As the away teams reported back to the Starship Enterprise, the reports were all the same. Everywhere on the planet were signs of an advanced civilization. Great abandoned cities were found all over the planet. In each the signs were the same: a loss of energy followed by a drastic population drop. The fossil fuel resources of the planet appeared to have been exhausted, and as power plants died computers had been shut down.

Wind generators were everywhere, but when Scotty looked at their pictures he shook his head. “Good God,” he said, “you cannot run a planet on wind.”

Mr. Spock nodded. “I don’t understand why they did not build nuclear power plants,” he said. One away team returned from the northeast quadrant reporting a single life sign and recommended a follow up.

Captain Kirk named himself to head the final away team. He asked Mr. Spock to join him. Scotty said he would tag along. Using a tricorder they picked up the life sign. In the ruined shell of what had once been a house, they found her, a shriveled old women in ragged clothes. The offered her food, which she accepted.

“What happened to your civilization?” Jim Kirk asked.

“After we stopped using fossil fuels, we could not get reliable electricity from the windmills. Things started to deteriorate, and people started to die. The people who knew how to fix the windmills started to die too, so they began to fail and more people began to die. There was a famine and even more people died. Eventually as the windmills stopped working, there was never enough food, people fought over food. The losers starved, but the winners did not last longer.”

“How did you survive?” Spock asked.

“I discovered a warehouse full of dog food. No one else knew about it.”

“Why,” Spock asked, “did your society not adopt nuclear power?”

“Some people wanted to, but we stopped them,” she said.

She ran back into the shell of the house and brought out a sign. The sign said, “No Nukes.” “No nukes,” the woman said and grinned.

“But why?” Spock asked.

“Nukes are dirty. We save the planet. A lot of people would have been killed in a nuclear accident. Responsible people just could not let that happen.”

Jim Kirk and Mr. Spock exchanged glances. “You are welcome to come with us,” Kirk said.

“Well I might, if it is safe. You don’t use nuclear power do you?”

“Good Lord almighty woman,” Scotty said. “Do you think we power spaceflight at warp 9 with windmills? Of course we use nuclear power.”

“It would not be safe,” the woman replied.

“We have not had a nuclear accident since 1986,” Scotty said. “It is very safe.”

The old woman replied, “You are a shill of the nuclear industry, and nuclear shills always lie.” They offered to leave her with several years supply of food, but she turned them down, because as she explained, it was probably radioactive from the nuclear drive of the replicators. “No thanks,” she said. “I’ll stick with dogfood.”