21st Century History: Sanctuary Districts Were an Augment Creation, and Their Shutdown Directly Led to World War III

I'm sure I'm not the first to suggest this, but as I've been listening to The Delta Flyers' last two episodes on "Past Tense," I've been thinking about the Bell Riots. Sisko describes the riots as "one of the watershed events of the 21st Century"; they were so important that without them the Federation is never established. I started wondering how they could be so pivotal, especially in light of what we later learn about the lead up to First Contact. It occurred to me that, given the timing, the Bell Riots must have in some way been a cause of World War III.

The somewhat revamped and streamlined 21st Century timeline as described by Captain Pike in "Strange New Worlds" helps to figure out how it all worked. Pike said that the Second Civil War led to the Eugenics Wars, which led to World War III. We know from "In a Mirror, Darkly" that the war began in 2026, two years after the Bell Riots. So, what's the connection?

This is what I think happened. Sisko said that after the riots, the United States finally started dealing with the serious social problems it had faced for a century or so. The implication is that those social problems were solved, which led to the establishment of the Federation. But I think the opposite is in fact true, because there was a secret purpose to the Sanctuary Districts.

We know that extensive experiments in genetic engineering had already begun by 2024 courtesy of Adam Soong and others. Khan Noonien Singh, in the current slightly revised timeline, was probably between 10-12 years old at this time. We also know that Soong himself was an influential person who was sanctioned for performing genetic experiments on homeless veterans. I don't think it's a stretch to believe that the early Augments, or their associates, influenced the US Government's creation of the Sanctuary Districts as 1) a means to conduct similar research outside of the public eye, and 2) to "weed out" those perceived to be "unfit" (the mentally ill, etc.).

The Bell Riots jeopardized those plans. It's not hard to believe that in an election year, the riots and associated problems would have become the deciding issue. I think that whichever Augment-backed administration had approved the creation of the Sanctuaries was voted out in favor of people who promised to fix things. For two years, things probably looked to be improving. Enter Colonel Phillip Green.

Colonel Green was a prominent figure in the previous administration, maybe even the one who proposed the creation of the Sanctuaries in the first place. Once he lost his place, he spent two years building his "militia" before attempting to overthrow the US Government by force in 2026. The Second Civil War had begun. Capt. Pike described it as "a fight for freedoms," but what he didn't say is that the freedom fighters lost. I think the war spurred the Augments, including Khan, to finally cease their covert attempts to control the world and seize power openly. At this point, I think things proceeded more or less how Kirk describes them in "Space Seed." The Eugenics War could perhaps be more accurately called the Eugenics Revolution, because the goal was to retake control from these "supermen." When Khan and his followers fled Earth aboard the Botany Bay, it seemed like more than a decade of war had finally ended.

However, the dictatorial Augments left a massive power vacuum in their wake, as well as unguarded stockpiles of nuclear weapons. One of the groups that seized these stockpiles was the Eastern Coalition, which was likely made up of territories formerly controlled by Khan himself. As Khan had not engaged in massacres or genocides, those people were probably in a better place to organize and begin striking back at their enemies. It is possible that Earth never would have recovered from this devastation were it not for Zefram Cochrane and Lily Sloan.

"Past Tense" ends on a hopeful note, optimistic that the Bell Riots were the first step towards peace. And I think you could definitely look at them that way, but unfortunately they were also the first atrocity of the worst period in human history.