Originally Posted by robkelk (Post 1752746)

The last time I was at the museum at Canada Forces Base Kingston, they had on display a WWII communications module for exactly this sort of truck-mounted deployment. So this AU is feasible... but somebody's going to have to make some decisions that weren't made or were made differently in our timeline.

Originally Posted by Frost (Post 1752883)

Integrating say a 10'x10'x10' 'loose box' of this sort into the trench railway systems of the (WWI) era would be relatively easy and is something that might be a chance suggestion from anybody familiar with the technique.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon (Post 1752474)

The I-Cops will start out with basic intelligence gathering. This shouldn't attract attention as they'll initially be looking at open source information. They'll be looking for specifics that will tell them a lot about 'our man.' Making heavier tanks with thicker armour and bigger guns says one thing; getting better guns on tanks mounting reactive armour and replacing diesel engines with gas turbine engines says an altogether different thing.

Getting to Paris in a little over three weeks from D-Day implies not just better tanks but different tactics. Getting to Berlin by 1 Dec. implies much better logistics.

Flying jets, of any sort, implies that 'our man' has gotten not just access to, but the willing ears of, very powerful figures among those responsible for defense and procurement and further that he's convinced them that this needs to be tooled up at a time when the U.S. is still pursuing an isolationist policy.

He has to work carefully enough that the U.S. doesn't decide to enter the war while it's still leaning towards the Axis. [IRL, jet aircraft were flown experimentally before WWII, but the war put a hold on their further development in favour of tried and proven technologies.]

Dismantling the Jim Crow laws is going to require a number of changes to enable it. "Our man' has to develop a plan that allows the returning soldiers to integrate back into the economy with minimal disruption [returning G.I.'s were largely pressured to not take up their old jobs when they returned home and housing was a problem in some states such as California]. Additionally, he needs to have found a way to minimize the impact that having women work during the war had. If he can overcome the social disruption caused by those two events, he has a fighting chance at dismantling the Jim Crow laws.

'Our man' needed to decide how he could affect America's attitudes at the grassroots level, so that politicians weren't running the risk of being tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail if they supported equality.

Once the I-Cops have located the actual changes made, they'll start looking for one or more new figures who show up in the background at Washington society parties (whether through guest lists or photographs) and they'll have an idea of when they should be seeing his first appearance.

If he was being subtle, they may not find him in the immediate circle of the movers and shakers. Then, the I-Cops move out and start examining the circle of acquaintances of the advisors to the movers and shakers. If 'our man' was really, really careful, they'll move out to the acquaintances of the acquaintances and see who shows up in multiple circles. (If this sounds like six degrees of separation, it is. Mind you, 'our man' is unlikely to have more than two intermediaries between himself and the real movers and shakers otherwise his message is likely to get lost in the background noise.)

Getting satellites built may not be a huge technological problem but getting a rocket to launch successfully is. This adds another ring of figures where 'our man' is going to turn up.

OTOH, he may not being hiding at all. He may have decided early on that subtlety isn't going to produce what he needs, so he's now the President. Maybe he's even arranged matters so that everyone is of the opinion that he is 'just the frontman' for the real mastermind and the I-Cops waste time looking for 'the man behind the curtain.'

Originally Posted by Frost (Post 1752517)

Even without a formal US entry into the war, operation Sea Lion (assuming that it was ever credible) or any possible successor is likely to be out of the question after mid 1941. Once the Germans switch their emphasis to the Soviet Union without further divergences they will rapidly become overextended and bogged down and will probably remain that way for a significant period of time.

Originally Posted by Drifter (Post 1752503)

If 'our man' is, or was, in the Cabal, wouldn't this all be an onion-layered monster hunt? You wouldn't necessarily be able to find just one man making a lot of influential conversations and decisions - if he is a very high powered Adept he might just be a reclusive millionaire living somewhere in the D.C. area. He is using his powers of magic and psi to influence key people, maybe with only meeting them once or not at all.

He could be doing this from a network of tunnels and chambers beneath Washington, built by monsterous minions of course, to get close enough to the Rich and Powerful while keeping his own hand out of direct actions.

He mind-controls some, gives bad or insight dreams to others, sending out the occasional 'monster' to carry out more direct actions (Joseph McCarthy dies in a 'freak accident' in basic training in 1941 for example, Truman desegregating the military at the start of the war after a vivid dream). The I-Cops will be able to track these changes back only as far as an area of D.C.

Finding the warrens under D.C and the ley lines linking the various landmarks in the Masonic layout of the Capital Mall is just the start of the endgame for ferreting out this guy.

And who knows? Maybe the warrens are there, but the main section is under the White House and President X is down there.

Originally Posted by Astromancer (Post 1753128)

It might be interesting to have a world were the Germans attempt Operation Sealion and it is a vast disaster. The sheer scale of the damage and loss shortening the war.

Originally Posted by johndallman (Post 1752889)

Most trench railways were under 2' gauge, and had to be unloaded by hand without equipment. Using boxes on them might well be sensible, but they'd have to be much smaller, maybe 3' cubes?

Originally Posted by johndallman (Post 1753146)

Having them attempt it as the divergence point requires a lot of officers and men to either be forced, or take leave of their senses: the likelihood of disaster was fairly obvious on the Chanel coast. While similar things happened later in the war, the system and psychology to enforce them wasn't in place in summer 1940.

A Germany that's better prepared for an invasion in summer 1940 is going to be much less prepared for something else.

Originally Posted by Astromancer (Post 1753833)

A world were the Germany Army says no to Hitler and he has to back down would be very interesting. Either the millitary would gain the power to handle millitary affairs (which would make Germany far more deadly) or, more likely, there would be a huge fight over whether the Party or the Army was in charge.

Originally Posted by Astromancer (Post 1753833)

A world were the Germany Army says no to Hitler and he has to back down would be very interesting. Either the millitary would gain the power to handle millitary affairs (which would make Germany far more deadly) or, more likely, there would be a huge fight over whether the Party or the Army was in charge.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran (Post 1753840)

Infighting from coups is common. Militaries choosing not to fight and go humanitarian pacifistic seems highly implausible. I doubt you meant that, but that's where my mind went.
Just following orders is human nature when in large focused groups, sadly.

Originally Posted by Astromancer (Post 1754646)

Perhaps Putin and Bed Ladin might seek allies in the millitia groups of America.

Originally Posted by scc (Post 1755201)

I don't think there would be as many American Militia groups, or rather they won't be as well equipped. With actual liberals in power in the US gun reforms are likely, now one of the oft quoted reasons for letting people own guns is 'self-defense', now that argument can apply to pistols, which you can carry with you at all times, but doesn't hold much water with rifles, especially military/assault weapons. More to the point, as far as I know, Texas is about the only state where you can get away with using a gun in self-defense (It has specific laws allowing you to use firearms on people who attack you).

Net result of this is that while you can get guns in the US, they're probably in the smaller calibers (like .22, which the military stopped using because it doesn't do enough damage) and either pistols aggressively marketed as 'self-defense' or hunting weapons

Originally Posted by Flyndaran (Post 1755334)

This seems to assume presidents have more power than I think they really do. Not much gets done that both parties aren't in favor of. Like removing the constitutional protections when the word terrorist is used.

Originally Posted by Drifter (Post 1755341)

I'm just using Presidents names as a shorthand for a hypothetical overall political climate. Details of who controls Congress, the names on the Supreme Court, and main players in industry and key governorships would all effect such broad strokes to history.

Originally Posted by Gedrin (Post 1755452)

Prime Directive - X: The "Prime Directive" worlds are named for the fictional Prime Directive from the StarTrek television show common on worlds close to Homeline. Homeline has recently uncovered a string of worlds where a, yet unknown, party has deliberately introduced technologies vastly in advance of the development of that parallel. While the pattern of introducing disruptive tech is shared, nothing else seems to be in common among these worlds. This has lead Homeline to speculate the PD worlds represent a series of experiments.

...

PD-3: Near the height of its power, Rome has been given the steam engine.

...

Originally Posted by Flyndaran (Post 1755475)

[The steam engine requires far more than knowledge to work. You need TL 5 metallurgy as well as thermodynamics.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2 (Post 1755489)

Metallurgy yes. Thermodynamics no, not when they aren't inventing them for themselves.



They could call it "Kirk".

Originally Posted by Flyndaran (Post 1755473)

That sounds prone to misunderstandings.
Change anyone's history/environment and you fundamentally change their present self.
I don't think you should use "our" Reagan in an alternate timeline when so much else is different.

Originally Posted by Drifter (Post 1755305)

That might make an good setting; Ruff-1, named after the author of How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years. President Reagan in the 70s somehow brings about the Soviet collapse in 1979, except this one is violent. A Russian coup leads to a limited nuclear exchange - while peace is quickly restored the world economy collapses in a heap. If Reagan is blamed (unlikely) you get Ted Kennedy overseeing a liberal super malaise while the US descends into chaos. Survivalists were right. Its 1988 and various Militias are begining to carve up the US as the feds retreat and local power brokers start to look like warlords in a coming civil war.

Originally Posted by Astromancer (Post 1755596)

An America proudly going in a liberal/democratic socialist direction. The millitias would hate that like poison.

Originally Posted by Drifter (Post 1755634)

All your points are very true - but what's the fun in that? ;)

Originally Posted by Astromancer (Post 1755598)

If Prime Directive is a sarcastic term, it works. The best ones would involve the chance to transform societies and promote adventure. Spaceships for Victorians or paper for ancient Rome.

Originally Posted by Astromancer (Post 1757142)

Try this reality seed Gandhi, Jinnah, and Nehru all get assassinated on the same day in the early 1930's.

Originally Posted by robkelk (Post 1757150)

As for India's internal affairs, I don't know enough about that part of history to comment meaningfully.

Originally Posted by dcarson (Post 1758153)

A earlier prosperous India would have a similar effect that China has been having. More demand for thins like oil and other tech economy commodities would be more expensive. This would change development world wide. Maybe more nuclear power maybe space based solar.

Originally Posted by Drifter (Post 1758383)

Babasaheb-3 is beset with civil violence. Rioting consumes many cities in the West as the Civil Rights movement is violently put down. Soviets send aid to the increasingly desperate groups in the American South, and semi-post-colonial Africa. Economic gains made thanks to India in the 50s have eroded away, and much of the West looks like 70s or 80s Israel, large sections of major cities walled off, terrorist bomb blasts a daily occurrence, armed guards everywhere you look. A dystopian, neo-1984 world.

Originally Posted by Drifter (Post 1758383)

With no big oil flows, international shipping dies - at least on an industrial scale.

Originally Posted by Randyman (Post 1758389)

There were civil rights groups and demonstrations outside of the American South, too. (c.f. Chicago, "The city that broke Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.") Did these not survive the crackdowns, or did the initial crackdowns prevent their formation/occurrence?

Originally Posted by johndallman (Post 1758418)

It can continue on a late nineteenth-century scale with coal-fired steam ships. Even sail for stuff that isn't time-critical.

Originally Posted by scc (Post 1758564)

Drifter, I'm not too sure on the timeline, but I'm guessing that Gandhi would have advocated non-violence only to get killed, that means that groups would TRY non-violent solutions, but the moment someone attacks them things get REALLY nasty

Originally Posted by scc (Post 1758728)

New idea: Second Amendment one or another American president turns the tables on the militias and other gun owning groups, in accordance with the Second Amendment they MUST submit the government regulation or be disbanded

Originally Posted by Drifter (Post 1758383)

Remember without Gandhi the idea of non-violence doesn't have a big-name advocate.

Originally Posted by Drifter (Post 1758383)

Remember without Gandhi the idea of non-violence doesn't have a big-name advocate. Everything from colonial independence movements to the US Civil Rights efforts are violent, destructive and see far harsher retaliations.

Originally Posted by scc (Post 1758728)

New idea: Second Amendment one or another American president turns the tables on the militias and other gun owning groups, in accordance with the Second Amendment they MUST submit the government regulation or be disbanded

Originally Posted by scc (Post 1758728)

Drifter, you missed my point. If Gandhi was advocating peaceful methods when he was killed by some unknown third party, these peaceful methods might not see a 100% take up, groups will try using them, only to lash out when attacked, which could cause lots of problems for the US.

Originally Posted by oldgringo2001 (Post 1758747)

Gee, I thought Jesus and Buddha were pretty big names. Christian pacifism is a very old American tradition. It was a big factor in the Abolition movement of the 19th century, the Populist and Progressive movements, and the Prohibition movement, and, of course, the Civil Rights movement.

Originally Posted by scc (Post 1758728)

New idea: Second Amendment one or another American president turns the tables on the militias and other gun owning groups, in accordance with the Second Amendment they MUST submit the government regulation or be disbanded

Originally Posted by Astromancer (Post 1758755)

Doctor King and other Civil Rights workers came up with many of the non-violent resistance methods on there own. Also Gandhi's main ideas on non-violence were known in the late 1920's. Gandhi in this history would be as much a martyr as in our own.

Originally Posted by Astromancer (Post 1758755)

Doctor King and other Civil Rights workers came up with many of the non-violent resistance methods on there own.

Originally Posted by Astromancer (Post 1760089)

On another tack with India. Suppose that a noble, favored by both George IV and Victoria, were to marry into the family of a Maharaja? If intermarrige between the high nobility of India and Britain became first acceptable then (because of the vast wealth) fashionable. Picture an British Empire with a powerful resurgent nobility and a total rejection of 19th century racism, but otherwise rather right-wing. It could be a lively, if low probability, world.

Certainly the Great Game would be wildly different.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran (Post 1760131)

Why would racism stop? Wouldn't you just have racism against anyone not British white or Indian brown? And doubling down on classism/caste-ism?

Originally Posted by Astromancer (Post 1760089)

On another tack with India. Suppose that a noble, favored by both George IV and Victoria, were to marry into the family of a Maharaja? If intermarrige between the high nobility of India and Britain became first acceptable then (because of the vast wealth) fashionable. Picture an British Empire with a powerful resurgent nobility and a total rejection of 19th century racism, but otherwise rather right-wing. It could be a lively, if low probability, world.

Certainly the Great Game would be wildly different.

Originally Posted by scc (Post 1760137)

Because Britain's multiculturalism will pre-date the rise of racism, people will reject it

Originally Posted by Drifter (Post 1760384)

How and when did modern concepts of racism arise? It seems to me that it was firmly established by George IV's time IF you link ideas about race with the African slave trade. So maybe the change came earlier, effecting the British view of race so that by the time of George IV and Victoria you get a culture that isn't quite so racist and allows a darker skinned person to be treated as an equal.

Per wikipedia John Lok first brought Africans to England in 1555 - voluntary immigrants - with the purpose of teaching them English to start a trade relationship with West Africa. The rise of tobacco farming and later sugar plantations meant the colonies needed cheap labor. Somehow this labor was not supplied by African slaves, but co-opted native Americans. The West African trade did not concentrate on slavery but was lucrative in some other way. Ideas that darker skinned people where naturally inferior didn't take hold - they were trade partners in Africa, labor and political allies in the Americas.

This would take a comb-punch of maybe failures of the tobacco crops in the early American colonies. Or lack of demand - say tobacco gets the same reputation that early tomatoes did; they're poisonous so don't use them. Maybe associate them with witchcraft. The other punch would be a bump in West African trade. Both can be combined in a temporary shift in weather patterns - bad weather in North America, good weather in Africa, leads to stunted American colonies and more close association with native Africans who had been given a boost with Lok's help in facilitating trade.

Originally Posted by tantric (Post 1760402)

For a LONG time religion played the role of race. There were black nobles in the Middle Ages in Europe - it was odd, but they were Christians. That same page have a link to a find of skeleton of a black African in 13th Century England.

...

Originally Posted by scc (Post 1760538)

Racism as we know it today developed early in the 20th century or late 19th, before that non-white people would have had a social stigma as backwards barbarians and it was the job of whites to civilize them, civilize in this case meant bringing things like basic hygiene

Originally Posted by tantric (Post 1760402)

. You had an industrial agarian society without a sufficient population base to drive it.

Originally Posted by tantric (Post 1760548)

Out of curiosity - why are we defining racism as a Western notion? Are the Japanese sentiments about Koreans not racism? When the Koran goes on about Jews, is that racism (and honestly, I don't know, but it seems more than religious)? Is it only racism when the culture you hate has a pigmentation differential? I'd certainly say that the oppression of the Twa pygmies in Rwanda/Burundi is racism. What can we learn by looking a racism as a cross-cultural phenomenon?

I utterly rejected the racism I learned from my family and subcultural, only to develop my own special variety in prison. Pathological social anxiety + hard time -> serious deep conditioning aversion reactions.

Originally Posted by tantric (Post 1760548)

...
I utterly rejected the racism I learned from my family and subcultural, only to develop my own special variety in prison. Pathological social anxiety + hard time -> serious deep conditioning aversion reactions.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran (Post 1760582)

It is interesting how trauma will make us make connections that we otherwise know to be false. If a person mugged me, I might develop fear of some feature the mugger had that I don't even if I knew it had nothing to do with criminality. Dark skin, blond, facial hair, or aftershave could become a trigger.

Originally Posted by johndallman (Post 1760820)

How about "Sans-Gandi" and "Equal Raj"?

Originally Posted by VulpesFulva (Post 1760866)

Well, Class vis-a-vis Caste could be an issue, methinks. Class, of course, being more important in Europe...

Come to think of it, is there really any philosophical difference... wait. One can change Class through "merit" (read, MONEY.)