New Reality Seeds

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Bending the lives of history's great villains into more positive channels may not be a whole lot harder than killing them, and makes the morality even more ambiguous. Given the state of pre-modern medicine, just about *everybody* in history, good or evil, has a sibling, parent, spouse, close friend or the like die early on them who could well have knocked their entire life into a different trajectory. How much can a time traveler bend history with a couple dozen vaccines and a bottle of penicillin?

And the willingness to be judicious in who doesn't get saved. And a good sense of foresight. Unless its an honest to goodness time traveler rather than someone mucking about with an alternate.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by ericthered

And the willingness to be judicious in who doesn't get saved. And a good sense of foresight. Unless its an honest to goodness time traveler rather than someone mucking about with an alternate.

I suppose it depends on how plastic the timeline is.

I tend to think that without arbitrary restoring forces just having an extra sibling live is a big enough change to drastically alter the life of anybody famous. Most people after all never do anything dramatic, famous people are presumably pretty far out on the edges of the probability envelope of their lives. Any substantial change in circumstances, good, bad or utterly neutral, will push them toward more ordinary lives more often than not just because there is a lot more ordinary available than there is equally or more exceptional.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by Kymage

This sounds like the TL-191 series from Turtledove. In that story the Confederacy sided with the British and French in WW1 while the United States sided with Imperial Germany. World War One went about the same with the Germans and USA winning. A second war took place in the 1940s that resulted in the USA finally conquering the Confederacy completely and deciding enough was enough.

I always had a bit of a problem with the idea, in both that book series and Dixie, of Britain and France allying with the Confederacy.

I know it fits into the 'realpolitick' of that era in Europe, but both Britain & France were actively anti-slavery actors by the late nineteenth century. There was the trading relationship between the South and Britain, basically southern cotton, but that's a lot to pin an alliance on (especially as it didn't happen in the real world).

Also, Britain and France weren't really allied with each other until the early twentieth century. After the debacle of the Crimean War, Britain separated from the Continent - and then France lost the Franco-Prussian War (which happened after the Civil War). So CSA would have to be allied with Britain and France separately for fifty years.

Britain and France did later ally, but, after opposing Germany, it was to some degree about both being relative democracies. If it had been purely imperial terms, the two largest empires would have been opposed to each other, yet Bismarck could never get one to ally with Germany against the other.


CSA-Anglo-French alliance always seemed more like trying to find a way for the CSA to survive the Civil War (outside intervention), rather than something that would naturally happen. And of making WWI different by allying USA & Germany, which would lead to Germany's victory.

[Gedrin]

To the end of the CSA surviving the Civil War, the big hurdles have always seemed to be industrial capacity and manpower. Of course, if you have high industrial capacity and manpower, there may not be a casus belli for the South to secede. However, for the sake of arguments, suppose the following:

A scion of an aristocratic southern family expands and transforms the family business from planting to manufacture. I'm picturing a non-ideological person with a talent for mechanical engineering and a genius for early industrial management. In the 1830's he's an eccentric young man who's education indulges his fascinations. In the 40's he's an all too common sad figure who's squandering the wealth of his family with fanciful projects. In the 50's he's a genius. By the 1860's he's a leading industrial magnate in the USA.

Where could this person be located to have access to the necessary transport and raw materials? Essentially, instead of killing off one genius or another, I'm hypothesizing the creation of a new one, and were such a person would have to be to make a significant impact.

[adm]

Originally Posted by Gedrin

...Where could this person be located to have access to the necessary transport and raw materials? Essentially, instead of killing off one genius or another, I'm hypothesizing the creation of a new one, and were such a person would have to be to make a significant impact.

In order of least likely to most likely, Norfolk VA, New Orleans LA, Mobile AL, or Charleston SC, would be your best choices, and it's not that far fetched an idea.

[fchase8]

A pre-war Southern industrialist could utilize coal out of what in the real world is West Virginia - or Birmingham, tapped earlier than in the real world. Or even Texan oil.


But any such industrialist would have to deal with the labor issue: could they use slaves in their factories? The Southern aristocracy would certainly want to try to, even if they couldn't.

And if, instead, it was white southerners manning the factories of the South, the economy there would shift away from slave-based plantation economy, sapping the reason for secession in the first place.

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Originally Posted by fchase8

. . . And if, instead, it was white southerners manning the factories of the South, the economy there would shift away from slave-based plantation economy, sapping the reason for secession in the first place.

There are lots of arguments about whether (leaving morality aside) slavery was an economically viable system.

Given that it made a fair bit of money for a lot of rich people I'd guess that it was at least viable.

Even if you have mines & factories stuffed full of Southern working men of pallor you still need farms to provide food and plantations to provide cotton for textiles. Note that the Southern textile industry flourished until the Japanese & other Asian nations' textiles exploded in the 1960-70s. IIRC there are still a fair number of southern textile factories today.

You might wind up with a two-tier labor system. Workers of pallor in the mines and factories and small farms -- enslaved workers of color in the industrial farms and cotton & tobacco plantations.

This would, of course, be a loathsome system, but it wouldn't be the first loathsome social-economic system in history . . .

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by fchase8

A pre-war Southern industrialist could utilize coal out of what in the real world is West Virginia - or Birmingham, tapped earlier than in the real world. Or even Texan oil.


But any such industrialist would have to deal with the labor issue: could they use slaves in their factories? The Southern aristocracy would certainly want to try to, even if they couldn't.

And if, instead, it was white southerners manning the factories of the South, the economy there would shift away from slave-based plantation economy, sapping the reason for secession in the first place.

Frankly it's a mistake to think that the South had to win by overpowering the North. All you really had to do is give Lincoln an aneurysm and replace him with a guy less willing to pay the butcher bill.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Frankly it's a mistake to think that the South had to win by overpowering the North. All you really had to do is give Lincoln an aneurysm and replace him with a guy less willing to pay the butcher bill.

Or simply replace Lee with someone who was more careful with men and resources and recognized areas other than Virginia as part of his nation.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea, Captain America and the Super Soldier serum are real on this parallel. Capt. manages to deflect the bullet for long enough that the scientist who created the serum can tell Capt. were he's hidden notes on the Beta formula. The Nazis steal the perfected formula.

The Beta formula is improved and put into use. Problem, it's somewhat random. Basically everybody gets somewhat stronger, more agile, and healthier, but Capt's level of physical power isn't common. However, psi powers like Paranormal Luck, ESP, Telepathy, Healing, and some PK (mainly either flight or some element themed manifestation) do occur regularly.

Basically take a normal Soldier Template, add a couple of levels each to ST, HT, and DX, plus 250 points of powers and skills.

The formula used to create Capt. creates super soldiers like Capt. But they lack Steve Roger's moral compass and noble resolve, and thus tend to quickly gain multiple levels of mental disadvantages.

The Nazis make more powerful, but less stable and versatile Super Soldiers. The Allies Super soldiers are saner, have surprise tricks, and work better as teams.

Any fun?

Note: If you think the allies are too weak, bump up the points budget. If you think you want to use the Movie Captain America, who has got to be a thousand point character, give the allied supers at least a five hundred point budget. The 250 point budget was for using a Captain America like the 1940's comics.