AHC - 'Fallout' except with Gilded Age tech/steampunk (non-ASB!)

WITHOUT employing Extraterrestrial Interstellar Chiropterae, and with a POD after the OTL Civil War, bring about a Fallout/Max Max-esque scenario with America getting 'stuck' in the style/tech/etc. of the Gilded Age (i.e. 'steam/coalpunk', or pre-diesel) instead of the 1950s post-war period.

Basically, turn ALL of 1880s/90s America into the wildest of wests.

No nukes!
 
Not possible because the Fallout universe and Mad Max rely on characteristics that are fundamentally absent in this period. Also, both universes have very little grounding in reality, so even if I were not restricted by the time period, it would be impossible to achieve the what if.
 

Delvestius

Banned
Some sort of devastating plague maybe. It probably won't keep technology behind for ever, but the worse the plague the longer the stagnation.
 
The only way I could see something like this happening would be in the case of yellowstone erupting. This would fall under geolocial PODs, but at least it wouldn't be exactly ASB.
 
I basically envisioned a disunited America, with factions and wild-west-y-ness a la Fallout. I guess it doesn't have to be post-apocalyptic.
 
The only way I could see something like this happening would be in the case of yellowstone erupting. This would fall under geolocial PODs, but at least it wouldn't be exactly ASB.

Does geologic include meteors/asteroid impact, or is that ASB? Because you could have an impact directly into the caldera, setting off the volcano.
 
Sterling did it in the Peshawar Lancers, using a comet and subsequent tsunamis to destroy most of the western world. This isn't really the focus of the book, but it is mentioned that people in the wreck of Europe are now reduced to making crude tools from scavanged railway tracks, the only viable source of steel.

All things aside I'm gonna echo what has been said, the idea of a gilded age "Fallout" is conceptually stillborn. The premise of post-apocalyptic scenarios arise from the tension of a looming catastrophe, nuclear weapons or climate change etc. No such real overhanging catastrophe is present in the gilded age neither in spirit or in the political field.

To most victorians the closest you came to a post-apocalyptic scenario would probably be some kind yellow-peril scenario of the "mongoloids" conquering the civlized world, most likely sparked by the Russian Defeat in the Russo-japanese war, which is a bit late for a truly steampunk/victorian fallout scenario (which I assume is what you are going for). Also it's inheriently racist and horrible.
 
All things aside I'm gonna echo what has been said, the idea of a gilded age "Fallout" is conceptually stillborn. The premise of post-apocalyptic scenarios arise from the tension of a looming catastrophe, nuclear weapons or climate change etc. No such real overhanging catastrophe is present in the gilded age neither in spirit or in the political field.

That depends on the scenario, surely? If somebody wants to write a story about a violent, chaotic steam-punk-y world and thinks some kind of apocalypse is the best way to get to this, I don't see why people's attitudes in the OTL 19th century are all that relevant.
 
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