By Chris Snellgrove
| Revealed
What if this 12 months had been the tip of the world as it? That seems like loopy speak, after all, however that is the 12 months that has lengthy been prophesied by one of many best sci-fi franchises as the start of World Struggle III. That prophecy involves us from the final IP you’d anticipate to foretell the tip of the world: Star Trek!
Clearly, Star Trek is thought for its optimistic portrayal of a future the place most individuals do not need to fret about trendy issues equivalent to poverty, illness, and conflict. Nonetheless, a significant a part of the franchise lore is that issues must get extremely worse earlier than they begin to get higher. Humanity doesn’t start working in direction of its vivid, shiny future till it survives World Struggle III, a catastrophic international battle that’s supposed to begin in 2026.
World Struggle III Begins With One Man
Fittingly sufficient, a lot of our franchise data of World Struggle III comes from Star Trek: The Authentic Collection. Traditional episodes like “Bread and Circuses” and “The Savage Curtain” inform us {that a} man named Colonel Phillip Inexperienced was liable for main a bunch of ecoterrorists in assaults that finally claimed the lives of 37 million folks. He may very well be the one liable for inflicting this conflict, as it’s talked about in “The Savage Curtain” that he “led” a genocidal conflict, later recognized as WWIII.
Frustratingly, The Authentic Collection doesn’t inform us way more about Colonel Inexperienced besides that he was notorious for placing his enemies within the midst of ostensibly peaceable negotiations. Later, Star Trek: Enterprise clarified that he used his troops to kill these affected with radiation illness and different situations that he thought-about “impurities.” He was anxious about these traits being handed on to kids, making Inexperienced an explicitly Hitler-like determine, proper right down to his obsession with eugenics.
And The Rockets’ Pink Glare
It was the fan-favorite movie Star Trek: First Contact that specified that World Struggle III started in 2026, and the film additionally put a reputation to one of many factions concerned: the Japanese Coalition. The primary episode of Star Trek: The Subsequent Technology revealed that among the totally different factions used medicine to manage their troopers. Discovery and Unusual New Worlds specified that as late as 2053, nuclear bombs had been being dropped on cities like Richmond, Washington, New York, and Paris.
Talking of Unusual New Worlds, that present used an attention-grabbing retcon to tie World Struggle III with a significant battle first talked about in The Authentic Collection: the Eugenics Wars. Throughout Earth’s troubled historical past, unethical scientists started experimenting with selective breeding and genetic enhancing, and their final objective was to create a race of supersoldiers. These troopers had been referred to as Augments, and their most well-known member was Khan Noonien Singh, who would later go on to have a number of iconic fights with an equally legendary determine: Captain James T. Kirk.
A Actual Khan Job
Predictably, these Augments tried to take over the world, seizing energy in over 40 nations earlier than they had been finally overthrown by humanity. Most Augments had been tried and executed as conflict criminals, however Khan and dozens of his followers escaped in a sleeper sheep, the place they had been later awoken from cryogenic stasis by Captain Kirk. Within the traditional episode “House Seed,” Spock talked about a really particular indisputable fact that Star Trek spent many years attempting to run from: that the Eugenics Wars lasted from 1992-1996.
Why has Trek been operating from this little bit of trivia, and the way does it connect with World Struggle III? After Star Trek: The Subsequent Technology got here out in 1987, it grew to become more and more exhausting for the writers (particularly after the tip of the Chilly Struggle) to think about the ‘90s as a interval of main international upheaval. One of the best proof of that is that within the Voyager episode the place they traveled again to 1996 (“Future’s Finish”), and regardless of this being the final 12 months of the Eugenics Wars, there isn’t any signal that America had skilled any of the worldwide battle that took the lives of over 30 million folks.
Burned By The Retcon
Unusual New Worlds addressed this matter in a really sudden manner. “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” revealed that the Temporal Struggle and diverse meddling time vacationers ended up affecting Khan’s private timeline. Now, the tyrant was born later within the timeline, however his rise to energy continues to be inevitable: within the Picard episode “Farewell,” the mad scientist Physician Adam Soong was final seen in 2024, analyzing a file (from 1996, no much less) titled “Venture Khan.”
That may put Khan heading in the right direction to be a significant participant when World Struggle III kicks off in 2026, however how do we all know for positive that he was concerned? Within the premiere Unusual New Worlds episode (“Unusual New Worlds”), Captain Pike gave a speech to a gaggle of aliens the place he talked about how Earth’s final main international battle had passed by totally different names through the years. “We referred to as it the Second Civil Struggle, then the Eugenics Struggle, and at last simply World Struggle III.”
No Place On Earth Was Secure
Beforehand, in The Authentic Collection episode “House Seed,” Spock claimed (whereas admitting that information of the time interval had been “fragmentary”) that the Eugenics Wars merely occurred throughout World Struggle III. Now, Pike is retroactively claiming that the Eugenics Wars and World Struggle III are thought-about the identical battle. Nonetheless, we do know that these totally different names possible referred to distinct intervals of time throughout this general battle.
That’s as a result of the primary title for what could be referred to as a worldwide battle was “the Second Civil Struggle;” at this level, the presentation Pike is displaying to a gaggle of aliens exhibits footage of the January sixth assault on america Capitol. Placing apart the wacky politics of this as a artistic resolution (is Star Trek actually linking Khan and Donald Trump in official canon?!?), this offers us an approximate timeline of occasions. The Second Civil Struggle begins in early 2021, the Eugenics Wars start someday after 2024, and World Struggle III breaks out in 2026.
2026: The Finish Of The World As We Know It
Hey, that’s this 12 months! Since Star Trek has predicted that that is the tip of the world, you need to in all probability take the time to place your affairs so as. Inform your family members how a lot they imply to you, find time for your personal wants, and take away something out of your life that now not sparks pleasure.
After the final episode of Starfleet Academy, that in all probability contains your Paramount+ subscription. Belief me: even when the world doesn’t finish in apocalyptic catastrophe, you don’t want a streamer whose exclusives really feel like each single biblical plague, all rolled into one!
