• @BigMikeInAustin
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    148 months ago

    Um, didn’t humans nearly exterminate themselves? And only because the Vulcans came did it stop?

    • @aeronmelon
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      398 months ago

      It’s not well explained, but Humans were actually spacefaring for a while before WWIII bombed Earth back into the Stone Age.

      And Humans agreed to a ceasefire then achieved warp-flight before they found out that there were other bipedal races flying around out there.

        • @aeronmelon
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          108 months ago

          Shran: “Why a Vulcan?!”

          Archer: “Because they’re cute.”

      • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet
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        108 months ago

        There’s a whole movie that focuses on the events leading up to First Contact with the Vulcans, it’s called Star Trek: First Contact.

        • @aeronmelon
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          178 months ago

          The whole movie focuses on the 24-hour period prior to first contact.

          It doesn’t really explain what Earth was like before half of it was nuked.

      • Flying SquidM
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        68 months ago

        And Humans agreed to a ceasefire

        Not true. Cochrane and his people were armed to the teeth and ready to fight in First Contact.

        • @aeronmelon
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          138 months ago

          From the movie, when Picard was leading Lily to the egress port:

          Lily: “Why did you break the ceasefire?”

          Picard: “We didn’t attack you.”

          Lily: “Who did?!”

          Yeah, they were armed to the teeth. After a nuclear war, I can’t blame them even years after the fighting had stopped.

          There was also probably a shit ton of looting and roaming gangs even through the military action had ended.

          • Flying SquidM
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            18 months ago

            I don’t think that she meant a global ceasefire. That wouldn’t have made sense when it came to a local firefight between a handful of people. The implication to me was it was a ceasefire between themselves and other local groups now that society in North America had broken down.

            And North America, that specific part of North America, is literally all we know about in that time period.

            • @aeronmelon
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              8 months ago

              cracks knuckles

              During the first scene in 2063:

              Lily: “It’s an ECON!”

              Cochran: “After all these years?”

              ECON = Eastern Coalition. As in the majority of the Asian countries why allied against the West in WWIII. It wasn’t a local skirmish, it was a Borg Sphere in low-Earth orbit that anyone under nightfall in the Northern hemisphere would have seen just as clearly as Lily did.

              Since it was something up in the sky, her first thought was an ECON satellite bombarding America again. Cochran immediately expressed shock at the idea since there hadn’t been an attack like that in “years.”

              While society had broken down, I think there was some form of communication that got news from one part of the world to the others. And I think every major power had stopped fighting - largely because there was almost nothing left to fight with. Exhaustion forced the world into a ceasefire. And any new fighting on that scale would have been seen by a lot of people and gotten whispered through makeshift rumor mills.

              All that was left was domestic altercations between disorganized bands of desperate people. So peaceful groups like the one living in the missile complex in Montana still had to arm themselves. But the war proper ended some time ago.

              • Flying SquidM
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                -28 months ago

                ECON = Eastern Coalition. As in the majority of the Asian countries why allied against the West in WWIII.

                We don’t know what Eastern Coalition means. For all we know, that meant people from the Eastern half of the former United States. It could mean a coalition of survivor groups to the east of them.

                We know almost nothing about WWIII. We know that it killed millions of people, although the number keeps changing. We know that it was not the same as the eugenics wars. We know that in some places, society breaks down and soldiers are controlled with drugs.

                We really don’t know much other than that. We certainly don’t know that it was a war of Asia against the West.

                • @aeronmelon
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                  98 months ago

                  We don’t know what Eastern Coalition means.

                  Audio commentary for First Contact confirms that it means an unspecified alliance of Asian nations. Early version of the script simply said “China”. But that was changed to the more vague “ECON” for obvious reasons.

                  Extra fun fact: In beta canon, the ECON was the same group of Asian nations formerly controlled by Khan.

                  • Flying SquidM
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                    -18 months ago

                    Sorry, audio commentary is not what is on screen, nor are early versions of the script. Only what is on the screen has been determined by TPTB to be canon.

                    Which is the same reason why Saavik is canononically not half-Romulan despite that being scripted and a line even being filmed. The line was cut, so she’s not half-Romulan.

                    They may have intended that to be the case when they made the film, but the very fact that they did not make it explicit opens it up to new possibilities. For the first time ever, in SNW, we hear about a “Second Civil War.” Maybe the Eastern Coalition was one of the two nations that was the result.

                    There are many examples in the past of things that were intended to be mentioned on-screen which are then contradicted later on specifically because they are never mentioned on-screen.

    • @ummthatguy
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      158 months ago

      WWIII had already come to pass when a pocket of humanity had begun to develop warp drive. After which, the Vulcans saw fit to intervene and raise up the pink-sk, er, humans.

      • @aeronmelon
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        8 months ago

        Pink-skin is an Andorian insult. Vulcans just stare at us, sigh, and say “Most illogical.” as they’re walking away.

        • @ummthatguy
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          8 months ago

          Edit: swapped to a catbox link, if it helps.

          • @aeronmelon
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            68 months ago

            FYI, gifv files don’t embed. Please drill down and find the original gif address.

            Fuggin Imgur…

            • @ummthatguy
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              8 months ago

              It’s a tumblr source, which generally shows up for me on Connect and browsers.

              • @aeronmelon
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                58 months ago

                I’m using Voyager, I’ll pass that info along.

                Imgur created gifv because they wanted people to load their JavaScript wrapper every time they viewed it. A useless, bloated format that adds nothing for the end user. Last I checked, you can still optionally choose to embed the original gif in Imgur links.

                • @PunnyName
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                  38 months ago

                  Just need to change the URL at the end from .gifv to .gif

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      -18 months ago

      The vulcans showed up after we’d stopped world warring. And they were butthurt as shit because they took a thousand years to rebuild after nuking themselves in a similar fashion, whereas humanity not only rebuilt but advanced in a tenth of the time.