07-22-2016, 07:28 AM | #2151 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: New Reality Seeds
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When Napoleon sold the Louisiana to the USA, the King of Spain refuted the right of Napoleon to make the sale. The viceroy in Mexico city sent troops North to capture and execute Louis and Clark. Until the Mexican American War, talk about conquering the USA was commonplace among the Mexican elites. For the first few decades of the USA's existence we had to fear imperialistic designs from others. A world with a strong Brazil could easily see Brazil's emperors backing Maximilian and the French in a bid to assert Imperial dominance Northward.
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07-22-2016, 07:41 AM | #2152 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: New Reality Seeds
I just finished reading Churchill's Bomb. Wild book, did you know Churchill was writing about nuclear war leading to human extinction in 1925! The book is full of twists and turns, some unrealistic, some interesting.
One character that seems like an underused historical figure for alternate worlds is Frederick Lindemann, Viscount Cherwell. The man was Churchill's private boffin and courtier. Vast numbers of scientists complained that because Lindemann had Churchill's ear, and was not really up on the latest ideas in science (and in fact often hostile to proven science fact) that Britain often wasted large amounts of vital resources when they could least be spared. On the other hand, Lindemann often made important ideas and facts of science clear to Churchill when he needed the information most. As Lindeman isn't all that well known, and his activities cast long shadows, he's a great place to work on big historical changes.
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Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo |
07-23-2016, 10:31 PM | #2153 |
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: New York, NY
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Re: New Reality Seeds
A more militarily successful Sun King could be like Aeolus, where Bourbon France becomes dominant, but then slowly decays. Or like Shikaku-Mon, where Bourbon France becomes dominant, but then is beaten soundly by an alliance of everybody else.
Brazil could become independent during the Napoleonic Wars, when the royal family of Portugal fled there (with much British assistance). Maybe the ship with the Portuguese royals sinks in the Atlantic, and Brazil declares itself independent. This would effect not just power politics in the Americas, but also Europe, as it would be harder for Britain in the Penisular War with France over Spain if it didn't have a Portuguese royal family in Brazil as an ally. One way to get Brazil to rival with the USA would be to give Brazil a Caribbean coast. During the Napoleonic Wars, Brazilian forces occupied French Guiana, but that is still pretty distant. Maybe an independent Brazil also takes Dutch Guyana (while the colonial power is occupied by France), even British Guyana. Or Brazil's independence inspires an earlier revolt of Spanish America. Most of Spain was occupied by Napoleon at the time. Instead of Simon Bolivar as the leader of the Spanish American independence movement, its Brazilian-led. So then the Yankees get involved because they see a Brazilian-dominated Latin America as a threat. First objective: conquer Florida. Second objective: conquer Cuba. |
07-24-2016, 12:21 AM | #2154 | |
Join Date: Nov 2012
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Re: New Reality Seeds
Jumping in on this bit, after the fact.
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So, if you're having the "Mafia-killed-Kennedy" as a plotline, you really need to keep "Kennedy-was-mobbed-up" as well, for it to hold together with any kind of logical coherency. Sure, the risks were high; but the stakes were enormous. If the Kennedys controlled the DoJ and the Mafia, well, you can only imagine. |
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07-24-2016, 12:46 AM | #2155 | |
Join Date: Nov 2012
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Re: New Reality Seeds
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07-24-2016, 03:48 AM | #2156 | |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: New Reality Seeds
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted. |
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07-25-2016, 11:49 AM | #2157 |
Join Date: Feb 2011
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Re: New Reality Seeds
There aren't a whole lot of Soviet survival worlds (other than ones which were written before the '90s as cold political fact), and on reflection it is, of course, hard to imagine what could have prevented the breakup.
Eliminating Lysenkoism might help (as, I think, one of the books suggests), as does my setting where Lysenkoism happens to be correct (leading to, in the '90s, a generation of soviet child supersoldiers). The real question is what kind of USSR you want to have. I personally admire Soviet space accomplishments, so I might tend to, for instance, have an asteroid get semi-captured by Earth in 1963. The metalic asteroid is small by cosmic standards -- only a few dozen tons -- but it is a rich nickel-iron-platinum mix. This temporary second moon would be a natural destination. Let the soviets get there first, and they'll bring back lumps of osmium and platinum, making moon rocks look like, well, rocks. Actually bringing back an economically significant portion of metal would require advanced spaceflight, but the Apollo missions returned 800 pounds of rock, and recovery from the asteroid wouldn't need to worry about takeoff. Even if they brought back a similar amount of material, it would only be a few million dollars worth of commodity. Perhaps the soviets stabilize the orbit and use the rock to stabilize their currency in an abstract way -- "We can print 30 trillion rubles because we HAVE 30 trillion rubles." Maybe they simply bring back what they can and claim they have trillions of dollars of rare metals. Last edited by PTTG; 07-25-2016 at 01:25 PM. |
07-25-2016, 03:25 PM | #2158 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: New Reality Seeds
No it isn't. All it really would have taken is replacing Gorbachev with someone with the qualities of a Stalin or a Napoleon. The economic problems were inevitable. The response was not.
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07-25-2016, 04:43 PM | #2159 |
Join Date: Jan 2014
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Re: New Reality Seeds
Alternatively, have the Soviet Union pursue reform earlier, more slowly, and without the political reforms that Gorbachev brought in to weaken the hardliners.
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07-25-2016, 10:39 PM | #2160 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: New Reality Seeds
Note too that the Communist Party continues to govern the People's Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, neither of which shows strong signs of being on the edge of collapse, and indeed look like they are doing fairly well. Sure their "communism" might not resemble Marx's vision very closely, but nothing says the Soviet Union has to stick any closer to it.
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