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Old 08-25-2017, 05:24 AM   #2761
malloyd
 
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Default Re: New Reality Seeds

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Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold View Post
"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.
I think you have to buy into its central conceit. Which is "leaders are special", so everything is somehow drastically different without that special handful.

It's the Great Man of history theme that infests alternate world stories writ large. There's a reason for that (it's much easier to compose *stories* about people), but it can start to strain plausibility if you aren't careful.
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Old 08-25-2017, 01:16 PM   #2762
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I wouldn't say that it's based on the "great man" principle. Rather, it's that without the organizations that are made up of senators, generals, telecommunication exchanges, etc., combined with a little bit of a narrative push in that people don't especially try to rebuild those networks, results in the more feudal society.
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Old 08-25-2017, 02:14 PM   #2763
malloyd
 
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Originally Posted by PTTG View Post
I wouldn't say that it's based on the "great man" principle. Rather, it's that without the organizations that are made up of senators, generals, telecommunication exchanges, etc., combined with a little bit of a narrative push in that people don't especially try to rebuild those networks, results in the more feudal society.
The thing is those organizations don't *stop* with the senators and generals. Everybody's army has a predefined chain of command that if necessary passes from those generals all the way down to the guy at the bottom of the last graduated class of the military academy, and those senators are part of an organization called "the citizens of the United States", who have a quite well defined method of replacing them. If you want to dissolve anything remotely self-organized - and most nations are at least in part these days - it's not enough to kill off the leaders, you have to either kill the entire membership, or shake their confidence in the organization enough they desert it.
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Old 08-25-2017, 03:17 PM   #2764
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Default Re: New Reality Seeds

A lot of it has to do with having similar outlooks and culture.

There are weird stories of armed units operating behind enemy lines for a while and then meeting up with each other. The officers knew procedure, and compared the data needed to determine chain of command, and that was that.

Sometimes. And sometimes in the absence of higher authority the two units stayed different and very much aware of each other, but non-cooperative. It depended on their outlooks. I believe I'm remembering memoirs of a guy who got stuck on the Philippines during WWII, and there were a number of units running around in the jungle.

Contrast that with how efficiently the french fell apart in world war 2. A lot of this has to do with respect for the previously existing authority and having similar aims/outlook/culture.

How would the US do in 1960? that's an interesting question. I think they'd be fair at rebuilding a structure, but I don't know.
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Old 08-26-2017, 12:48 PM   #2765
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Default Re: New Reality Seeds

1960's America was very different. For most of the past fifty years most mainstream movements of the Left and Right have been attacking all sources of social cohesion throughout the West. Russia in the 1960's might fall apart, but the USA would tend to pull together because vast numbers of Americans would believe that pulling together was the best thing.

Who and how the pulling got done would be a major influence.

Assume that the key people in the revival were WWII vets who were New Dealers and Pro-Science and Industry, and you could have an America that might remind many people of Star Trek: OS. On the surface at least.

The question is who supplies the ideals of unity.
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Old 08-27-2017, 08:39 PM   #2766
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Originally Posted by Ransom View Post
For example, in the United States, the governors of the individual states have the power to appoint senators to temporarily fill unexpected vacancies in their state's delegation. So even if you anhilliated congress, if the governors of the individual states survived it could be replaced almost overnight. Each state also has its own line of sucession to replace deceased governors, so you would need to take out all the state governments as well. Even if you managed that, elections here are managed on an incredibly local level, so it would probably take a total collapse of our society all the way down to level of individual towns to stop a new government being elected within a short time.
Once you have a new Senate, they can elect a new President Pro Tempore of the Senate, who in the absence of any surviving Speaker of the House or Cabinet member, then becomes the President of the United States until new elections can take place. Likewise, if all the generals and admirals die, the most senior colonels and Navy captains get promoted. With the type of system the USA has, and had already in the 1960s (and to a degree, even earlier, though the 1950s & '60s were when people started really considering this kind of thing), you can't get a total societal collapse like PTTG suggests from a highly restrained nuclear war, even if you add in a lot of assassinations (a fairly unrestrained nuclear war is another matter, but leaves you with all kinds of fallout to deal with). Creating a collapse like that is damn hard, by design, because a lot of people thought about the possibility, and worked to prevent it.

If you set it in the mid-to-late 1960s, and have it as a war between the PRC and the USSR, though, you'll get a collapse like that, because neither country was that stable at the time.
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Old 09-01-2017, 08:57 PM   #2767
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Default Re: New Reality Seeds

A little while back, someone asked for a world where Canada is the supreme power, and I suggested one where temperatures got hotter. The idea stuck with me, so I wrote it up (in GURPS Infinite Worlds style):


Canuck, 1950

Current Affairs: Canada is the premier power, trying to hold together a hotter planet nearing its boiling point.
Divergence Point: 1900: Temperatures slowly rise, making the tropics uninhabitable, the temperate zones tropical, and opening up the lands around the poles.
Major Civilizations: Western (multipolar), Japanese (empire), Tibetan (unitary)
Great Powers: Dominion of Canada (representative democracy, CR 2), German Empire (oligarchy, CR 4 for Germans, CR 5 for others), Japanese Empire (oligarchy, CR 5 for Japanese, CR 6 for others), United States (representative democracy, CR 3 in the north, CR 4 in the south), Alaskan Commonwealth (representative democracy, CR 2), Tibet (theocracy, CR 2)
Worldline Data:
TL: 6
Quantum: 7 Mana Level: No Mana
Infinite Class: R4 Centrum Zone: Orange
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Old 09-01-2017, 08:59 PM   #2768
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Canuck, continued:

Pile researchers discovered the only known timeline where Canada is the greatest power. It came from a global temperature increase making The Great White North fertile, but at the cost of rendering much of the rest barely habitable - or worse.

Global Warming
It was only in retrospect that the global temperature rise was cited as beginning in 1900. Bumper harvests came to Russia & Canada, but wilted in the tropics. Grigori Rasputin claimed magical credit for Russia’s bounty, to great favor Tsar Nicolaus II’s court. But the delusional Tsar personally led Russia’s intervention in the Balkan revolts in 1909, and died in its failure. The court fell to revolution, and Imperial Germany sent in troops to “secure order,” with its authority eventually extending to the Urals. A French attack on Alsace-Lorraine was rebuffed, and Paris fell to chaos.
Trouble in France soon extended throughout the Continent, and into the colonies. Canadian scientist Brendan Mackenzie made public in 1911 that global temperatures were rising, and it started a global panic. First went tropical states like in Latin America, then the colonies from Africa to southern Asia. A few places just held on, such as southern Africa and northern India, while boats of refugees went to Europe and America.
And Canada. While Europe and the U.S. were paralyzed, Canada was able to manage. The warming temperatures made new land habitable. Those wrecked by crop failures along the Mediterranean, Eastern Europeans fleeing Germans, sinking Caribbean islanders, even Asians escaping chaos - all found a home in Canada.
But in the rest of the world, populists raged against the refugees, even as governments couldn’t stop them. It was Italy that first sank a refugee ship in 1919, but the Americans took to it most. Some wealthy refugees were able to buy their way out, and a few other states were more accommodating - Copenhagen moved the entire population of the Danish Virgin Islands to a warming Greenland.
Meanwhile, Japan had followed up its victory in 1905 by seizing all of Far East Russia as the nation fell, later sweeping into Peking and stretching into Mongolia & Siberia. Between the reaches of Tokyo and Berlin, there was “empty Siberia,” with Europeans from the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and various south Asians heading to the steppes.
It was only in the thirties that things calmed down to the ‘new normal.’ Canada is strong and outgoing, keeping alive impotent Britain and Western Europe, while the U.S. is divided between a rebounding north and crippled south (troops & racial tensions in Dixie; The New Mexico Desert stretches from Los Angeles to Dallas). Imperial Germany rules central and eastern Europe, and the Japanese Empire exploits Chinese & Korean labor. In between are buffer states, from Russian-speaking Arctic republics to nomad kingdoms west of the Himalayas. The southern hemisphere has pockets of civilization, from booming Argentina & New Zealand to rump Australia & Brazil to white-run southern Africa.
And the great mass in the middle? Abandoned and unknown, save reports of giant deserts and depopulated jungles, with humanity reverting to tribalism & warlords. Cults stretch from the Holy Land to Mecca and along the Nile. A native-run rump of the British Raj in the Hindu Kush still tries to rule the subcontinent. Tibet is a mysterious Buddhist theocracy that somehow manages to flourish.
Temperatures stopped rising in 1925, and the last quarter-century has seen mostly peace in this new world. Canada is responsible from the Pacific to the Rhine. The Alaskan Commonwealth is as independent from Washington as Ottawa is from London. The Scandinavian Union reaches from Greenland to Karelia. There is slow, steady growth in Imperial Germany, but scarier expansion from Imperial Japan, and potential war between the two in buffer Siberia. The ‘Southern States’ are exploring Antarctica, and have reconnected with the ‘Northern Powers’, while the tropics remain a mystery.
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Old 09-01-2017, 08:59 PM   #2769
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Default Re: New Reality Seeds

Canuck, finished:

Outtime Operations
But Homeline is interested in the climate. Infinity, the U.N., Homeline governments and companies all want to see global warming ‘in action.’
Yet it isn’t as expected. Northern hemisphere temperatures rose more than southern. Projected sea level rises are only in the tropics (The Netherlands is not completely underwater, even as Florida is). Wildlife has not died off, but shifted & adapted - there are unknown new jungles giving off oxygen. Even Canada’s rise seems unlikely, as the new soil shouldn’t be this rich.
And then there’s why it all happened. Canuck scientists believe that the sun’s output rose, starting a positive feedback of increased CO2 and ozone depletion. But this is just a theory, and no one knows why it stopped. Homeline tries to investigate, but this timeline takes its climate research seriously - military secrets are less protected than weather data. Infinity is also looking out for Taft-3 radiation - Robert Taft serves as V.P. under an ailing President.
Meanwhile, Centrum has an edge on the timeline, as its agents infiltrate the scientific establishment of Canada and others. Infinity worries about Germany and Japan not only exploiting their under-peoples, but slowly careening towards war, even as Homeline examines the unique syncretic cultures of central Asia.
But the primary interest is in Canada. Homeline Ottawa wants to make Canuck Canada a model protectorate, despite Centran influence and climate chaos, and it’s hard for Infinity to disagree (Canada is the home of The Pile…).

Last edited by fchase8; 09-02-2017 at 12:40 AM. Reason: removed weather satellites
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Old 09-01-2017, 09:39 PM   #2770
TGLS
 
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Originally Posted by fchase8 View Post
from all the pole-to-pole satellites (more on this timeline than any other).
How'd they get satellites up if they're at TL6?
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