New Reality Seeds

[Astromancer]

I kind of assumed that, once the Americans showed signs of being able to fight back, the aliens focused on taking America down first.

As such I assumed that all the saucers went to Washington. However, it occurs to me that some saucers would have been left in reserve. Still, other than simply leave, or try to buy some kind of influence with tech, I can't see a good game plan for them.

Given how few and fragile the remaining saucer folk were, I can't see how they hoped to get anything from a conquest of Earth. They seemed to be dying out already. They'd have quickly lost hold of Earth even if they'd have won.

Certainly, a 1956 Earth were the USSR saw the Americans bat off alien invaders would see political shifts. There would also be a massive investment in science in general and space flight in particular.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Given how few and fragile the remaining saucer folk were, I can't see how they hoped to get anything from a conquest of Earth. They seemed to be dying out already. They'd have quickly lost hold of Earth even if they'd have won.

A drawback of the genre in general really. Conquests are *never* as simple as these plots require. Cortez wins not through technological superiority, but his impressive ability to win local allies. Machiavelli has some relevant things to say about principalities won too easily through force of arms too.

We like the straight up fight with clear heroes and villains that settles the issue as a story format, but it's rarely realistic, and not just with respect to invasions.

Though this particular film, well, I'm not sure the US actually comes off as a clear hero. It helps that it becomes clear the aliens really intend to conquer everybody, but shooting at them as they land, and a general lack of effort to negotiate don't look all that heroic, even by 1956 standards.

[Astromancer]

My idea is less a world were America looks like a hero (which would have been burned down instantly anyway) than a world were America has proven uniquely capable and tough. Also, no one would know about whether or not the alien tech could be reverse engineered.

[GreatWyrmGold]

As you may know, EPCOT—the other other theme park at Walt Disney World—was originally supposed to be an experimental prototype community of tomorrow. It was his last great project, the idea he poured his heart and soul into through his last years of life. But EPCOT didn’t turn out as he dreamed it; most of his plans for a Disney-owned town were discarded, and none of his ideas became as universal as he had hoped.

But what if they had? What if Walt lived a little longer, pushed his ideas through, and somehow got the rest of America to follow suit? What if the experimental prototype Walt envisioned really was the city of tomorrow?

(Before I get underway, I’d like to thank Defunctland for inspiring this idea and providing a good starting point for researching what EPCOT might have looked like.)
(Also, as an aside: Disney was thinking about merging his company with General Electric for their urban design experience and to distance the EPCOT project from the studio people who thought it was a dumb idea. That’s an easy detail to add to this alternate history.)

Disney knew his experimental prototype wouldn’t be perfectly replicable across all communities; the cost of the experiments relied on tourists visiting a unique, experimental community. But many aspects of them could become standard in this alternate history; I’ll try to call out which are which as we go along.

Walt Disney saw many problems with the American city, but the one he was perhaps most concerned about was traffic. Walt saw the automobile rise from a sci-fi wonder to a mundane nuisance, and wanted to reverse that trend. He wanted to push the automobile out of its place of prominence and make room for pedestrians again.

He was also concerned about the side effects of “white flight,” which saw the wealthier residents of urban centers leave and take their financial resources with them, leaving those too poor to leave in even worse conditions, and about education, crime, poverty, and more. Disney wanted to solve these problems and more with (then) state-of-the-art technology and urban design.

Let’s start with logistics. Walt Disney loved trains and retro-futurism (then known as “futurism”), so of course EPCOT was going to have a monorail. It would run from the jetport and park entrance in the south, through an industrial park/research attraction, then through the titular City of Tomorrow, and finally to the actual theme park (which Walt wasn’t terribly worried about). It’s a monorail—you know what they’re like.

I’d like to pause to discuss the industrial park, though. On one hand, it’s meant to actually be a functional industrial park, though one dedicated to very Tomorrow industries (like R&D labs, prototype industrial facilities, and computer stuff). On the other, it’s meant to be a tourist attraction, with areas for them to learn about all the cool stuff major corporations are developing there...with the slight problem that most corporations don’t like to show off stuff that’s early in development.

There was another, more reasonable thing that these corporate sponsors were expected to provide—one so reasonable that it made it into the theme park that actually exists. Corporate-sponsored pavilions meant to shill for a company’s latest products or general image were common in Disney parks of the era, and would have been in this EPCOT as well.

But that’s not all! The corporate sponsors weren’t just sources of funds for constructing and maintaining EPCOT—they were also part of its own economic activity! The corporations were supposed to set up offices and other facilities as well as the experimental stuff in the industrial park, which would serve as places for the employees to work.

EPCOT clones obviously wouldn’t have (or want) the industrial park viewing areas, but they could still have an industrial park. They could still have corporate partners helping the city operate and supporting the local economy in exchange for what amounts to civic advertisements. Having multiple corporate partners operating facilities in and around the town would make them more resilient than modern single-enterprise communities, because multiple businesses would have to pull out of a town without any replacements before things got too dire.

Back up a few paragraphs. Transportation. Monorails wouldn’t have been EPCOT’s only method of transportation. Far more interesting, in my opinion, would be the PeopleMovers. They’re a form of transportation used in Disney World, with an identical system used in a Texas airport and a similar one used under the US Capitol. (More information here.)

They’re a bit like small trains, except that they’re pushed by induction motors in the track rather than a locomotive. This lets them literally move continuously, if desired—one plan had the PeopleMover cars merely slow down at stations, matching speed with a moving walkway! It’s a cool system with some downsides that mean it’s pretty much only useful in places that don’t get too chilly, like Florida and buildings. But for the most part, small electric trains could probably replace them in places where winter exists.

The PeopleMovers are the backbone of the EPCOT transport system, the spokes in his hub-and-spoke design. PeopleMovers would take people from monorail stations to their jobs (or tourist areas) at the industrial park, from the central monorail station to various locations in the middle of town, from their jobs in town to their houses, and more. Walt Disney wanted to build a town where you could live without a car.

But there were still cars. At some point, there were plans to have electric cars available for employees to rent if they wanted to go out of town on a weekend or something, and of course guests would often come in cars. I’m not sure what the roads leading into the urban part of EPCOT would have been like (maybe just extensions of whatever roads lead to the park gate?), but the roads within the city would have been quite interesting.

The outer areas would have pretty ordinary streets, aside from the fact that houses face away from roads (since the residents would mostly use PeopleMovers for transportation). But once you got close to the heart of EPCOT, the roads would go underground—like Elon Musk’s futuristic Loop, except with multiple lanes, which averts many of the problems Musk had with the Loop. For Disney to foresee problems that a...mind like Musk’s couldn’t is surely a testament to the man’s brilliance.

Anyways. Transport in EPCOT’s center would have three levels. The bottom level would be reserved for supply trucks. Above them would be an automobile throughway and parking lots, reserved for hotel guests and inner-town residents, but expensive enough to hopefully deter residents from owning cars. And pedestrians would be on top, unless you count the elevated PeopleMover and monorail systems.

EPCOT would have far, far less traffic than American cities, either then or now. Part of this is because of how the roads are laid out (Disney wanted there to be no stoplights in EPCOT, using traffic circles and such instead, and those have better throughput than a typical stoplight); however, it’s mostly because the City of Tomorrow was designed so people wouldn’t need cars to get everywhere. I think it’s fair to say that we’d have a lot fewer problems in our cities if they embraced that attitude instead of automobiles.

(to be continued)

[GreatWyrmGold]

But I mentioned a hotel. The central hub for EPCOT’s roads would be located directly under the Cosmopolitan Hotel & Convention Center, a (hopefully) iconic structure at the center of the town. Around that would be a business and commerce center, intended to capture everything good about urban downtowns with few if any of their flaws. It would be an enclosed, climate-controlled facility, like an overgrown shopping mall. It wouldn’t just have retail; it would have banks, warehouses, offices, a TV studio, and more. There would also be additional office towers for corporate sponsors, an International Pavilion (mostly a tourist destination), and in early drafts a small theme park. The roof had skylights, as well as facilities for various outdoor activities (primarily for hotel guests).

This space was designed primarily to convince tourists to look at the actual community part of EPCOT, but elements of it could be at the heart of other Communities of Tomorrow. The business and commerce center is basically just a shopping mall trying to be an arcology, and there’s no reason that couldn’t be replicated. Same with the corporate sponsors’ office towers, and of course the transportation hub underneath it all.

The city would be radially designed, for efficiency. The first ring around the business and commerce center would be high-density housing—mostly apartments, but also containing administrative buildings, fire stations, and other important buildings. (No retail, though.) One feature of note is a Center of the Arts, which was inspired by an earlier community Walt Disney tried to create—Seven Arts City. It eventually turned into the California Institute of the Arts.

The next ring would be a “Green Belt,” full of parks, playgrounds, schools, churches, car dealerships, and other public facilities. Notable among them are a Teen Center, Walt’s answer to the gangs everyone was worried about the rowdy youths getting into. (Historians will note that these rowdy youths were the baby boomers.) It was supposed to be a dedicated space for teens, supervised both distantly by adults and closely by their peers, because, as DefunctLand put it, “the teens of the 60’s loved nothing more than hanging out with a bunch of narcs in a building designed by 60-year-old man.” I can see Teen Centers like this catching on; I don’t think they would have the desired effect.

The final zone in EPCOT’s community would be low-density housing—something like a suburb. It was arranged into cul-de-sacs, with a couple interesting twists. First, as previously mentioned, the roads would go around the cul-de-sac instead of into it. The cul-de-sacs would be public green space (rather than individual lawns) with a PeopleMover station in the middle.

The houses would be “self-sufficient,” with advanced automation by the standards of the time. Notable features include individual generators (possibly using renewable power sources like solar or wind), tubes under the buildings that take trash directly to waste management (Walt hated garbage trucks), and a CCTV system that would let residents watch a wider variety of programs than were being broadcast at the time.

Another important feature of the community is that everyone living there would need to have a job. “Everybody must be employed according to their ability,” said proud yet irony-blind capitalist Walt Disney. You can’t move in then look for a job, or stick around job-hunting if you get fired, or even keep living in the same house if you retired. (At times, there were plans to build a second community nearby for retirees. For the sake of making this plan less depressing, let’s assume those exist.)

That’s not all. Obviously, the residents wouldn’t own the houses; they would be renting. The houses would be owned by Disney (or DGE or whatever the merged Disney/General Electric company would call itself), and not just for rental income. The Experimental Prototype Community would bring experimental prototype devices into the homes for testing, possibly without bothering to ask for the residents’ consent. Since EPCOT was a tourist attraction, the residents would need to always strictly adhere to proper etiquette, to the point of needing to put on a tie when grabbing milk or the mail (Disney literally said that). Maybe it’s for the best that he wanted residents to rotate every nine months or so.

…

The biggest challenge unique to the original EPCOT would be the experimental prototypes. Walt wanted it to continuously be 25 years in the future, and that’s pretty expensive. EPCOT would offset this cost by being a tourist attraction, drawing in crowds wanting to see the picturesque little community, the industrial innovations on display, International Pavilion, and of course the theme park.

Other communities of tomorrow wouldn’t need to pay for all that R&D; they could wait until DGE optimized the novel technology enough to make it practical, then copy or license it from them and build a community maybe five years in the future, without plans to constantly update it.

One advanced gizmo that would hopefully catch on was Webcom. Then a state-of-the-art communications system, it sounds a bit like a local, private, very primitive Internet, allowing everything from medical records to hotel booking to be easily share information. Perhaps Webcom would replace ARPANET as the prototype for this timeline’s World Wide Web? “25 years in the future” would have been the late 80’s and early 90’s when Walt was planning EPCOT, so if it worked out that way, he’d have hit the target on the head.

Webcom was even involved in the local education system, letting kids take courses from nearby universities connected to the network. This would be the most conventional part of the education experience Walt envisioned. Lectures and exams would be replaced with a “game-like” learning environment, perhaps similar to gamified learning that some have experimented with in the real world. More conventional classes could be taught by closed-circuit television from the industrial park...teaching curricula determined in part by the corporations running that park.

…

Moving on. The Reedy Creek Drainage District, later the Reedy Creek Improvement District, was created by the state of Florida as a public corporation, with power over the land that would become Disney World superseded only by the state itself (and the federal government). The District is administered by a Board of Supervisors elected by landowners in the district—that is to say, just the Disney corporation. In this timeline, the RCDD/RCID has jurisdiction over utilities, roads, building codes, environmental protection, law enforcement...

...

(to be continued)

[GreatWyrmGold]

Walt Disney was many things. He was creative, audacious, ambitious. And he was a bit of a control freak.

When Disney was asked to run for mayor of LA, he jokingly asked “Why would I run for mayor when I am already king?” But it wasn’t just a joke. He was the supreme authority over the corporation bearing his name, over everything from the movies it produced to the parks it ran. The only thing he disliked about that arrangement is that his magic kingdom was too small.

Walt had tried his hand at community-building before. There was the aforementioned Seven Arts City, but before that was his Burbank animation studio. He tried to design it to fill every needs to animators might have—he almost included apartments there for the animators to live in, so they would live just a couple stories from their workspaces. Walt was utterly confident that he knew best.

He didn’t. The move to the Burbank studio is arguably the proximate cause of his animators going on strike. They didn’t appreciate what he’d done with the studio, and they didn’t appreciate even hearing that on-site apartments were a possibility. Uncle Walt did not, in fact, know what his animators wanted better than they did. This wasn’t enough to convince him—nor was anything else that happened in his lifetime.

The thing about a town, especially in a democracy like the USA, is that its inhabitants expect self-governance. The residents of tomorrow’s experimental prototype community would want to vote on issues affecting their community, and maybe even run for office. And that wouldn’t do at all. That kind of democracy would loosen Walt’s control over his community, and Uncle Walt knows best, doesn’t he? That kind of thing wouldn’t be acceptable.

That’s why he eventually decided to rotate out residents every nine months or so—not because maintaining the picture-perfect public image Disney wanted for years on end would exhaust the friendliest saint, but because after a year or two, residents might start to feel obligated to some kind of power over the community they lived in. They might look for ways to force Walt’s hand. They might riot, or sue, or worst of all, unionize.

Disney’s dream for EPCOT could easily be described as a company town, and many have done so, including Kevin Perjurer of DefunctLand. But I don’t think that’s quite accurate. It’s more of a companies’ town. A company town is run by precisely one corporation. EPCOT would technically be run exclusively by DGE, but in practice several other corporations would share that responsibility in power.

Company towns never really went away, but they were in hiding until pretty recently. They were tiny forgettable villages in West Virginia, or colonial plantations in Brazil, or single-enterprise communities that aren’t technically owned by that enterprise and only informally pressure workers into voting for the company’s interests.

But in this timeline, company towns would only see a brief dip in popularity before metamorphosing and returning to prominence in American culture. The experimental prototype company town would be an experiment not just in community design or domestic technology, but in corporate control over their employees. They would want to see whether Walt could solve the problems that come with company towns—especially unions.

The biggest problem company towns face has consistently been unionization. The conditions at company towns are pretty ******, transparently tilted in the company’s favor...and organization is a lot easier when your neighbors and coworkers are the same people. Striking unions could ruin a company town, or even the entire company; they couldn’t be stopped by anything short of slightly more equitable treatment or the National Guard. Hell, sometimes they needed to bring in the Air Force!

The biggest obstacle to EPCOT’s success, assuming it got off the ground, would be unions. Would rotating out the workers consistently and splitting responsibility for the town across several distinct corporations be enough to reduce unions to a manageable obstacle? It might. And for EPCOT to become standard, it would need to.

If Walt’s vision of tomorrow took root, it wouldn’t be for humanitarian reasons—not for relieving traffic congestion, or revolutionizing education, or novel appliances, or...whatever the Teen Center would do. If the prototype community was replicated en masse, it would be because corporations found an effective way to control their workers.

Not all communities of tomorrow would follow the EPCOT model precisely, of course. Aside from lacking the touristy accommodations, having normal industry instead of just cutting-edge R&D, and letting you pick up the mail in your pajamas (or at least a T-shirt), there might be more substantial changes. Some would build houses of today if not yesterday, some would de-emphasize public transportation in favor of cars, some would leave out Webcom until it became worldwide. Some would probably want employees to stay longer than nine months at a time; a few might even encourage permanent residents!

But by and large, the future envisioned by Disney would have been cyberpunk without the cyber (or the punk, if the Teen Centers somehow worked). A future where corporations routinely govern towns in place of democratically-elected mayors or councils, where most workers are forced to move regularly, where corporations dictate the curriculum and ensure everyone’s fine with it. A world where democracy is smothered by corporate control of not just the means of production, but of life itself, long before Silicon Valley had a chance to try the same thing.

…

Oh, and if EPCOT was successful enough to revolutionize how people lived in America, it would also make the Disney parks division a bunch of money. They’d have more than enough money to finish Beastly Kingdom at Disney’s Animal Kingdom (the other other other theme park at Walt Disney World), meaning there wouldn’t be space or (internal) demand for the World of Pandora. This means that Avatar (the purple one) would somehow be even less culturally-relevant than it is in our timeline.

The “companies’ town” thing might be more significant, though.


(My post was just a hair over 20,000 characters, so I had to break it into thirds. My apologies.)

[zarawesome]

instead of a world where Walt had a little more political clout, here's an alternative: Disney acquires dimensional travel, locates a world without humans, and builds it into Planet EPCOT. or Planet Disneyland. jesus

[patchwork]

There's a Timewatch scenario in which Walt is hurled back in time a couple of centuries and winds up in charge of the East India Company. A good time is had by basically no one.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Originally Posted by patchwork

There's a Timewatch scenario in which Walt is hurled back in time a couple of centuries and winds up in charge of the East India Company. A good time is had by basically no one.

"Ooooh, we're gonna hit the big boss for a raise...."

[Apollonian]

There's an alternate timeline written up somewhere online where Walt is nominated by the GOP instead of Eisenhower (IIRC) and wins the presidency. It's not a very happy timeline... (I think it's called World of Laughter, World of Tears, or some such.)