New Reality Seeds

[AlexanderHowl]

The Spanish Flu was not deadly enough to kill over a billion people. If you want a virus that kills that many people, mutate smallpox so the vaccine is ineffective.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by TGLS

What are antibiotics going to do to a virus?

My bad, antivirals then.

Seems unlikely; the space race would probably have been put on hold by plague effort. Going by our timeline, it was 12 years from Sputnik to Apollo 11. Delayed to the mid-60s, without any opposition from the Soviets, who at best have the first satellite and first animal in space, a moon landing may have never happened.

The Soviets are still around in this world.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The Spanish Flu was not deadly enough to kill over a billion people. If you want a virus that kills that many people, mutate smallpox so the vaccine is ineffective.

Maybe people only thought it was the flu.

[David Johnston2]

Bismarck-3: So called because the point of divergence seems to have been the early death of Bismarck, the rival alliances which created World War I fell apart when put to the test. There was no Great War. There was no World War II. That's not to say there were no wars. There was the Austro-Russian War which still toppled both monarchies. The Franco-German War, which was inconclusive thanks to France's extensive fortifications and Germany's reluctance to violate Belgium's neutrality. Japan and China had three wars and the Americans joined in on the third war known as the Pacific War, defeating Japan, but not decisively. There was the Ottoman War, in which Britain fought the Ottoman Empire.

Less terrorism. More wars but smaller ones. Up until the Second Franco-German War in the seventies which ended with Germany being the first nation to use atomic weapons to blow away France's static defenses. Now it's the eighties and everyone is rushing to build their own atomic weapons even as alliances begin to form...

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Maybe people only thought it was the flu.

Even low level magic could enhance it without breaking my suspension of disbelief. And I'm a crotchety critic.

Antivirals are relatively new. Wikipedia lists that only since the 1980s and full genetic sequencing do they become more than sheer guesswork with only trial and error producing anything vaguely workable.

That would likely lead to advanced understanding of genetics in this timeline. Mostly microbial and viral, but still advanced compared to ours, most likely.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The Soviets are still around in this world.

And in no position to compete in a space race. Everything has a cost, and with the Americans building a welfare state and the Soviets becoming North Korea, neither has the funds for a moonshot.

[Flyndaran]

Yeah, the space race required loads of public support, fear, and wealth to occur. Not a lot of realistic parallels are going to have those.
Though I remember reading that human cultures tend to get much more xenophobic when disease is common, and not just during outbreaks.

[PTTG]

Lucky

Since 1950, every hurricane has remained at sea. It's taken as a minor mystery of meteorology that hurricanes somehow "know" to avoid land, but it's not an easy thing to track down. Likewise, there have been no earthquakes above a 4.0 (the same amount of energy was instead released over many quakes), and no droughts lasting longer than two years, anywhere on the planet. This state of events has persisted from that year to now (2011), and there seems to be no reason for it to stop now.

One last protection, the economy has had stock collapses, but though those wipe out a great deal of hypothetical money, none of these crises have seriously affected the everyman. Some researchers believe this may be a second-order effect rather than a first.

A more-or-less universal 10% increase in wealth exists around the planet, with most of it concentrated in infrastructure and construction. The population is not significantly larger (maybe 10 million more people, all told). Science is not accelerated, but visitors could think otherwise because most cities show their tech more, with trillions of dollars of investment in freeways, maglevs, megastructures, and ports.

The greatest difference between this worldline and our own can be seen in the American southeast. The equivalent of several billion dollars of avoided costs was added to its economy every year, the region grew even faster than ours did in that time.

[Astromancer]

Marzipan

This parallel got its name early before the divergence point was known. It refers to the elaborate and brightly painted architecture popular in the dominant cultures of the parallel.

This world seems to have actually diverged in ancient times but mysteriously stayed fairly close to Homeline history in spite of that. This "historical inertia" being why it's so hard to find the divergence point in this parallel. This entire Q6 parallel seems to be a print the legend over the top cinematic version of Homeline. In the late 1880s groups of scholars put magic on a new basis. Magic had always been around, weak, fickle, but sometimes profoundly useful. However, this new synthesis of occult lore was stunningly powerful, except when it was a damp squib. (Gamespeak for a moment. This parallel had Path Magic and not many Paths at that. Then this group came up with a flawed, but far from useless, syntactical magic system.)

The present day in this Q6 world is 1928. History is becoming less parallel but it looks like the stock market crash and the great depression are coming right on schedule. Meanwhile, the Weimar Republic is being rocked by scandals involving black magic and the mysterious Thule-Gesellschaft is taking credit for slaughtering anti-Aryan sorcerors and demon worshipers. France is in terror whispering about horrible grimoires like The Black Pullet and Lucifuge Rofocale. The first of which teaches how to make magic rings and the second how to sell your soul to the devil! Britain is rife with occult conspiracies and secret societies rule Spain, Italy, and Russia.

Meanwhile, the USA is having an alchemical-techno boom. Charles Lindbergh was the first man to set foot on the moon in 1927, I say the first man because Amelia Earhart beat him out the door to be the first person to step on the Moon. They've both been involved in starting the moonbase.

Clearly, this world is heating up. The reason that Homeline, Centrum, and the Cabal, are all fixated on this world is simple. Albert Einstein is talking about a theory of parallel worlds. Would this lead to a high magical world developing panchronomics? Can Einstein be distracted? Are demons taking over Europe? Is this parallel's "historical inertial" over? Or is another WWII in the offing, complete with demon powered Hitler and Stalin?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Lucky

Since 1950, every hurricane has remained at sea. It's taken as a minor mystery of meteorology that hurricanes somehow "know" to avoid land, but it's not an easy thing to track down. Likewise, there have been no earthquakes above a 4.0 (the same amount of energy was instead released over many quakes), and no droughts lasting longer than two years, anywhere on the planet. This state of events has persisted from that year to now (2011), and there seems to be no reason for it to stop now.

One last protection, the economy has had stock collapses, but though those wipe out a great deal of hypothetical money, none of these crises have seriously affected the everyman. Some researchers believe this may be a second-order effect rather than a first.

A more-or-less universal 10% increase in wealth exists around the planet, with most of it concentrated in infrastructure and construction. The population is not significantly larger (maybe 10 million more people, all told). Science is not accelerated, but visitors could think otherwise because most cities show their tech more, with trillions of dollars of investment in freeways, maglevs, megastructures, and ports.

The greatest difference between this worldline and our own can be seen in the American southeast. The equivalent of several billion dollars of avoided costs was added to its economy every year, the region grew even faster than ours did in that time.

Ok, this is awesome in a sinisterly innocent fashion. What is going on? why the southeast? why are they so lucky?