RE: Something Star Trek Missed
May 23, 2019 at 4:45 am
(This post was last modified: May 23, 2019 at 5:13 am by BrianSoddingBoru4.)
(May 23, 2019 at 2:32 am)onlinebiker Wrote: Never mind the fact that the whole universe speaks English.......
If two races that evolved on different planets met - wouldn't simple contact likely be fatal for both sides due to bacterial and viral contamination?
After all - we teem with microbes that we are immune to - but an alien wouldn't have that immunity.
Meet, shake hands, dead within hours....
Kinda makes "live long and prosper" moot.
I don't think so. It's wrong to draw parallels from human history (smallpox in the New World, for example), because all life on earth shares the same genetic lineage. Aliens would have a completely different genetic map, so the viruses and bacteria wouldn't have any effect on them.
The bad germs we deal with evolved to deal with us, so I doubt that Yersinia pestis would give a Vulcan so much as a head cold.
Boru
edit: Come to think of it, a much bigger plot hole is humans and ETs producing offspring. The likelihood of a human/Vulcan child is roughly equal to the successful cross breeding of a Percheron with a petunia.
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson