alternate history

So, let's suppose that, somehow, all nuclear weapons disappear or are disabled today. It doesn't matter how. The US deploys a secret anti-nuke field that accidentally zaps all of NATO's nukes along with everyone else's, alien space bats steal all the nukes, Superman tosses them all into space...

The mentions recently of Andrew Johnson as the first President to be impeached have left me wondering: Suppose he had never been President at all? Suppose JW Booth had been stopped, and Lincoln had lived out his second term? Johnson would not have been able to sabotage Reconstruction, and...

Before I start, this is a purely SF / alt-history exercise. I'm not proposing in all seriousness that time travel is possible, nor that something like this has actually happened. So, you know, no need for this to go into the technology forum ;) So, anyway, the general consensus seems to be that...

Alternative history to the many smart people here: Say that the French don't allow the Rhine to be re-occupied in 1936. Hitler goes down to one of the assassination attempts against him. So the Germans calm down and don't launch WWII. Mussolini just spins around doing nothing until he gets...

I dunno, but the movie sure as hell would have been different!

Suppose that Otto and Duryea and Daimler and the others had stood back from their proof-of-concept vehicle and remarked, wiping their hands on oily cotton waste, “Welp. It works, but it’ll never pay if it can’t carry freight.” Then they’d set out to find bigger powerplants (Herr Diesel was doing...

HBO is working on a series based on the premise that the Confederacy won the Civil War. Approached from the other direction, assume that the U.S. had never instituted slavery. Suppose that the farm and other work performed by slaves was done by voluntary immigrants paid fair wages, who were...

In thinking about the "states' rights" claims about the Confederacy, I wonder, were they really in support? I mean, we have the real life attempts to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, and the fact that they threatened to secede over the fact that Delaware tried to get around it. But let's take...

Admittedly this is not an original concept. We see it in the rock band Rush's early period, and lord knows star wars is full of medieval parallels. What might it have been like in medieval times were there no christianity, no theism or religion in general. Rather, naturalism and scientific...

I didn't see one of these active, so apologies if it's already been covered. I think there was at least one occasion where the South could have at least gotten much better terms for quitting the war. In 1864, things weren't going so well. Grant was bogged down in a siege outside Petersburg...

What if there hadn’t been a war between the States instead a huge opponent from Europe such as France, England and Spain combined? (just for instance). Who could have been the US commanders at the start? Robert E. Lee Overall Command, (Winfield Scott Aide to Lincoln) Army Commands: P.T...

The renewed controversy over the Confederate flag reminds me once again that the South never really stopped fighting the Civil War. The Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, the lynchings, the "massive resistance" to civil rights, etc., were basically guerrilla war against America. Question: Suppose...

If FDR had been in better health he might have run for a fifth term. I mean, why not? If he had, do you think he would have won? Speculation required.

I've been on a history kick recently, the lead-up to WWI and the Russian Revolution in particular. I got to thinking, would it have been possible to prevent the Russian Revolution, given that Nicholas II was in charge? One possibility would be keeping Russia out of the war, but I'm not sure...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika_Night Anyone read this book? I read Fatherland years ago and this one sounds like it would be good also. Ranb

I'm currently finishing the preliminary outline for a series of SF/alternate-history novels about a man and a woman in their mid-twenties who are transported, by a probe from an extraterrestrial civilization, to an alternate reality identical to our own, except the year is 1856. Andrew is a...

In the 100 years ago today thread Craig B and I went a bit off topic onto speculations about the likely consequences of a world without the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on the 28th of June 1914. Assuming the plotters had failed, for whatever reason1 what do people think...

Hi all, I've uploaded a collection (link) of about 160 photos and other material from the Trigon occupation of the (then) USA that may be of interest. These are from April of 1952 during the early stages of Trigonist operations on (what was then) the Continental "United States" and are mostly...

Let's say D-Day was a bust for whatever reason (Germans prepared for it, bad weather etc.), and by August 1945, the US launches nuclear strikes on Berlin and Munich, killing hitler and ending the war. How does that affect the post-ww2 setup?

...if South USA had successfully seceeded? At least Dawkins possibly thinks so: It's an interesting topic. Without the South there would be significantly less people in the USA, which might mean a lack of synergy effects, maybe.

I would like some opinions from everyone that knows a lot about the Second World War. There has always been the question of 'what if' Germany won World War Two? When I first thought about this, I asked myself, "Well could Germany have won? Realistically.." The more I get to thinking about it, I...

As I've said elsewhere in the forum I'm a bit of an obsessive fan of alternat(iv)e history, or counterfactuals as some academics call them, that is history that didn't happen. I'm not sure exactly why, though I'm also interested in actual history, even to the point of (nearly) completing a...

Of course we know that the USA did get them first in some part because America was fortunate to be a refuge for many of the worlds greatest physicists during the terrible times of the second world war. And it's well known that Germany had a nuclear weapons program that floundered when a lot of...

I have a good idea just what Christian responses will be but I'm kinda curious to see if someone tries something new here. So, what if... Today's date is September 18, 2001. The events of 9/11 happened just a week ago. 3,500 were killed in a vicious attack on the American way of life...

I've been thinking... what if they decided to hit Pearl Harbour instead, because of its historical significance as America's last surprise attack victim? What vessels were present there and what was the readiness at the time? I guess what I'm asking is, could the terrorists have hijacked...

I’m working on a an alt-history story around the American Civil War era, and just for kicks I thought it might be fun to change up the presidency. So I wondered what would have happened to the American Civil War time line if Stephen Douglas had won the 1860 campaign? This isn’t a question of...

I'm not big on Alt History, but this is something that came to mind the other day and I'm not sure WW II would have turned out as it did if anti-Semitism was a key platform in Nazi ideology. - All the Jews who fled or were put into concentration camps would have been availible for the war...

Understanding that no society develops in a vacuum, I was wondering what the alt-history of the American Plains Indians would have been if left undisturbed (i.e. unencrouched/unconquered) by Europeans after they obtained horses? Anyone?

Bigred has inspired me to start another thread. :) What would have been the effect on American, English and World history if the Americans had lost the American Revolution? A while back I had skimmed the book 1776 by David McCullough. In that book he makes the case that the British came...

Long-term they couldn't have held out really, and for the same reasons as the South winning the Civil War: inferior resources/logistics. Still, I don't even want to think about how ugly that could have made the following years.... Course whether or not we beat Japan would make a big diff...