New Reality Seeds

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Yep, that's the myth. Seriously any time you see lethal radiation covering huge areas, particularly for years (or centuries!), it's fictional.

The world has seen multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns (and literally hundreds of atmospheric nuclear tests), which have managed to produce zero large areas of deadly radiation. A few acres maybe. And yeah, there are a handful of areas a few miles across than have been dangerously contaminated as a result of fissionables *production* but even there we're talking about a few miles, not "Belorussia" and most of the hazard is chemical anyway.

The Chernobyl (and Fukushima) exclusion zones are a nod to public panic more than any real danger. You might run a somewhat higher cancer risk if you lived in them for a few years (how much is actually pretty controversial, because our estimates of the risks of low radiation exposure aren't actually based on very good data, estimates for the number of people killed by radiation induced cancers from those atmospheric tests range from hundreds to tens of millions as a result), but you are not going to drop dead from radiation poisoning. Certainly they wouldn't kill enough people to "decimate" a population. Not even in the literal sense of killing 10% of them.

But this would be a much bigger meltdown than ever occurred in real life, an explosion that would send the highly radioactive material into the air and over a large portion of land - not to mention into the water table, and more meltdown/explosions from the other reactors at Chernobyl.

And the biggest part isn't even the radiation, but the panic & breakdown of society. Chernobyl lay in the core of a tottering Soviet Union. Even if people weren't dropping dead immediately, they'd flee, and a breakdown of the command system in the command economy could cause massive flight.

Nuclear power already scares people in real life, out of relation to the actual threat. Now imagine that the actual threat, the worst incident, is much worse. Look what 9/11 did to people's perception of air travel.

A big issue in this timeline is ordinary people, particularly soldiers, not wanting to go into a place they think will kill them, but actually run the other direction. Where they'd meet soldiers trying to stop them, not just from anti-refugee sentiment, but believing that they're carrying the deadly radiation. And those soldiers & people would rather go the other direction, as far as possible from what they believe to be killer radiation.

Thus, even if Byelorussia & Ukraine aren't literally uninhabitable, very few people want to live there (and no one wants to make them better). All of Eastern Europe becomes a giant failed state, creating a massive refugee problem for Western Europe and elsewhere. Just look at the refugee problem regular failing state violence in Syria or Central America's Northern Triangle has created for Europe & America. Now make it bigger, and add the threat of radiation.

There's also the collapse of the Mid-East, and subsequent oil economy difficulties, plus some nuclear missiles getting launched, which I added in to make the timeline worse.



This is an extreme timeline, but most of the GURPS Infinite Worlds timelines are extreme, and take some big leaps. Anti-slavery Britain & France allying with the Confederacy decades before they'd even ally with each other? A nobody American fascist getting into the White House and inviting in Nazi soldiers? Ezcalli?

It's more a hell world, which are all extreme. Lenin-2's collapse due to pollution is extreme, much more extreme than Chernobyl-1.



But maybe some Infinity (and Interworld) analysts suspect there is more going on with this timeline, that the nuclear disaster was bigger than it ever could have been. Conspiracy? Different physical laws? Someone's gonna blame The Cabal...

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by fchase8

But this would be a much bigger meltdown than ever occurred in real life, an explosion that would send the highly radioactive material into the air and over a large portion of land - not to mention into the water table, and more meltdown/explosions from the other reactors at Chernobyl.

It still won't. A reactor might have several billion Ci of material in its core (4.5 billion seems to be the usual figure for Chernobyl, but lets call it 10 billion anyway). Honestly a lot of that is *very* short lived, spent fuel rods tend to only be a few million, but we'll ignore that too. Very roughly 1 mCi will deliver a rad/year at 1 meter, so if you spread 10 billion Ci evenly over 10^11 square meters, anybody averaging a meter away from it (which is about how tall humans are) will suffer around a rad/year, which is only a few times background and hardly deadly, but enough you can at least *detect* the higher cancer rates. 10^11 square meters is less than a 200 kilometer radius. That's not going to cover Europe. It's certainly true people can panic over a lot less, but a sustained panic enough to collapse nations and force people to flee over something that is provably not killing anybody? Many people refuse to flee something that actually *is* dangerous, let alone something that has yet to obviously harm anybody they know.

[PTTG]

I think fchase8 makes a good argument here -- any discrepancies from our history were presumably from some more subtle (and potentially interesting) earlier divergence.

[fchase8]

(I've updated the stats and 'Outtime Operations' of Chernobyl-1 to reflect it's ultra-extreme disaster)


Chernobyl-1, 1995

Current Affairs: After a nuclear disaster, Europe is barely habitable, with the rest of the world in chaos or authoritarianism.
Divergence Point: 1986: Chernobyl nuclear disaster goes thermal, sending deadly radiation across Europe.
Major Civilizations: Western (empire with satellites), Chinese (empire with satellites), Indic (empire), Japanese (unitary with satellites)
Great Powers: United States of America (representative democracy, CR4), Populist China (dictatorship, CR6), Indian Republic (oligarchic democracy, CR3), Japan (oligarchic democracy, CR3), Vladivostok Republic (oligarchy, CR5)
Worldline Data:
TL: 7 (TL6 and lower in chaotic regions)
Quantum: 7 Mana Level: No Mana
Infinite Class: Z2 Centrum Zone: Orange

On Homeline, the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster is remembered as the greatest nuclear accident ever, but it could have been worse. On Chernobyl-1, it was much, much worse. A thermal explosion sent deadly radiation across Eastern Europe, killing Belarus and Ukraine, and irradiating from Berlin to Moscow, Baltics to Black Sea.


.....


Outtime Operations
I-Cops only discovered this benighted timeline a few years ago, from stolen Centrum information. Every Security Council power demands that their counterpart be saved first, but Infinity has so far held them off, because this nuclear disaster was more massive than even the highest estimates of what could have happened at Homeline’s Chernobyl, covering a much larger area and delivering much deadlier (and faster-acting) radiation. And the panic seems to have be extreme, not just toppling communism but also the Middle East and starting nuclear war. Chernobyl-1 has been compared to Lenin-2, another timeline where communism wrecked the world environment far more than would seem possible.
There’s also evidence that Centrum is active here. While usually Interworld washes its hands of hell worlds, recent advancements in radioactive clean-up on Chernobyl-1 echo Centrum’s - and that world-state knows how to clean up, after the Last War. Indeed, there are those who suspect that Centrum deliberated leaked this timeline to Infinity, either to show Interworld ‘doing good’ or just to warn about high-tech in the wrong hands (it would be just like Interworld to equate Soviet nuclear power to Homeline parachronics…). Or maybe Centrum wants to tests its methods against Chernobyl-1’s ‘super radiation.’ Miracle Workers wants to give hospitals on this irradiated world the cancer cures of parallel Jeanne Orieuxs, but if this world has divergent physical laws…

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by PTTG

I think fchase8 makes a good argument here -- any discrepancies from our history were presumably from some more subtle (and potentially interesting) earlier divergence.

I think he's probably right, too, but rather than just sit there and kvetch at the world-line somebody else has created, why not offer one that accomplishes the same goal, but does so more realistically?

Carrington-6

The appellation, "Carrington" refers to world-lines in which vast Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) had profound impacts on human society or Earth's biosphere (including, in the case of Carrington-8, the sterilization of most of the land-based animal life during the Holocene).

The solar flare that took place on Carrington-6 occurred on July 14, 2000. Other world-lines (including Homeline) experienced such an event on that same day, but on Carrington-6, the strength of the "Bastille Day Event" exceeded X28 and resulted in the collapse of most modern societies, either directly or indirectly.

Highly developed, the Europe of 2000 depended heavily on its sophisticated telecommunications and electrical power infrastructure. The impact of solar particles from the massive solar flare turned the energy and communications networks into a grid of fire.

Every transformer exploded in flames and nearly every power line either caught fire or melted. Wiring in all but the most hardened structures experienced catastrophic arcs and many caught fire. Vehicles not parked underground structures experienced similarly crippling damage.

The huge CME knocked out radio communications globally, and most areas of the world experienced at least some damage on the ground. However, Europe caught the worst of it, and the disaster reached from Atlantic coastal nations all the way to the Urals.

While physicists and astronomers did their best to warn of the potential impact, in most cases politicians and other decision-makers couldn't wrap their minds around the scale of the disaster. Only a very few people were adequately prepared, and no nation had taken anything close to sufficient precautions.

(In fairness, the rather short notice made it quite difficult to put such preparations into place, anyway.)

While the lack of preparation could perhaps be forgiven, such could not be said about some of the responses. The political and military leaders of the eastern regions of the Russian Federation least affected quickly determined that the solar flare had dealt the country a death-blow. They decided not to go quietly into the night.

Most ordered immediate ICBM launches against the United States. While many missiles didn't make it through the highly-charged ionosphere, enough did to cause tremendous damage to the continental United States -- particularly the coastal cities.

Additionally, areas of the inland U.S. with active military bases were also targeted, although the damage was mostly limited to the vicinity of the bases themselves.

The United States, relatively unaffected by the solar flare, retaliated once reports of missile strikes began to come in (radar had been knocked out by the CME). Many of its missiles malfunctioned, as well, but enough made it through to glass any Russian city of significant size east of the Urals (and also "piled on" damage to the burning cities of western Russia and Belarus).

In the fog of war, the United States also launched against China and caused enough damage to its infrastructure that the massive populations of the cities -- cut off from the food-producing hinterlands -- quickly began to starve.

(More later.)

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Krypton-7

Have supers show up in 1930's as in DC comics and then history goes "realistically" off course. Superman (or equivalent if you don't like DC) simply flies to Berlin and captures Hitler early in WWII. He then takes him to a nation at war with Germany and hands him over.( My choice of country would be the UK with Churchill in charge as I feel Winston would have the fewest issues with putting the "Nazi Gangster" in a regular jail cell.) By March of 1940, Superman might lead (using only those now owned by DC) Captain Marvel, the Flash, Hawkman, Ibis the Incredible, Zatara, and Hourman, to liberate Poland. Or at least give them an area controlled by the Government in exile. By August, Dr. Fate, Magno, Neon the Unknown, Green Lantern, Miss America, and the Ray, could join them.

Assuming that Superheroes are a US monopoly, Germany loses quickly, Poland regains their independence decades early, Stalin is forced to give back occupied lands.

This is a mess. Europe is tenser and more bitter than before. The American heroes are lauded, attacked, sneered at, loathed, loved, and more. Germany is still Nazi, but, depending on who got him, Hitler is in jail or dead. Stalin wants to conquer Europe. The Nazis want the same thing, and with new management are more dangerous.

Meanwhile, back in the USA...superscience is all over the place. The Tech Level will soon be TL7+1^, and rising! Reactionaries are in a panic. With the new Mystery men clearly on the Left (the fact they pushed Stalin out of Poland is ignored) and in league with FDR!

Basically this is a hyped-up Two-Fisted supers game. This list will tell you who is around to play with and suggest what powers are available. The more powerful heroes would be NPCs. PCs would be created on 200 points for the basic PC, 100 points in powers/abilities, a limit of 60 points of Disadvantages, and five Quirks.

Assume this Q3 world is undergoing rapid changes. Lost Races like Wonder Woman's Amazon Sisters have rejoined the world. Martians have made contact and are looking into diplomatic relations. Magic is back and schools of magic are opening even as the USA, Britain, Germany, the USSR, Japan, and France all rush to establish Moonbases. Manna level is Normal-ish (but the rules are weird). The local year is 1941, it's November 11th, Wonder Woman shows up next month.

Basically supers but your actions count.

Note: Rule of Cool. Skip the Lieutenant Marvels and Cap Jr. They're dull. Go right to Mary Marvel she's much more fun. Also, pull in the Green Lama for the same reason.

[YankeeGamer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

Krypton-7

Have supers show up in 1930's as in DC comics and then history goes "realistically" off course. Superman (or equivalent if you don't like DC) simply flies to Berlin and captures Hitler early in WWII. He then takes him to a nation at war with Germany and hands him over. By March of 1940, Superman might lead (using only those now owned by DC) Captain Marvel, the Flash, Hawkman, Ibis the Incredible, Zatara, and Hourman, to liberate Poland. Or at least give them an area controlled by the Government in exile. By August, Dr. Fate, Magno, Neon the Unknown, Green Lantern, Miss America, and the Ray, could join them.

Assuming that Superheroes are a US monopoly, Germany loses quickly, Poland regains their independence decades early, Stalin is forced to give back occupied lands.

This is a mess. Europe is tenser and more bitter than before. The American heroes are lauded, attacked, sneered at, loathed, loved, and more. Germany is still Nazi, but, depending on who got him, Hitler is in jail or dead. Stalin wants to conquer Europe. The Nazis want the same thing, and with new management are more dangerous.

Meanwhile, by in the USA...superscience is all over the place. The Tech Level will soon be TL7+1^, and rising! Reactionaries are in a panic. With the new Mystery men clearly on the Left (the fact they pushed Stalin out of Poland is ignored) and in league with FDR!

Basically this is a hyped-up Two-Fisted supers game. This list will tell you who is around to play with and suggest what powers are available. The more powerful heroes would be NPCs. PCs would be created on 200 points for the basic PC, 100 points in powers/abilities, a limit of 60 points of Disadvantages, and five Quirks.

Assume this Q3 world is undergoing rapid changes. Lost Races like Wonder Woman's Amazon Sisters have rejoined the world. Martians have made contact and are looking into diplomatic relations. Magic is back and schools of magic are opening even as the USA, Britain, Germany, the USSR, Japan, and France all rush to establish Moonbases. Manna level is Normal-ish (but the rules are weird). The local year is 1941, it's November 11th, Wonder Woman shows up next month.

Basically supers but you actions count.

Note: Rule of Cool. Skip the Lieutenant Marvels and Cap Jr. They're dull. Go right to Mary Marvel she's much more fun. Also, pull in the Green Lama for the same reason.

I like...but I think it would be more fun if the first superhero arrived in the Great War. The film version of Wonder Woman is the only super hero until the second Great War, when others start to show up.

Dismayed by war, she hasn't got into the war until late, when she realized how bad the Axis are.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by YankeeGamer

I like...but I think it would be more fun if the first superhero arrived in the Great War. The film version of Wonder Woman is the only super hero until the second Great War, when others start to show up.

Dismayed by war, she hasn't got into the war until late, when she realized how bad the Axis are.

Your imagination is rich and I am honnored that you'd spin new settings off of mine.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

I think he's probably right, too, but rather than just sit there and kvetch at the world-line somebody else has created, why not offer one that accomplishes the same goal, but does so more realistically?

Carrington-6

(SNIP)

In the fog of war, the United States also launched against China and caused enough damage to its infrastructure that the massive populations of the cities -- cut off from the food-producing hinterlands -- quickly began to starve.

(More later.)

However, the government of the People's Republic of China didn't go quietly into the night, either. Most of the nation's approximately 150 nuclear warheads required delivery by bombers, but the nation did launch a couple of dozen intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Japan and Taiwan. Only a few hit, but that was enough to create short-term havoc.

However, the devastation caused by the U.S. nuclear strike, combined with atmospheric conditions in the northern hemisphere, prevented any follow-up action, and within two months any ability by China to project force beyond it's own borders had vanished.

South Korea wasn't so lucky. The nuclear attack on China and the Pacific Coast of Russia caused the government of Kim Jong-Il to launch an invasion of the Republic of Korea, and initiated with a devastating sustained artillery barrage.

North Korea followed that attack with an invasion across the DMZ, but the ROK Armed Forces put up stronger resistance than expected by the authoritarian north. Both Seoul and Incheon fell quickly, and the North Korean's drove hard down the west coast toward Asan Bay.

However, the ROK retreated to the mountainous country to the east to regroup, and then counter-attacked all along the invasion's eastern flank. The North Korean's advance stalled at the banks of Ansong River, and then slowly got beaten back.

In south Asia, India and Pakistan exchanged artillery fire, but both held back from outright invasion, and strong senses of self-preservation meant neither resorted to nuclear weapons. However, border clashes take place constantly, and Muslim extremists routinely stage terrorist attacks in India.

In the Middle East, the flare devastated most of the developed areas, and Israel took the worst of it. However, the Israeli military's preparedness paid off, so when its neighbors all attacked, the army was ready.

The lack of an air force proved quite problematic, but most Israeli military surface vehicles had been hardened and many survived the CME. The Syrians and Egyptians took the worst of the drubbing, but Israeli casualties were high. The Jewish state reoccupied southern Lebanon, eradicated the PLO and initiated a humanitarian crisis by forcing Palestinians to flee from the West Bank.

Southern Hemisphere

While the nations north of the equator took the brunt of the damage from the flare and the nuclear exchange, the southern hemisphere didn't escape entirely unscathed.

The loss of almost all of its trading partners sent the Australian economy into a deep recession, and triggered some civic unrest. In addition, visitors and foreign workers -- many with no homes to which they could return -- became displaced persons.

Ships that could reach Australia or New Zealand did so, as those two nations provided two of the few safe harbors. In many cases, the governments of Australia and New Zealand requisitioned cargoes of needed goods or commodities, and relocated refugees and displaced persons so as to reduce concentrations of frightened, frustrated people and help absorb them into local economies.

South Africa, under President Thabo Mbeki since 1999, had continued its policy of economic privatization and, as such, enjoyed a stable government. Reasonably well-respected (despite such failures as his disbelief that AIDS is caused by HIV and his refusal to condemn Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe), Mbeki has managed to hold South Africa together, despite increasing agitation from the left wing of the African National Congress, which has long decried the liberalization of South Africa's economy.

However, other African nations -- including those on South Africa's border, have not done so well. Zimbabwe under Mugabe has rapidly descended into an authoritarian hell-hole with an economy in free-fall, most white farmers have fled to South Africa, and the few that remain in remote areas fight constantly against raids from variably-armed groups of mostly young black men.

Mozambique's recovery from the one-two punch of the worst floods in 50 years, followed by Cyclone Eline, came to a screeching halt with the destruction of northern nations who had tried to fund the recovery. Starvation and disease stalks Mozambique, and the steady trickle of refugees poses an ongoing problem for Mbeki's government.

By contrast, the stable democracies in Botswana and Namibia and (until the flare) their growing economies remained firmly aligned with Mbeki's government. Many of Zimbabwe's displaced white farmers have found their way to sparsely-populated Botswana. However, most have avoided Namibia, where great income disparity generates resentment against the white farmers who control much of the best agricultural land in that arid country.

In the Western Hemisphere, Chile and Uruguay struggled to contain the fallout from the ongoing collapse of Argentina's economy. The destruction of the global economy caused by the flare in the northern hemisphere sent every economy in South America into a tailspin.

Fortunately, the relatively stable governments in Chile and Uruguay have managed to hold things together. However, Argentina is locked in a brutal civil war, and Brazil's corrupt government fell to a military coup. Fighting is widespread, there.

In Peru, Alberto Fujimori halted his planned resignation and, backed by the Peruvian military, has implemented authoritarian control. This caused a spike in atrocities (an historical political reality, in Peru), but it has maintained the stability of the nation.

Most of the rest of South America struggles along. Venezuela has collapsed into a brutal civil war, Colombia's economy struggles, and most of the rest of the people in Latin America have turned their focus inward.

(Current events to follow)

[maximara]

Originally Posted by fchase8

This is an extreme timeline, but most of the GURPS Infinite Worlds timelines are extreme, and take some big leaps. Anti-slavery Britain & France allying with the Confederacy decades before they'd even ally with each other? A nobody American fascist getting into the White House and inviting in Nazi soldiers? Ezcalli?

IMHO any Axis power takes over the world reality is extreme but some elements do ring true. After all there was that Nazi Rally in Madison Square Garden.

Worlds like Ezcalli play the 'diverged so far back (508 BCE) that to expect anything resembling our world of [year] (1848 in this case) is implausible' card.