Loads of people go on about how “awe shucks, we’re in the Mad Max future, instead of the Star Trek future” completely unaware that Star Trek’s utopia was built on top of the ruins of a Mad Max distopia that came first.
In canon, Star Trek’s utopia only happened after Earth had a nuclear WWIII followed by the Eugenics War (and several related genocides) before first contact with the Vulcans. In fact, without those wars, we might not have gotten the tech for warp drive. In further lore, after the wars of the 21st century and before first contact, there was a concerted “never again” kind of movement globally eventually resulting in the United Earth government being founded. It then took more than a century of technological and societal progress to get to the matter replicator driven post-scarcity economy.
So we could be on track for Star Trek future… but none of us will be alive to see it.
And further more the Vulcans did not manage this rapid transition away from armed conflict and instead had thousand years of war. They were impressed and scared but the humans adapting this quickly breeding doubts in their restraints from violence.
I don’t know in fairness an actual all-out nuclear war would probably do it. Mostly people are alright, the problem is governments and corporations which presumably wouldn’t survive a nuclear war.
Loads of people go on about how “awe shucks, we’re in the Mad Max future, instead of the Star Trek future” completely unaware that Star Trek’s utopia was built on top of the ruins of a Mad Max distopia that came first.
In canon, Star Trek’s utopia only happened after Earth had a nuclear WWIII followed by the Eugenics War (and several related genocides) before first contact with the Vulcans. In fact, without those wars, we might not have gotten the tech for warp drive. In further lore, after the wars of the 21st century and before first contact, there was a concerted “never again” kind of movement globally eventually resulting in the United Earth government being founded. It then took more than a century of technological and societal progress to get to the matter replicator driven post-scarcity economy.
So we could be on track for Star Trek future… but none of us will be alive to see it.
And further more the Vulcans did not manage this rapid transition away from armed conflict and instead had thousand years of war. They were impressed and scared but the humans adapting this quickly breeding doubts in their restraints from violence.
Star Trek canon is that humans suddenly acted completely differently than they had throughout their entire history. I don’t think that’s gonna happen.
I don’t know in fairness an actual all-out nuclear war would probably do it. Mostly people are alright, the problem is governments and corporations which presumably wouldn’t survive a nuclear war.