10 Times Star Trek Foretold The Apocalypse

Each year, we celebrate one particular date in the Star Trek calendar that we'd all like to get to, unless the aliens are already here. We tend to forget, however, that to arrive at April 5th in 2063 in the world of Sloane and Cochrane will mean taking a rather devastating, and nuclear, detour. The First Contact theme park of 'Historical Bozeman' might look like a lot of fun, but there are a whole lot of bones beneath it.

The canon of Earth's third global conflict is confused and timey-wimey, although getting the dates wrong is no doubt the most apocalyptic anyone can be. 2012 much? Added to that has been the shifting placement of the problematic Eugenics Wars. Nevertheless, there is now a broader consensus that WWIII for Star Trek begins c.2026 and ends in 2053. Whatever the timeframe, whatever the cause, it was most definitely exceptionally deadly!

If we go by Seven of Nine in In The Flesh then, "in Earth's Third World War, nuclear weapons accounted for six hundred million casualties". However, in Strange New Worlds, Captain Pike gave the most likely now more correct figure of "30% of Earth's population". By the current, that would mean in excess of two billion dead. That's not to forget "the eradication of 600,000 species of animals and plants". Ten years to warp drive after that is not just a "historical irony," to quote Data, but a bloody miracle! As a most famous physicist probably once said, "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones".