Starfleet Contingency Plans

[Ted C]

Planetary Invasion of Earth
In the event of a planetary invasion, the first course of action is to get the President and High Council to safety. They would either be moved to another location on Earth where they'd be safe, or if given enough time, to another world or starship. Given the response to the Borg, it's probable that Starfleet keeps a strong home fleet at all times, kept ready at the Utopia Planetia shipyards. The fleet would probably need to be destroyed or severely damaged to surrender Earth's space to any invader, so the incoming fleet would be severely damaged. The resulting invasion would proceed almost immediately, and we've seen that there aren't many shields around major military instillations given that the Breen attack yielded so much damage. Starfleet will have troops on the ground and will put up a resistance, but it will probably take the return of Starfleet in force to retake the planet.

The events of ST:TMP, ST4:TVH, and TNG:BoBW all indicate to me that the Federation is typically very unprepared for a direct attack on Earth. They don't keep a defensive fleet in the system, presumably because they expect to be able to detect and intercept a threat long before it reaches Earth (which worked out for them in ST:FC).

Destruction of the Earth
In the event of the destruction of Earth, Starfleet will have one of two options. Earth has always been the de facto center of the Federation, and its loss would have profound ramifications for the Federation as a whole. As the Council becomes exiled trying to find a new place to set up shop, they must also deal with the force that destroyed Earth. If it was an enemy attack, they need to destroy the weapon before it can be unleashed again. If it's a natural force, they must ensure it doesn't affect other worlds. For humans, they have plenty of colonies to fall back on, but the loss of Earth will devastate the psyche of humans throughout the Federation. It might even shatter the illusion of paradise and completely change the lives of Federation citizens.

Important as Earth is, I don't foresee the Federation shifting the seat of government to another human colony if Earth is lost. Control would most likely shift to Vulcan, Andor, or the homeworld of one of the other founding Federation members.

Annihilation of the Federation
The absolute worst case scenario would be the destruction of the Federation. An invasion from the Borg or Dominion or any other major power would be something very few would enjoy planning for. The question in this case becomes what to do. Preservation is preferable to extinction, but with the strict adherence to the Prime Directive, the decision might be a hard one to make. The only way to preserve the Federation would be obtaining all known data on the threat and proceeding into the past to deliver the data. If that happens, some idealized Federation officer might try to ignore the data, but when it contains data on how the Federation will be attacked and possibly destroyed, it's doubtful that anyone worth their commission will ignore the data. Having several ships ready to engage temporal drives at once would go a long way towards ensuring that even in the worst case scenario, the Federation still has a chance of survival.

I don't know that time travel would be considered a particularly viable solution, given what the Federation knows about diverging timelines. ST4 worked because the crew brought a whale back to the present to actually solve the problem, rather than going back a few days and attacking the probe or giving Earth more warning of its approach. A "deliver information to the past" attempt would, at best, just create a divergent timeline in which the Federation might not be destroyed.

[the atom]

I would imagine it isn't as simple as take a Warbird there and turn of the containment. It woudl be helpful if that woudl work though.

The Romulans clearly know how to make artificial singularities and control them; I can't see it being a big leap to build a larger-than-normal singulrity and rig it in such a way that it won't instantly evaporate into Hawking radiation when you stop containing it. Let it start sucking things in and you're done. It'll get bigger and bigger until eventually S8472 is fucked.

Recall though that S8472 is pretty good at controlling singularities to the point where they travel using them. Odds are they'd just switch it off the moment it becomes a problem.

[Cesario]

I don't know that time travel would be considered a particularly viable solution, given what the Federation knows about diverging timelines. ST4 worked because the crew brought a whale back to the present to actually solve the problem, rather than going back a few days and attacking the probe or giving Earth more warning of its approach. A "deliver information to the past" attempt would, at best, just create a divergent timeline in which the Federation might not be destroyed.

Diverging timelines is not how it works.

It also isn't how the Federation thinks it works, otherwise no one would ever bother with things like "preserving the timeline" or "restoring the timeline".

[Ted C]

I don't know that time travel would be considered a particularly viable solution, given what the Federation knows about diverging timelines. ST4 worked because the crew brought a whale back to the present to actually solve the problem, rather than going back a few days and attacking the probe or giving Earth more warning of its approach. A "deliver information to the past" attempt would, at best, just create a divergent timeline in which the Federation might not be destroyed.

Diverging timelines is not how it works.

It also isn't how the Federation thinks it works, otherwise no one would ever bother with things like "preserving the timeline" or "restoring the timeline".

The Federation apparently isn't all that clear on just what effects time travel can have, but TNG "Parallels" made it abundantly clear that diverging timelines are a reality in Star Trek. Basically, it seems that any time travel activity that would create a causality paradox can create a divergent timeline. As Mike noted long ago on the main site, divergent timelines can neatly explain every time travel incident in Star Trek, but a single timeline won't.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I would imagine it isn't as simple as take a Warbird there and turn of the containment. It woudl be helpful if that woudl work though.

The Romulans clearly know how to make artificial singularities and control them; I can't see it being a big leap to build a larger-than-normal singulrity and rig it in such a way that it won't instantly evaporate into Hawking radiation when you stop containing it. Let it start sucking things in and you're done. It'll get bigger and bigger until eventually S8472 is fucked.

Recall though that S8472 is pretty good at controlling singularities to the point where they travel using them. Odds are they'd just switch it off the moment it becomes a problem.

Yeah, that "we travel through quantum singularities" thing was kinda bullshit though. I mean, they'd be squished and spaghettified.

[Cesario]

I don't know that time travel would be considered a particularly viable solution, given what the Federation knows about diverging timelines. ST4 worked because the crew brought a whale back to the present to actually solve the problem, rather than going back a few days and attacking the probe or giving Earth more warning of its approach. A "deliver information to the past" attempt would, at best, just create a divergent timeline in which the Federation might not be destroyed.

Diverging timelines is not how it works.

It also isn't how the Federation thinks it works, otherwise no one would ever bother with things like "preserving the timeline" or "restoring the timeline".

The Federation apparently isn't all that clear on just what effects time travel can have, but TNG "Parallels" made it abundantly clear that diverging timelines are a reality in Star Trek. Basically, it seems that any time travel activity that would create a causality paradox can create a divergent timeline. As Mike noted long ago on the main site, divergent timelines can neatly explain every time travel incident in Star Trek, but a single timeline won't.

Asside from the excelent points D13 made, there's also the point that what matters from the Federation's prospective is what the Federation thinks and knows. They obviously think that the timeline is mutable, and that this paralell universe theory DW posits is wrong. They're the ones who are making these plans, so their plans will be based on that understanding of temporal mechanics.

[the atom]

Yeah, that "we travel through quantum singularities" thing was kinda bullshit though. I mean, they'd be squished and spaghettified.

Well evidently they found away around that little snag because of, y'know, the fact that they weren't...

[Grumman]

It depends on how their means of travel actually works. If they travel through the singularity itself then yes, they'd get squished no matter what (as should be obvious, since a singularity is very, very small). If they merely have to be within the event horizon or something like that, they could survive. The "light can't escape" radius is proportional to mass but the "tear things apart" radius is only proportional to the cube root of the mass, so a sufficiently heavy singularity will have an event horizon that extends far beyond the point where the ship gets spaghettified.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The ship doesn't have to be within the event horizon to get spaghettified (my favourite science term). Even outside the event horizon you can have tidal forces exerting a pull of 10 kN on your head and 10 MN on your feet. You'l still be dead unless you have super-duper-hull-armour-shit. And even then, the gravity won't just be pulling on the armour but the structural beams within the ship, and the decks, and the crew and so on. Even having forcefields to hold your ship together may not help close enough: the generators will be subject to tidal forces as well.

[Grumman]

The ship doesn't have to be within the event horizon to get spaghettified (my favourite science term).

Like I said, it depends on the mass of the singularity (and the effective tensile strength of the ship and its occupants). A heavy singularity and the technology to directly apply force to an object with grav plating and tractor beams are both elements that would make it easier to safely get within the event horizon.

[Eternal_Freedom]

True, but the point still stands that travelling through a singularity and it's immediate surroundings is not a healthy idea. I'm going to lean towards the idea that they weren't proper singularities (for one thing, ships left them at sublight speeds, which is impossible) and the writers don't know jack about science (after all, this is the same show that gave us a "crack" in an event horizon).