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Would it be enough to prevent the rise of the Severans? Or were the causes deeper then that? And, if it could be prevented, how much difference would it make to the Crisis of the Third Century, assuming the plagues and barbarian invasions still happen roughly as IOTL?

I don't know much about Roman history (yet - I'm learning!), but I've been listening to Mike Duncan's History of Rome podcast. I've just gotten to the Severan dynasty, and he mentioned what sounded like an interesting PoD. Clodius Albinus, commander of the Legions in Britain during...

The Teton Dam was an earthen dam built by the US Bureau of Reclamation in Idaho, and which sprang a leak and ultimately collapsed as it was being filled for the first time, inundating the towns of Wilford and Sugar City and severely damaging several others. A subsequent investigation...

What the title says. There was more then one opportunity for the whole project to have come out in the open twenty years before it did, usually in relation to lawsuits. For example, there was at least one subject at a mental institution who died as a result of an overdose of an experimental...

Now, I want to make it clear upfront that I do not believe in Little Green Men flying around probing cattle. But a lot of Americans do - 36% according to a recent poll. And even more - about 80% - believe the government has hidden information about UFO's. IOTL, there have been...

At first glance, it's almost surprising there hasn't been a terror attack motivated by UFO beliefs. There's no shortage of UFO believers who think that either aliens, the government, or the two of them together are plotting to either kill us all or enslave us all. If (you believe that) the...

I don't know enough chemistry to tell if this is plausible, but could nerve gases have been invented during World War I? If they were, what effect would this have on the war?

This is, I realize, a tall order. But a potentially very interesting one. Obviously, the Russians aren't in a position to contribute materially, not while they're busy kicking the Germans out of the motherland. They had a lot of excellent physicists, who could be valuable to Los Alamos...

How plausible are Soviet reconnaissance overflights of the US? I don't mean playing games with RADARs in Alaska, I mean actual overflights of the CONUS, a la the United States' U-2 and A-12. I know the usual argument is that, since the Soviets had the KGB, and later recon satellites, they...

In February, 1969, the US Navy lowered SeaLab III, their third underwater habitat, into the waters off San Clemente Island. This was supposed to be the deepest, longest dive in the SeaLab project. Tragically, however, aquanaut Berry L. Cannon died while attempting to open the habitat...

On October 27th of 1948, a temperature inversion over the town of Donora, Pennsylvania trapped hydrogen fluorine and other gases from a nearby zinc plant over the town. For four days a thick smog covered the city, ultimately killing 20 people and sickening thousands more, until a rain on the...

A companion to an earlier thread... In his Memoirs, Edward Teller claims he originally planned to testify in favor of Oppenheimer at his hearing. In fact, he claims he only changed his mind the very day he testified, after learning of Oppenheimer's behavior in the Chevalier incident - and...

I've been reading Edward Teller's Memoirs, and came across an interesting passage. Apparently Ernest Lawrence was originally planning to testify at Oppenheimer's security hearings, but was unable to do so due to an attack of a chronic digestive disorder. Lawrence was pretty right-wing - he...

Back in the '60s there was speculation that hippies and other no-goodniks might dump LSD in the water supply to "turn on" a whole city at once. From a bit of Googling, it looks to me like LSD wouldn't work; you'd need literally tons of the stuff, and it tends to break down fast when it's in...

Remember this is an approval poll, so you may vote for multiple entries. Rumsfeldia: Fear and Loathing in the Decade of Tears by Drew Zhirinovsky's Russian Empire by Pellegrino Shots Agent Lavender: The Flight of Harold Wilson by Lord Roem and Meadow That Wacky Redhead by Brainbin Dirty...

(READ BEFORE VOTING!) Remember that this is an Approval Voting poll, which means you may vote for multiple choices. Down the Road to Defeat: The 1952 US Presidential Election and Beyond by The Red The Biden Express by Whanztastic Jesus Walks: A History of the War on Terror, 1979-1992 by...

I'm reading I Am Providence, S. T. Joshi's landmark (and gargantuan) biography of H. P. Lovecraft, and he mentions that in 1933 an editor at Knopf aprpoached Lovecraft about publishing an anthology of stories. Joshi says this is "probably the closest Lovecraft ever came to having a book...

Just curious. Is there any evidence the Soviets ever gave serious consideration, even on a theoretical level, to landing troops on American soil? Something more than just Spetsnaz guys. I'm thinking of anything from Red Dawn to landing paratroopers in Alaska to draw off American forces...

Despite being such a potent symbol of the early Cold War, relatively few bomb shelters were ever actually built in the United States. After 1960, the program appears to have settled on the idea of evacuating city dwellers to the countryside over several weeks and housing them in a mix of...

I'm not entirely sure this is plausible, but hear me out. Let's suppose the gaseous diffusion program in the Manhattan Project isn't able to come up with a suitable barrier material. Even if they still build the thermal diffusion and electromagnetic plants, that's not going to make enough...