World War III

In the 21st century, rising divisions, political collapses and the aftermath of the Eugenics Wars led to a third global conflict. Its start is not precisely dated on screen, and newer works such as Strange New Worlds place its roots in the 2020s; it ended in 2053. Nuclear weapons were used, and around 600 million people died.

Most major cities were destroyed and governments largely collapsed. The war years and the chaos that followed, sometimes called the post-atomic horror, saw courts that judged without law, troops kept in line with drugs, and warlords such as Colonel Green, remembered for his campaign against those he deemed contaminated.

The war is the lowest point in human history as told by Star Trek, and a reference point for later generations: Q used it to put humanity on trial, and Captain Pike showed archive images of it to aliens to explain what humanity had overcome. It was in this devastated world that Zefram Cochrane built his warp ship from the remains of a nuclear missile.