[Atrocities]

In the book Vendetta, we discover that the Dooms Day machine was designed by the First Federation to destroy the Borg.

I recall reading a comment by Gene R. about why all the races in the Alpha Quadrant appear so equal in tech and appearance. He stated that a great war had occured in our portion of the Galaxy where entire advanced civilizations were wiped out of exsistance. After the great war the Galaxy began to rebuild, the seeding of many worlds by advanced races, as later explained in a STNG episode, started to blossom into new beings who eventually, if they survived, evolved into the species that we now have roaming the Alpha Quadrant.

I thought this was quite interesting.