Steamfission - Abomb in ACW

AH challenge. Have the Atom bomb developed and used as the decisive weapon in the American Civil War. Given a POD at any time from 1700 on. (this last to prevent an entire different world from existing, which would make the ACW, or even America itself, irrelevant)

No, this is not ASB, that's the whole point

Between the ACW and the end of WWII is just about 80 years. I've seen many other ATL where the difference is something or other happening 100 and even several thousands of years sooner. (steam engines in Rome, etc.).

Admittedly, it does seem to be a rather difficult idea, to say the least. The only idea I can contribute is to have John Dalton somehow hook up with Michael Faraday, Gustav Kirchoff, Lord Kelvin, Oersted etc. Does anyone know of precursors to Einstein in the first half of the 19thc

Really sorry, actually, silly idea but if anyone would like to take a shot at it...might be interesting.

Hmmm... Mach came oh so close to relativity in a few papers published in the 1880s. However... I think the PODs needed for this one are so extensive and so remote in time from 1861-65 that an 'America' or an 'ACW' would not/might not exist.

How about just a fission bomb in the 1860s? That should be easier.


Bill

How about just a fission bomb in the 1860s? That should be easier

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Do you mean just a 'dirty bomb' or actual fission like at Hiroshima? Or do you mean a fission bomb after 1865? or not being used? I ask because I can't see how that's any easier (or in fact different) from what I'm proposing.

As long as its not just a DB, go ahead. (I like the idea of BIG explosions, especially at Gettysburg )

NapoleonXIV said:

Do you mean just a 'dirty bomb' or actual fission like at Hiroshima? Or do you mean a fission bomb after 1865? or not being used? I ask because I can't see how that's any easier (or in fact different) from what I'm proposing.

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Nappy,

I am suggesting that you can spin enough POds to have a real, fission, boom-boom type, Fat Man and/or Little Boy bomb by 1865.

I am also suggesting that the PODs you use to make atomic weapons exist in 1865 also mean that there might not be an 'America' or an 'ACW' as we know them.

The changes made in scientific knowledge and industrial capabilities for an 1865 bomb will also ensure great changes in your ATL society from the OTL 1865.

To keep my example simple, try this thought experiment. You mention that only 80 years separated 1865 and 1945, so to have 1945 OTL 'Hiroshima' tech in your ATL 1865, let's dial back 80 years and give OTL 1865 'Appomatox" tech to your ATL's 1785. Sound easy enough? Good, let's go...

Dialing back our 'tech' in the way I propose means that the ARW (if it is fought as all) was fought with Minie balls, percussion caps, repeating carbines, ironclads, railroads, and telegraphs. It means that the Napoleonic Wars (if they're fought at all) are fought with all of that plus gatling guns. It means that parts of the western world are already industrialized. It means factories, the 'American' system of intechangeable parts, lots of steam engines, increased literacy, lots of big cities, etc., etc., etc.

Can you see why an 1865 bomb most likley means no 'USA' and no 'ACW'? Or at least no 'USA' or 'ACW' as we know them?


Bill

Well the Curies and Radium was in the 1890's. so you have to push Radium back to the 1800's, X rays to the 1810's & Sub Atomic Theory idea to the 1820's

I think this is as bad as my Crimea War Aircraft Carrier Challenge.

DuQuense said:

Well the Curies and Radium was in the 1890's. so you have to push Radium back to the 1800's, X rays to the 1810's & Sub Atomic Theory idea to the 1820's

I think this is as bad as my Crimea War Aircraft Carrier Challenge.

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If someone had built a pulsejet or ramjet propellor type aircraft, you could have had a twenty mile range box kite type air craft (and carrier) in 1856. But a nuke in the Civil War demands both a tremendous boost for science that does not get rid of slavery by getting rid of cotton with rayon and boll weevils and such. I mean, you need good polymers to handle UF6, so how can you avoid artificial fibers?
Maybe a major epidemic makes human labor very scarce? Possibly use of plague as a weapon kills enough people that slaves are still valuable.
Of course, the civil war could be fought over something other than slavery, but what would cause America to be so bitter about something that they would fight a major war over it?
Fifty thousand people lived in Richmond at the beginning of the war. What would piss off the North enough that they would kill fifty thousand people?

I will point out that in 1967 Ronald Clark wrote a book precisely about this WI. Its titled Queen Victoria's Bomb. The library I work at happens to have a copy of it and I flipped through it. The main character is a scientist, and along with this assistant, build an atomic bomb in the 1840s. Its tested in an isolated area of India, tho nobody believes that it went off tho it laid waste to a vaste area - the authorities believe it was struck by lightning which set off a forest fire. There is also a plan to use it against Sevastopol during the Crimean War.

In Eric Davin's 'Avenging Angel' the Confederates enlist the aid of many prominent European scientists, including Mach, to build a long range rocket that they launch at Washington D.C. The rocket hits the capitol during Lincoln's second inaugeral and kills him and hundreds others. The only cabinet member not there is Secretary of War Stanton who succeeds to the Presidency and leads to the sacking of Richmond and a harsh Reconstruction.

I think ACW US or CS building an atom bomb to be close to impossible, tho I wouldn't rule out any of the Great Powers of Europe - such as Britain, France or Russia possibly figuring it out.

David S Poepoe said:

I will point out that in 1967 Ronald Clark wrote a book precisely about this WI. Its titled Queen Victoria's Bomb. The library I work at happens to have a copy of it and I flipped through it. The main character is a scientist, and along with this assistant, build an atomic bomb in the 1840s. Its tested in an isolated area of India, tho nobody believes that it went off tho it laid waste to a vaste area - the authorities believe it was struck by lightning which set off a forest fire. There is also a plan to use it against Sevastopol during the Crimean War.

In Eric Davin's 'Avenging Angel' the Confederates enlist the aid of many prominent European scientists, including Mach, to build a long range rocket that they launch at Washington D.C. The rocket hits the capitol during Lincoln's second inaugeral and kills him and hundreds others. The only cabinet member not there is Secretary of War Stanton who succeeds to the Presidency and leads to the sacking of Richmond and a harsh Reconstruction.

I think ACW US or CS building an atom bomb to be close to impossible, tho I wouldn't rule out any of the Great Powers of Europe - such as Britain, France or Russia possibly figuring it out.

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A problem I have with the 1865 fission bomb, is that an a-bomb is not just an extrapolation of mechanical and physical laws known at the time (like a Crimean aircraft carrier would be), but is competely unimaginable without a completely new physical model. Inventions in the mid 1800's were not based on mathematical constructs but operational experiments. I can imagine an extremely imaginative, aggressive and hardworking set of inventors with unlimited funds coming up, through trial and error, with airplanes, cars, submarines, tanks. airships, and even rockets to the moon in the 1860's. I find it had to see how technical wizardry and money would make anyone want to smash lumps of uranium together at high speed to see what would happen over and over again until they got the proportions right.

I tend to agree with Bill that to have an atomic bomb invented by "1865", you'd have to go so far back in time that, not only would the USA and the ACW probably not exist, but that a calendar with a date "1865" on it corresponding to the time the ACW was waging in our TL is unlikely

Anti - Ice

Steve Baxter wrote a book in the 1990s about a 19th Century Atom bomb made from a substance called Anti ice, later on Gladstone launches a rocket to try to stop the Franco Prussian war. Not a bad book, and my first AH Novel i read

zoomar said:

I tend to agree with Bill that to have an atomic bomb invented by "1865", you'd have to go so far back in time that, not only would the USA and the ACW probably not exist, but that a calendar with a date "1865" on it corresponding to the time the ACW was waging in our TL is unlikely

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I too would agree. In doing research for my Egyptian timeline, I discovered that basic atomic theory which could have lead to an atomic bomb existed as early as the 5th Century BC. But until the early 20th century the scientific equipment to test those theories and put them into practice did not exist. And the process leading up to the invention of the devices which allowed such testing took about 200 years in OTL. So to have an atomic bomb, you have to dramatically speed up technological development by about 250 years, which is going to create so many butterflies that there probably won't even be a United States where the ACW would occur.

Well given the amount of industrial power required it is VERY unlikely that the South would have had it.

Just what MILITARY use would nuclear weapons be in the context of that war?

Hmm...so I guess my further idea, about having Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse develop it just before Custer is going to be really difficult

I suppose you're right but I wonder... the Manhattan Project was indeed a technological big deal but a lot of the info that they went into the project with was from guys working on shoestring budgets in little labs. Einstein didn't have any equipment at all.

Well, ok, a lot also was from a 27 inch cyclotron about the size of a Sherman tank but you know what I mean.

The ASB Route to 1860 A Bomb

From My-- CF and the ASBs-- Thread

Firestorm


Realizing that almost everything he has tried so far has caused major changes in the South. CF decides to go for Broke. Purchasing ten 20 megaton H Bombs on the Black Market.

Going back to 1860 the day before the Novembre Election, CF places one bomb in the Centre of the ten largest cities in the North, NY, Brooklyn, Boston ,Philly, Baltimore, Cleavland, Pittsburgh.

They go off at 3 am Tuesday morning, lowering the population by 7 million, near equalizing the two sections, & removing the north's industrial advantage.

Due to the speed of communication at the time, most of the country votes before the news is known.

President Douglass takes office in March with the solid backing of the southern dominated congress. The next four years are spent in Rebuilding the unexplained destroyed north, and there isn't any ACW.

Almost no one cares when the Western States are all opened to Slavery, and when the issue raises it head again in the 1870's the Slave owning states have a large majority in congress.
__________________

why not confederate zepplins and poison gas?

NapoleonXIV said:

AH challenge. Have the Atom bomb developed and used as the decisive weapon in the American Civil War. Given a POD at any time from 1700 on. (this last to prevent an entire different world from existing, which would make the ACW, or even America itself, irrelevant)

No, this is not ASB, that's the whole point

Between the ACW and the end of WWII is just about 80 years. I've seen many other ATL where the difference is something or other happening 100 and even several thousands of years sooner. (steam engines in Rome, etc.).

Admittedly, it does seem to be a rather difficult idea, to say the least. The only idea I can contribute is to have John Dalton somehow hook up with Michael Faraday, Gustav Kirchoff, Lord Kelvin, Oersted etc. Does anyone know of precursors to Einstein in the first half of the 19thc

Really sorry, actually, silly idea but if anyone would like to take a shot at it...might be interesting.

Click to expand...

You would need a POD before 1700 if you don't want this ATL to be an ASB. Not only was the A bomb 1945 technology but bleeding edge 1945 technology. There are too many scientific and technological changes need in order to do it. You need changes in atomic theory, metalurgy, precision engineering etc. to do it. Too many changes in that short of a time.

What about an accidental discovery during the ARW that Urainium is a viable power source (or should I say during the first Ind. Revolution. ) In just fourty years the Atomic bomb was come up with from the discovery of that fact.

I did read a speculative TL once based on Isaac Newton focusing more on his work with prisms and accidentally discovering spectroscopy, with the result that after 15 years with slow centrifuges Britain has the bomb in 1750 and uses it to blow Paris off the map in the Seven Years' War...

Not particularly plausible, but a funky concept!

That sounds very cool Thande

I think it was on changingthetimes.co.uk but it was a bit vague.

But the idea is, indeed, very cool.

Would it make it easier if you had the war drag on longer...stalemate type situation - giving military technology a chance to catch up?