Shitty Alternate History Thread - If only the Romans had AK-47's they would've survived...
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🔧 Actively working on site again.
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It's getting a television adaptation. The Coen Brothers probably would come up with something better but after Hail Caesar, maybe not.
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Old, but this made me think of a book I read once where the author gave this treatment to the original 13 states.
In a timeline where the US constitution was never ratified, the Articles of Confederacy were too weak to hold the Union together and it breaks up into like 5 different state blocs, which eventually all devolve into tinpot dictatorships. The midwest gets turned into something more like the USA, by a bunch of defectors who use the rejected constitution, and the far west stays in the hands of Mexico.
The book is also an isekai (although it was written before isekai was a term anyone used) where a young politician from our world gets transported to this alternate US to teach him the true meaning of
The rest of the world isn't mentioned at all, although the technology seems to be a couple decades behind, and presumably World War II at least never happened.
It's been a long time since I read it but it wasn't bad. Written in the 70's or 80's, I believe. I can't remember the name at all though.
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I have (as one of my projects I'm doing nothing with) a timeline in progress for the Articles of Confederation not being ratified (and a Napoleonic victory, basically, a sort of inversion where Europe is much more dominated by hegemons but America has a competitive great power system). It's very underused as a topic, for some reason. I call the internal conflicts (inspired by the ones that tore up the Peru-Bolivian Confederation) the "War between the States" (lots of recycled terminology from our timeline, applied to different contexts).
In the North I had New England as a republic with a sort of nationalist proto-progressive thing going on and New York/New Jersey (renamed as Hudson) as a constitutional monarchy under Alexander Hamilton. Between them they war over Vermont which has its own Mormon (that's where the Mormons originated) jihadist insurgency. Rhodes Island is a perilous city-state endangered by them. Pennsylvania-Delaware and Virginia-Maryland (dual states are a common feature of the landscape) are both states, Pennsylvania-Delaware having the closest thing to a "good guy" of the setting but divided up between Quaker, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Scotch hillbilly sectarian interests. Virginia-Maryland much more classical republican in that Jeffersonian type of tradition.
Down South, South Carolina also became a constitutional monarchy (they were very reactionary), and North Carolina went down in flames as a result (historically inspired) of Appalachian insurrectionists, so it wound up partitioned between Carolina and a nation of Washington (nod to Bolivia) more centered on the mountains. Georgia (renamed as Transsavanna) is pretty much the populist republican slavocracy fiddle to Carolina's elitist monarchist slavocracy.
The idea originally came out of a Victoria II mod concept, so I didn't really develop it beyond the "start," but there are ideas I know I want to play with for the American interior. Dividing the Transappalachian East into the following chunks, Great Lakes, Ohio River Valley, Tennessee River, and Deep South, the theaters of colonial competition basically go Hudson - Grand Virginia - Washington - Transsavanna, those corresponding to where each is strongest with spillover conflicts around the borders, with Pennsylvania-Delaware, New England, Rhodes Island, and Carolina being shut out (they have colonial ambitions elsewhere, I was thinking of Rhodes Island even becoming a Belgian Congo analog). On the frontier, the Appalachian people in the North creolize with the Shawnees and other Great Lakes Indians and become an Ohio nation (like the Metis, but much more numerous and politically/military viable).
Down South, competitive pressures make it easier for Indians and statelets to survive and for Blacks and other groups to escape/resist. The Melungeons wind up being much more numerous and in control of the Cumberland Plateau as an isolated analogue to Paraguay. Had a fanciful idea of the genetic disorder that makes the Blue Fugates be blue becoming a trait of royalty/nobility among them. Blacks end up forming a fourth Abrahamic religion and a maroon state in the Ozarks. Backed up by the British (as in OTL), the Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws manage to survive as a protectorate and become a prosperous plantation economy running on convict labor (like Australia), Irish refugees, and Blacks. Small Indian minority in control of a huge White underclass. The Cherokee are basically destroyed and sent fleeing all the way to what in our time was the Sequoyah National Forest (a joke on the name).
Further on the frontier and in the future, I imagined that at some point revolution might sever the transappalachian "territories" from the homeland states, and European settlers could easily carve out states within the interior on their own, particularly German-speaking settler states on the Plains, which Plains nomads would put up a much stronger but still doomed fight against. The Bourbons, both French and Spanish, maintain a government-in-exile in New Spain, Louisiana, and Florida and are considerably more stable (the closest thing to a United States). I picture a huge Chinese population in the West, and in the Oregon Country possibly New Englander colonies, not necessarily ones capable of surviving British encroachment. I figure Carolina would eventually go down in flames as Haiti 2.0.
In Europe and the broader world, the British, Portugal-Brazil, Russia, and Ottomans (Concert of Europe) are cast as a more colonial and fringe competitor to the Continental System. Napoleonic Europe is severely threatened by constant nationalist revolts, revolutionaries, and other such, and it eventually goes down in burning flames as part of (probably early) world war. In the alt-Cold War (Great Game), I had some idea of shaking up which non-European states survive and which don't (like more of China, Persia, or Japan being colonized but parts of India and Africa escaping).
For all the stuff I've come up with for the setting, though, I have no actual plot. I was thinking it could be something focused on a travel writer or drifter (like Walk Across America), something that explores the setting not through big political events or war or like but from the view of daily life in the world that's been created.
Edit: Extra fun wacky event idea: Maryland Crusade, Irish-Americans persecuted by New England WASP nationalists mount a crusade to conquer Maryland and restore it to its intended purpose as a Catholic state, possibly result in American Papal State.
In the long run, the basic cultural units of Anglo-America, specific names for which I don't have, are New Englander, Bayfolk (a term I'm stealing from After the End to describe people around New York City), Delawarean, Appalachian, Chesapeake, and Carolinian. These will diverge in identity in the same way Spanish America did. This makes Hudson a powderkeg since the New Englander nationalist agenda is going to be a huge problem in the Upstate and Long Island, while Pennsylvania-Delaware is much less nationalist but will still aggravate New Jersey's Delawarean population. In Pennsylvania-Delaware the Deitsch and the Quakers (or whatever their ancestors call themselves, maybe "ethnic" Pennsylvanians) are going to generally have interests that align against the Appalachians, and if an Appalachian nationalism forms around Washington, that's a huge problem for both Pennsylvania-Delaware and Virginia.
Historically, the Revolutions of 1848 played a big role in pushing Germans to America. In this timeline, revolts against the Continental System are probably going to drive people like Spaniards to New Spain (possibly resulting in a stronger Spanish hold on what in our time was the Southwest) and people like Dutch, Italians, and Germans to the American interior. I have some ideas about a great revolt of the serfs in Russia, having a large-scale Cossack mass migration to the Plains would be really fun.
Something I didn't mention was that I also have the idea of a Dutch government-in-exile controlling the East Indies and maybe never losing South Africa so a little Concert of Europe-aligned Dutch Indian Ocean empire is a big player there. New Spain keeps the Philippines and I don't know if I want France, Britain, or neither to be the dominant player in India, I kind of like the idea of India being competitive ground. I also like the idea of at least one African state, maybe Madagascar, pulling a Meiji Restoration and becoming a serious competitor.
One idea I was toying with for New Spain (because I'm a big fan of colonial empires going native) is that the Spanish Crown, in America, takes its status as Protector of the Indians seriously while retaining its own Spanish character, polarizing Mexico into a much more indigenous and a much more European cultures which are aligned against the castizo Mexicano middle/planter class.
Down South, South Carolina also became a constitutional monarchy (they were very reactionary), and North Carolina went down in flames as a result (historically inspired) of Appalachian insurrectionists, so it wound up partitioned between Carolina and a nation of Washington (nod to Bolivia) more centered on the mountains. Georgia (renamed as Transsavanna) is pretty much the populist republican slavocracy fiddle to Carolina's elitist monarchist slavocracy.
The idea originally came out of a Victoria II mod concept, so I didn't really develop it beyond the "start," but there are ideas I know I want to play with for the American interior. Dividing the Transappalachian East into the following chunks, Great Lakes, Ohio River Valley, Tennessee River, and Deep South, the theaters of colonial competition basically go Hudson - Grand Virginia - Washington - Transsavanna, those corresponding to where each is strongest with spillover conflicts around the borders, with Pennsylvania-Delaware, New England, Rhodes Island, and Carolina being shut out (they have colonial ambitions elsewhere, I was thinking of Rhodes Island even becoming a Belgian Congo analog). On the frontier, the Appalachian people in the North creolize with the Shawnees and other Great Lakes Indians and become an Ohio nation (like the Metis, but much more numerous and politically/military viable).
Down South, competitive pressures make it easier for Indians and statelets to survive and for Blacks and other groups to escape/resist. The Melungeons wind up being much more numerous and in control of the Cumberland Plateau as an isolated analogue to Paraguay. Had a fanciful idea of the genetic disorder that makes the Blue Fugates be blue becoming a trait of royalty/nobility among them. Blacks end up forming a fourth Abrahamic religion and a maroon state in the Ozarks. Backed up by the British (as in OTL), the Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws manage to survive as a protectorate and become a prosperous plantation economy running on convict labor (like Australia), Irish refugees, and Blacks. Small Indian minority in control of a huge White underclass. The Cherokee are basically destroyed and sent fleeing all the way to what in our time was the Sequoyah National Forest (a joke on the name).
Further on the frontier and in the future, I imagined that at some point revolution might sever the transappalachian "territories" from the homeland states, and European settlers could easily carve out states within the interior on their own, particularly German-speaking settler states on the Plains, which Plains nomads would put up a much stronger but still doomed fight against. The Bourbons, both French and Spanish, maintain a government-in-exile in New Spain, Louisiana, and Florida and are considerably more stable (the closest thing to a United States). I picture a huge Chinese population in the West, and in the Oregon Country possibly New Englander colonies, not necessarily ones capable of surviving British encroachment. I figure Carolina would eventually go down in flames as Haiti 2.0.
In Europe and the broader world, the British, Portugal-Brazil, Russia, and Ottomans (Concert of Europe) are cast as a more colonial and fringe competitor to the Continental System. Napoleonic Europe is severely threatened by constant nationalist revolts, revolutionaries, and other such, and it eventually goes down in burning flames as part of (probably early) world war. In the alt-Cold War (Great Game), I had some idea of shaking up which non-European states survive and which don't (like more of China, Persia, or Japan being colonized but parts of India and Africa escaping).
For all the stuff I've come up with for the setting, though, I have no actual plot. I was thinking it could be something focused on a travel writer or drifter (like Walk Across America), something that explores the setting not through big political events or war or like but from the view of daily life in the world that's been created.
Edit: Extra fun wacky event idea: Maryland Crusade, Irish-Americans persecuted by New England WASP nationalists mount a crusade to conquer Maryland and restore it to its intended purpose as a Catholic state, possibly result in American Papal State.
In the long run, the basic cultural units of Anglo-America, specific names for which I don't have, are New Englander, Bayfolk (a term I'm stealing from After the End to describe people around New York City), Delawarean, Appalachian, Chesapeake, and Carolinian. These will diverge in identity in the same way Spanish America did. This makes Hudson a powderkeg since the New Englander nationalist agenda is going to be a huge problem in the Upstate and Long Island, while Pennsylvania-Delaware is much less nationalist but will still aggravate New Jersey's Delawarean population. In Pennsylvania-Delaware the Deitsch and the Quakers (or whatever their ancestors call themselves, maybe "ethnic" Pennsylvanians) are going to generally have interests that align against the Appalachians, and if an Appalachian nationalism forms around Washington, that's a huge problem for both Pennsylvania-Delaware and Virginia.
Historically, the Revolutions of 1848 played a big role in pushing Germans to America. In this timeline, revolts against the Continental System are probably going to drive people like Spaniards to New Spain (possibly resulting in a stronger Spanish hold on what in our time was the Southwest) and people like Dutch, Italians, and Germans to the American interior. I have some ideas about a great revolt of the serfs in Russia, having a large-scale Cossack mass migration to the Plains would be really fun.
Something I didn't mention was that I also have the idea of a Dutch government-in-exile controlling the East Indies and maybe never losing South Africa so a little Concert of Europe-aligned Dutch Indian Ocean empire is a big player there. New Spain keeps the Philippines and I don't know if I want France, Britain, or neither to be the dominant player in India, I kind of like the idea of India being competitive ground. I also like the idea of at least one African state, maybe Madagascar, pulling a Meiji Restoration and becoming a serious competitor.
One idea I was toying with for New Spain (because I'm a big fan of colonial empires going native) is that the Spanish Crown, in America, takes its status as Protector of the Indians seriously while retaining its own Spanish character, polarizing Mexico into a much more indigenous and a much more European cultures which are aligned against the castizo Mexicano middle/planter class.
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PS1gamenwatch
kiwifarms.net
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- Oct 26, 2015
What if Canada took the British Carribean?
Imagine Canada having teir own Hawaii
Imagine Canada having teir own Hawaii
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- May 14, 2019
Outside of HOI4 having it as a hidden joke path for Poland, has anybody ever written something where a False Anastasia overthrows the Soviet Union? It's retarded but it's got a grip on my mind because there were so many False Dmitris and Peters running around, even recently, that it's stupid but still has some real world allusion to it. To make this a bit more specific, let's say that Trotsky wins the power struggle in the Soviet Union, acts like a tard with antagonizing his neighbors, and it results in the Intermarium forming and going in to kick their ass and install False Anastasia (Anna Anderson/Franziska Schanzkowska) as a stabilizing puppet?
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- Aug 1, 2019
@Ughubughughughughughghlug One issue I noticed with your big summary of your setting (which I can't quote for some reason) is that the Mormons didn't start in Vermont. They started in the New York countryside, but got big in Missouri and moved to Illinois where they really built up their infrastructure (the first Mormon temple is there, although no longer operational) before most of them left for Utah.
In both Missouri and Illinois they had a lot of clashes with other people in the states. In Missouri the governor outright ordered them driven out of the state, and in Illinois their first prophet was arrested and then shot through the prison window by a mob. That's why most of them fled all the way to Utah. Once there weren't enough to be a political threat in Missouri and Illinois, the other locals calmed down and mostly stopped caring about the ones who stayed behind (even though technically the order to drive them out was still in effect in Missouri until like the 1980's or something, LoL).
If you wanted to do an alt-hist where they never go west and become a radical religious element, I think Illinois is the most natural state for them to bunker down in. That's where they formed their big militia, the Nauvoo Legion. The turning point could be that instead of allowing himself to be arrested peacefully (and then getting killed), their first prophet, Joseph Smith, decides to declare holy war on whichever government controls the Illinois territory. If the states are divided in this timeline, that could also make more sense, since he'd be fighting a smaller foe than the US government in our timeline.
In both Missouri and Illinois they had a lot of clashes with other people in the states. In Missouri the governor outright ordered them driven out of the state, and in Illinois their first prophet was arrested and then shot through the prison window by a mob. That's why most of them fled all the way to Utah. Once there weren't enough to be a political threat in Missouri and Illinois, the other locals calmed down and mostly stopped caring about the ones who stayed behind (even though technically the order to drive them out was still in effect in Missouri until like the 1980's or something, LoL).
If you wanted to do an alt-hist where they never go west and become a radical religious element, I think Illinois is the most natural state for them to bunker down in. That's where they formed their big militia, the Nauvoo Legion. The turning point could be that instead of allowing himself to be arrested peacefully (and then getting killed), their first prophet, Joseph Smith, decides to declare holy war on whichever government controls the Illinois territory. If the states are divided in this timeline, that could also make more sense, since he'd be fighting a smaller foe than the US government in our timeline.
PipTheAlchemist
kiwifarms.net
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I had Vermont in mind because it was where Smith’s family was from the border area there, and then instead of getting driven out the religion fuses with Vermont nationalism. So if they hadn’t moved it would make sense.
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He didn't start the religion till he went to New York though. He was just a little kid in Vermont, and never talked about golden plates there. Supposedly the religious revival in New York at the time played a key role in Mormonism becoming a thing. He definitely met some key players there (Martin Harris funded the printing of the book, as well as their move to Pennsylvania where Smith met Sidney Rigdon, who might've helped him write the thing). You can do what you like with your own alt-hist, obviously, but Vermont just doesn't work as well for a plausible Mormon insurrection story unless the Mormonism is going to be drastically different (to the point it might not even be called Mormonism), IMHO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith
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Team Yankee i heard was pretty good.
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Red Army, by Ralph Peters. Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe. It's very well done and, unlike most WW3 treatments, the commiebloc wins. It's presented almost entirely through Soviet eyes, also very different from most WW3 books, and the Soviet commanders actually make intelligent tactical and strategic decisions, which is almost unique in WW3 novels.
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Several factors: much of NATO's operational forces were forced into German cities by the Soviet offensive, which were then surrounded and bypassed, thus serving as effective hostages to discourage tactical nuke use by NATO; and the West German leadership decided that, actually, red was better than dead. Basically, a loss of political will combined with the reality that NATO's operational striking force could be quite easily destroyed in reprisal, leaving NATO with no conventional forces in a post-nuclear battlefield environment. It was quite elegantly done, actually, tying back in to the aforementioned intelligent strategic and tactical decisions by the Soviet military leadership. NATO forces, after the cease-fire, were withdrawn across the Rhine with any operational equipment. There are suggestions at the very end that the Americans, in particular, did not consider the war over, possibly transitioning to a Pacific phase.
It's really a very good read.
Fortunato Brown
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I'm sure it's fun but seems extremely outdated. I think seeing the Soviets struggle to crush the Chechens was a realization that we really never had all that much to fear from them in conventional terms.
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Agreed, and the author himself points out in the afterword that he was assuming that lots of things go just right for the Warsaw Pact for the sake of the story. I think that it was written pre-First Gulf War, when no one really knew just how shitty commiebloc military equipment was and how good NATO military tech was.
In other words, it's very outdated, yes.
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- May 14, 2019
I looked up both books and apparently they're right there with Red Storm Rising in having the war be over in like a week and revolving around Germany. Why do they all do this? Did armchair generals think in that time period that every war would be a Six Days War? Is it cut short out of necessity to wriggle out of having nuclear total war?
WW3 doesn't have to mean goofy Red Dawn scenarios but there's like this huge gap where either everything is a wargame played out between the Rhine and the Oder, in days instead of years, and barely qualifies for a general European war, or is goofery where the Soviets march into the White House. There's nothing I've found of a scale between the two like the first two world wars.
WW3 doesn't have to mean goofy Red Dawn scenarios but there's like this huge gap where either everything is a wargame played out between the Rhine and the Oder, in days instead of years, and barely qualifies for a general European war, or is goofery where the Soviets march into the White House. There's nothing I've found of a scale between the two like the first two world wars.
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That was the Russians (not the entire USSR) in the mid-90s when the country had practically collapsed and the military suffered from innumerable purges and budget cuts. Several years later when Russia had somewhat recovered, the Russians came back and did a far, far better job.
Probably because the actual Soviet plan was called Seven Days to the River Rhine. The full details weren't known until the 90s, but western intelligence accurately speculated on Soviet aims.
The reality of modern warfare is that full-on wars will end quickly barring situations like one side deliberately holding back for whatever purpose and incompetence on the part of generals (Russia in Ukraine is dealing with both) or terrain (Iran-Iraq was both incompetence, terrain issues, and shitty tech on both sides). World War II amply demonstrated all of this where Poland lost in a week, France lost in 6 weeks, and the USSR probably would have been defeated in a year had German logistics been better. And that's with primitive 20s-40s era tech. City sieges are an exception since a city nowadays is like a medieval castle.
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Also basically it was less than a week until REFORGER got to Europe and deployed and it was widely thought that the fresh American reinforcements would sweep aside the exhausted Soviet Forces, or at least that was the hope, plus literally all the air assets coverging on the ETO would have made DS look like a 4th of Julay celebration, hell Operation Reforger was basically the entire plot of Red Storm Rising.