Worldbuilding without the post-WW/WWII/Cold War glasses (TL, CR etc.)

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I still think Asta Kask is looking at the 1920s through post-WW II glasses (“obviously governments regulate X”). Goverments in the 1920s had very little involvement in most of the areas that we expect them to regulate today.

Greetings, all!

I think this quote deserves to spawn its own thread in the context of consistent worldbuilding. Many of our ideas about how the world (including many a fictional one) works are derived from how our, modern world works. And the string of World War / World War II / Cold War have shaped many aspects of our world. And yet, many settings did not develop along the same historical lines. Some I wonder:

What preconceptions and ideas should be 'unlearned' when designing a world (with TL, CRs, Statuses, Stigmas and other features) which hasn't experienced WW-/ColdWar-equivalents?

Gun Control has been mentioned. Passports are another one (passport/border checks were extremely mild/non-existent pre-WWI by modern standards).

What else?

Thanks in advance!

[Phantasm]

Women's/minorities' (and in some cases majorities') rights and roles in society.

Prior to WWII (or was it WWI?), women were not permitted to work in factories; the only reason they were permitted to do so during the war is because the war effort required more bodies on the factories' assembly lines, and there was a shortage of men due to the front lines. Even prior to that, it was extremely rare to find a woman doing what was traditionally "men's work": doctors, lawyers, etc.

I'm not sure how things were in other countries, but segregation of people by skin color was prominent in the US until the 1960s (and even in South Africa until even more recently), with some races (blacks, Jews, etc) being considered "inferior" by the ruling elite.

A lot of this was the believed "superiority" of the European white male over all others.

[Ronin Rabbit]

I love the descriptions of bigotry & racism given in the GURPS 3e Cthulhupunk book, where it explains a nuanced attitude that existed in Lovecraft's time but which ALL falls under "racism" today. Modern sensibilities have evolved in such a way that most people have very black and white views on the subject.

[ErhnamDJ]

Women's role in society is probably a lot closer to how it was before. And, of course, everyone is a lot wealthier. A lot. Unimaginably so. Most of the wealth created in Europe during the industrial revolution was destroyed during the war, or spent on the wars that followed. And there probably aren't any nuclear weapons. I wonder if there would even be satellites or computers. I doubt it.

No telling what happened in Russia and China. Oh, and there was never any roaring twenties (look at the social mores there!) or great depression. Which means that the depression never led to FDR and his social programs, or to any of the social programs that followed. Also, check out that commerce clause!

I wonder what would have happened with Japan. Would they have been free to have their little wars? Maybe they conquered Korea and parts of Russia. It's possible that there would have been a Japanese Empire.

On a lighter note, those pulp magazines from the twenties never went out of style, since there was no depression. Television might not ever have been as popular, since the print industry wasn't wiped out at the same time the economy recovered.

I guess there wouldn't have been any nuclear power without all that research during the war, but I don't know enough about the science to guess.

Maybe without the war Tesla would have had another ten years of inventing left in him, but I'm not so sure about that. They wouldn't have blown up his tower. His spirits might have been considerably higher during those years.

Of course, there wouldn't have been any war to have hints of racial integration in. That's probably pretty important.

But generally I think the biggest difference would be how incredibly wealthy everyone would be, at least in the west. It's nearly incomprehensible how much wealth was destroyed during the wars and depressions and recessions that followed.

Oh! They might not have had alcohol prohibition either. The war had a pretty big impact on that, as I understand.

Those automatics weapons never would have been outlawed. And they probably never would have had any reason to start outlawing any weapons, what with no nuclear weapons ever being invented.

Europe looks really crazy, though. I don't think you would have had a Soviet Union. Still have a German empire. Never would have had Communist China.

And there's no telling how much higher the world's population would be. After all, didn't about a billion people die in those wars and under the regimes that were able to come to be because of them? They never would have had that big influenza outbreak here in the states.

Things would be a lot less centralized. There wouldn't be any federal highway system. Maybe people would still use trains. Or maybe air travel would be much more prominent. People probably deal on a much more local level.

[Anthony]

Neither gun control nor passports are really a feature of WW/WWII/Cold War influences; gun control is primarily a function of an increasingly urbanized society (with little personal attachment to firearms, since they don't hunt) and increasingly deadly weapons, passports and the like are a function of increased mobility and an increasingly bureaucratic society (also a function of urbanization/population density).

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Neither gun control nor passports are really a feature of WW/WWII/Cold War influences; gun control is primarily a function of an increasingly urbanized society (with little personal attachment to firearms, since they don't hunt) and increasingly deadly weapons

I don't know about that. Without the gangsters using them in the depression, and without their mass production during the wars, I'm not sure how much exposure people--and politicians--would have to automatic weapons. Would the Thompson have even been invented absent the war? I doubt it.

People's views on guns here in the US were pretty benevolent back then. Without a substantial event to change those views, I would expect them to stay the same.

But automatic weapons are pretty useless. Without alcohol or drug prohibition, I would expect them to just be something else firearms enthusiasts put in their safes. It looks like a negligible difference to me.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

I don't know about that. Without the gangsters using them in the depression, and without their mass production during the wars, I'm not sure how much exposure people--and politicians--would have to automatic weapons. Would the Thompson have even been invented absent the war? I doubt it.

It wouldn't have been invented without some war, but any setting that doesn't have wars is so alien to human nature that it's really hard to speculate. And gangsters using automatic weapons is nothing special to the depression (barely even related; Prohibition is more to blame, though any form of organized crime will produce similar effects); if you have gangsters, and they're fighting each other, they will use whatever weapons are available and effective.

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

But automatic weapons are pretty useless. Without alcohol or drug prohibition, I would expect them to just be something else firearms enthusiasts put in their safes. It looks like a negligible difference to me.

Snrk. Automatic weapons are darned useful, which is why people fighting in small wars all over the world use them.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It wouldn't have been invented without some war, but any setting that doesn't have wars is so alien to human nature that it's really hard to speculate.

But it really had to be that particular war at that particular time. A whole lot of stuff had to come together for those gangsters to be using those weapons. Yeah, they'd have had access to some kind of weapons. But it might not have been so easy to get, or as useful. Without a WWI event with trench warfare, there probably wouldn't have been a need to risk developing such a weapon at that time.

What if the equivalent weapon was made in Germany or England or Russia instead? Then it would have been a lot more difficult to acquire. I don't know.

Snrk. Automatic weapons are darned useful, which is why people fighting in small wars all over the world use them.

I'm not sure if that's true. They're useful, sure. But I thought they used them because central planners in socialist states decided to churn out gajillions of them, and then they just happened to be available. Would those people in small wars really be that different if they had bolt actions designed for long range? I don't know. What's a VC sniper? One who learned how to use his sights.

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

. . .People's views on guns here in the US were pretty benevolent back then. Without a substantial event to change those views, I would expect them to stay the same. . .

Remember two American presidents, both Garfield and McKinley, were killed by small handguns, only about 20 years apart. Despite this there was no giant roar for handgun elimination until the mid-20th century (say, 1930s) and it accelerated in the 1960s.

There had to be a large, vocal, and well-organized anti-gun movement to gain much headway.

Originally Posted by Ronin Rabbit

No cold war means no Vietnam, it also ends up meaning no war on drugs. . . .

The "war on drugs" actually was a product of the Progressive Era. Mid 1910s. Calls for bans on alcohol, drugs, and guns were all part of the same movement to make America safer, more productive, and more rationally organized.

One BIG change due to the Cold War was the microchip. It's cheap as he## now but the original research the led to its development, and, more important, the development of ways to make microchips en masse was extremely expensive -- the equivalent of hundreds of billions of 2012 dollars. No private sector corporation was going to do that without a huge guaranteed market -- which, of course, did not exist in the early 1960s.

Uncle Sugar (Sam, for those less cynical) was in the early 1960s looking at the Big Bad Bear (CCCP) and had reason to fear. The Bear had more people and resources. So if the US of A was going to stave off Russian offensives in the Third World by military force (Vietnam was only the most publicized effort) Uncle Sam had to have superior tech, including communications and sensor gear. Gee. Guess what the microchip is good for?

A friend of mine claimed that people like the late S. Jobs and current Wozniak could build their first computers cheap courtesy of Uncle Sam. (IIRC a 16K Apple cost about $2000 1977 dollars -- say 5-6000 US dollars now -- but that was dirt cheap for a working computer in 1977. Don't ask me how I know that.) The US military was buying lots of microcircuits for use in their aircraft, missiles, etc. but they had to have a very long MTBF (mean time between failures.) Chips from batches that didn't meet the MTBF requirements got shipped back to the manufacturers.

Well, no manufacturer is just going to throw away merchandise if they can make a buck on it some way. "Sure, Mssrs. Jobs & Wozniak, we can sell you these chips -- cheap. Where do you want them delivered?"

And a whole economic sector was born.

But the first checks for R&D, manufacture, and purchase were written by Uncle Sam.

The Progressives and other modernists of the late nineteenth century had been calling for Big Government long before it got here. The wars, especially WWI, did a HUGE amount to sell this idea -- and to make it seem irresistible. "If we don't have command economies with central planning, we're going to be drowned by the efficiencies of the evil Communists!" Well . . .

No wars, less of a sales pitch for Big Brother.

Note that in WW I the US government took over the railroads, about 25 percent of the economy. Almost every senior official of the New Deal had had experience in running things in 1917-18.

Don't underestimate this.

[Daigoro]

The Space Race, with the target of getting a man on the moon, was a direct result of the Cold War.

So even though the idea of space travel was becoming realistic from the end of WWII, without the impetus and available budget from the Cold War space travel might be extremely retarded.

Likewise, following from fredtheobviouspseudonym's exposition on microchips, jet travel, radar, cryptography and many other high technology products of wartime need, that we otherwise take for granted, might not exist or be underdeveloped.