New Reality Seeds

[Willy]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Stalin-2

Stalin-2 SNIP

A interesting setting with many problems for the allies.

First if Stalin attacked precious british ruled territory full of oil and other supplies ( Iran and Iraq ) than the british fleet may have a problem to supply the fleet and army with fuel. Also the focus of the british military defense will be diverted, defending the home isles from germany will be more important than fighting a 2 other fronts in oversea, in asia alongside the US against japan, and against Stalin in middle east, all while russia is looking at india. Indian colonial forces will have to stay at india in defense positions and couldn´t bolster the british forces where ever needed.

With the britsh forces diverted, germany has a lot of possibilities, given that this timelines GröFaZ is more able to see the chances. Having secured the northern part of the mediterranean sea, it can strangle GB with taking Gibraltar and the suez channel. Given that the war is running better than in homeline for the axis, Franco may try to choose the winning side, in our history he was not stupid enough to do this. A several thousand mile longer seaway from and to asia would hamper GB seriously.

All the british lands and isles in the mediterranean and north afrika wouldn´t be able to support themselfes against a italian assault. Just because the british fleet wouldn´t be able to enter the mediterranean without being shred into pieces, without fire support and supplies north africa would be doomed. For the axis there is no need to move south of the sahara for a long time, it protects them from the british and the own forces are better used elsewhere.

With the russians not lending the needed canon fodder against Hitler and a constant grinding away of wehrmacht forces, Hitler can play the time game, waiting unless the US have their major forces and fleet in the pazific ocean before striking at GB.

Churchill will suffer from a lack of supplies a 3 front war and a thin streched fleet, while Hitler will have more troops and a good supply of fuel and other supplies, thanks to africa, Stalin and the fact that the Wehrmacht hadn´t to rescue Mussolinis butt in this scenario.

By the way not only Stalin and Hitler will lurk at each other waiting for a opening to strike first, but also japan and russia who have goals which are incompatible, even if they both have the same formal ally - germany.

A good way to get history back on the rails may be to bring dissens into the deeply hostile but allied nations. Once Hitler and Stalin fight or russia and japan than there will be no way for the axis to win this game.

But that is of course unless the outtime interference haven´t their own plans of action.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Meanwhile, there seems to have been out time interference in the States. The transistor has been invented early. Walkie Talkies are being mass produced for the US military and multiple types of artificial rubber have been introduced. It's proving remarkably hard to trace the perpetrators of these acts.

Basically, it's an espionage campaign set in an alternate WWII. Continental Europe is a deadly place to operate. But finding out if out time aid is going to Hitler or Stalin is vital. Meanwhile, back in the USA, tracing the out timers is still going to be hard. The out timers seem to manipulate their targets from a distance. Possibly by magical or psionic means.

Or possibly not at all. If all you are looking at is slightly out of period technologies, you don't need magic or psionics to leak them effectively untraceably to the Americans. If you can write clear explanations in English and drop the resulting papers into the mail from somewhere in the world that isn't opening all mail addressed to the US yet, boosting the local TL a level is pretty easy if you have a few years of lead time.

Picking the right scientists or corporate product development engineers to send your missives too is the only remotely tricky part, since you want them to "steal" your work and not say, sit on it while they try to find out who you are to buy the patent rights, but I doubt that's a problem. You can always explicitly include a release in the package, it's a little legally iffy without witnessed signatures, but probably close enough. Hint in the texts that you're a group of scientists disaffected with your current government (no need to specify in too much detail exactly [which] government that is), and combined with the fact this stuff actually works, should more or less quiet any concerns from American intelligence, or at least keep them from looking too hard lest they put you at more risk. Not that there is a lot they could do to trace anonymous mail from outside the country even if they were willing to push.

[Astromancer]

Southern Cross

In this Q6 Low/Normal/No Mana world (75%,5%,20%) the geologic history of Australia was different. Multiple periods of recent vulcanism left the soils of this most ancient continent rich and fertile. Still, until European settlers got to Australia with advanced farming techniques and a variety of agriculturally productive species to plant, little was changed. However, once European settlers got to this Australia things were profoundly different.

Crop production went through the roof. Australia had incredible agricultural productivity. And the population soared. By WWII Australia had a population of sixty millions. By the year 1990 Australia had a population of one hundred eighty million people. In many ways this Australia is a second USA.

On Homeline a three way struggle between China, Russia and the USA has become a tag team struggle between the China/Russia team and the American/Australian team.

Centrum wants the English speakers to win. But they don't like either Australia or the USA. Centrum is hungry for influence on this world. Homeline is worried about what they'll do.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Southern Cross

In this Q6 Low/Normal/No Mana world (75%,5%,20%) the geologic history of Australia was different. Multiple periods of recent vulcanism left the soils of this most ancient continent rich and fertile. Still, until European settlers got to Australia with advanced farming techniques and a variety of agriculturally productive species to plant, little was changed. However, once European settlers got to this Australia things were profoundly different.

Australian agriculture wasn't especially bad as it was, and the early difficulties it ran up against were more from lack of labor or irregularity of rain than problems with the soil.

The problem Australia had drawing colonists wasn't that they weren't successful, the odds were actually fairly good, it was that the trip was 4 times longer (and hence 4 times more expensive and more likely to be deadly) than the trip to America.

There's a reason Australian colonies depended so much on convicts and involuntary transportees - people who had a choice didn't want to take the risk, and often couldn't have afforded to pay for tickets either. When they could afford to Australian colonies would subsidize the tickets, and that actually helped, but mostly the money wasn't there for that. If anybody in the English government had really cared all that much, you could change the colonial history of Australia a lot with a better subsidy program, and I might well go with something like that instead.

Raising the agricultural productivity doesn't help all that much, since it's not terrible in the first place and because that distance issue works both ways. Australia is so far from the major market for agricultural surplus (the cities of Europe) that it has always been a problem. Note that the world's last commercial sailing ship market was transporting Australian grain to Europe - because if you shipped it by steamer the fuel costs were so high you lost money. That was in the 1950s. It actually struggles against the prevailing winds to ship to just about anywhere populated.

[Astromancer]

I was really dealing with the limits of Australia's population size. Basically, Australia is living on its mines. Yes, the agriculture Australia has is highly productive. But it is limited by the fertility of the soil in ways North American, New Zealand, Argentine, and European, agriculture aren't.

I was removing a limit to growth and making Australia as large as some Australian governmental leaders have wanted it to be.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

I was really dealing with the limits of Australia's population size. Basically, Australia is living on its mines. Yes, the agriculture Australia has is highly productive. But it is limited by the fertility of the soil in ways North American, New Zealand, Argentine, and European, agriculture aren't.

I was removing a limit to growth and making Australia as large as some Australian governmental leaders have wanted it to be.

Ah, OK. I still think water is more limiting, and I don't think the difference there is particularly volcanic. Lots of tropical soils are less good simply because they are older - something that holds in Africa and the desert and tropical parts of the Americas too. The high latitude stuff had the old surface having been scraped away by glacial action in one of the recent ice ages.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Ah, OK. I still think water is more limiting, and I don't think the difference there is particularly volcanic. Lots of tropical soils are less good simply because they are older - something that holds in Africa and the desert and tropical parts of the Americas too. The high latitude stuff had the old surface having been scraped away by glacial action in one of the recent ice ages.

To solve water I'd have had to move the whole continent of Australia a couple of hundred miles South. Well, let's do both. Those folks in Hobart won't thank us, nor those enjoying the topics in the northern sections of Queensland. Still, moving more of Australia out of the Hadley Cells should mean more rain were it counts.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

To solve water I'd have had to move the whole continent of Australia a couple of hundred miles South. Well, let's do both. Those folks in Hobart won't thank us, nor those enjoying the topics in the northern sections of Queensland. Still, moving more of Australia out of the Hadley Cells should mean more rain were it counts.

To be honest, I think moving continents a bit is somewhat more plausible than adding a lot of extra volcanos. Moving them is just a bit of change to the plate motions in deep time, but adding new volcanos seems to require new plates. I suppose you could add a chain above a hot spot or a rift valley running through the middle of any continent if you wanted. But even then the vulcanism isn't all that spread out. If you want volcanos all over the place you almost have to ditch plate tectonics entirely.

And hey, maybe you can combine them. Run a chain of volcanos from a hot spot from the north edge of the continent down into the interior somewhere, and maybe you can blame that hot spot for slowing the northward movement of the plate enough to give you a couple degrees of southward latitude. Not maybe enormously plausible, but explains a bit of both with one change. You could pivot the continent a bit too around Hobart if that's a problem for you. Stick your chain over near the west coast and force southwest Australia a bit south while keeping the East in about the same place...

Edit: Another possiblity, stick some moderately large Iceland style island on the southern end of the 90-East Ridge. Now you have an excuse for altering the motion of the Australian plate, and a chunk of land you can claim does stuff to the wind and ocean currents out to the west of Australia for who knows what changes to the climate. Added bonus, it gives you a spot to stick somebody else's not so good colony close enough to add more chaos to your recent history.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

In this Q6 Low/Normal/No Mana world (75%,5%,20%) the geologic history of Australia was different. Multiple periods of recent vulcanism left the soils of this most ancient continent rich and fertile. Still, until European settlers got to Australia with advanced farming techniques and a variety of agriculturally productive species to plant, little was changed.

And what are the aborigines in this timeline, chopped liver?

Humans presented with decently fertile soils anywhere in the world tend to develop some kind of agrarian system. I'm pretty sure that you could find something edible in Australia to plant and to breed for better yield over the centuries. (Apart from anything else, you'd be getting seeds from other areas blowing or floating in over the millennia.) It might not support the population density of modern Europe, but I'd expect Cook and Banks to run into something comparable to the New Guinea highlands if not Mesoamerican societies.

(At the very least, the managed macadamia forests are going to be something to see.)

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

And what are the aborigines in this timeline, chopped liver?

Humans presented with decently fertile soils anywhere in the world tend to develop some kind of agrarian system. I'm pretty sure that you could find something edible in Australia to plant and to breed for better yield over the centuries. (Apart from anything else, you'd be getting seeds from other areas blowing or floating in over the millennia.) It might not support the population density of modern Europe, but I'd expect Cook and Banks to run into something comparable to the New Guinea highlands if not Mesoamerican societies.

(At the very least, the managed macadamia forests are going to be something to see.)

The two candidates for a grain crop in Australia were both at the extreme end of the spectrum of
plants with edible seeds in several ways. First, of the sixty plants on Earth the characteristics of a grain crop they had the fifty-ninth and sixtieth smallest seeds. Second, they have extreme demands for both well drained soil and water. Third, each plant is found in a very limited range. Fourth, each plant is on the opposite side of Australia from anyplace for a primitive agricultural system to start up. So improving the soil and rain fall wouldn't help much.

Australia also lacks suitable candidates for animal domestication. Although, one set of ponds that had an abundant supply of eels had an impressive town (according to the archeologist who discovered it). But the ponds dried up.

The achievements of the native Australians were impressive. But they lacked any chance to build a major civilization. They proved they had the brains and determination, but Australia itself gave the Native Australians no chance.