World War III
Also called "World War Three" and "WWIII", this was the last world-wide war on the planet Earth.
WWIII (2026-2053) was the most devastating of Earth’s world-wide wars, and left an estimated 600 million Humans dead, with virtually all of the planet’s major cities destroyed.
In the aftermath of the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s, Humans continued to experiment with genetic engineering and selective breeding, continuing to create what they would call “Augments” in the name of bastardized evolution. The political conflict of these “superhumans” caused destabilization, and countries began to control their armies using narcotic drugs. The first official act of the war was an act of terrorism by economic radicals “ECON” against the United States, initially killing 37-million people.
Near the end of the war, Earth's atmosphere was revealed to have been severely damaged by radioactive isotopes, causing radiation sickness in countless people. As the harmful radiation was in the atmosphere, there was no escape, and Acute Radiation Syndrome was wide-spread across the planet. Populations suffered from skin burns, intestinal distress, cardiovascular problems, sterilization, and painful death. The radiation also harmed the soil and water qualities in certain areas, making those areas uninhabitable.
2050 saw the rise of two major powers: New United Nations and Eastern Coalition. Simply put, the New UN believed in living at peace, whereas ECON was in favor of experimental eugenics for the advancement of the human race. While the war came to an official end in 2053, ECON leader Phillip Green continued his violent attacks. (Green's post-war killings of radiation-damaged people was met with mixed feelings: many regarded him as a genocidal maniac, whereas others saw him as a pragmatist, who was humanely euthanizing radiation-damaged individuals, preventing those afflicted from passing on deadly mutations to future generations.)
Ten years after war ended, Vulcans saw it fit to initiate First Contact with the Human species. Though the war had devastated the planet, Humans had continued to strive in the field of space travel. Ares IV went to Mars in 2032, Charybdis left the solar system in 2037, and the Phoenix became the first vessel to reach Warp 1 in 2063. Initially written off as “too primitive,” the Vulcan people could not ignore Humans reaching the warp threshold, and thus being on the precipice of interstellar space travel.
First Contact between Vulcans and Humans took place on April 5, 2063, between survey ship T'Plana-Hath and the pilot of the Phoenix, Zefram Cochrane.
To Humans, the realization that they were not alone in the universe was a moving uniting factor. Within fifty years, Earth residents were able to eliminate such hardships as poverty and disease. They began to heal their scarred planet, and a new faction arose of xenophobic farmers, calling their beliefs "Terra Prime." Believing that isolation from the rest of the galaxy was the best way to heal their plant and their people, Terra Prime eventually faded into the background, as Earth became a founding member of the Coalition of Planets, which would later morph into the Federation.
See also:
- World War I (1914 - 1918)
- World War II (1939 - 1945)
