Alternate History / Timeline: Invading the US

[Tomsdad]

Ok in the .280 thread I made this response to the idea of the USSR invading the US:


I'm not sure there was ever much threat of a conventional USSR invasion of the US? If nothing else I don't think the USSR ever had the capability to land or drop the numbers of troops and support they would require to make it a legitimate threat*. And that leaves aside all the other questions of the USSR needing to project air superiority or even better air supremacy over the US invasion, negating the US navy to prevent any amphibious landing force from being stopped before it got there etc, etc

*either in the 50's or any time since. In fact thinking about it an actual conventional invasion of the US combines all the fun of thousands of miles of territory to take and control and for the home team to retreat and swallow you up in, ala Russia. With having to do this over an ocean so via amphibious landing or airborne drop ala D-Day. Only imagine it's not 75 miles of channel, and a couple of hundred mile round trip from home air bases, but thousands of miles of ocean! All vs. the largest economic and military power in the world, with a nuclear deterrent.

Yeah that would be unfun

And I pretty much stand by that in terms of RL. But this story come up in fiction. film and computer games a lot as a compelling what if.

So how do we make this work?

I can think of couple of possibilities:

1). Someone else get nuclear weapons and uses (a lot*) of them before the US does, ala Man in the High Castle

2). Someone builds up a big enough land invasion force and crosses a land border. This still has big issues not only at the time of invasion, but with who's doing it and the US not noticing the build up. But at least you are not doing an amphibious landing and running supply lines over either the Atlantic or Pacific oceans.


All in all I can't help but think you need either an inherently changed US, or someone leap frogging the US as the global economic and military superpower, not only in one quick go but by a significant margin!

I'm generally thinking C20th / C21st, but actually earlier might be interesting too (and possibly more plausible)!


But this isn't a very GURPS specific thread though so not sure if this is the right forum. So Mods if this doesn't belong here, feel free to tie it off.

cheers

TD


*In the fiction it seem to often only take one, but I think it would take more