Asteroid impact ASB or can be consisdered actual AH?

I'm starting a TL in which an asteroid is vital to the PoD. Would this be considered "real" AH or would i be considered ASB?
 
I'm starting a TL in which an asteroid is vital to the PoD. Would this be considered "real" AH or would i be considered ASB?

My $0.02 would be ASB, but I know for a fact there are people on this board who say the opposite.

I suggest you work very carefully to get your ballistics correct, and if possible pick an asteroid that actually passed close to Earth.
 
Another thought: I'd avoid both the surgical strike (Wow, it just happened to hit the building in Berlin where Hitler was meeting with all the key leaders of Nazi Germany!) and the cataclysm (extinction-level-event or anything on that order of magnitude).

And one more: several people have postulated an alternate location of the Tunguska impact (hitting London, Washington DC, etc.). You might do a search for such threads.
 
As a general rule anything that sounds like the plot to a Bruce Willis movie should be considered ASB.
 
It could go either way. It all depens on how you set it up. But one rock was to fall out of the sky and hit Berlin on May 1 1945, odd but would be AH. But if a second strike happens anytime soon(I use soon to be a few hundand years) It so be ASB.
 
I disagree with it being ASB. ASB is stuff that isn't possible except by means of what basically amounts to magic; someone magically changes there mind, or something magically doesn't work, or someone is magically transported from one time to another. A rock hitting the Earth isn't magic. It can happen, and has, and -since the deep reaches of space don't necessarily effect the development of earth- butterflies are not much to fear here, except in the aftermath.
 
My $0.02 would be ASB, but I know for a fact there are people on this board who say the opposite..

I'm one of those people. Asteroid strikes happen without divine or supernatural causes. They are natural events. However, I would say they are rarenatural events and I'd be very hesitant to use them to affect specific historic events within a TL such as battles and so forth: "Suddenly without warning, a small asteroid slammed into the Normandy invasion fleet...." However to use a past asteriod strike (or lack thereof) as the takeoff point for an alternate timeline - such as in Pesawar Lancers or the Specworld project seems legitimately non-ASB to me.

I wrote a TL a while back that had a massive earthquake devastate Japan a few weeks before the Pearl Harbor raid was launched, eliminating the Pacific War and delaying US involvement in the European War until 1943. I wouldn't consider this ASB.
 
In general I think people are a bit too quick to shout "ASB!" when something not entirely plausible happens in a WI or TL. I include myself into that group.

Acts of god are not entirely ASB as long as they are reasonably realistic in how they work (the aforementioned 'laser guided' act of god being a good example of an ASB POD). My very first WI(not a TL) postulated a situation in which the Ardennes forest was devastated by a forest fire in the late 30s, no one accused me of positing an ASB POD.

The Tunguska asteroid hitting somewhere else or at a different time is not ASB(barring it hitting somewhere ridiculously out of place, like the north pole, or having it be waaaaay late or waaaaaayyy early like hitting kido butai just before the attack on Pearl). Having a near miss turn into a hit is also a perfectly fine POD in my opinion.

The things that I think are tricky are diseases, changing the symptoms or pathology of an OTL virus of bacteria would require getting very well acquainted with biology before writing your TL.

In otherwords, I say go for it.
 
Risky, but not ASB

To me, an asteroid/comet impact is far from ASB, but is a low probabiity event. Personally, I'd think a surgical strike (Kido Butai wiped out on December 6, for example) to have a good chance of being an ASB in disguise--but anything other than a perfect shot is quite plausible. I'm working on one where an asteroid strke is the POD, myself.

Multiple strikes would be so unlikely, it's not funny, unless they were related somehow.

In short, tread carefully, and ask yourself, "Is this asteroid necessary?"
 
Not so ASB as one might think

I linked over to the timeline thread you posted. I'll weigh in on the "non-ASB" side just because it did not happen in the middle of some historical event.
 
Speaking of Synchronicity

It is interesting. A couple of elemental parts of just what you wanting to discuss have recently been touched upon posts to this forum.

About the odd parts of unusual situations that due to the nature of the world often happen as a group but are extremely rare as a single instance -- and often shape what takes place in real life. The reason is that so many things are happening at the same time in our world that highly unusual events are the norm, if you know when and how to assess the results of every day events.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=200159

Asteroid situation:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=184084

Asteroids hit the earth of size a few times a decade, most harmlessly over the ocean and friable (come apart at high altitudes so even passing ships think it is naval exercise, etc.). Since there are some 60 million or so square miles of surface area, 30% of the whole, alone, usually no problem as a 22 foot/7 meter body. But with the real big ones, you know the score. As already posted here, the issue is of an asteroid falling in a critical spot at just the right time, which is pretty out there.

We, in OTL, have some what more a chance of dying in an asteroid strike than in a _Commercial_ airline tragedy, yet we have publicly sold insurance for one but not the other. The reason is three fold: A) fairly impossible to insure in most scaled instances since in some cases of past all life on Earth has been destroyed except the extremophiles in rock hundreds of meters deep in the crust, with all water boiled away for a year. This does things to insurance companies. B) People ignore long term events C) Airline tragedies happen more often, albeit of relatively tiny amounts of deaths, so are much better actuary events for a profit

Maybe I can be of assistance via mail to point you in the better directions, sort of personally being involved in this field but not one of the 50 or so scientists which were seriously doing research globally but have talked with quite a few (Scotti, Shoemaker, et al). A friend and associate, Jim Davidson, once advised Representatives Dana Rohranbaker and Ron Paul on space and these subjects.


Gridley;4688185]Another thought: I'd avoid both the surgical strike (Wow, it just happened to hit the building in Berlin where Hitler was meeting with all the key leaders of Nazi Germany!) and the cataclysm (extinction-level-event or anything on that order of magnitude).

And one more: several people have postulated an alternate location of the Tunguska impact (hitting London, Washington DC, etc.). You might do a search for such threads
In past AH, it is ASB, unlike in future writing it is as madmen will have the ability to cheaply aim an asteroid to do exactly at a place and time (e.g. for a yearly scheduled event) and totally reverse the odds.
 
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