Oh cool. It's on HNQ now.

On 8 September 1966 the USS Enterprise, NCC1701, boldly went "where no man had gone before" when Star Trek premièred on NBC.

@Mithrandir Great! And thanks. The more of those we get, the better for this site.

@sempaiscuba Some may consider this fluff, but it assuredly was not. We've actually achieved so much of Rodenberry's social Science Fiction, that people today don't appreciate how transgressive it was in its day.

Even some of the technology by now. Like padds.

For example, Trek showed white men, Asians, women, and even black women working together like it wasn't a thing at all. This may look a bit like your office today, but it was flat out Science Fiction in in 1966.

To illustrate this, here's what the US election map looked like in 1968, while Trek was running:

Those brown states? Those were won by a candidate running of a platform of "Segregation Forever".

So the society we have today, that looks so much like the bridge of the Enterprise? It didn't have to be that way. Lots of people didn't want it to be.

What happened was that a generation of people looked at what existed, looked at what Trek showed, and they chose Trek.

And believe me, this was appreciated at the time. There's a story that when Nichelle Nichols met with MLK, and casually mentioned she was considering leaving the show, he wouldn't let her.

> I said something like, Dr. King, I wish I could be out there marching with you. He said, no, no, no. No, you don't understand. We don't need you on the - to march. You are marching. You are reflecting what we are fighting for. So, I said to him, thank you so much. And I'm going to miss my co-stars.

Hmmmmmmmmmm.

So, in a realistic scenario, a WWIII in 1973 = What happens in Europe during a conventional war?

> And his face got very, very serious. And he said, what are you talking about? And I said, well, I told Gene just yesterday that I'm going to leave the show after the first year because I've been offered - and he stopped me and said: You cannot do that. And I was stunned.

> He said, don't you understand what this man has achieved? For the first time, we are being seen the world over as we should be seen. He says, do you understand that this is the only show that my wife Coretta and I will allow our little children to stay up and watch. I was speechless.

Hmmmmmmm.

I wonder how the other PACT forces in 1973 time period were like compared to the USSR's military.

Just to see how they would perform in the German Front (which is the main front).

I'd like to think it would have worked out roughly like the first Gulf War, but that's probably just my US homerisim talking.

I know.

And it is not.

The Americans had just gotten out of Vietnam at this point, they had morale issues, still a lot of draftees and now, an entire army of Soviets and their satellite states marching into West Germany.

So, @T.E.D.? How would other PACT nations' military forces perform in their push towards the Rhine River?

Honestly, the only military hardware from that era I'm really familiar with is the EM-50 Urban Assault Vehicle. If we had a few of those stationed nearby, the Warsaw Pact would be sunk.

Meh. Personally, I feel that PACT forces are going to get to the Rhine River, only to get nuked by NATO.