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The Burn, otherwise known as the dilithium cataclysm, was a galaxy-wide disaster that rendered dilithium inert, allowing antimatter containment to fail instantaneously. The Burn occurred on stardate 81986-mark-272129, in the year 3069. Countless ships exploded and millions of people were killed. (DSC episodes: "That Hope Is You, Part 1", "Die Trying"; DSC novel: Wonderlands)

History[]

Before the Burn[]

In 2270, Aegis operative Gary Seven gave Commander Spock of the USS Enterprise a temporary vision of future events. One of these visions included the moment of the Burn, with ships across the galaxy exploding. (TOS - Year Five - Experienced in Loss comic: "Issue 23")

Before the event, the stability of the Federation had already been strained due to the Temporal Wars, which led to the devastation and abandonment of several Federation members. (DSC novel: Wonderlands)

Consequences[]

The Federation was unable to ascertain the cause of the cataclysmic event, nor were they able to prove that it would not occur again. In addition to starships, the Burn eliminated the small number of deep-space stations which Starfleet had built to sustain their exploration missions inside regions which lacked habitable planets. By 3188, the Federation had virtually collapsed as a galactic power. (DSC episode: "That Hope Is You, Part 1"; DSC novel: Somewhere to Belong)

Earth soon withdrew from the Federation after a radical Klingon death cult named the Black Path launched a savage attack on the planet, bombing San Francisco, London, Rome and Valencia with instable warp cores. Captain Delacourt Sato was able to kill the woman that ordered this slaughter, Ha'shet, in a traditional duel that allowed him to claim leadership over her warriors and demanded their immediate departure, ordering them to withdraw into space and back to their own warrior halls. Within a short stretch of time, subspace communications were flooded with dying screams as twenty-nine worlds with Klingon populations were decimated from dilithium detonations. Qo'noS and multiple other core worlds were outright destroyed or otherwise rendered lifeless. The final message from these demolished worlds was a question that asked Starfleet how it would die. However, though the massacre was halted before more cities could be attacked, the death toll inflicted to the population of Earth from its signatory allies demoralised faith that the Federation was able to function as a government or military force which was able to address the market limitations created from a sudden dilithium-scarce galactic economy. When a final decision on the future of the planet was put to a popular democratic vote, the overall sentiment compelled the government to invoke Resolution 0 and United Earth becoming a sovereign nation once again. (TLS comic: "Issue 3")

The Burn decimated the Trill population, forcing the survivors to withdraw from the Federation. By the late 32nd century Trill society was on the edge of collapse with there no longer being enough suitable hosts for the Trill symbionts. The revelation that the Tal symbiont had joined with the human Adira gave the Trill hope that a solution to their crisis was at hand. (DSC episode: "Forget Me Not")

An even worse fate befell the Klingon people. Weakened from their own internal schisms as factions assembled beneath violence-driven minds like Ha'shet attacked the ideals which their species adopted through their decision to follow what the critics referred to as a "red path of peace", the mass decimation of their ancestral homeworlds was a death blow to the empire, nailing the doors to its proverbial coffin shut. Within a short spasm, the Klingon Empire that had reigned for centuries was annihilated. Dilithium had been an essential component to reactors which supplied entire planets with power and its destabilisation caused these same reactors to explode with devastating effects. Indeed, the death toll was so staggering that it caused the Klingons to be labelled an endangered species. Moreover, their leadership had been reduced to decisions made with input from the Great Houses. While these clans had been vital players in the Imperial power structure since Kahless the Unforgettable first created the Empire, in the aftermath of the Burn, only eight houses remained with any semblance of their structure intact, the others having been either destroyed or dissolved. The result of the event that later generations came to know as the Klingon diaspora seemed to have also restructured their chain-of-command. The High Council had functioned beneath a chancellor, but after the dilithium catastrophe, the Houses instead looked to the warlord Obel Wochak for leadership, referring to him as general. Though their people had been members of the Federation at the time of the Burn, the surviving population - now reduced to refugees - were unwilling to accept any support from the government, viewing such aid as "charity" that the proud warrior race continued to reject, even at the potential cost of their own extinction. (TLS comic: "Issue 3"; SA episode: "Vox In Excelso")

The Federation world Kaminar was unable to maintain regular contact with the rest of the Federation after the Burn, but was believed by Starfleet to be unharmed and in status quo in 3189. (DSC episode: "Die Trying")

Worlds under the Federation were not the sole victims of the Burn, of course. The former population of Xahea — rendered nomadic when the planet became uninhabitable after occupation in the Dominion War — lost thousands of their citizens onboard starships that had been with active dilithium engines when the Burn occurred. However, although Sanctuary — a space habitat which housed their species — suffered from minor damage, because most of the dilithium stores which it housed was unrefined, the impairment was limited. Nonetheless, soon after the catastrophe, certain elements inside the Xahean Council and Ministry of Security began a clandestine initiative to replicate the unique displacement-activated spore hub drive that had been developed onboard the USS Discovery centuries before. With designs from a former queen, generations of these conspirators wanted to utilise this device as a means to relocate Sanctuary from the reach of potential successors to the Cardassian Union and Dominion which had tyrannised Xahea until the Treaty of Bajor was signed, as well as mitigate a growing schism between conservatives and a separatist movement. (DSC novel: Somewhere to Belong)

However, despite the mass destruction, a single positive consequence emerged from the dilithium catastrophe in the shift that it marked to relations between the Federation — or rather, what was left of it — and one of the most implacable foes to have faced Starfleet: the Borg. Though the proper Borg Collective had been subject to a final destruction at their effort to assimilate the entire fleet on Frontier Day, surviving fragments of the hive mind remained scattered throughout the galaxy, though none ever had the strength or even the desire to wage the same destruction as their predecessor. Prior to the battle which eliminated the mainstream consciousness that drove the Borg in their efforts to assimilate sentient life, another faction had begun to form around an alternate idea for a collective which embraced uniqueness and the diversity of the people who joined of their own volition, rather than as a consequence of forceful assimilation. The idea for such a deviance from the original Borg came into existence from the mind of Agnes Jurati, a talented cyberneticist who was once a scientist at the Daystrom Institute that had befriended the former Admiral Jean-Luc Picard. Over the course of her adventures with the famed officer, Agnes had been transported four hundred years back into the past, where she had come into contact with a version of the nameless monarch of the Borg native to a deviant timeline. It was here that Jurati, who had been assimilated, proposed the creation of this new collective to the Borg Queen. Though such an ethos was atypical to the Collective, the Queen had found it absurd, but "not entirely un-intriguing". Jurati and the Queen thus agreed to share a single consciousness and broke from the former's companions to venture to the Delta Quadrant instead, where she began to create a new Borg Cooperative which revealed itself to what had then been the modern era. Embracing individuality as a haven for the outcasts and broken, though the Cooperative had coexisted with their neighbours as a known power in the Delta Quadrant that stood to defend the rest of the universe from an unknown threat, before the Burn, the Federation had forgotten about its existence and thus reacted with shock and hostilities when Agnes appeared before the surviving officers of Starfleet Command as it convened to discuss the predicted decline of their government. (TLS comic: "Issue 1")

Cause[]

In that year, the cause of the Burn was found. The Kelpien starship KSF Khi'eth, sent to investigate a dilithium-rich planet in the Verubin Nebula, crashed on the planet. Doctor Issa, a member of the ship's crew, was pregnant at the time, and later gave birth to a son, Su'Kal. (DSC episode: "Su'Kal")

However, radiation sickness soon took Issa's life; young Su'Kal was so traumatized at watching his mother die that he unleashed a powerful psychic shockwave, causing all dilithium within range to become inert, and thus accidentally causing the Burn. (DSC episode: "That Hope Is You, Part 2")

Known casualties[]

Numerous unnamed Federation starships of different classes exploded simultaneously across the Milky Way Galaxy when the Burn occurred. In 3188, acting communications chief Aditya Sahil of Spaceport Devaloka showed Commander Michael Burnham a graphic representation of these ships. (DSC episode: "People of Earth")

• USS Gav'Nor^[1]
• USS Giacconi^[2]
• USS Yelchin^[3]
• USS Brookfield^[4]
• 111^[4]
• USS Bolivar^[4]
  • Captain Anderton^[4]
• USS Sagan^[4]
  • Chief Silyk^[4]
• USS Reykjavik^[4]
• USS Solana^[4]
• USS Martok^[4]
• USS K'Tang^[4]
• USS Antaka^[4]
• USS Nog^[4]
• USS Reznor^[4]
• USS Enterprise^[4]
  • Ensign First Class Emily Tolson^[4]

Appendices[]

References[]

• DSC episode: "That Hope Is You, Part 1" (first referenced)
• DSC episode: "People of Earth" (first depicted)
• DSC episode: "Die Trying" (referenced)
• DSC episode: "Su'Kal" (depicted)
• TOS - Year Five - Experienced in Loss comic: "Issue 23" (depicted)

External link[]

• The Burn article at Memory Alpha, the wiki for canon Star Trek.