"What Madness Is This?" - A Timeline

Great section, John! And it's especially weird thinking of one of the characters dying in 1998. This TL began in the 1700s. :D

Oh, just destroy the world. Hope has completely died.

Hope is lost in the Americas. But on the bright side Europe is still somewhat better, the Prussians aren't as insane as the Alt. Americans.

Also, the man in the picture looks like he's looking AT you. Its fucking creepy

Definitely, Warpath. If anything, Europe (minus Russia and the chaotic, lawless British Isles) might be close to never going to war with itself again. They've realized the futility of modern warfare and how the old Enlightenment-era "Gentleman's War" is completely over.

And yes, I was amazed at the creepiness of the picture. :D

oh, i can hear the church bells tolling for the doom of the world. this. is. AWESOME. :D:D:D:D

Thanks, Tim! :D

also gonna make a chapter about the Union campaign in the Caribbean and Peru after they use the NUS use the Flu in the continent after all you don't want possible enemies in your own continent

Actually, NUSA may currently be satisfied to let the Caribbean go for the time being. The nations they are already occupying are a huge amount of territory, and dealing with an island-hopping, amphibious invasion of the Caribbean is the last thing they need to do. Oswald's army has extremely low morale at this point, and he doesn't want to risk them ever turning against him. :eek: Peru will probably also be left for now, as a similar campaign would need to waged against their Pacific holdings.

Napo is the George RR Martin of AH. Everything we love dies and burns

That is the most epic thing I've ever been compared to in any way. :D
 
Thanks for the compliments, guys. :D This chapter below is the best in a long while, IMO, so you'll really enjoy it.

"A CURE FOR THE BETTERS OF SOCIETY"
THE SCOTTISH INFLUENZA VACCINE PROGRAM AND OPERATION EXPATRIATE
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1958 portrait of Charles Goodyear III, owner and CEO of Colonel Goodyear Vaccines


Goodyear: "It is my personal view, Mr. President, that we use this Plague as a weapon to further our Manifest Destiny."

Oswald: "What do you mean, precisely, Mr. Goodyear?"

Goodyear: "I mean, Your Excellency, that we vaccinate those we deem to be the Fittest and, of course, anyone serving in our government. The Inferiors and anarchists would, obviously, be left to die. Much faster and much less difficult than our old plans for total sterilization of the Inferiors."

Oswald: "Will there be enough vaccine to go around?"

Goodyear: "Quite. Goodyear Enterprises, once Goldberg and his minions finish inventing a cure, can begin creating 100,000 doses a week in our Shicagwa laboratories. If we... push... the workers hard enough, we could get it up to 150,000. And that's just in that one facility."

Oswald: "Very well, Colonel. You have my approval of this plan. I'll get in touch with ORRA and the National Guard. Goldberg tells me his boys are about to make a major breakthrough. At least those captured Southron scientists have been making themselves useful, even if we do have to have to point a gun at their heads every now and again."

Goodyear "Yes, sir. But some of them are just as mad as Goldberg. My experiences with men of science almost always make me believe them to be lunatics. Gifted lunatics with an enormous amount of knowledge, but lunatics nonetheless."

-Audio recording of a conversation between President Charles Oswald and Colonel Charles Goodyear III, dated November 15th, 1958

***

In the weeks following the end of the Siege of Atlanta, the Office of Racial and Religious Affairs (ORRA) put into effect "Operation Expatriate," a long-planned secret mission to capture Southron scientists and press them into service to the United States. The operation had been largely underway following the Fall of Richmond, but many of the Virginian scientists had fled to the deep south and escaped. The same happened with the Carolinian scientists. Finally, however, they started to be captured in droves in Georgia. On August 3rd, 1958, NUSA special forces captured the supposedly-secret Georgian underground scientific facility in Birmingham, the "South's Capital of Science." Some of the scientists had escaped just in time, but others found themselves suddenly on a one-way train to the laboratories of Midas Goldberg.

Perhaps the most interesting and insane of all the Southron scientists captured under Operation Expatriate was Dr. Thor von Koehler. Born to wealthy parents in Austria-Hungary in 1918, he eventually was moved to Virginia as a scientific exchange student of sorts in 1939. A brilliant but oddball figure in the Newport News Academy of Medicine and the Sciences, he built a reputation as one of the most able-minded doctors there, helping cure several common diseases and making several huge developments in the creation of what would later become the computer and the Ultra-Network. But things took a turn for the militaristic when he was requested by the House of Burgesses to invent weapons and bomb-sights in the late 1940s, in the face of growing tension with the Union. When the war broke out in 1955, von Koehler was busy at work in his secret laboratory under the Appalachian Hotel, deep in the mountains of north-western Virginia.

Eventually, following the Union invasion of Virginia, von Koehler found himself fleeing with his equipment and research to the Carolinas. When General Charlotte Baker came down and took over the Confederation, the doctor once again found himself on the road, this time to Birmingham. Following his capture by American special forces during the August 3rd Birmingham Raids, von Koehler was flown north to Shicagwa to meet with Doctor Midas Goldberg at Reeducation Camp 222. The two hit it off quite well, as far as prisoners and captors can be concerned. In the face of huge bribes and the promise of not being shot in the face by ORRA executioners, von Koehler agreed to work for the Union.

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Dr. Thor von Koehler

Quite possibly next to von Koehler in his importance among the scientists captured by America as part of Operation Expatriate was the Georgian genius Gilgamesh Dalton, who was captured by Union spies in southern Florida while trying to escape to Cuba in late August, 1958. Born to a newspaperman in Savannah in 1922, Dalton was solving complex math problems at age six. From 1940 to 1958, Dalton worked on rockets and Georgia's nuclear weapons program. While Dalton made huge headway in the development of a Georgian bomb, it was too little too late, and the nuclear facility fifty miles in the woods outside Savannah was captured by NUSA soldiers on July 28th, 1958. Dalton was a tougher nut for the Union to crack and more loyal to the South than von Koehler, but even that loyalty could not hold up in the face of Oswald personally threatening to murder Dalton's wife and three children if should "persist in being stubbornly anti-American." On September 20th, 1958, Gilgamesh Dalton received his security clearance to work at Camp 222.

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Gilgamesh Dalton

In just a few months of work, Goldberg, von Koehler, Dalton, and the rest of the "NUSA Government Influenza Research Team" did thousands of tests and hours of research. In late November, Goldberg called President Oswald to announce his team was nearing a cure.

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104 members of the NUSA Government Influenza Research Team; 77 of them were Columbia-born men captured or bribed into service during Operation Expatriate

One of the many, many unfortunate things that happened during the research for a cure was the fact that all test vaccines were tried out first on Inferior camp inmates. Over 2,000 inmates died horrifically painful deaths from the tests, and all "failed test subjects" were subject to immediate cremation in the infamous corpse furnaces of Camp 222. At one point, a sample of the virus escaped into general population in the camp exercise yard. Over 500 prisoners were brutally mowed down by guard tower machine guns and then their bodies were burned in the furnaces. Von Koehler said of it, "I feel sorry for them. But sacrifices must be made. All hail."

On December 12th, 1958, Goldberg phoned President Oswald to announce that he had developed a cure. It was over. The Scottish Influenza now had a safe and stable cure. Oswald called the international press together in Philadelphia on December 18th, 1958.

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"Good evening, my fellow Americans. My comrade-patriots. Good evening, mankind. Merry Christmas. Today, I come before you to announce a scientific breakthrough of unprecedented size and scope. For month after month, the world and the people of America have been ravaged by a blight. But now, the New United States of America, the Promised Land of the New Jerusalem, has received yet another blessing from the Lord. We have a cure. The New United States of America will no longer be menaced by this plague. I'm sure other nations are working for a vaccine, as well, such as Prussia, the Tripartite Empire, or the Kingdom of Sweden. But they don't have one. No, NUSA is the only country to have the ability to cure the Scottish Influenza. We are entering the Era of America, the Era of Freedom, the Era of Stability. That's why, as the humble President, Chief Executive Officer, and Commander-in-Chief of America, Defender of its Freedoms and Champion of its Liberties, I find it my humble honor to ask all those citizens of foreign countries who meet our immigration and religious qualifications to come and join us in the building of this New World Order. The Anglo-Saxon-Teutonic American race will be a pan-Protestant, pan-American empire of liberty, with healthy and happy citizens living under the fatherly observance of their God and government, keeping them free from foreign and Inferior subversion and brainwashing. I love the German people. As I said during the War, Ich bin ein Berliner. That's why I'm asking the Prusso-Germanic people to immigrate here, to the United States. The same for the English. The Scottish. The Swedes. Norwegians. Danes. Come and live free of monarchical tyranny and the wrath of God and his Plague. What I say to you, Citizens of the World, is live free or die! All hail!"

Thousands of people all across the United States rushed out into the streets, waved American flags, and chanted, "USA! USA! USA! USA!" again and again for hours. They danced with joy at the prospect of "God wiping out the foreign Inferiors by his own hand" while the Fittest-elect would have a cure. Oswald and Colonel Goodyear III announced that a new nation-wide vaccination program was to begin on Christmas Day, at every "friendly neighborhood ORRA office."

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Colonel Charles Goodyear III doffs his hat to the press as he jubilantly leaves the Presidential Mansion following a meeting with Chuck Oswald

It wasn't long before Reverend-Colonel Billy Graham was proclaiming that:

"The Rapture is upon us! Come, loyal servants of the Lord, into our brotherhood of patriots! We are bringing in the sheaves, and preparing for the establishment of God's Kingdom on Earth. Abandon the sodoms and gomorrahs you currently inhabit. Burn them. Rise up against your imperialistic, papist masters and join the People of these United States in the glory that will come. Be ever-watchful for Satan's attempts to trick you into following the foreign hordes to Hellfire! Conquest has galloped over your countries. He has been joined by his fellow riders, War and Famine. Now Death, too, is upon you! He trots over Berlin, Paris, Delhi, Stockholm, and Cairo! Escape Death! Become an American and survive Armageddon!"

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As i said before, when you make an Earth that could easily be in the 40k universe you make something especial

very good work Napo very good work
 
I hope some spy manages to smuggle out the cure, or that someone else develops one. The NUSA being the only nation that can stop the pluage is just a bad thing.

Nice update.
 
This chapter is what you could call the Atlas Shrugged of this TL. It seems at first like a normal snippet of everyday life in America's cult-church, but quickly slides south into a lengthy rubber-stamping ethnic-cleaning pep-rally and then into a protestor going full Ayn Rand in his public outcry against NUSA tyranny, something so shocking and incomprehensible to the crowd that they let him talk for a minute in what will surely become an infamous speech oft-quoted by those anarchist foreign collaborationists who hate our freedoms and liberty. :p

A MAD AFTERNOON WITH BILLY GRAHAM

"Reverend Billy will save your soul... if it's the last thing you ever do."
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"Are you a sinner and a servant of the Enemy? I think that you're a dirty sinner and a servant of the Enemy. That's what I think. And my patience is waxing thin with you, you left-wing anarchistic Beutelist."

Location: Philadelphia, PA, NUSA
Time: October 30th, 1958

Reverend-Colonel Billy Graham made his way to the pulpit of the AFC Church of Philadelphia. Thousands of people sat, some wearing facemasks or even gasmasks in the hopes of not catching the Scottish Influenza. As the local ORRA color guard positioned the national flags on the stage, the choir sang "What a Friend we have in Jesus."

Billy gave a straight-arm salute to the crowd, and then bowed slightly. Then, he raised his AFC Bible above his head and shouted "To Christ the Glory! There is only one true God, and I am his servant!" He positioned himself behind the pulpit and positioned the various odds and ends that were laying on it. Then, after a short sip of water from a nearby glass, Billy spoke again. "All hail!"

"All hail! All hail! All hail!" screamed the congregation.

"What a friend we have in Jesus, indeed, huh?" Billy said in his typical calm-and-cool voice in which he always began his speeches. "We, the People of America, and America itself, has a friend in Jesus. Isn't it grand? And isn't grand how he has delivered our enemies unto us? Isn't it grand that we have won victory over the Southron usurpers at long last? But how did we win victory over them? How? Was it because we had the most boom-boom sticks? Is it because we nuked a couple sodoms into ash? No, it was God. God Almighty gave us those rifles and atomic bombs. He, through us acting as His righteous instrument of judgement, atomized and disintegrated the Inferiors of Louisville and Rio de Janeiro by the millions. And that's what I want to talk to you about tonight, the power of believing in ourselves and our nation, and of the holy wrath dispensed upon those who have not accepted the true faith or the New Jerusalem.

"Now, when, as a child, you were met with a bully, what did you do? Did you turn the other cheek to his abuse? Did you let him kick you around? Of course not. What you did was you reported him to the local ORRA office, and they saw to him, by golly, didn't they! If you had acted out and knifed that bully right in the throat, like he might have deserved, how would you have felt? Guilty? I should hope not. Murder is killing without cause or out of greed or spite. Without justification. If you had killed him, that would have been God having acted through you to dispatch that miserable little cretin into the Void, never to bully you or anyone else again. That is what brings us to our first point of tonight's sermon: righteous judgement. We could basically wrap this section up in one phrase, a phrase I often respond with when asked about the morality of wiping out entire cities: They had it comin' to 'em. Louisville, Rio de Janeiro, Myrtle Beach, Atlanta, and all of the other foreign cities leveled by this war were being judged. We gave 'em a chance. God gave 'em a chance. At any moment, they could have recognized America's superiority and supremacy over them, and stopped with their damned bullying. But they kept it up, and kept it up, and persisted in being arrogant little sinners! Now it was time! We destroyed them. Manifest Destiny, as we all know, is the divine will of God for the United States to encompass everything in this Hemisphere. by resisting the expansion of our sacred borders and freedoms, they spat in God's face. They spat in my face. They spat in your face. They spat in our faces collectively. They spat on a bunch of faces. Those disrespectful little heathen tried to doubt our God-given rights, and we smashed them one for liberty! And as we also all know, our Manifest Destiny is guaranteed. The Bible says so. The New Jerusalem cannot be stopped or delayed, and any attempt to do is disrespectful to both God and Fatherland. The miserable little Satanists that do so will and should be exterminated with extreme prejudice. This is righteous judgement. God himself annihilated the nations to the south that currently lie in ruins. We are merely a tool for this judgement. There are no moral questions about this, despite what some self-righteous, pompous fools would have you believe. Those people we killed... they weren't... people. They were Inferior scum. They were servants of Satan. They weren't... American. They hated our freedoms and our position as God's Chosen People. They now burn in Hellfire, with the likes of Napoleon Bonaparte, Mad Czar Victor, and Beutel. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

"That's what brings me to our next point: What if other countries should get the Bomb? The answer is: Don't worry! Love the Bomb! No matter how many craters or rubble dot our soil, our patriotic spirit will never die, and our armies march on to conquest in the end, no matter what. God does not make being a Christian American easy. We endure persecution and tribulation, but we always come up golden in the end! Nothing gets accomplished without hard work, perseverance, and sacrifice, and you can ask Patriot-Saint Custer that when you see him in the afterlife. We shouldn't doubt God's plan. We should embrace the fact that our enemies have atomic bombs if they should ever so happen to attain them. Nothing they do can or will stop America's Holy Mission. Their actions are simply the last death-rattles of Satan as he is about to be thrown into the Lake of Fire. God is in control, and God will look over us."

Graham's sermon (or, more accurately, feel-good propaganda stump speech occasionally referencing the Bible) was suddenly interrupted by a man walking toward the pulpit.

"Yes, my good man? What have you to say, citizen?" asked Graham, all smiles.

The man, about thirty, of a dark complexion and wearing a tweed suit and nervously clutching a fedora in his hands, looked Graham straight in the eye and said, in a German accent, "How can you believe in this? What madness is this, that has consumed you all and turned you into genocidal freaks?! I came to this country ten years ago, seeking freedom and opportunity. I was met at the docks by armed thugs. I was met at the hotel by armed thugs. I was immediately forced to sit down with a pastor of your so-called Church and was forced to undergo tests to see how vulnerable I was to the 'Devil's wiles," like whether I would or would not be willing to report a neighbor for speaking against the government in private to me. Whether I do or do not find Irish women attractive and/or worthy of carrying on my genetic lineage with. After that, I was given a punch card for an ORRA computer, and I was assigned a job in a factory. Then I was drafted. I lost most of my left foot in combat against Virginia in '56. It took me two months for your so-called 'government healthcare' to get me my painkillers. What kind of freedom and opportunity is this? Since I got off the boat from Baden, I have been mugged, assaulted, forced into conversion, worked half-to-death, and been shot at by some guy I've never met in a war both of us got literally nothing out of. You're all insane. You're all evil lunatics hellbent on destruction and murdering your fellow human beings. You make me sick. Reverend Billy, if you were any kind of man, you'd stand up right now and stop peddling this... this... bull-shit. That's what this. Look at yourselves, all of you! You should be ashamed. You're all in a death cult. You're all too stupid to realize it, or if you do realize it and get on a guilt trip, you come crying to Reverend Billy to make the pain and self-loathing and doubting go away. He gives you a nice, fatherly pep-talk telling you you're all just the best people ever, and that you're all good little servants of the state. You're all a bunch of statist fascists. You use this bunk of a religion as an excuse to do whatever you jolly-well please. I have to hand it to the founders of the AFC. They found a way to make sure every generation of Americans was more hateful than the last. I am not an American. I am a free man. Free men are opposed in this nation by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies on subversion, instead of elections. On intimidation, instead of free choice. It is a system that, for almost 160 years, has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. It’s mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. You're all blind sheep, being led to the slaughter. When you wake up one day, if you're still alive, you'll see you helped found the most tyrannical, bloody, repressive, godless regime in the history of mankind. One that has stripped you of all your freedom. One that watches every move you make. One that tells you what to do, what to say, what to think, how to act, what to name your children, where you can go, who you can marry, and what version of God you can believe in. Or maybe by that point the American leaders will have outed themselves as a bunch of immoral atheists and despots, who just won't care anymore what you think about them because, brother, they'll have you so surrounded by security cameras, rifles, and police that you won't be able to blink, much less organize a revolt, without Philadelphia knowing about it. It'll be a New World Order, all right. A miserable, Satanic regime that will encompass the entire globe in its iron fist of terror. I hope I've given you all something to think about before its too late. I know I might die for the things I've just said, but I'm glad to die saying them, and I regret I can only say them once. One more thing, I'm a Catholic. Put that in your cocaine lozenges and chew it, Billy."

The stadium, which was still reeling and completely silent from the shock of anyone, anyone, interrupting the Reverend-Colonel to spout out a bunch of "subversive nonconformity," watched in horror as ORRA troops grabbed the German man and began ruthlessly beating him to a bloody pulp. Billy Graham pointed his finger at the man and, with an evil grin, said, "Are you a sinner and a servant of the Enemy? I think that you're a dirty sinner and a servant of the Enemy. That's what I think. I also think you're a piece of horse shit. And my patience is waxing thin with you, you left-wing anarchistic Beutelist." The goons continued their beat-down, and then dragged the half-dead protestor away to a reeducation camp. The protestor would go on to serve time at Camp 222. He would eventually become a test subject for the Vaccine Program. He died a horrible death and his body was burned in a corpse furnace.

The congregation still sat still. Many of them were pale-faced. Some were crying. Graham did not look happy at all. "You better not listen to that Catholic thug. I can tell what's happening to some of you. Your faith is not strong enough to survive that pathetic pelting of left-wing talking points being hurled at you. We need to spend some extra time at this revival focusing on faith, for what good is it doing preaching about how our faith in Christ will lead us to glorious victory when you have no faith to begin with. That man claimed to believe in Jesus. Don't listen to him. He's trying to lead you astray with his magic friendship peace-Jesus garbage! That Jesus doesn't exist! Let's all open our Bibles to
Exodus, Chapter 34, verses 11-14. 'Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I am driving out from before you the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it be a snare in your midst. But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images (For you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.)'"

Billy saw some of the congregation remembering their places. Several of them clapped. Soon, several hundred were standing up and clapping. Then, they began murmuring about how "nothing can stop Reverend Billy from preachin' on." Then, thousands stood, chanting as one, "USA! USA! USA! BILLY! BILLY! USA! USA! USA! REVEREND BILLY! USA!"

Things were so much simpler when you conformed and got in a mob and did what one person said. The sheeple could handle that. Anything else was simply un-American, and thus could not possibly be true or logical, or for that matter even something to think about. Jesus and the government loved them very, very, very much, and that was all they cared about.
 
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Thank you, Napoleon.

By the way, the more I read this story, the more I think that it makes Orwell look like an optimist.
 
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Zachanassian

Gone Fishin'
Man, Hugh Dalton is the creepiest Labour MP I've ever seen.

My only hope at this point is that Russia and the European nations finally realise just how insane Oswald and the NUSA is and invade just to put a stop to all of it.
The man, about thirty, of a dark complexion and wearing a tweed suit and nervously clutching a fedora in his hands, looked Graham straight in the eye and said, in a German accent, "How can you believe in this? What madness is this, that has consumed you all and turned you into genocidal freaks?!"
Hah, he said it, he said it!
 
Doubleplusgood update

Thank you, Napoleon.

By the way, the more I read this story, the more I think that it makes Orwell look like an optimist.

What he said :eek:

Just found and finally read through this entire TL...what hast thou wrought? You've taken a chillingly adept look at human nature and used it to twist American society into...there's no other word for it: America is TTL's Draka :cool: (in the fascist totalitarian way, not the slavery-wank way :D).

As for Oswald getting the vaccine for Scottish Flu...well the rest of the world's kinda in trouble, isn't it? As are the Catholics, the Mexicans, the Irish, the Southrons...although you mentioned, early, early on that the RU/USA/NUSA falls at some point...how? At this point it looks like God Himself may just cradle his head in his hands and wipe the slate clean :p :(

I'm holding out a little hope for the French - and how unbelievably grimdark is this TL if we're all rooting for Hitler!? (Yes, yes, alt-Hitler, but still a Hitler) - if only in the hope of some kind of...ICBM strike in a couple decades' time? Pan-European alliance launching a massive Overlord? Orbital bombardment? :cool:

Just for fun: is George Orwell/Eric Blair about in any way, shape or form ITTL? Granted he was born in India to a British father (who could maybe exist if his noble ancestors weren't offed) and a French mother so they're....rather long odds, to say the least. Failing that, how about Sean Connery? :D:p

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