New Reality Seeds

[maximara]

Originally Posted by ericthered

And paranoid morons have never lead nations in history. Ever.

Originally Posted by malloyd

You also can't be sure there isn't a civilization out there that would have put off annihilating you until later if you hadn't proved you were cowardly weaklings by letting other species still exist even though their worlds are clearly inside your natural territory. We *hope* there are more civilizations that would be inclined to crush the monsters than slaughter the easy target weaklings for fun, but there's no particular reason to assume that's the case.

The thing is civilizations led by paranoid morons go either one of three ways - they become isolationist (ala Imperial China and Imperial Japan), eventually self destruct, or get into a battle with another civilization led by paranoid morons resulting in a cultural MAD.

Your premise ignores that the idea of a food chain concept ie what if the reason they're letting other species still exist is so to make "use" of them.

Let's face the sad fact that exploitation and colonization not optimistic exploration for its own sake is the defacto standard. Odds are the life on the planet is so alien that your civilization can't make easy use of it...but if you can "control" the native population you can use them to get stuff you want/need and they don't really care about or understand the value of with you having to put in a lot less resources. After a while trusted members of the species become citizens of your empire and you go to the next world. Think Threshold and it gets even wilder.

In fact a Threshold like idea makes the most sense ie subtly turn the aliens into you via your technology. You get both sides of the cherry - you expand your civilization and also by making them you effectively eliminate them as a threat.

Media Zealot's Advanced Sci-fi Civilisations Too Stupid To Really Exist series goes into how many of the space civilizations in fiction are collectively about as smart as a bag of hammers (and Starship Troopers's Earth is on this list)

One of the ideas in Robotech (first generation) is the aliens can't tell fiction from fact and so think a movie's ki attack is real equating it to a "death ray". It is done intentionally in the 1994 Fantastic Four cartoon where movie monsters are portrayed as real.

Another flaw, briefly mentioned by Carl Sagan in his Cosmos series, is that odds are the technology differences between space fairing civilization will be so large that battles, as equals, between them would be impossible. At a practical level this means that the low tech civilization poses little to no threat to the high tech one. So why waste resources trying to intentionally wipe them out? Even the elimination of the Tasmanians wasn't entirely intentional.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Wells-7

Try this idea...

As the old British Sci Fi film "Things to Come" makes clear many people thought that if there was a second Great War, it would last for decades and lead to a new Dark Age. On Wells-7 ( the other Wells worlds are myth parallels) WWII, for unknown reasons, lasted until European and Asian civilization collapsed in the early 1970s. A fairly socialistic and still democratic USA still exists. The economy is a mess but that is blamed on the aftermath of the War and President Goldwater's "free market" economics. ( Goldwater got in in 1968 and got rid of all market regulations and totally collapsed the economy.) Robert F. Kennedy was elected in 1972 and is now finishing his second term. He is credited with doing titanic things to straighten out the mess.

The local year is 1980. The Tech Level is a mid TL7^ (think circa 1960 with a few exotic bells and whistles mainly in the Raygun Gothic style or theme) in America. In Europe and Asia it varies between TL6 and TL3, depending on how badly messed up the area was. The USA is trying to restart the economy and promote peace and democracy. The USA has fusion power generation. This is cheap and reliable. Once the economy comes back these fusors will rapidly replace all other power generating systems accept hydro-power. Buckminster Fuller came up with a wonderful supercheap battery for cars. As the oil fields on line are tapped out if accessible or totally inaccessible everybody prefers electric cars they can use to gas cars with only rare expensive gas to run them. The electric cars may be slower and less fun, but they are available.

Many things, including the Soviet invasion of the Middle East and Stalin's order to destroy both Mecca and Medinna, make the whole Middle East a no go zone. So an energy crisis is part of the problem.

This is a Q6 parallel. Centrum wants to take over the USA and use them to rule the world. As one of the side effects of the long war was an Occult revival. The Cabal likes this world and wants a calm stable, wealthy, world with lots of occultism. Centrum loathes occultism. Thus the Cabal wants to thwart Centrum's plans. Homeline just wants to understand what happened and why.

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Wells-7

North America During the long war Churchill, remembering the short union with France, pushed a union between the USA and Canada. Truman agreed, but only if the Canadians agreed. Confused, but respecting Churchill, and assuming there was an important reason for it all, they agreed.

No one knows why Churchill thought it was vital but the union worked. Every vice-president from 1948 to the present has been Canadian except Goldwater's. All the major party candidates for the presidency are Canadian in the 1980 race. With a French Canadian Social Democrat in the clear lead. Homeliners looking at the combined US-Canada on Wells-7 describe it as a best of both.

The economy is slowly healing and the inflation unleashed by Goldwater ending all price and wage controls at once has subsided. Society is beginning to rapidly upgrade the technology of everyday life, there is a housing boom on, the first since the 1920s in this America. After decades of wartime austerity and a twelve year depression right after the war, brilliant colors and extravagant looks are in. Both men and women wear bright lively colors, there are no separate men's and women's colors or fabrics. The general movement towards informality of dress that happened in Homeline's 1960s hasn't happened here yet. But there are signs of a trend that way.

During the long WWII American society became more egalitarian. Women and non-Whites have full equal rights and the Jim Crow South is gone. There are signs that there will be an attempt to use something like the Southern strategy, but as wartime solidarity and sacrifice were evoked to end Jim Crow, while there is still resentment in the White South, it is far weaker. Wartime attitudes seem to have erased the 1950s period of "Moral Rearmament." The sexual revolution has happened more slowly and less dramatically. Gay rights are starting to be a thing and are meeting little or no resistance.

Schools in this America have a national curriculum and are state and federal funded. Property taxes are almost never used for school systems. These changes in were made in response to wartime conditions.

Medical services are fully socialized and that is in no way controversial.

Trains dominate interstate transit. The highway system is underdeveloped and very much like the 1940s. Meanwhile, trolley cars, subways, tramlines, etc. are very much the norm. Interurban Trolley systems are getting massive investment.

Radio and films still dominate mass media, TV is unlikely to catch on until the economy seriously improves. When it does, it will start out in color and the system will resemble the BBC with taxes on TVs and their use paying for broadcasts. Print media including newspapers and comic books are lively and vital.

The Caribbean The British colonies in the Caribbean are all now attached to the USA. Puerto Rico, Belize, Jamaica, and the Bahamas, are all now US states.

The Biggest change is the fact that the Vatican, after fleeing Italy in 1950, and a year in Dublin, is now headquartered in Havana Cuba. As this means that the Papal court is now placed between it's greatest numbers of Followers (Latin America) and most of its stable wealth (North America) this looks likely to last.

Due to careful politicking and the fact the Popes are more popular than Baptisra, Cuba is becoming more and more a papal state. American gangsters have pretty much migrated to Mexico. The Havana nightclub scene remains lively. And both American influence and the need to challenge the Cuban elites have led to Papal support of Cuban Labor and Union activists.

More Later.

There are a few problems with Wells-7.

First, fusion power seems unlikely to be developed absent fission power and the seeming lack of atomic weaponry suggests fission power wasn't explored, so maybe it should be solar power. OTOH, maybe atomic fission on Wells-7 works the way Wells thought it did in one of his novels. You can make explosives using the fission reaction, but the explosion doesn't release all its energy instantaneously. Instead it releases the same amount of energy as a conventional explosive of the same mass, but it releases one such explosion every half-life, until all the energy of the reaction has been expended. You can however reduce the half-life to days rather than hundreds of thousands of years. Which makes such an explosive semi-useless, it won’t affect any larger area than a conventional explosion, but it’ll keep everyone from occupying the area of the explosion, including yourself.

Maybe Wells-7 adopts some views from other Wells novels. The world government consists of Samurai who are pledged to live nobly according to the five principles of liberty: privacy; free movement; unlimited knowledge; truthfulness; and discussion [Men Like Gods] by suppressing the four irritants: fear; self-indulgence; jealousy; and prejudice; abstaining from drugs and alcohol; and by withdrawing for a mandatory annual nature ramble in solitude [The Research Magnificent].

Society is divided into four classes according to mental ability: Poetic; Kinetic; Dull; and Base. To enter into marriage you must be self-supporting (women as well as men) and of age (twenty-six for men, twenty-one for women). Marriages are dissolved after three years if they are childless.

Economically, all land is owned by the state. Coinage is energy-based, so capital will flow to where energy is the cheapest. This might explain Canada’s relative power with in the U.S. It has a lot of cheap hydroelectric power.

Churchill can push for union between Canada and the US all he wants. He has zero say in the matter. Well, he could get one vote if he moved to Canada and took up residency there. The Statute of Westminster only recognized what was already a fact on the ground at the end of WWI: the self-governing Dominions (Dominion of Canada [1867], Commonwealth of Australia [1901], Dominion of New Zealand [1907], Union of South Africa [1910], Dominion of Erie [1926], Republic of India [1947] and Dominion of Pakistan [1947]) were not subject to the U.K. government even in military matters and foreign relations, which had been the only two powers reserved from the self-governing Dominions.

It’s more likely that Truman pushed Churchill about a U.S.-Canada union and Churchill told him he needed the approval of Canada. Which would match FDR asking Churchill to place the Canadian military under US command in WWII, which was so sensitive IRL, the existence of the request was classed as a state secret for fifty years and incensed Canadians when it was finally declassified in the early nineties.



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[Curmudgeon]

There are some problems with the development of North America. While union with Canada might see the emergence of a multi-party system in the U.S., there would likely be two approaches to the French fact, both being Quebec-based, though there are French Canadians elsewhere. The first would be to have a French-Canadian deputy leader in the party (effectively a French-Canadian Vice-President). The other approach would be to rotate the leadership (alternating between an English-speaking President and a French-speaking one). Primaries would largely be things of the past in a multi-party system with party leaders being chosen at conventions outside the Presidential election year and those leaders being the presidential candidate of the party. There might be some Constitutional changes to Congress. The Senate still has to confirm Cabinet nominations but Cabinet Secretaries must be chosen from the members of the House of Representatives and cannot be replaced in their office, even by the President, unless the House of Representatives votes no-confidence [including a veto] in the President, which triggers a special election. The President and Vice-President are not elected by the states but chosen by Congress from the membership of the Senate, with the provisio that the President must be from the party with the most seats in the Senate and the Vice-President must be from the party with the second-largest majority. This is seen as a means of braking the more extreme policies of any given party. There is talk that after the mid-terms, the President should become the Vice-President and vice versa.

A national curriculum won’t fly in Quebec as control of education was a guaranteed provincial [state] power. Union with Canada would tend to promote greater centralization of power with the federal government. Canada would be more likely to come in as separate provinces and territories than as a single state [thus new states of: Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Newfoundland, and the territories of Yukon and North-West Territories. Possibly Yukon and Alaska are merged. With this Quebec becomes the largest state in the union [three times the size of Texas] and Rhode Island remains the smallest.

Quebec is opposed to a national draft except in war and only for the defense at home. Between the French and the blacks, the U.S. has two sizable minorities and they tend to unite by focusing on French-speaking blacks in New Orleans. Thus, rather than French-Canadian Vice-Presidents from Quebec, most Vice-Presidents have been French-speaking blacks from New Orleans and the surrounding area.

With the absorption of the Caribbean, the U.S. fad for bright colours gives everything a Caribbean Island vibe. Music is shifting from jazz/early rock ‘n’ roll to more of a calypso flavor.

Since you didn’t say anything about it, let’s assume that the French possessions of St. Pierre and Miquelon have become an autonomous part of Canada, administered by Newfoundland. St. Pierre and Miquelon at this point remains the only place in North America where capital punishment is carried out by the guillotine.

TV won’t just be in colour when it arrives (unlikely given the technical problems are different than those of colour film, though the problems may be overcome more quickly), it’ll likely be in stereo, too. Note though that this late introduction of colour TV will have a profound effect on US culture. A lack of black and white TV will drop demand for the back catalog of B&W features and shorts from the movies. Early Popeye, Betty Boop, Captain and the Kids, Three Stooges, Marx Brothers, even The Mark of Zorro, will have rarely seen the light of day since their original releases. B&W re-releases tend to be film noir or horror.

Sports are a little different. Cricket and Association Football [soccer] are popular sports although American rules rugby is the most watched form of football. The National Football League is divided into the Northern Conference teams: BC Lions; Calgary Stampeders; Edmonton Eskimos; Saskatchewan Roughriders; Winnipeg Blue Bombers; Hamilton Tiger-Cats; Toronto Argonauts; Ottawa Roughriders; Montreal Alouettes; Halifax Bluenosers; and the Southern Conference teams: Cleveland Browns; Pittsburg Steelers; New York Giants; Philadelphia Eagles; Washington Redskins; Chicago Bears; Detroit Lions; Green Bay Packers; Los Angeles Rams; San Francisco 49ers. The season lasts twenty weeks from the Sunday after July 4 to the third Sunday in November. Every team plays every other team in their conference twice, once at home and once away. There are two bye weeks per team. The two conference champions meet on the fourth Sunday in November to play the championship game for the Grey Cup.

The Army-Navy football game remains the most popular military sports game in the U.S. but the second most popular game is the Kingston Cup hockey game between the gunners of A Battery and B Battery. It’s especially popular with Las Vegas as it is traditionally preceded by the Officers vs. Ranks game which often gives an opportunity to see some members of the A and B Battery teams take the ice against their own teammates.

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[GreatWyrmGold]

I just watched a video about the Gavin Menzies book 1421, which suggests (on increasingly questionable grounds) that the Chinese treasure fleets reached the New World, founded colonies in the Americas and Australia, explored the Arctic Ocean, criss-crossed the Atlantic Ocean, passed by Antarctica, and returned to China within three years. (Not in that order, but still, dang.) The video ended by pointing out that Mensies's next two books were one claiming that a Chinese ship that ended up in Italy in 1433 started the Renaissance (despite the Renaissance starting in the 14th century, which despite the name came before the 1400's), and that the myth of Atlantis was based on the fall of a Minoan civilization...which stretched from the Americas to India.

I like to think of ways to make these sorts of ridiculous scenarios in alternate history, even if I have to resort to adding a fantastical element or two (as long as I don't start adding another for each new problem). So let's analyze what this scenario would need in order to work:

• A Minoan civilization which can exert control over the Atlantic ocean (and also east to India, but that's less impressive)
• A China in the 1400's with ships capable of making journeys longer and faster than ships from the Age of Sail could plausibly manage
• The Renaissance needs to be delayed by a century or more, so China can start it

The obvious place to start is the Minoan Atlantis Sunset-less Empire. This empire presumably fell around 1500 BCE, because...because I said so is why. (Also because that's when the historical Minoan collapse that might have partially inspired Atlantis actually took place.) This fall should be something that knocks back civilization across the Empire's expanse, letting China surpass them; ideally, it should leave something that the Chinese outsiders could take to get world-crossing ships in the 15th century.
I'm thinking some kind of unobtanium that allows for energy to be stored and released as repulsive energy. It can be weapons, levitation/propulsion, maybe some kind of reactive shield...it's flexible, but specific enough to not just feel like generic plot juice. Let's call this unobtanium Atlantite, because Atlantis, and say it comes from a mysterious meteorite which was buried deep inside a Cretan mountain. Since we don't want Crete to end up as a mediterranean Wakanda, we might want to specify that there are other less-pure atlantite meteorites buried elsewhere in the world, but they're hard to identify or make use of if you don't already know about atlantite's uses.

Sometime around 2500 BCE, the Minoans began to discover the secrets of Atlantite, finding ways to "charge" it more efficiently without destroying its unique properties as well as ways to release the energy in a controlled fashion. (Details depend on the aesthetic you're going for. Maybe Atlantite absorbs heat and is released by physical impacts, leading to Atlantite being stuck in carefully-controlled furnaces to charge and being inserted into vaguely clockplunk devices; maybe it's all based on vestigial psychic powers, letting you have empires powered by slaves' minds and souls and devices which wouldn't look out of place in a Middle Earth knockoff.)
After a few centuries of refining this magitek, the Minoans have the array of devices that will serve them throughout their conquest of an improbably fraction of the Earth's surface. Repulsor-beams (weapons which amount to a high-power, long-range punch gun), horseless chariots (levitating vehicles with atlantite-based propulsion), and sky-barges (giant horseless chariots, possibly powered by sails as well as atlantite). Maybe also some other utility devices...maybe some kind of repulsion-enhanced super-plow? I'm bad at agriculture.
These devices will continue to be refined and developed until the empire falls, but they're enough to let them reach the newly-forming empires of the Fertile Crescent, as well as the civilizations which presumably existed in the western Mediterranean but which I didn't find much about in my brief skim. (It sounds like they're more locally-focused than the empires of Egypt, Akkadia, Ur, etc.) The 4.2 kiloyear event (wow, what a name) seems like a good time for them to make their big entrance on the Mediterranean scene. Sure, the Minoans had become master traders and probably established colonies (at the very least, trading ports in all major states and near all notably distinct tribal regions), but they didn't blossom into an empire until the rest of the Mediterranean was knocked off-balance. Crete was less-affected by the aridification, maybe by luck or maybe because of some atlantite technology letting them adapt more easily; this is taken as a sign by a Minoan king that they were chosen by the gods, and used as an excuse to march into these crippled empires and demand tribute (possibly as conquerors, possibly through a semi-peaceful exchange of autonomy for goods needed to survive).

With the core of the Minoan empire set up, the Minoans begin establishing roots across northern Africa and western Eurasia. It starts as it did in the Mediterranean, but on a larger scale; set up trading ports, then swoop in when their trading partners are weak to conquer and/or aid-assimilate them. Some time around the turn of the second millennium BCE, the web of Minoan vassals/tributaries/whatever would engulf the Indus Valley, since that's around when Harappan civilization began to decline in OTL and whatever caused the breakdown in their urban centers &c could probably still happen in this timeline. The Minoans would definitely disrupt the Vedic Age, and I haven't found details on what India was like between the Harappan and Vedic periods, so to get this posted before I need to sleep (sorry) I'll move on.
Let's say the Minoan trade colonies reach East Asia some time around the 1800's or 1700's BCE. This allows cultural flow between the two regions, and lets ideas from each culture influence the other. Some idea from China trickles to the Minoan heartland, inspiring some Colombus to throw together a sky-barge that can cross the ocean separating the western edge of the Minoan empire from East Asia. Maybe there's a miscalculation involved, maybe the sky-barge is just packed with enough supplies and whatnot to last a trip around half the world and only got 10-20% deep by the time they ran into Mesoamerica. I like the latter idea; it's less OTL-derivative, and makes an impromptu exploratory/colonial mission more plausible.
This Minoan merchant/explorer meets the Olmec, and promptly infects the Americas with various livestock-borne illnesses. Maybe not as badly as in OTL (urbanization patterns change a lot over a few millennia), but we're still looking at a pretty bad die-off of Native Americans. On the bright side, domestication of American flora took long enough that there don't seem to be as many big, thriving nation-states to destroy as there were in OTL...that's a bright side, right?
Regardless, the Minoans set up trade colonies in the new world. Their primary interest is in the jungles of Mesoamerica, the islands of the Caribbean, and the exotic crops these areas produce (like chocolate and sugar cane). These colonies are set up almost as feuding nation-states ruled by powerful families with ties to the Minoan upper class, because that feels both reasonable and distinct from allohistorical colonialism. The sky barges allow (relatively) easy trade between the New World colonies and the Imperial heartland; the colonial fiefs allow themselves to be dependent on import of some critical goods (maybe foodstuffs, maybe weapons/tools, obviously atlantite), focusing their colonial subjects on cash crops.

Then it's ~1500 BCE, and the collapse comes. There are a bunch of options, but I'm fond of having the Minoan empire devote too much of their atlantite stores and economic output to some grand infrastructure plan while ignoring slowly-accumulating problems plaguing their empire. By the time those in power have to care about said problems, they've invested too much in the causes of those problems and in their own pipe dreams to change course in time. The Empire collapses, and with it the network of trade that it built and was built on.
[cont next post]

[GreatWyrmGold]

[cont from previous post]
The New World colonies are hit hardest. Without a market to sell crops to or buy supplies from, their economies promptly collapse and the nobility are overthrown. A new culture, native with some strong Minoan undertones and access to Minoan technology and knowledge, forms in the remnants of their empire and starts butterfly-effecting the rest of the Americas into an almost unrecognizable state.
The Old Empire isn't hit quite as hard, but there are critical trade routes and institutions which fell apart and weren't easily replaced. Maybe crafting/maintaining "modern" atlantite tech requires not just atlantite but specialized tools/furnaces/ritual implements/whatever that require resources from outside the Minoan heartland, meaning that technology is forced to regress centuries. Beyond that, as I noted, the empire wasted their atlantite reserves on some vaguely-defined infrastructure project, with enough invested in it to exhaust easily-accessible sources of atlantite and other critical resources but not enough invested to make it more than locally useful, and only in some locations. Also, there's all the normal chaos, death, and disaster that comes from a bunch of centuries-old institutions falling apart at once.
China is hardly affected at all. The Xia dynasty was already on its way out before a neighboring empire fell apart, but the Shang would be well-positioned to pick up the pieces. They might pick up a few Minoan colonies which would otherwise be just outside the Chinese sphere of influence; they might not. Either way, the biggest effect on Chinese history would be their exposure to Atlantite technology. Speaking of which...

Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold

Since we don't want Crete to end up as a mediterranean Wakanda, we might want to specify that there are other less-pure atlantite meteorites buried elsewhere in the world, but they're hard to identify or make use of if you don't already know about atlantite's uses.

Well, as it happens, most of the settled world knows about atlantite's uses. Their deposits are less pure and hence harder to use, and they might not have all the other resources required for advanced atlantite tech right at hand, but it's there. Arguably, the least-realistic part of this scenario is that it takes 3,000 years for China to decide to send some cool sky-barge (or the Chinese equivalent) around the world, expand its empire, start the Renaissance in what could be construed as Italy, etc etc. But we can handwave that by creating a new calendar! If the Minoans had a calendar that started around the foundation of their empire in ~2200 BCE, that calendar's 1421st year would be only several centuries after the fall of the Minoan civilization! ...Okay, the timeline probably still needs work.

...This wound up a lot more fantastical than I expected, but it has some decent hooks. It has a rising empire (China) with some potentially-concerning parallels with the fallen empire laying large in this world's past; indeed, it's likely trying to out-magitek the local Precursors. It also has Americas which, while probably still lacking in organization and critical resources/data compared to the Old World, can put up a much better fight, especially since it would have its own Old World livestock to breed diseases. (Forget guns and steel, germs killing something like 95% of Native Americans are probably the biggest reason the Americas were conquered with such relative ease.) Oh, yeah, and then there's the incomplete and weathered infrastructure plans; if you can't think of a few potential plots from that alone, you aren't trying.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

There are a few problems with Wells-7.

First, fusion power seems unlikely to be developed absent fission power and the seeming lack of atomic weaponry suggests fission power wasn't explored, so maybe it should be solar power. OTOH, maybe atomic fission on Wells-7 works the way Wells thought it did in one of his novels. You can make explosives using the fission reaction, but the explosion doesn't release all its energy instantaneously. Instead it releases the same amount of energy as a conventional explosive of the same mass, but it releases one such explosion every half-life, until all the energy of the reaction has been expended. You can however reduce the half-life to days rather than hundreds of thousands of years. Which makes such an explosive semi-useless, it won’t affect any larger area than a conventional explosion, but it’ll keep everyone from occupying the area of the explosion, including yourself.

Maybe Wells-7 adopts some views from other Wells novels. The world government consists of Samurai who are pledged to live nobly according to the five principles of liberty: privacy; free movement; unlimited knowledge; truthfulness; and discussion [Men Like Gods] by suppressing the four irritants: fear; self-indulgence; jealousy; and prejudice; abstaining from drugs and alcohol; and by withdrawing for a mandatory annual nature ramble in solitude [The Research Magnificent].

Society is divided into four classes according to mental ability: Poetic; Kinetic; Dull; and Base. To enter into marriage you must be self-supporting (women as well as men) and of age (twenty-six for men, twenty-one for women). Marriages are dissolved after three years if they are childless.

Economically, all land is owned by the state. Coinage is energy-based, so capital will flow to where energy is the cheapest. This might explain Canada’s relative power with in the U.S. It has a lot of cheap hydroelectric power.

Churchill can push for union between Canada and the US all he wants. He has zero say in the matter. Well, he could get one vote if he moved to Canada and took up residency there. The Statute of Westminster only recognized what was already a fact on the ground at the end of WWI: the self-governing Dominions (Dominion of Canada [1867], Commonwealth of Australia [1901], Dominion of New Zealand [1907], Union of South Africa [1910], Dominion of Erie [1926], Republic of India [1947] and Dominion of Pakistan [1947]) were not subject to the U.K. government even in military matters and foreign relations, which had been the only two powers reserved from the self-governing Dominions.

It’s more likely that Truman pushed Churchill about a U.S.-Canada union and Churchill told him he needed the approval of Canada. Which would match FDR asking Churchill to place the Canadian military under US command in WWII, which was so sensitive IRL, the existence of the request was classed as a state secret for fifty years and incensed Canadians when it was finally declassified in the early nineties.



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I responded to a few of these and borrowed (stole) some ideas.

On the fusion front, Thorium power was explored but Thorium bombs don't work. The local form of Fusion is a type of Supertech.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Wells-7

Latin Americia: Most of Latin America is early TL7 but getting new tech in fast. As the USA recovers and begins to rebuild Europe and Asia both Latin America and Africa find their economies growing quickly. The main thing holding Latin American nations back tends to be their political elites and political systems. The more democratic a nation is the better off it is economically weather it is "Socialist" or "Capitalist."

The presence of the Pope in Havana has sent ripples throughout the continent. The Pope from 1950 (Pius XII was assassinated and the Axis forbid the election of a new Pope) to 1967 was an Irishman who chose the name Linus II(after the second Pope). He was on the Left of the European political spectrum and promoted democracy and social justice. Linus III is Brazilian and follows similar ideas. Although many reforms like Vatican II have been carried out, this Catholic Church will seem old fashioned to Homeliners.

Argentina, is the odd nation out in its politics. One of the few places outside Europe where Nazis might be found. Conservatives in the Argentine government use the Nazis as advisers in how to hold power and crush progressives.

More Later.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Wells-7

Subsaharan Africa: Colonialism just faded away in this world's Africa. Europe just lost the power to enforce their wishes. When Portugal was invaded in 1949 their empire popped like a soap bubble. Elsewhere it was more of a fadeout. The Bores wanted to ally with the Germans but they were prevented by the USA and later the Brits armed the Black Africans to keep the Bores out of their way.

The USA has provided what aid it could. And some of what they've done has been very useful. There is a standard All-Africa rail-gauge. There is an African postal union which is growing into a customs union. People are saving that it is like the Zolverein without the insane imperialism. Africa's economy is growing well. Anyplace they put in a Fusion power plant moves forward nicely. As soon as the world economy picks up Africa could boom like Homeline's East Asia in the 1980's.

However, this Africa is still volatile. The long war brought stagnation and lacking the struggle against Imperialism this Africa is less politically aware and even more Tribal than Homeline's Africa in 1980. The future looks good, but getting there will be rough.

India: India, which still includes Pakistan and has had Burma and Sri Lanka reconnected to it, also simply ended up independent. Gandhi, Nehru, and Jinnah, all died in jail due to a botched plot by the Japanese to kidnap them (Churchill himself, much to his chagrin, cleared their names from charges of cooperation). B.R. Ambedkar then took up the leadership of the independence movement and moved India in a rationalistic and pragmatic way. Always going for practical substance over show. Birth control wasn't sacrificed to Gandhi's whims, and it was assumed from the start that India would need technology and good transport.

The India of Wells-7, like Africa is ready to boom economically, once the world economy restarts.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Wells-7

The Antipodes and the Pacific:

Australia and New Zealand are both Tech Level seven countries with stable governments and economies. They are allied with the USA and friendly. They are aiding in the general recovery programs and are well respected. But their economies and populations are small.

The main type of adventure PCs would have in these countries is based on the simple fact that this is were many European refugees preferred to go to drop out of sight. If someone has a secret, and no sustained connections to the Nazis (some folks burn their bridges hard), then the Antipodes were the place to run to. (Active Nazis ran to Argentina).

The Pacific Islands are a mixed bag. Hawaii is a state and modern as anyplace else in the USA. But other islands might as well have missed the whole 20th century. It's a good place for classic pulp adventure.

Southeast Asia:

The Area between Australia and China was a war zone. Little of the area retains modern technology. There are a few islands of commerce and modern technology, but very few. As trade renews and the fusors come in these islands grow.

If you want to adventure in this area read Ring of Fire: An Indonesian Odyssey or watch the old PBS series. It's that wild.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Wells-7

China: China hasn't been a unified nation since the 1920's. Mao died in the 1940's and the Communists, lacking Russian backing faded out. Taiwan and Canton constitute Nationalist China.Moderately stable and a TL6 society that will soon move to TL7 if the economy picks up. Due to land reforms promoted by Wolf Ladejinsky and the US government, these areas are stable and democratic. If the US economy doesn't right itself soon, China might be able to pull out of it's crisis by itself.

However, it would not be easy. Most of China is ruled by local warlords who fear Democracy and the return of any kind of stable government but themselves. In many ways it is a pulp adventure setting much like the 1920s and 30s in popular fiction about China.

Tibet: No place on Wells-7 is more infested with Cabalists than Tibet except Egypt. Tibet has more real independence in this time period than anytime since the Medieval period.

Travel conditions are about like they were in Homeline's Tibet in 1918.

East Asia: Korea and Japan are total wrecks and the population is living at TL4 if they are lucky. Neither nation has a unified government. Some Warlords are allied with the Nationalist Chinese and the Americans, others are trying to form a new Shoganate. These alliances shift constantly as leaders seek advantage and power.

Russia: The Russian Far East is much like China, Korea, and Japan, petty warlord kingdoms. Some are based on local ethnic groups others are based on those claiming to be successors to either the Czars or the Soviets.

Siberia is mainly a lawless wilderness with a few surviving soviet era towns run like gulags. Russia East of the Urals is mainly a group of states each claiming to be the sole legitimate government of the Soviet Union.

There are isolated pockets of German speakers. Left overs from the German invasion. Their little warlord states resemble gulags too. They simply add a Nazi theme.