Our timeline gets parachronics in 2022

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

For what? To die in the retaliatory strikes?

In theory, they could stay in the other world when doing the attack, but they'll still lose their economic base, and replace a large portion of their country with a nuclear wasteland. I don't really see it working out well for them.

Originally Posted by Agemegos

I doubt it. I'm not as confident of this as Peter Zeihan, and certainly not as jubilant, but Russia and China have zombie economies and are facing severe demographic problems (their populations and workforces are shrinking, their populations ageing, their dependency ratios rising). They will be lucky to survive this decade as unified states, and are simply not in any sort of demographic or economic shape to conquer even one world, let alone hundreds.

Their technology will give them enough of an advantage to be able to readily conquer a large swath of land in the other world, but holding it against local insurgents may be difficult (particularly if they end up being armed and at least partially trained by their counterparts in the West). The question will be if they can setup a new economic base quickly enough - and hold it successfully enough (that is, so that it is a net generator of wealth and industry, rather than a net consumer due to needing to replace bits destroyed by insurgents) - to gain an advantage. I suspect they would ultimately fail, but it's hard to say for certain. There is a higher risk of an "If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me" nuclear strike, given the leadership class has a whole other world they can retreat to when nuclear Armageddon is going down on Earth.

In the interim, however, the human (or equivalent) cost of the sorts of atrocities they'll get up to while conquering, pacifying, and suppressing the locals will be... massive, to say the least.

Originally Posted by Agemegos

If the other world had domesticated cattle, yes, smallpox or something like it. And they might well have analogues of other zoonotic diseases such as chickenpox, avian flu, swine flu, dengue, measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, plague etc. that are different enough from our accustomed versions that we are not immune to them. And in another world they might well have different epidemic diseases from analogous domesticates, or even unfamiliar domesticates.

I personally suspect that other world diseases getting loose here won't be as big of an issue - any polity that can manage the expense of parachronic travel (unless it relies on One Weird Trick and is actually easy and affordable) can probably manage the sort of quarantine needed to keep the diseases from spreading. Also, those diseases aren't going to have any resistance to the sorts of general treatments we have readily available. Earth diseases (including Covid-19 and its variants) will almost certainly end up spreading to the other world, however.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Dr. Beckenstein

But remember this whole quantum-projector-and-conveyor is the way it works in the "official" Infinite Worlds Setting. The original post looks like it would be a totally new campaign world, so other ways (wormholes? fairies?) are possible.

This is a fair observation... but things just get so much simpler if we use the existing stats, because we don't get distracted by changing the stats. We have enough Unknowns floating around as it is.

Originally Posted by Willy

Yes it changes everything. The whole MAD strategy of nuclear deterence bases on the idea that the attacked can strike bake and kill the attacker too.

If there is no warning, a attacker can strike at the target eliminate the whole nuclear potential of the emeny in on beheading strike with impunity. At the end of the old cold war the US and the Russians knew where every nuke of the other side was. Now we have better surveilance equipment and satellites and it is 100% clear that this is still true nowadays.

I agree with the first paragraph. I disagree with the second. We don't know to within nuclear strike distance where the ballistic nuclear submarines are at all times. And even if we did, hitting those submarines blind from another planet where you have at minimum 10 minutes since you last had a chance to see it and in practice a LOT more time is going to be tricky.

This also assumes that the enemy isn't patrolling their territory, which as I've said before, will absolutely be the case. Its going to be critical to territorial integrity, and the great powers will do it almost as the first thing they do.

The standard IW setting has nuclear problems, but this setup reduces them via the following:

1. There is only a single world to launch attacks from. This means it is possible and fairly easy to occupy and deny the enemy the territory adjacent to yours, at least for great powers.
2. There is not an industrial base on another world you can retreat to if you don't get away with your nuclear strike. All you can do in the failure case is go to rule places that lack internet, plumbing, and folks who speak your language.
3. No untracked nuclear bombs enter the game. All the nukes are still on earth, and still being carefully watched.

Now, if the Russians got a hold of parachronics before their rivals and without their rivals figuring out anything about it? That's a different scenario than the main one I'm considering, which is a general race for parachronics based on principles published in scientific journals. Though that still leaves the submarine problem.

Originally Posted by KarlKost

Other than that, there is ZERO doubt that Russia and China would use this to conquer and enslave HUNDREDS of worlds as soon as they got to them. Those worlds would become mere sources of raw materials and slave labor to them; more advanced worlds would become sources of tech to be reverse engineered.

Please read the OP. We have ONE world to work with.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Anaraxes and ercithered have already put what I wanted to say better than I probably would've, but my hot take is this ain't gonna be pretty.

Which is terrible thing if it actually happens, but from a gaming perspective, its fine. I bet we can come up with dozen campaign seeds based on this world*:

*I'm using the rough version of events I outlined for now.

1) Shadow of Cortez
The yuligon are a brutal empire built on slavery, terror, and human sacrifice. The great powers have thus far limited their actions to "diplomacy", claiming that they have no right to interfere with the daily brutality and formalized atrocities. You are acting where they will not, improving the lives of the oppressed, introducing new technologies, and leading them to freedom. But as you lead them, you find they wish to enact some of the same atrocities upon their enemies. How do you stop the brutality? And how can you improve lives without imposing your own culture and morality system upon those you help? Your intentions are much better than Cortez, but will your outcomes be any better?

2) Envoys to the Heavenly Ones
You remember the first time you saw the new birds in the sky, the chariots of the heavenly ones, who can travel farther in a day than you can walk in a year. They have a palace near your enemies, who have granted them terrible weapons that can slay seven men in one blow. If nothing is done, they will conquer the land, remove you from your place, and establish their blasphemy. To stop this, you must find a palace of the heavenly ones, give them rich gifts, and secure your own weapons. Only this way can your people remain free.

3) Search, Rescue, Arrest
The World is full of idiots. Idiots who follow one cause or another, and lack both respect for the conservation treaty and respect for the deadly lands behind it. It is your job to save these idiots. Save them from the land, from its inhabitants, and from themselves. Some have inserted themselves into wars. Some are leading small cults. Some dying of exposure out in the wilds. And some are actually foreign soldiers who know what they're doing. Those last are still idiots. just dangerous ones. Because you and your team can handle them all.

[Willy]

Originally Posted by maximara

The return of smallpox which would go through our modern society like a buzzsaw (it hasn't been seen naturally since 1977) until vaccine production was resumed.

Depends, due to similarities the monkey pox vacine offers some protection againts small pox.

Since monkey pox are a increasing problem and the developped parts of erath consider wide spread vaccination programs in case of a ongoing monkey pox pandemic. We will have at least some protection.

Also while small pox are deadly and we haven´t a big actual vacine production, certainly the big world powers have some vaccines in stock for emergencys at least for high level key personal, we made a great leap in vaccine understanding and production, the only positve thing about covid.

Originally Posted by Varyon

SNIP I personally suspect that other world diseases getting loose here won't be as big of an issue - any polity that can manage the expense of parachronic travel (unless it relies on One Weird Trick and is actually easy and affordable) can probably manage the sort of quarantine needed to keep the diseases from spreading. Also, those diseases aren't going to have any resistance to the sorts of general treatments we have readily available. Earth diseases (including Covid-19 and its variants) will almost certainly end up spreading to the other world, however.

100% true about the chance of our diseases running loose, as long as we didn´t wear sealed suits all the time and bring only sterilized stuff into the other world.

As for protecting us against the hazards from the other side? Depends, the greater the level of contact and exchange the greater the risk. Small science teams can be isolated easily and safe for month to make sure the didn´t carry anything. But such a long time containment for hundrets or thousands of staff running a outpost the size of a small town there? And of course we must add trade to the problem. The current earth is resource hungry like a starving scavenger. If this world has oil, gas, rare earth or anything other, we can forget the whole quarantine process, it´s impossible to maintain strict sterilisation given the number and masses of stuff.

Also the whole quarantime has just to be longer than the incubation, look at a potential killer like HIV, you wouldn´t filter it out with a year long quarantine.

Last but not least the potential threat has to be detected as such. Many diseases are for the locals just a nuisance for newcomers they are deadly. Bringing a new world folkt to earth say too speak to the UN or make treatys, who has such a for him totally harmless disease can be a threat to whole manking. Quarantine wouldn´t help because he may have this disease chronic, without any symptoms.

Best guess is any who makes the trip knows it´s a one way trip unless it´s absolutely sure the world hasn´t any such diseases we can´t fight. Which takes years of research. Basically a isolated research outpost kept alive with supplies delivered by conveyor. And / or we use it as a garbage dump for overpopulation.

All of that goes several levels up, once we add other intelligent races to the mix.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

Nah, nobody's going to nuke anyone anytime soon. The nuclear powers are pretty much all major trading partners, and there's no percentage in nuking the people who pay you on the regular.

After the Ukrainian war do you still believe in that?

The idea that "commerce conquers anything" is essentially an anglic idea, which prizes social prosperity more than anything else.

Places like China and Russia do NOT think in those terms. Xi Jinping wouldnt blink into letting 500 millions of his own citizens to starve to death if he thought that could contribute to the "glory of China". Those tyrants think with the mentality of old Emperors and Tzars that thousands of deaths are worthy some dozens of square miles of land.

To them, trade is just a mean, not the end.

If China and Russia could nuke all the other nuclear powers without the risk of retaliation, they would do it, even if the result were the collapse of global logistic chains resulting in the deaths of millions of their own people, because for them that would mean that 100 years from now they would be the "Earth's Emperor".

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

I doubt it. I'm not as confident of this as Peter Zeihan, and certainly not as jubilant, but Russia and China have zombie economies and are facing severe demographic problems (their populations and workforces are shrinking, their populations ageing, their dependency ratios rising). They will be lucky to survive this decade as unified states, and are simply not in any sort of demographic or economic shape to conquer even one world, let alone hundreds.

That's why they would go on a conquest spree of other worlds, precisely because they have horrible demographics and economies.

They obviously would not try to conquer a TL 10 world like Caliph, but the vast amounts of TLs 0 to 5 would become hellhole dystopias.

How much do you think you need to conquer a TL 3 or 4 world? 100k would be the largest army ever seen in such a place. A single tank could topple a nation, as long as it had ammunition and fuel (and repair).

In fact, there would be no fight at all. What do you think that superstitious natives from the middle ages would do? Try to run a spear into a tank from a horse?

They would immediatly surrender and obey anything the "conqueror wizards" told them to do.

Those worlds would become sources of raw material and unskilled slave labor. China and Russia would try to use that raw material to pump up their economies, and those populations to pump up their demographics, perhaps even transporting some back to homeline.

Their main problem would be skilled labor - which they would try to create enough economic boom with those economies to educate their own populations.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Willy

As for protecting us against the hazards from the other side? Depends, the greater the level of contact and exchange the greater the risk.

A sufficiently-large scale operation is inevitably going to bring otherworld pathogens to Earth, but I'd expect things to start much smaller than that, which buys time to identify the pathogens and figure out how to neutralize them (a world without modern medicine is unlikely to have produced pathogens that are highly resistant to modern medicine, as they didn't have that sort of selection pressure to contend with), even if that's just "Joe from the research team has some sort of new-world flu, let's see what fixes him before he drowns in his own snot."

There is the risk of a nasty disease that either has an exceptionally-long incubation time or is chronic (and communicable when it flares up) and treatments can only send it into remission, but I think those are fairly rare.

I may well be underestimating the dangers, however.

Originally Posted by KarlKost

If China and Russia could nuke all the other nuclear powers without the risk of retaliation...

But that's not on the table here - nuking their rivals will mean their own country will get nuked. Sure, the leaders can personally survive that by being on the other world when they opt to rage-quit (assuming their rivals haven't set things up to create a MAD situation there as well, anyway), but then they're basically having to start over from scratch in a new world, one that lacks the industrial and economic base to provide them with what they had back on Earth. I don't think conveyors are going to provide the first strike capability of completely (or even just sufficiently) neutralizing their rivals' ability to retaliate. Some of the nuclear-missile-equipped submarines (not to mention any equivalent conveyors that may have been set up in the other world, presuming both sides have access to that technology) are going to survive, and are going to cripple China and/or Russia.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Please read the OP. We have ONE world to work with.

I thought this were to be the first step towards developing parachronic travel. If it's just one gateway to just a single world it changes things a bit

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

If China and Russia could nuke all the other nuclear powers without the risk of retaliation

For the sake of argument, I'll agree with you. Now let's go back to conveyor deployed nukes. Does it deploy unbelievably quickly? Yes; so much so that there's no time to deploy for your opponent's to deploy a first strike. On the other hand, it still doesn't do anything about your opponent's ability to deploy a second strike. A psychopathic world leader still has to consider: "Am I willing to let them hit me with everything their submarines have?" or for that matter, "Am I willing to let them hit me with all their conveyor based weapons?"

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by ericthered

1) Shadow of Cortez
The yuligon are a brutal empire built on slavery, terror, and human sacrifice. The great powers have thus far limited their actions to "diplomacy", claiming that they have no right to interfere with the daily brutality and formalized atrocities. You are acting where they will not, improving the lives of the oppressed, introducing new technologies, and leading them to freedom. But as you lead them, you find they wish to enact some of the same atrocities upon their enemies. How do you stop the brutality? And how can you improve lives without imposing your own culture and morality system upon those you help? Your intentions are much better than Cortez, but will your outcomes be any better?

"Hear me mortals! I am the God TuTu Comon! Wielder of the metal thunder! Master of the metal birds! I come to usher in a new age! I'll gift upon your mortal hands the divine metal-thunder-death weapons! You'll use those to dispose of the Yuligon who lost my favor, and after that there will be no more sacrifices! Hear me mortals... And obey!"

PS: screw their culture.

Originally Posted by ericthered

2) Envoys to the Heavenly Ones
You remember the first time you saw the new birds in the sky, the chariots of the heavenly ones, who can travel farther in a day than you can walk in a year. They have a palace near your enemies, who have granted them terrible weapons that can slay seven men in one blow. If nothing is done, they will conquer the land, remove you from your place, and establish their blasphemy. To stop this, you must find a palace of the heavenly ones, give them rich gifts, and secure your own weapons. Only this way can your people remain free.

The end is night. Lets pillage and murder and... While we can, because this mad world is about to end anyway. Let us jump in the fires and beg the gods for salvation, or a burst of violent nihilism is in the order of the day.