New Reality Seeds

[Flyndaran]

Going with ideologically dependent myths and/or all out conspiracy beliefs...

I wonder what could be done with some of the more out there ones like:

Mesas are just gargantuan petrified tree stumps from when true forests reigned. It's part of an almost Paul Bunyan level "history" espoused by some flat earthers.
Parallel in "the past" where such mile high trees existed and perhaps giant humans with even larger clear cutting machinery/magic/etc.

[Astromancer]

Why not radically reshape North America? If you want them to sail to Utah, reshape the continent and let them sail there.

[Astromancer]

Try this one Cagliostro is one of the most notorious figures in history, and yet, what was he really? Commonly accused of fraud and theft, yet there is no credible accusation of either. I don't mean proven allegations. There aren't any allegations made by credible individuals whatsoever. We're always told he was born Giuseppe Balsamo of Palermo, but there is nothing beyond hearsay to back this up. Cagliostro seems to have large amounts of money on a regular basis, but he never charges for his services (he was a very successful medical practitioner) of any kind and was very generous to charity. Who was he? What was he up to?

Given this setting, making Cagliostro a mystically inclined world-jumper unassociated with the Cabal would be an interesting ploy. After all who'd expect a famous "fraud" of being a real Mage?

As for goal, Cagliostro was allied with the Enlightenment, perhaps he's seen how badly the French revolution went and wants to either delay the Revolution, to prevent it collapsing in on itself, or he wants to alter the course of events to prevent the revolution altogether.

He could also have seen worlds like Cornwallis in Alternate Earths 2 that had no French Revolution. He might want a bigger more complete revolution.

You could also have more than one Cagliostro out among the timestreams.

For an enemy to harass Cagliostro why not Baroness Barbara Juliane von Krüdener a fashionable novelist turned end of the world prophet. Von Krüdener like Cagliostro was a mystical seeker during the Enlightenment, but she later helped found the Holy Alliance a major force fighting human freedom in the Early 19th century (but with Napoleon running loose you might not notice a new enemy). Von Krudener makes a good little bad to Metternich's big bad. Either way, you could have a grand game of occult conspiracy with political teeth.

[PTTG]

Suppose that, in the early '60s, a highly restrained nuclear war took place. Both sides attempted a decapitating strike, and both sides succeeded, leaving both nations without military and civilian leadership.

The result, in this case, was a general breakdown of civil society, without as much loss of infrastructure as an apocalypse usually implies.

Military forces turned to banditry, so mercenary and local forces were needed, and of course the distinction between bandit and mercinary is thin...

By the 1990s, any settlement needs to be fortified and militarily independent. Long-range travel is through a hostile world, and requires armed caravans. There was a period where "broken arrows" were a threat, but between intentional decommissioning and age, it's not likely that any remaining warheads would go off correctly. Between overflowing barbarism and international threats from broken arrows, China and the few untouched first-world nations also crumbled in the years after.

The technology, despite the fall, is fairly stable at the mid-TL7 level, with most technological advancements being mainly focused on ways to replace and recycle suddenly scarce resources. Wealth and population, however, have decreased dramatically.

Though outsiders would certainly see this as an apocalyptic scenario, the inhabitants mainly see it as a regression to the mean of history. Politically speaking, what goes up must come down.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Though outsiders would certainly see this as an apocalyptic scenario, the inhabitants mainly see it as a regression to the mean of history. Politically speaking, what goes up must come down.

I suspect outsiders would class it as a Myth parallel, like frankly most "post-apocalyptic" worlds. They have a remarkable tendency to not make sense in a way that either highlights a "danger" of something society isn't taking as seriously, or in a way that let's some group live their political (or religious or high adventure) fantasies.

A hostile world between the enclaves is often a clue to that. As are wildly diverse levels of technology or (especially) manufacturing capacity. What do the evil bandits eat, and what stops the higher tech groups from enslaving the rest?

[PTTG]

The largest changes in the timeline are political -- it's a regression to medieval governments, in essence. And it's by no means static. The bandits (which frequently work part-time as paid mercs defending some town or the other) push one way and the largest cities and military factions push the other.

Everyday life is more like modern life than it is like an apocalypse fantasy. It's the very big things (like the political structure) and fairly subtle things (like how many people carry a gun during daily chores) that's different.

[ericthered]

I would use warlord china (in all its instances) as a model.

Though that does mean that successful bandits usually set up as rulers, not perpetual bandits, or at least limit their raids to the people who don't pay them tribute. You're also likely to have an area or two that comes out relatively unscathed and likes to try and assert some degree of legitimacy. Perhaps Brazil.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Suppose that, in the early '60s, a highly restrained nuclear war took place. Both sides attempted a decapitating strike, and both sides succeeded, leaving both nations without military and civilian leadership.

The result, in this case, was a general breakdown of civil society, without as much loss of infrastructure as an apocalypse usually implies.

Military forces turned to banditry, so mercenary and local forces were needed, and of course the distinction between bandit and mercinary is thin...

Which two nations, though? For the USA (or rather, for a USA anything like the USA was at that point in OTL), a decapitating strike would just lead to people far down the chain of command and line of presidential succession taking charge. In order for it to be as bad as you suggest, it would only be a 'restrained' nuclear war in the sense that the two countries (and the rest of the world, presumably) are still inhabitable, and could not be a 'highly' restrained war. I think that the USSR might have had similar plans, but they were less stable.

A 'highly restrained' nuclear war between China and India, China and the USSR, or India and Pakistan could perhaps do that, though the PoD would have to be earlier for India or Pakistan to have been a participant, as they did not officially have working nukes until 1974 and 1998, respectively (China had the first known detonation in 1964, though it's possible that they could have had some nuclear devices ready well before that point - would still work better to have an earlier PoD, though).

From Wikipedia's List of states with nuclear weapons (with date of first test):

USA, 1945
USSR, 1949
UK, 1952
France, 1960
China, 1964
India, 1978
Pakistan, 1998
North Korea, 2006

In addition, Israel may have had nukes in the 1960s, and may have performed test detonations, most notably the Vela Incident of 1979.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Suppose that, in the early '60s, a highly restrained nuclear war took place. Both sides attempted a decapitating strike, and both sides succeeded, leaving both nations without military and civilian leadership.

"Um...you killed all of our important guys. Including the backups. How'd you do that?"
"I dunno, I wasn't there—you took out ours, too. For all I know, it was just been bad luck that he was in one of the secondary targets. Same?"
"Erm...would you believe me if I said no?"

This worldline is a lot funnier to me than it should be.

Though outsiders would certainly see this as an apocalyptic scenario, the inhabitants mainly see it as a regression to the mean of history. Politically speaking, what goes up must come down.

This suggests an interesting take on post-apocalyptic society. The world's development isn't just slowed by how the world is set back politically, or that the main sources of innovation and prosperity relied on the governments and the stability they brought, but by the philosophical developments inspired by the war. This would be both the idea that civilization will always just return to its natural state and a more common/accepted belief that technology ultimately and inevitably leads to destruction.

I'd recommend that anyone looking into this also look into past examples of large-scale systems collapse, e.g. the Bronze Age Collapse, for both inspirations on how to make the collapse of the world more plausible and inspiration on what happens next.

[fchase8]

Isn't there a whole set of official worlds with the Teller designation, from a Pyramid issue or something, that are based around a nuclear war in the 1960s?

Teller-4 has the northern hemisphere wrecked, with refugees fleeing to the tropics & southern hemisphere.

There's another one that has some biological weapons released as well, all happens under President Carter I believe, and America is definitely wrecked with hyperspeed mutants or something.