

Would Humanity go extinct from environmental damage? Would their civilization (permanently) regress back to a pre-industrial society and likely continue it's legacy of barbarism and savagery ad infinitum?

Deep Space Nine gives us a hint in the episode "Past Tense," when the timeline changed in 2024:

O'BRIEN: I'm not getting any response from Starfleet.
ODO: Is there something wrong with our communications array? I was just talking to Starfleet Security when my comm. line went dead.
O'BRIEN: There's nothing wrong on our end. Everything checks out fine.
KIRA: Could be interference on the comm. channels. Try a wide band subspace signal.
O'BRIEN: Still nothing. Maybe if I direct it toward one of the Federation communications satellites in Earth orbit.
ODO: What is it, Chief?
O'BRIEN: They're not there. The entire Earth satellite network is gone.
KIRA: The spacedocks? The orbital habitats?
O'BRIEN: All of it. The Utopia Planitia yards on Mars, the terraforming stations on Venus, Starfleet Headquarters. I'm not detecting a single sign of Starfleet activity anywhere in this sector.
KIRA: Try a non-Federation frequency.
O'BRIEN: The only subspace signals I'm detecting are coming from the vicinity of Alpha Centauri. And they're Romulan.

Then later:

O'BRIEN: Well, we know one thing. They arrived before the year 2048.
ODO: How can you be sure?
O'BRIEN: Because we were just there. And that wasn't the mid-twenty first century I read about in school. It's been changed. I mean, Earth history has been through its rough patches, but never that rough.

So since there's literally zero space activity in orbit of Earth or other places in the Solar System by the alternate 24th century, it can be surmised that based on this dialogue, at the least Cochrane never made his warp flight, and at most the human race is effectively dead.

 

[DonIago]

Just a stray thought here, without any conclusion.

The Borg seemed to have placed significant emphasis on this particular "first contact" event, as they targeted this event very specifically by time traveling back to the very day before. The idea of preventing the Federation from forming in the first place is clear, but why pick this specific event? If they had traveled back to, say, 2062, they could have assimilated earth at their leisure, too, with the same result. Or even if they traveled back to 2100 ... it's not as if Earth then could have put up any significant resistance.... or the Vulcans, for that matter. (Their defeat in Regeneration was only possible as the collective was still in the very early stages of re-establishing itself, limited in both numbers and resources -their sphere ship might have been significantly stronger than their converted shuttle).

So, what is it the Borg know about the importance of First Contact that we still don't even though we understand the 'Federation never forms'- part ? Or did they just need to pick any date in a certain time interval and they just happened to pick that precise day?

The ironic thing about this, based on the Destiny novels at least, is that if we assume all of the events shown occur in the same timeline, then if First Contact and the ensuing events don't happen then ultimately the Borg never exist. Perhaps that strengthens the case that the events of the film are a predestination paradox.