New Reality Seeds

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by robkelk

Without a USA in this timeline to fan the flames, the matter in 1837 wouldn't be as bad - or result in as many reforms that lead toward full democracy throughout the Commonwealth.

Maybe. Or without the painful lesson taught them by American colonists and a European alliance, the British leadership might have pursued the same bone-headed course they did with the Thirteen Colonies. Possibly losing even more territory.

And note I didn't write that the second revolution would be a Canadian affair. Not that Upper Canada would have received all those Tories. They'd be on the winning side of the first revolution and would like thus likely have remained at/returned to their homes in the Thirteen Colonies.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Does anybody know enough of the history of the Iroquois to come up with an alternate history where the Iroquois establish an independent nation or become a US state. If any of the native Americans of Eastern North America could have done such things, the Iroquois are the most likely.

Not Iroquois, but Eric Flint has written two novels in a timeline with a less bad Cherokee expulsion.

1812: The Rivers of War

1824: The Arkansas War


tl;dr: The Cherokee move voluntarily to Arkansas and set up an independent nation, which bans slavery and welcomes free blacks. There is a war with the US in the second book.

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

And note I didn't write that the second revolution would be a Canadian affair. Not that Upper Canada would have received all those Tories. They'd be on the winning side of the first revolution and would like thus likely have remained at/returned to their homes in the Thirteen Colonies.

And some people who moved in the other direction in OTL wouldn't have in this timeline. That's why follow-up effects are always open to debate in alt-history - anything could happen because we don't know how what didn't happen changes things.

(Pity we can't actually have this debate here...)

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Yes, I agree that we'd likely have won.

Too bad about the civilian casualties, and all the dead conscripts who weren't ideological. And the environmental damage.

True, wining would look like losing or at least feel like it.

But what anti-USA propaganda? From whom? There's be no Soviet Union left to fund agitation or provide leadership to the global internationalist left.
Or are you envisioning a Soviet survival despite the defeat?

Anti-USA propoganda was a norm for European high society and intellectual culture from the early 19th century onward. Defeating both the Nazis and the Soviets within two decades would have embittered Europes Intellectual and Artistic elites against America perminantly.

I suppose that role could shift to Red China, but I'm not sure they'd have the same success the Soviets enjoyed.

Without the USSR does Mao stay in power. He first needed them as support and then as foes. Remove the USSR and hit China with some of the nukes and Mao looks less viable.

I'm not entirely sure that some of the former Soviet states wouldn't turn out to be US allies. After all, several of them are friendly with the US today, and none of them are enemies. True, we didn't go head to head to war with them and drop any nukes on them, military targets or otherwise.
But we did nuke Japan and we are friends with the Japanese. We smashed Germany up pretty good and we get on fine with them.

It seems likely.

We never had the chance to punish the Bolshevik leadership and the security men after Nuremberg type trials, as they so richly deserved. Nor did we get to compel ex-Soviet citizens to watch films about the genocide carried out by the Reds, the gulags, the forced famines, the torture chambers, and all that.
Communist symbols weren't banned the way the Germans banned Nazi symbols. If de-Nazification of Germany was incomplete, then de-Communization of the former Soviet Union states leaves even more to be desired.

I don't know that after even a small scale nuclear war that Russia would have been coherent enough to work with that way.

By the way, surviving a nuclear war would have the nasty side effect of making folks less scared of dropping nukes! That could be very nasty.

[patchwork]

Instead of the Haudenosaunee/Iroqois, consider the Muscogee/Creek. Specifically have a look at chief Alexander MacGillivray. George Washington and Henry Knox essentially offered the Creek statehood, but the deal didn't work because Alex bitterly hated the Rebels (the only term he ever used for Americans) and continued to conspire with the Spanish against them. He was embittered because his father fought for the crown and lost, thus forfeiting all his land within the boundaries of the state of Georgia. Have the senior MacGillivray decline to fight, or die quickly and anonymously so that it can never be established as fact that he was Loyalist, and Alex grows up with a better opinion of Americans and deals with them in good faith. The result is the state of Creek, probably with borders very similiar to our Alabama, admitted in 1795-6 and likely with a very different state constitution. The Tsalagi/Cherokee won't be removed all the way to Oklahoma when Creek will take them; in fact, Creek militia might cross the border into Georgia to defend them...

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

By the way, surviving a nuclear war would have the nasty side effect of making folks less scared of dropping nukes! That could be very nasty.

I think we are a little cavalier about what surviving this war might mean. In the 50s the bombs were big, upwards of 50mT. If you assume the US "won" this war, I would have to say that few, if any, of the Soviet bombs got through to us. Maybe a very few of the primary targets.

Eurasia, on the other hand, would suffer greatly. Aside from the primary effects, you'd have millions of refugees with radiation sickness, and not just in Russia and China, but anywhere the fallout was falling. Including the Americas. The economic dislocation alone would be enough to grind the world to a halt.

I cannot see a US coming out of such a 50s without being totally transformed. Very likely a dictatorship, probably military. Transoceanic trade gone since Europe and Asia are virtually destroyed, if not literally. Maybe Australia and South Africa and South American states are better off, but they'd have been targets of massive refugee flows too, and probably a lot like a dictatorial US.

If the biosphere isn't collapsing, and every mouthfull of food tainted with fallout, I'd be surprised. The US would certainly think of atomic weapons as a cure for any international problem, but I doubt anyone else would. Or if they did would be able to field them. It would be decades if not centuries before it industrial and economic output was large enough to warrant any country but the US to use atomics again.

The US, as the only power left, would have enough trouble at home, let alone trying to command anyone outside of North America.

[dcarson]

The biggest bomb ever built was 50 Mt, it was a one off by the USSR. The biggest one the US built was 25 Mt and the ones normally deployed ranged from less then 1 to 10Mt.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by patchwork

Instead of the Haudenosaunee/Iroqois, consider the Muscogee/Creek. Specifically have a look at chief Alexander MacGillivray. George Washington and Henry Knox essentially offered the Creek statehood, but the deal didn't work because Alex bitterly hated the Rebels (the only term he ever used for Americans) and continued to conspire with the Spanish against them. He was embittered because his father fought for the crown and lost, thus forfeiting all his land within the boundaries of the state of Georgia. Have the senior MacGillivray decline to fight, or die quickly and anonymously so that it can never be established as fact that he was Loyalist, and Alex grows up with a better opinion of Americans and deals with them in good faith. The result is the state of Creek, probably with borders very similiar to our Alabama, admitted in 1795-6 and likely with a very different state constitution. The Tsalagi/Cherokee won't be removed all the way to Oklahoma when Creek will take them; in fact, Creek militia might cross the border into Georgia to defend them...

Interesting. I knew Washington thought incorperating the Native Americans into the USA as equals, or nearly so, (he was a man not a demigod, he could be flawed) was the best future. Get rid of a key block and maybe you get a USA with many native American states.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Drifter

I think we are a little cavalier about what surviving this war might mean. In the 50s the bombs were big, upwards of 50mT. If you assume the US "won" this war, I would have to say that few, if any, of the Soviet bombs got through to us. Maybe a very few of the primary targets.

Eurasia, on the other hand, would suffer greatly. Aside from the primary effects, you'd have millions of refugees with radiation sickness, and not just in Russia and China, but anywhere the fallout was falling. Including the Americas. The economic dislocation alone would be enough to grind the world to a halt.

I cannot see a US coming out of such a 50s without being totally transformed. Very likely a dictatorship, probably military. Transoceanic trade gone since Europe and Asia are virtually destroyed, if not literally. Maybe Australia and South Africa and South American states are better off, but they'd have been targets of massive refugee flows too, and probably a lot like a dictatorial US.

If the biosphere isn't collapsing, and every mouthfull of food tainted with fallout, I'd be surprised. The US would certainly think of atomic weapons as a cure for any international problem, but I doubt anyone else would. Or if they did would be able to field them. It would be decades if not centuries before it industrial and economic output was large enough to warrant any country but the US to use atomics again.

The US, as the only power left, would have enough trouble at home, let alone trying to command anyone outside of North America.

I admit the phrase "winning a nuclear war" is paradoxical to the point of being a contradiction. The biosphere has survived worse than fallout. But there would be more disease and other problems. I don't think the USA is all that easy to turn into a dictatorship. Dictators need people to see them as in charge and better than the alternatives. I don't see that being an easy thing to get in the USA. Although we are all told that the USA is little different than a dictatorship by every twit of both the Right and the Left.

I would think that there would be a vast influx from Europe into the Americas and other suitible lands.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

I admit the phrase "winning a nuclear war" is paradoxical to the point of being a contradiction. The biosphere has survived worse than fallout. But there would be more disease and other problems. I don't think the USA is all that easy to turn into a dictatorship. Dictators need people to see them as in charge and better than the alternatives. I don't see that being an easy thing to get in the USA. Although we are all told that the USA is little different than a dictatorship by every twit of both the Right and the Left.

I would think that there would be a vast influx from Europe into the Americas and other suitible lands.

Don't go silly the other way. Every country can become a dictatorship frighteningly quickly. It's only obvious after the fact.

Earth life has survived worse than nuclear Armageddon. But mass extinctions events were never pleasant for anything during the disasters, except maybe a few tolerant fast reproducing scavengers of which humanity certainly isn't.