Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by fchase8

There's Duzakh in GURPS Worlds of Horror, with an Etruscan vampire empire stretching to the Bosporus.

Its nice when you find a world that still has a chance at not being completely overrun.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by fchase8

Do you have an idea how far out Cold War era humanity could predict an asteroid to hit Earth with a reasonable degree of certainty? I suppose the farther out, the less certain. But also the bigger, the easier to detect.

.

The Trojan asteroids were spotted well before the beginning of the Cold War period...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_trojan

....1906 for the first one.

However, Jupiter itself has asteroid sized moons that weren't discovered til the post-Cold war period. Same for the other gas giants. Pluto's moon Charon also wasn't discovered til the post Cold War period.

So somewhere in that range maybe, 5 to 30 AU.

[Flyndaran]

Except that moons are kind of easier to spot since so many are studying their planets. And similar for Lagrangian points.
Asteroids coming right for us would almost certainly sit in poorly viewed sections of the sky.

[Astromancer]

Try this notion. Drop a comet, enough to wreck a key section of a nation or a midsized nation on any one participant in WWII. You can play out some wild twists on the 20th century.

[AlexanderHowl]

Dropping a comet would cause every civilization of Earth to fail, regardless of where it fell. A smallish asteroid (500m) in the middle of a nation, a VEI 7 eruption, or a category 9.0+ earthquake would probably be a better idea for destroying only one nation rather than all of civilization.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Dropping a comet would cause every civilization of Earth to fail, regardless of where it fell. A smallish asteroid (500m) in the middle of a nation, a VEI 7 eruption, or a category 9.0+ earthquake would probably be a better idea for destroying only one nation rather than all of civilization.

We'll play it your way.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Except that moons are kind of easier to spot since so many are studying their planets. And similar for Lagrangian points.
Asteroids coming right for us would almost certainly sit in poorly viewed sections of the sky.

No, asteroid-sized moons of gas giants are obviously not easier to spot than asteroids in free space. That they were spotted so much later shows that clearly.

Then, before 1906 no one had any reason to believe that small objects might congregate in Lagrange points and didn't look there.

I'd say that unexpected objects were most likely to be found in otherwise uncluttered sky where their movement were more obvious.

[Flyndaran]

That sounds very counter-intuitive, but as I'm not an astronomer I'll concede layman's ignorance.

[somecallmetim]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Dropping a comet would cause every civilization of Earth to fail, regardless of where it fell. A smallish asteroid (500m) in the middle of a nation, a VEI 7 eruption, or a category 9.0+ earthquake would probably be a better idea for destroying only one nation rather than all of civilization.

Isn't Tunguska often speculated as being caused by a small comet? That seems like it could really spoil a lot of people's day in Mitteleuropa without ending civilization. Unfortunately I don't know enough about WWII to work out the effects realistically, but Berlin getting deep-sixed just prior to Barbarosa seems really intriguing. Not just for the effects on the war, but the result of the massive destruction of life by the Nazis and Soviets on the eastern front being averted, and the lack of an existential conflict to rally the Soviets to Stalin.

[Astromancer]

Try this one. In the same year that Ataturk abolishes the Caliphate have a Tunguska type object hit Mecca. This would lead to a massive crisis in most of the Islamic lands. Given the culture of the 1920s, this would lead to serious anti-Islamic attitudes in the West and widespead cultural crisis in many parts of the globe.

Similar effects can be achieved by smashing other religiously important cities in different historical periods.