New Reality Seeds

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by patchwork

Characterizing Evil Ernie as a "hard right ultraTory" does something of a disservice to both him and the Tories. He was a totalitarian, while the Tories were simply conservative aristocratic oligarchs; for example, Evil Ernie wanted to abolish the property requirement to vote (while keeping the franchise limited to communicants of the Church of England) on the theory that poor, uneducated Anglicans would vote as their priests and their King told them, thus actually increasing his power.

That said, what does Parliament imagine it can do about him? His son is incapable of personal rule (being blind, he will be heavily dependent on his assistants and advisors). There's not a lot of republican sentiment to work with.

I hadn't known that about King Ernest of Hanover. It's been awhile since the UK has had a really rotten monarch. Edward VIII could have been a major pain durring WWII. Whether or not you think that he and Wallace were under Hitler's sway, Edward wanted to be King and RULE. The man thought that the role the dictators filled on the continent, he could fill in Britain. Kicking this twit out of office would have been a major burden/propoganda loss for the UK at a time when they had burdens enough.

Had Edward VIII provably committed treason (there are those who say he did, and others who say he came very close), what would that have meant durring WWII?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Had Edward VIII provably committed treason (there are those who say he did, and others who say he came very close), what would that have meant durring WWII?

If it was treason committed before an abdication more or less on schedule, it would depend on the nature of the treason, when it came to light, and the political expediency of the time. Being royal does mean that your life is subject to political expediency, it's one of the downsides of the job.

There was a faction of opinion that his duty was to part from Wallis Simpson and remain monarch. Over time, that faded into the general view that things had turned out fairly well.

If you mean committing provable treason during WWII while still monarch, that depends on what it is and how widely it becomes known. Unless it was blatant and widely known, he'd probably have retained the throne but with all his power (which is mostly soft power) suppressed.

There is a moderately developed wargaming setting, "A Very British Civil War" based on the idea of Edward VIII not abdicating, appointing Oswald Mosley as Prime Minister, and presiding over a collapse into civil war in 1937-38. It has an implausibly large number of factions and little consideration of the arms supply situation, but it's somewhat interesting, although very little of the material is on the web.

[Astromancer]

Throught the 20th century and today as well people have feared a return of the Spanish Flu. Try the idea of a Soviet scientist (purged and dead in most worlds by 1937) finding a frozen corpse of someone who died of the Spainish Flu in 1950. While studying the corpse he recovers viable flu viruses and makes them antibiotic resistant.

Now this less than sane scientist thinks he has a way to vaccinate the Soviet people against the flu (he's wrong). Stalin, thinking that an epidemic only as bad as the 1918 pandemic but with Russia excluded would be no bad thing, releases the virus once the vaccine is ready. He's amoung the first to die. 20 percent of humanity follow him in six months.

This pandemic rips through the planet. Truman isn't effected, but both the congress and the supreme court are hit hard. Truman, appoints twelve justices to the court (three die soon after appointment and are replaced). Thurgood Marshall is one of them and lives to become Chief Justice and remains on the court until 1990. Because of the emergency, Truman is granted the right to appoint emergency members of congress. Both the state govenors and the supreme court sign off on this as an emergency measure. Socialised Medicine goes through the congress as do bills for Hawaii and Puerto Rico statehood. Many programs resembling the Great society programs on most worlds go through congress before the elections of 1952, including serious civil rights and voting rights bills.

As hard as the USA is hit, most of the rest of the planet suffers worse. However the ecconomic recovery is felt everywhere by 1960. The Communist block is pretty toothless and Eastern Europe gains independence from Russia in the 1960's. The Korean war happens later, the pandemic riped through China prolonging their civil wars and killing Mao and key nationalist leaders. Korea unites well before China does.

It's now 1970. The main problem of this world is that a toothless USSR is still seen/known to have nukes an is deeply paranoid. Their foci for keeping up with the West are the Space Race and biomedical research. The KGB is known to be obcessed with germ warfare and getting nukes into orbit to defend Mother Russia. America is researching antibiotics and starting a Moonbase. Decolonialisation is only now getting seriously started. Meanwhile Civil Rights has progressed very well in the USA (think of race relations in this world's 1970 being as far along as they were in our world in 2007) leading to a nasty side effect of millitia groups who say that the 1950 Civil rights Acts were the product of an illegal congress. They seek the aid of their White Brothers in Russia to kill the ZOG!

Reactions.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

While studying the corpse he recovers viable flu viruses and makes them antibiotic resistant.

That's an exceptionally easy task in Bioengineering/TL7. Viruses are already immune to antibiotics, which are for bacterial infections, and there are no antivirals worth the name until the mid-seventies.

Now this less than sane scientist thinks he has a way to vaccinate the Soviet people against the flu (he's wrong).

This specifically requires that the vaccine is not honestly tested. This may well be possible under the political circumstances, but the medical services of whichever of the GRU and NKVD aren't running the operation will be screaming about it.

[Astromancer]

The setting does assume a bureaucratic foul-up. But the point is a wildly altered Cold War. Nuclear death is replaced with germ warfare and the arms race is focused into the Space Race.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea. A Human from a Q15+ world, who thinks he's traveled to his past, arrives on a Q6 world in that world's 1950's. He has the goal of scambling all future history in order to save humanity (imaginative fiction was banned from the research base where this man was raised, so time paradoxs aren't something he understands).

The traveller unleashes in the San Francisco Bay area a nanotech-virus hybred, which functions as a Proteus Virus. His goal is to turn all humans born after 1957 into advanced parahumans. However the difference in the physical universe between his quantuum and Q6 leads to his sudden death and a slight malfunction of his tools.

Roughly 50% of US and Canadian children born after 1957 are modified. Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Western Europe, and the European Mediterranian, including Turkey and Cyprus (because of trade ties) are at 40%. The rest of Latin America, the Carribean, Australia, N.Z., Southern and Southeast Asia, are at 35%. West Asia, North Africa, and Sub-Saharran Africa, are at 30%. The Soviet block, Red China, and other similarly isolated areas are at 10%.

The ParaHuman modifications, because of malfunctions, aren't what they were meant to be, but they are all positive. Plus two to all stats, a (+5) resistance to Disease, the Zero point traits of No Genetic Defects, No Mental Defects, and No Unattractive (all as defined in Biotech and Transhuman Space), plus Intuitive Mathematician, Edetic Memory, Language Talent, Sensitive, and Versitle. But the traits that bring the big surprises are Extended Lifespan(with the zero point trait of a regular length childhood, i.e. maturity at 18) and Longevity. Although geography and degree of contact/isolation effected the spread of the nano-virus, all racial and ethnic groups were effected with no apparent differences.

That there were large numbers of unusual children was understood by the mid-1960's (the new agey term STAR CHILDREN was applied to these kids in the popular press). It's not until the late 1970's that doctors learn that Star Children and regular humans can't interbreed (the StarChildren are parahumans).

It is now the late 1990's people are begining to notice that the oldest StarChildren, who are nearing 40, don't look as if they've hit twenty-five yet. Added fun, PSI exists on this Q6 world, and the Star Children tend to be good at Psionics.

Fear and paranoia are becoming more and more common. In the USA and Canada were Star Children are the most common in the population, and were many Star Children emmigrate there are legal protection banning discrimination based solely on genotype. In many areas of the world the Star Children are either persecuted or trained to be the new elites. Democracy is under attack from all sides because equality can be disproved.

Meanwhile both Homeline and Centruum want to know what happened and how to make it happen when they want it too.

[Flyndaran]

What does legal/ethical equality have to do with a nonsensical idea that everyone has the exact same abilities?
That might fly in dictatorships where the very concept of democracy is never properly defined. Otherwise it's a very absurd straw man.

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The setting does assume a bureaucratic foul-up. But the point is a wildly altered Cold War. Nuclear death is replaced with germ warfare and the arms race is focused into the Space Race.

My issue with that is the Space Race was more of a "war head delivery" race. Militarys were convinced to fund it as long as the governments knew what it was really for; not sending men into space, but delivering H-bombs across the globe.

Without nuclear death as a primary motivator there is no reason for an expensive space race. You might get communications satellites funding, but its just as likely to be high altitude balloons or even ultra-high altitude communications planes. All that money spent on rocket programs would go instead into conventional forces. And THAT, along with the lack of the MAD Doctrine, would make the world a far more violent, unstable place.

But that just makes it more interesting :)

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Drifter

...

Without nuclear death as a primary motivator there is no reason for an expensive space race. You might get communications satellites funding, but its just as likely to be high altitude balloons or even ultra-high altitude communications planes. All that money spent on rocket programs would go instead into conventional forces. And THAT, along with the lack of the MAD Doctrine, would make the world a far more violent, unstable place.

But that just makes it more interesting :)

That's a matter of opinion. There might be far fewer proxy wars that turned much of our world into a dictator run propaganda ridden ****-hole.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

What does legal/ethical equality have to do with a nonsensical idea that everyone has the exact same abilities?
That might fly in dictatorships where the very concept of democracy is never properly defined. Otherwise it's a very absurd straw man.

Actually it's about racism and hysteria in a different mask. I'm stealing from the X-Men.