Alternate First Contact

[Baffalo]

Ok, everyone knows in Star Trek: First Contact, the Vulcans detected Earth's first warp ship and decided to swing by and be all friendly. Well, my question is, what if the first ship to detect the Phoenix hadn't been Vulcans but had been a more violent race? Say the Romulans or Klingons?

[Cesario]

Terrran Empire?

It's not like the humans of this time period were incapable of shooting hostile aliens and taking their stuff.

[FedRebel]

Terrran Empire?

It's not like the humans of this time period were incapable of shooting hostile aliens and taking their stuff.

Um, they were.

Earth was still recovering from a massive nuclear exchange and the "Post Atomic Horror" is in full swing.

Also Earth materialized no response to the sphere (no ASAT's, nothing)

And since nobody knew that a 600m sphere shaped ship orbited the Earth in April 2063 (except Cochrane, whom no one believed.)

If an aggressive race found Earth first it would boil down to how useful Earth and humanity are to them.

At the time we pose no threat, and it seems our system is of very little interest or someone would've paid us a "visit" well before the Vulcans.

[Cesario]

That depends on if they decided to land or not, don't you think?

[Baffalo]

That depends on if they decided to land or not, don't you think?

No, it doesn't.

The Klingons might have taken advantage of the situation to conquer a fairly defenseless species, and so would the Romulans, but then they'd have to commit the resources to doing so. Remember, at the time, all the major players are starting off on somewhat equal footing. The Vulcans barely had warp 1 (or was it 2 by that point?) so even short trips were still long and tedious. The Klingons wouldn't want to commit the troops needed to occupy and hold a planet that was well beyond their borders.

Just a bit of reference, the invasion force into Iraq during 2003's invasion consisted of 300,000 troops. The Iraqi army was 375,000 strong. Now, even if you go for a 2:1 ratio or even a 3:1 ratio of troops, you still have to send thousands and thousands of troops across space, going a slow as hell warp 1, means you have a long, long, long time just to get troops in, so reinforcements have to be on site and ready to deploy.

According to Memory Alpha, Qo'nos, the Klingon Homeworld, is 4 days at warp 4.5. The Star Trek Warp Chart gives warp 4 as 102c and warp 5 as 214c. So if we infer that warp 4.5 is 158c, and it takes 4 days, that's
4 days * 24 hours/day * 3600 sec/hour = 345600 seconds of travel at 47.4*109 m/sec, so that means the distance from Earth to Qo'nos is 16.381*1015 meters.

Now, since warp 1 is rated at c, that means to travel that distance at warp 1 would take 54.6*106 seconds, or 632 days. That's almost 2 FREAKIN YEARS of travel just to get troops to land on a tiny, blowed up world. Sorry, ain't happening.

Also, we should know Qo'nos isn't 2 lightyears away. Seriously.

[Darth Tanner]

Remember, at the time, all the major players are starting off on somewhat equal footing.

Vulcans had warp in 1947 according to memory alpha and were at warp 7 by 2151, if their progress was smooth they should have been atleast at warp 3-4 by First Contact of 2063. Klingons apparently had warp back in the 9th century.

Either way getting to Earth wouldnt pose that insurmountable a problem speed wise.

Now, even if you go for a 2:1 ratio or even a 3:1 ratio of troops, you still have to send thousands and thousands of troops across space

Except someone like the Klingons/Romulans won’t be hesitant to use orbital bombardment as a massive force multiplier. You wouldn’t need to be occupying every city on the planet Iraq style to control the planet, just a few of the key administrative centres ie. Washington, London, Moscow.

Obviously though there isn’t much point invading Earth at the minute, it has no resources worth stealing and its industry has been burned to the ground.

[CaptHawkeye]

At those early time periods of Trek history Earth might as well had been in the freaking Delta Quadrant. The distances separating the Klingon Empire and Federation were so great that early encounters with them in TOS were still basically a totally new experience for everyone.

[Solauren]

Also, it should be noted that the Klingons became hostile to humans because humanity poked there noses into Klingon affairs
(Depending on which 'First Contact with the Klingons' scenario you use)

It's entirely possible the Klingons would scan the planet, see how badly beaten up it was, and land to find out "How the hell did these people get Warp Drive?"