Alternative earths

[gryffydd65]

Just need help generating alternative earths. This is the premise of a super hero game, in which heroes come from different earths to our present day to fight behind the scenes villains discovered by the f b i.
So far
Confederacy wins civil war.
Germany wins world war 2
Soviet union survives break up after cold war.
What would each of these worlds look like in 2018 ? And how would they mold a hero?

[Kyrell1978]

Just need help generating alternative earths. This is the premise of a super hero game, in which heroes come from different earths to our present day to fight behind the scenes villains discovered by the f b i.
So far
Confederacy wins civil war.
Germany wins world war 2
Soviet union survives break up after cold war.
What would each of these worlds look like in 2018 ? And how would they mold a hero?

I'm not sure I can get into detailed answers without delving into real world politics, but I would say look at the political goals of each of those winning groups and determine the groups of people most effected by their ideology. Make the heroes come from that subset of people and the villains come from the "dominant oppressive" culture.

[gryffydd65]

I might take each of those and break them down into subsets.

Germany, Italy and Japan divide the world up.

Hitler finds Holy Grail and lives on .

Germany gets the atomic bomb and not united States , Germany bombs the United States .

Confederacy wins, becomes the Confederacy of the United States , allows the United States of America to survive .

Confederacy wins taking over all of the original United States , turns into a huge agricultural state , using slaves, indentured servants and low paying immigrant workers. Does not get involved in world affairs like world war 1.

Soviet Union takes over Europe and Asia pushing into India . Putin leader for life . Isolates the United States and the Western Hemisphere .

[Kyrell1978]

I might take each of those and break them down into subsets.

Germany, Italy and Japan divide the world up.

Hitler finds Holy Grail and lives on .

Germany gets the atomic bomb and not united States , Germany bombs the United States .

Confederacy wins, becomes the Confederacy of the United States , allows the United States of America to survive .

Confederacy wins taking over all of the original United States , turns into a huge agricultural state , using slaves, indentured servants and low paying immigrant workers. Does not get involved in world affairs like world war 1.

Soviet Union takes over Europe and Asia pushing into India . Putin leader for life . Isolates the United States and the Western Hemisphere .

That all sound pretty realistic.

[Goaty14]

Hitler finds Holy Grail and lives on.

Sorry (https://theglen.livejournal.com/16735.html), no can do...


325. Even if he was a paragon of humanity in his alternate dimension, Good Hitler is not an appropriate superhero concept.

Hmm, how about a world where goldfish evolve to be at the top of the food chain instead of humans? The resulting superhero is a renegade shapeshifter who led a revolution against their finned oppressors.

[Vogie]

Gotta include at least:

1 Worldwide Theocracy... which one you picked is up to you
The Roman Empire never ended
Genghis Khan actually did conquer the world
WWIII already happened, and is peaceful
WWIII already happened, and the world is a post-apocalyptic wasteland
1 nearly empty world, with the hook being what happened to the people.

[Knaight]

WWI and WWII never happen, and neither does the part where they all but break the colonial powers - instead they're still kicking, and still terrible.
U.S. and Soviet brinkmanship fails during the Cuban missile crisis, and nukes are actually fired. Both countries are annihilated, and the rest of the world has to deal with nuclear winter.
The agricultural discoveries of the green revolution never happen, and the world hits its effective population cap without them. Famine is rampant, as are the wars started because of it.
Vaccines, antibiotics, and other essential medicine is never developed. This makes biological warfare much easier, and WWI normalizes it.
The Pan-Arabism movement actually ends up meaningfully working, and a frightened Iran and Turkey start a similar Pan-Persian/Turkism movement. This leaves two massive regional superpowers, deeply hostile to each other, sharing a border, trying to develop nuclear weapons, and egged on by the U.S. and Soviet Union, both of whom think they're running a controlled proxy war and both of whom have very little actual control.
At some point one of the various warring states that made up pre-colonial India actually manages to get secure control of the whole Indian subcontinent, becoming a regional power comparable to China. Both of those nations then get a read on how much of a threat the colonial powers are planning on being from their earliest actions, and crack down on that hard throughout the entire region - which, unfortunately for other nations in that region, tends to translate to India and China being colonial powers themselves. Eventually a very different great war happens based off of a different (but no less volatile) pile of treaties, it goes significantly worse, and the colonial powers all break, having done significantly more damage through their added members.





Sorry (https://theglen.livejournal.com/16735.html), no can do...

I think the idea was immortal-Hitler, not good-Hitler.

[gryffydd65]

Hindenburg zeppelin never explodes ,leads to zeppelin as main air craft.

Steam powered engine never invented .

Three mile island went seriously wrong leaving nuclear devastation.

Wright brothers never fly at kitty hawk, leading to no planes .

Ufo survive and is seen as friendly to government in area 51.

[Nifft]

- World is divided into many mutually-hostile theocratic blocks.

- World is divided into many mutually-hostile race / nation blocks.

- World is divided into many mutually-friendly mercantile blocks, but within each block there is significant oppression of the lower classes. (This is 10 years before communist revolution world.)

- Post-zombie plague world, with many isolated city-states slowly pushing their safety radius outwards, slowly re-establishing trade relations.

- Mid-alien invasion world, where roughly half the world is free humanity united against the alien menace.

- Post-supervolcano world, where ash rained down in the 1950s, causing an effect similar to nuclear winter in terms of the 10-year survival methods, but far less horrible for the survivors after the ~10 years of darkness pass.

[Bohandas]

Just need help generating alternative earths. This is the premise of a super hero game, in which heroes come from different earths to our present day to fight behind the scenes villains discovered by the f b i.
So far
Confederacy wins civil war.
Germany wins world war 2
Soviet union survives break up after cold war.
What would each of these worlds look like in 2018 ? And how would they mold a hero?

If the confederacy won it might lead to germany winning WW2 as they would likely ally with each other

[Nifft]

If the confederacy won it might lead to germany winning WW2 as they would likely ally with each other

IRL the deep south plantation owners did not like how the Nazis admired their racial caste system.

Perhaps the southern agrarian aristocrats did not appreciate praise from a bunch of foreign, urban, industrial peasants.

Just because they were similar in some ways (slaves/racism/militant/expansionist) doesn't mean their values aligned in other ways.

[gryffydd65]

Wow great ideas,

Man never makes it to Australia and New Zealand and dinosaurs survive .

Fairy tales are true.

Big foot, loch Ness monster etc are real .

Vampires , and supernatural are real.

Could combine all of the above.


Need to figure out generic super hero backgrounds based on all these ideas and major villian, two minor villains and henchmen.

[MoiMagnus]

1) The roman empire discovered steel before its fall. The induced technological advancement allowed him to last until modern days.

2) Under the rule of a particularly audacious emperor, the Chinese Empire colonised the Americas before the European Rennaissance. Rennaissance still happened, and the Americas were conquered from China. During WWII and the Cold War, China managed to recover the control of their former lands in South America, and still claim (without success) the ownership of North America.

3) Napoleon didn't tried to invade Russia. After the second French revolution, Europe organised itself into a huge confederate state. WWII happened in Asia, with the role of Europe and USA reversed (The Japan tried to invade USA after successfully conquering China, and then Alaska. Europe come as a savior...)

4) Europe (and Asia, and North Affica) was destroyed by a meteorite during middle age. Native americans have colonised the world.

5) There is a 9th planet to the solar system. This planet has a very weird eliptic trajectory which happens to cross Earth trajectory very very rarely. Trough centuries, Earth and Planet 9th cross each other nearer and nearer. Scientist have computed. End of the world in 2144.

[Bohandas]

*Rome never fell

*There was no Manhattan Project. As a result World War 2 lasted several years longer and killed almost 25% more people

*The various groups of natives allied with each other and stopped the advancement of he white settlers at the Rocky Mountains, so the USA does not extend west past Colorado

*There's no tungsten. And that makes it harder to mine everything else in the modern age because tungsten carbide is widely used in mining equipment. And that makes anything with metal in it more expensive.

*There were 25 years of world peace at some point during the mid 20th century. As a result everything really went to hell when everyone started fighting again, including several atomic exchanges (that didn't destroy everythig because there was no arms race).

*The dog was never domesticated

*There are no humans, but there is a civilized sapient species that evolved from spotted hyenas instead

*A huge earthquake separated western california from the rest of the USA

*Alan Turing wasn't persecuted and driven to suicide and so computer science and mathematics are a bit more advanced.

*America loves soccer

*Baseball was never invented

*Prohibition never ended

*Leonardo DaVinci's airscrew idea was funded by the Medicis. The materials of his time are only sufficient to produce a toy novelty, but it and the principles behind it become sufficiently widely known for the full scale helicopter to be produced two decades before the first airplane rather than three decades after

*The tank was never invented so WW2 was fought still using trench warfare.

*Shakespeare wrote a bunch of buddy cop plays and/or a bunch of space-opera type scripts.

*Tesla was more successful in his time than Edison.

*The Beatles never broke up.

*Nuclear power replaced oil pretty much as soon as it was invented. As a result the overall state of the environment is im general much better, but the environment in a handful of specific areas where there have been leaks or meltdowns is much much worse.

*fluorescent lights started seriously displacing incandescent lights in the 1980's instead of in the early 2000's

*Bathrooms all went unisex in the 1960's but are still segrated by race.

[Paleomancer]

Just need help generating alternative earths. This is the premise of a super hero game, in which heroes come from different earths to our present day to fight behind the scenes villains discovered by the f b i.
So far
Confederacy wins civil war.
Germany wins world war 2
Soviet union survives break up after cold war.
What would each of these worlds look like in 2018 ? And how would they mold a hero?

One thing to consider is how these events might even come into being.

Many seceding nations are often weaker than the nation they try to leave. But getting outside help can result in said nation being subjugated by said help. Civil War applies here.
Groups based on conquest or virulent racism tend to make enemies left and right and rarely have control even within their own lands. Restraint is thus necessary, but a rare quality in such powers. Such a group would have to choose a nation or group lots of people at the time feared (USSR for example) and do everything to make themselves useful as an "opposition." Otherwise, they will overreach and be crushed within and without. Anyone making an empire faces this issue, as do certain manifestations of bigotry.
Remember no nation is necessarily doomed to fall at a particular time. The Ottomans could have survived WWI by staying out of the war, and even kept much of its original territory in some form today. A New Deal-like project could have rejuvenated the USSR, or the Soviets invented the internet first (this almost happened in real life!) and profited from information technology and economic flexibility.


Other scenarios:

The Young Turk Rebellion (pre-WWI) revitalizes the Ottoman Empire into something more democratic.
Mongolian Empire conquers Europe after Bubonic Plague (Think Spaniards vs. Aztecs).
Horses and mammoths never went extinct in the Americas; Indigenous peoples had cavalry from the start.
Dromeosaurid dinosaurs survive the Cretaceous, and humans coexist with intelligent feathered raptors.
Humans never domesticate bees.
Smallpox never hits the Americas.
China under the Ming Dynasty established naval trade empire.
Polynesian civilizations create trans-Pacific oceanic hegemony.
Napoleon leads France to a diplomatic and industrial control of Europe; the wars bearing his name never happen/instigate WWI sixty years early.
The Carolingian Empire and the Abassid Caliphate forge an alliance and devastate the Eastern Roman Empire.
The USSR figures out how to breed socialized bears and creates armored bear platoons that terrorize infantry during WWII (borderline sci-fi here :smallbiggrin:).
The US does not survive the Great Depression intact and Balkanizes into smaller states.
The South American Dreadnought Races results in the nations of Argentine, Brazil, and Chile becoming at regional naval powers, ousting European and US control.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth defeats the early Russian Empire (almost happened in real life).
Carthage sacks Rome and crushes the nascent Roman Empire.
The Cthonnians, ancient burrowing worm-things, get tired of human oil drilling/coal mining and sink as many major cities as they can. Human society as we know it collapses in the face of intelligent Graboids (Not seriously :smallamused:).
My African history is apparently terrible... add more here soon.
Indian Subcontinent nations form early version of UN.
Norway-Denmark defeats Sweden during the Napoleonic wars.
Sweden allies with France and invades Britain during the Napoleonic Wars.
The Two Cities of Arkham and Innsmouth declare their independence from Washington, D.C. and rouse Great Cthulhu from its dreaming. Ia Cthulhu Ia!


Hopefully this doesn't cross forum rules on history... I did try to keep it simple, but it's a cool topic.

[2D8HP]

I'll go with Carl Sagan's:


The Ionian Greeks civilization continues it's scientific research, the Library at Alexandria never falls and interstellar travel happens in the 20th century

[Bohandas]

*Prohibition never ended. The country is now run by gangsters.

*America was reconquered by the British empire

*The british empire is intact and still relevant

*The Russian Revolution never happened. As a result social welfare programs around the world are significantly more widespread since there was no USSR making socialism look bad.

*Julius Caesar was never assassinated

*The New Deal didn't happen, the depression continued, and the United States of America is now a third-world country

*Qin Shi Huang never unifies China

[Thunderfist12]

° The Cold War never ended and spawned two World Wars, one in 1959 and another in 1988. The USSR inducted Europe east of France, as well as Korea and parts of the Middle East. The East US (and New Mexico) annexed Mexico and the West seceded gradually forming the Second Republic of Texas (TX and OK), Greater California (OR, CA, NV, and AZ), Ute Republic (CO, UT, and WY), Alaska, and Lower Cascadia (WA, ID, and MT). China and Greater Maharaj are two massive socialist states with deeply conflicting interests grating at the borders, one having seized Mongolia and Southeast Asia and the other expanding into the lower Middle East (with buffer states between the USSR and Egypt). Japan, areas near Cuba and Florida, and East France are practically uninhabitable from assaults nuclear and otherwise.

° Former European colonies were never willingly released from empire and allied against their oppressors, turning the tables on them.

° The Americas are found and not bothered with for 420 years (1912). In fact, the nations discovered in the Americas are respected as sovereign and participate in the global political exchange. By the time the East goes colonizing they have both advanced to technology similar to WW1.

° Industrialization begins 100 years early. The technological advancement by the Civil War is closer to the 1960s.

° Egypt has ruled N Africa, Europe, and W Asia for most of history, with its rivals being Indochina (most of East Asia) and three large empires in the Americas. Technology is advanced enough for things like space travel and bombs but the languages, religions, etc. of the world are very different.

° Terrible plagues destroyed most of Earth's population. What remains are three tiny nations that hate each other with a huge arsenal of weapons.

° Animal types that died off in some places but not others are switched. So camels, sloths, and horses evolve from their American cousins, lions stay in Europe, rhinoceri and elephants do not exist in tropics and are replaced by mammoths and wooly rhinos in the Arctic, etc.

[Thunderfist12]

° The Civil War continues, with stalemates and ceasefires, all the way up to the 1950s. American involvement in the World Wars never happens and there develops two Cold Wars on two fronts: one between the USSR and the European Nations (EN); and the other between the North, South, and West factions of America (plus maybe Mexico or Canada?).

[Hazzardevil]

Sorry (https://theglen.livejournal.com/16735.html), no can do...


Biblical/The Grail's Morality doesn't have to match up to ours to make Hitler good.

Random ideas I had:
Christianity fails with Jesus and never goes anywhere.
Constantine never manages to make Rome Christian.
Julian the Apostate repaganises the Empire.
The Ottomans conquer more/all of Europe, not being repulsed at the Siege of Vienna in 1683.
Civil Rights in the US results in the US splitting into multiple ethnostates.
MLK survived his assassination.

Martin Luther's reformation fixes the issues Martin Luther had with the Catholic Church, so Europe isn't divided into Catholic and Protestant.

WW2 ends in a stalemate. Making the Cold War three ways, Fascism vs Capitalism vs Communism.

[Thunderfist12]

° On 15 September 2017, North Korea sent a missile over Hokkaido, Japan's North island. In this timeline, the missile was not launched at the correct angle to glide over the island, instead making contact at Sapporo and killing almost 100,000 instantly and injuring over twice that number. Having already issued several ultimatums, Donald Trump pushes the button. North Korea is virtually destroyed. China and Russia retaliate, and before the US can fire back its largest cities are obliterated.

[Bohandas]

*The mesoamericns managed to repel the spanish conquistadors

*Archimedes survived the siege of Syracuse

*Charles Babbage's mehanical calculators were mass produced

Edit:

*Papa Doc took over the entirety of the Carribean

*Napoleon conquered the entire world

*The dog was never domesticated

*The meteor that hit Tungusga hit a populated area instead

*The meteor that killed off the dinosaurs never hit the earth

[Tiadoppler]

North America was colonized by Icelandic Vikings in the mid-1000s.

Columbus' expedition sank in the mid-Atlantic. North America was not colonized by Europeans until the early 1600s.

Amelia Earhart did not disappear. She landed successfully, achieved great fame, and became an outspoken proponent of space exploration and travel. "I've done everything I wanted to here. Let's figure out how to get to some other places!"

One of the two nuclear devices dropped by the US at the end of WWII failed to function. Because it was cursed. By Granny Weatherwax.

The United States did not offer amnesty in exchange for research to certain scientists at the end of WWII.

The United States pardoned and encouraged certain scientists to continue their most immoral and unethical research at the end of WWII.

The Enigma machine failed to function, or its creation was discovered before it could be used successfully.

The Moon Landing failed. Nixon delivered a different speech (https://www.space.com/26604-apollo-11-failure-nixon-speech.html) and space exploration was delayed significantly. After the Soviet Union fell, there was no national competitiveness or political will to re-explore the ideas of manned space exploration.

[Nifft]

After the Soviet Union fell, there was no national competitiveness or political will to re-explore the ideas of manned space exploration.

That sounds way too much like real Earth.

[Tiadoppler]

That sounds way too much like real Earth.

Well, yeah, but worse. Imagine if there'd never been a successful moon mission: no space shuttle, no space stations. Just probes.

[lightningcat]

Maybe check out the Alternate History Hub on youtube for some ideas. The creator even wrote a full book on the Eurotropa timeline, which in short was an actual idea about draining the Mediterranean Sea.