AHC/WI Slowest scientific and techonological progress possible

Insider

Banned
Invent a POD after 1650 that would throw the biggest possible monkey wrench into the gears of progress. What consequencess that would have in 2015?
 
Invent a POD after 1650 that would throw the biggest possible monkey wrench into the gears of progress. What consequencess that would have in 2015?

Have a major asteroid impact in Europe, completely destroying European civilization, and setting back China and India with a nuclear winter situation.

Have something like Ebola get out into the human population - especially if, like plague, it doesn't kill rodent hosts very fast.

etc.

Consequences:
China and India are just starting to experiment with steam engines at this point, and Europeans are back to building castles and attacking each other with swords. ...
 

Insider

Banned
Hmm... Well, the extraterrestrial explanation, even if completely natural sounds like ASB to me. Asteroids are slow, and follow their orbits quite rigidly. With POD after 1650 AD it would be inplausible that it would hit the Earth within hundreds of years.

Ebola forms a localised outbreaks. It disables person too fast for sick to move and spread the disease further out. Another outbreak of Black Death, would be deadly but again, it would be quickly stopped by quarantine. At gun point if necessary.

An epidemy sounds plausible, plague could kill some philosophers or scientists.
Who would be most crucial for further progress?

Spinoza is eighteen, probably didn't made any influence yet.
Leibniz is four. He would be another child dying in his youth.
A plaque that would hit both, is a long shot but remotely plausible. Spinoza lived in Rotterdam. If a plaque started there it could be transported aboard ships to northern Germany.

How would world develop without them?
 
Top