How do ASB OTL events even happen?

[von kressenstein]

Originally Posted by I Blame Communism

Bah! Humbug!



Besides the fact that the Americans had the same basis of military technology as us, there were other people involved. One miserably isolated power being beaten by a coalition of several other powers supporting rebels within its empire? ASB! Or not.



So everything was just top of the world as of 1985?



A moment ago we were told that it's ASB when countries do become world superpowers. Make up your minds!



Until root-crops and fire-arms, there was very little sedentary peoples could do about a well-organised, well-led nomad horde but wait for it to blow over. The Mongols were not the first, or even quite the last.



And would the things available in the 1890s - effectively instanteous communications, say - not have seemed quite astonishing 120 years before that?

Technology sometimes goes back but mostly forward, and like hell had things changed little since Rome. They had witnessed the creation of the world economy. The really transformative decades were the 1840s-70s, and they didn't spring from nowhere either.

back in the early 80's i never thought i would see the Soviet Empire crumble...

I would also say that for the most part.. and i will grant you the transformative years part.. since that point.. the technological leaps and bounds that have transpired have been rather remarkable.

one last thing that might seem ASB'ish given our track record as a species.. we havent blown ourselves back to the stone age yet. or unleased some virus that puts us back a few thousand years...

[wcv215]

Originally Posted by von kressenstein

well a bunch of ill equiped rebels winning against the british in the ARW is pretty ASB..

The rebels were about as well equipped in small arms as the British, and spent several years building up to a similiar level in artillery, and other things. Additionally they were operating in largely friendly territory and had the backing of several other pissed off great powers that wanted Britain taken down a peg.

Combine that with a lot of the British's best officers not wanting to fight and a British victory would be a lot closer to ASB.

the collapse of the soviet union.. ASB.

Not really, the USSR was never going to be the superpower that won the Cold War, it was just a matter of how violent the breakup was going to be.

China not being a world super power and held down by colonial interests? ASB.

China had been in decline for a long time, and their technology had been lagging behind Europeans for just as long.

a bunch of dudes on horses from mongolia creating the largest empire ever? ASB..

Their weapons were about as advanced as those of similiar areas, and their tactics were likely more so. Additionally, the Mongols as individual groups had been getting tribute from China for a long time, it isn't inconcievable all of them could conquer it. And the rest of the world had the same attitude you would if you hadn't seen it, these Mongols are backwards, they can't... where did that arrow come from?"

[mrmandias]

A lot of these 'real-life ASBS' only sound ASB if you don't get into the details at all.

Which is a tip for TL writers. If you want something improbable to happen, give it lots of detail.

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by von kressenstein

well a bunch of ill equiped rebels winning against the british in the ARW is pretty ASB.. the collapse of the soviet union.. ASB.. China not being a world super power and held down by colonial interests? ASB.. a bunch of dudes on horses from mongolia creating the largest empire ever? ASB..

and the biggest one of all..

the last 120 years...

the entire species overnight went from a pretty much agrarian society that hadnt changed much since rome.. to automobiles.. powered flight, space travel, nuclear power... real scientific progress in so many fields.. it really is amazing... Computers, the internet.. 120 years ago.. it would have been science fiction...

Yes, if we leave out France, Spain, and the Netherlands in recounting the history of the war.

No, not really, the USSR's collapse was not a guarantee but it preserving itself as an empire as a certain point was only possible if its leaders went over the Francisco Solano Lopez/Pol Pot level of sheer mind-numbing evil.

China was never successfully invaded by anyone, even Japan found itself unable to transform won battles into a won war, and attempting to hold China down for colonial interests is what touched off WWII in 1937.

The Mongols brought an M-16 to a water pistol fight, that's not ASB except in that they had the benefits of an anachronism in their favor.

What? Agrarian society changed plenty since Rome. Western Europe is what happens when the attempt to reconstruct united European empires (Carolingians, Louis XIV, Habsburgs, Napoleon) all fail. By contrast elsewhere big damn empires could and did reconstruct themselves.

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by lookupshootup

Like Gunther Prien's Raid on Scapa Flow.

Or the U.S. and Russia becoming Superpowers.

German skill and British stupidity.

The USA and the USSR becoming superpowers is due to a little thing called WWII, WWII was due to a little thing called the Xinhai Revolution in Asia and the First World War in Europe. The whole thing leveled everything, but only the USSR wound up larger and richer after it in any sense to rival the USA. Question answered.

To be read in a Tommy Lee Jones voice.

[Gosing]

For fundamentally the same reason that a coin, if tossed 10 times, might not land on heads and tailes 5 times each.

At least that's how I always understood it.

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by basileus

The battle of Midway was sheer ASB the way it went. Put it into an AH novel and the world will laugh your ass off.

Not exactly. Now the Battle of Missionary Ridge, OTOH, if put into a novel would be a slam-bang either anti-war novel or deconstruction of military fiction in general.

[Phyrx]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

German skill and British stupidity.

The USA and the USSR becoming superpowers is due to a little thing called WWII, WWII was due to a little thing called the Xinhai Revolution in Asia and the First World War in Europe. The whole thing leveled everything, but only the USSR wound up larger and richer after it in any sense to rival the USA. Question answered.

To be read in a Tommy Lee Jones voice.

But even without WWII, the United States and Russia would still be absolutely massive industrial and economic powers. They might not be unrivaled, but they'd still be in the top tier.

Here's an interesting quote from a book called Democracy in America, which was written by a Frenchman in 1835:

There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and while the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time.

All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and they have only to maintain their power; but these are still in the act of growth. All the others have stopped, or continue to advance with extreme difficulty; these alone are proceeding with ease and celerity along a path to which no limit can be perceived. The American struggles against the obstacles that nature opposes to him; the adversaries of the Russian are men. The former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization with all its arms. The conquests of the American are therefore gained by the plowshare; those of the Russian by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of the people; the Russian centers all the authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting point is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.

[Paul V McNutt]

In the 80s, I expected the Soviet Union to collapse. I did not expect it to happen by 1991.

[Tovarich]

I feel we may be putting the cart before the horse here, and it's simply the case that too many AH.Commers will scream "ASB!" at any TL which doesn't fit their own preconceptions (especially TLs with a political slant!)

[Snake Featherston]

The United States being a Great Power is not ASB. Russia had been one since the Battle of Poltava. It's also not improbable that two powers whose geopolitical anchors are both in and out of Europe will wind up the least-damaged by a general European war.

[Petike]

ASB = impossible events, not improbable events. Nuff' said.

[Fiver]

Originally Posted by IchBinDieKaiser

I'ld like to quote Tom Clancey, "The difference between Fiction and Reality? Fiction has to make sense."

Lord Byron: Truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.
Mark Twain : Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn't.
G. K. Chesterton: Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.

[Timmy811]

The simple fact is that people are not rational, yet most people refuse to accept this.

[Dalmighty]

I think the creation of life on earth would be the most ASB event that has ever happened in our history.

[theman from the ministery]

There is no such thing as ASB IOTL. That said IMO the biggest flaw with Alternate history is that no one can know everything. It’s a bit like being shown

2+2+83 =87*

you can spend your whole academic life studying on country for one era and learn new things about it till the day you die.

And in average TL were trying to cover the whole of human history in a few thousand words with 2 or three years to do it in


So from one point of view every TL here is ASB as no one can possibly look at an event and the butterflies knowing everything



* the 87 is the sum of human history the 2+2 is the amount one person can
learn of it

[mattep74]

Originally Posted by BlondieBC

I have often wonder if Bin Laden or someone near him read the book, and just copied the idea. To go from Clancy's novel idea of a jet into a joint session of congress to a 4 plane attack plan seems quite plausible. The details were changed due to operational issues, more than change in concept.

Well, in 99 or 2000 i played a game called world i crisis by a guy called skinny puppy. It was a pbm emailgame and it was either ww1. ww2 or present day. I was in one of the modern variants and played as a terroristgroup. I wanted to highjack airliners with boxknifes and fly them into the white house and other targets, but the security on the airports was to good.

[Brady Kj]

I got a question. How did nuclear attacks make Japan so friendly to the US?

[Mikestone8]

Originally Posted by Petike

ASB = impossible events, not improbable events. Nuff' said.

True, but there have been real events which might well seem ASB if they hadn't happened.

Frex, if Napoleon's career had been described to an historian in 1750, he would probably have dismissed it as anachronistic. "You're just inventing a super-Wallenstein, but that doesn't happen nowadays. Individual soldiers of fortune can't take over entire states any more."

Similarly, would anyone have believed in Bismarck had he been fictional. "No absolute monarch would let himself be under a minister's thumb that way - and certainly not an Hohenzollern. That's not the way it works in Prussia".

[corditeman]

My twopenn'orth is as follows :-

Possible : Anything permitted by the physical laws and following a causal chain of events, cannot be ASB.

Impossible : Any event requiring a change in physical laws and not following a causal chain of events, is ASB.

That argues for geological changes (POD in the nature of millions of years BC) being non-ASB. Harry Potter magic IS ASB.

Naturally, this may make the Unspeakable Sea Mammal possible...

...And the collapse of Chinese industrial dominance...