New Reality Seeds

[PTTG]

Deprived

Deprived is that worldline where engineers and technicians get banestoremed from. Well, one of them, anyway.

Since the mid-1700s, technicians and engineers, especially those with expertise in whole-production-chain work, have had a shockingly high chance of getting banestormed elsewhere.

Despite this, inertia seems to have kept this worldline mostly stable. Maybe the biggest obvious difference has been that factories and laboratories are extraordinarily careful about safety standards, as historically engineers are known to disappear in accidents, steam explosions, blue-sky lightning bolts, and so on.

More subtly, the technology is equal to other timelines, but it's generally less well-maintained (unless it's safety equipment), since people tend to get promoted up the chain faster, meaning low-level maintenance techs are, on average, less experienced. It's not a huge difference, but it's cumulative.

Oh, and engineers and researchers are better paid, which helps counteract the public perception that they're likely to get vaporized by an industrial accident or otherwise just vanish.

[Astromancer]

Charnel House

During the Cold War, a Soviet scientist working with bioweapons had an accident that released a pathogen to the air. The collapse of the USSR was so quick that not much more than the date and basic nature of the accident could be determined. The plague ripped through the Earth in the year 1973.

The local year is 2015, the Tech Level is six in the advanced areas, Tech levels of five to three are more common. The population is about 250 million planetwide. Most pregnancies end in miscarriages induced by the plague. Still, although most people die young from the plague (life expectancy is 57) society isn't disrupted by random losses of adults as in a crisis like the Black Death or the Spanish Flu. However, there is a constant draining and sorrow caused by the misery of loss and the constant struggle to survive and hold society together. The constant miscarriages also bring sorrow and misery.

This Q6 seems to fascinate the Cabal, a fact that disturbs both Homeline and Centrum. Is the Cabal after the plague virus? Or has the misery and horror opened this world to the visitation of demons or worse? Both Homeline and Centrum want to help the people of this world if only to shield themselves from whatever the Cabal is doing. Also, if the Cabal is seeking this world's plague or plagues as a weapon, they'll need to know how to fight this plague.

[Flyndaran]

Sounds like the plague is not wholly natural. It could be partly or totally an infectious magical curse. Or an opened door of death/disease energies and it only mimics a natural disease to outtimers.

[AlexanderHowl]

China could have easily quarantined itself in 1973, and the majority of South America could as well, as international trade was slower 45 years ago. In fact, I am not sure that it would have progressed far beyond the Warsaw Pact, as there really was not much trade or travel between the Warsaw Pact and the NATO countries.

A more likely scenario would be that the USSR launched its nukes after its field commanders lost contact with Moscow, and the West responded. The nuclear exchange and the subsequent nuclear winter would have killed 95% of humanity easily, leaving only 250 million survivors or so. The radioactive fallout would result in mutations that would reduce human fertility, fetus viability, and human lifespan.

[PTTG]

Considering the disease doesn't kill adults, there was plenty of time for it to sneak its way out of the Warsaw pact. By the time it was clear what was happening, it was probably all over the world.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Sounds like the plague is not wholly natural. It could be partly or totally an infectious magical curse. Or an opened door of death/disease energies and it only mimics a natural disease to outtimers.

At least that might be how the Cabal sees it. Either way, neither Homeline nor Centrum want the Cabal to have magical plagues at their beck and call.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Considering the disease doesn't kill adults, there was plenty of time for it to sneak its way out of the Warsaw pact. By the time it was clear what was happening, it was probably all over the world.

It did kill adults, but vulnerable adults are all gone now. Only unborn children, though some are immune even in the womb.

[Daigoro]

A collapsing USSR might deliberately infect other countries out of spite or as a defensive move, like a biological version of mutually assured destruction.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

A collapsing USSR might deliberately infect other countries out of spite or as a defensive move, like a biological version of mutually assured destruction.

It fits a good deal of Russian history and Soviet actions.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

If you don't like it make a better setting. spending vast amounts of time attacking me seems like a waste.

It's almost as if I'm trying to do something other than just attack you. Maybe a combination of trying to bring more attention to the incredible achievements and discoveries of non-Europeans and inspiring others to make less Euro-centric timelines? Possibly including someone who I said usually made interesting timelines?

Make your own cool parallels.

I thought I made it clear how I could turn that mediocre timeline into an interesting one? Well, let me detail it for you.

Zealandia-3
In this timeline, a continent exists in the northern Pacific ocean. Its land area is about 60% larger than Australia's, but it is compressed on the north/south axis. Its climate is similar to that of Japan or the Pacific Northwest: Temperate and damp enough to support abundant forests, if its soil wasn't so nutrient-poor. Its wildlife is relatively unremarkable, aside from the fact that an unusual proportion of megafauna are ursine in taxonomy (presumably due to adaptive radiation after its native deer were driven extinct early in the ice ages). This continent has numerous names, but the one most commonly used within the timeline is Yoake, so we will refer to it as such.
Yoake's first human inhabitants appear to have been descended from Japan's Jomon culture. They developed an economy based on a combination of fishing and hunting, with limited agriculture. This early Yoake culture spread to nearby islands, and even back to Japan. The relationship between Yoake and Japan was varied and complicated, as relationships between neighboring landmasses tend to be. There are some scattered artifacts which people claim as evidence for contact between Yoake and North America at this time, but with no conclusive evidence.
Over time, Eurasian innovations crept into Yoakean culture, from livestock to metal tools. During the Bronze Age, a tin mine was discovered on eastern Yoake, which became the site for a prominent trading town, generally known as Suzushigai. Local tin, fish, and some other products were exported to Japan in exchange for bronze weapons and luxuries for the Suzushigai elites. Suzushigai came to dominate much of Yoake, though their grip on anything but the eastern coasts was flimsy at best.
The mercantile elite of Suzushigai eventually established trading posts in Japan (somewhere within a century of "Year 0"?), and centuries later in Korea and China as well. In our timeline, these cultures already considered mercantile professions to be low-status; uncultured, foreign merchants would be seen as even lower. Still, they provided a useful service; the Yoake would grow moderately prosperous from their trading. Of course, this success was not without its problems; it was not uncommon for the leaders of these lands to confiscate Yoake wealth and expel them from their land, and Yoake (like Korea) went through periods of being conquered by Japan.

Around 300 AD, Austronesians made contact with the Yoake. Their superior grasp on agriculture allowed them to drive Yoakeans out of the islands suitable to it, but they never managed to establish a foothold on Yoake nor anywhere north of it. After a few generations, Austronesians and Yoake began trading en masse, bringing unique Oceanean goods (ranging from sandalwood to tiki figurines) to Yoake and Asia while Asian goods and technologies spread to the more xenophilic Austronesian cultures. Perhaps the most important exchange, however, was the Yoake's acquisition of Polynesian shipbuilding and navigational techniques. This allowed them to travel farther, faster, and safer than they could previously have dreamed of.
One Suzushigai leader dreamed an empire to rival those of Japan and China, and briefly established control of lands beyond their grasp (including the Kuril Islands, and possibly some Aleutian Islands as well). This obviously didn't last; actually controlling territory so far from their homeland was impractical. However, it did train Yoake sailors in techniques which would serve them well after the discovery of America.
For discover it they did! Around 550 AD, an adventurous (or possibly just disgraced) scion of a rich Suzushigai family sailed west. He was expected to never return...but he did, bringing with him strange crops and goods of a land previously unknown. He told tales of a land as fertile and prosperous as the great empires to the east or the islands to the south, but as backwards and disunified as the northern islands which were lost so long ago.

And so the Yoake began trading with a new, more distant land. Many adventurers sailed off to the west with goods they thought the western savages would want; many of these died along the way, and many more found that the savages were not particularly interested in what the Yoake thought they needed. But the Yoake and native Americans eventually found goods each was interested in. Historically, the most significant of these were the trade of crops and livestock; maize, tobacco, and other American crops came to Asia, while the native Americans gained livestock, more diverse gains, and myriad innovations.
Sadly, the Yoake traders carried diseases with them. Yoake was not an ideal breeding-ground for plagues (Suzushigai was small and sprawling by even contemporary standards, let alone the massive, dense cities of the late Renaissance), but they picked up enough from more densely-populated regions they traded with. Still, the plagues were fewer and farther between, resulting in a smaller and slower decline of native populations. And the Yoake leaders had history warning them not to even try to control such a distant land, giving the Americans time to recover.
The Karuk tribe benefited greatly from trade with the Yoake. After recovering from the Asian diseases, they began conquering or assimilating nearby tribes into a burgeoning empire, starting with their downstream neighbors the Yurok. The Karuk maintained their what OTL historians described as "very democratic" traditions, clashing somewhat with the more oligarchic Yoake (but never enough to disrupt trade, of course). This lead to them being able to quickly bring other tribes under the control of their state, but made the actual control of said state over anything unwieldy (absent some great leader or threat to the Karuk nation). As the Karuk began to spread and quarrel with neighboring tribes, other nations began to form—some to protect themselves from the Karuk, some to copy their successes, some for other reasons entirely.
Meanwhile, the American trade was affecting the Yoake and East Asia as well. Suzushigai and Yoake in general became more and more prosperous. A town grew on the eastern end of Yoake, where traders would load up supplies to travel to trade with the distant western lands. This town, named Shuten, began to rival Suzushigai in power—especially after Japan conquered Suzushigai (again) during the Nara Period (as it would remain until the late 12th century, when Taira no Tomomori fled to Yoake after losing the Imperial throne to the Yurimoto clan). Suzushigai and Shuten were still trading partners lead by their greatest merchant clans, but they were bitter rivals. Buddhism was promoted in Suzushigai by Emperor Shomu, while Shuten continued to practice the old Yoakean faiths (proto-Shintoism mixed with Polynesian beliefs); Shuten promoted egalitarianism (among the upper classes) while Suzushigai began to accept a more hierarchical approach to governance; etc.

[cont]