Challenge: United States Battleship Division 9 interned at Scapa Flow with HSF

They need to do way instain mother> who kill thier babbys. becus these babby cant fright back?

it was on the news this mroing a mother in ar who kill her three kids. they are taking the three babby back to new york too lady to rest my pary are with the father who lost his chrilden ; i am truley sorry for your lots
 
OK.

Assuming this ASB scenario comes to pass, the British leadership get replaced by aliens, and BatDiv 9 gets interned and scuttled at Scapa Flow, Britain starves to death inside of 6 months. By 1918, Britain was dependent on US grain for its survival. Europe is exhausted and devastated, so there's not much food to get from them. Britain would surrender inside of 6 months to avoid mass starvation.

This all assumes that the whole thing happens, which is ASB, as has been proved previously.
 
Not to mention immediately after the UK and Commonwealth had been bled white and damned near bankrupt.

Here is a better question...

Do you think that Bard/Blair might BE Taylor Anderson?

His ongoing efforts to promote Destroyer men would make so much more sense that way.

Neah.

I have talked to the guy before and this does not seem to be him. Anderson may not be the best writer but he is not as bad as this blair chap?
 
Last Marylander is, AFAIK, a Freshman or Sophmore in high school. He has PM'd me quite a bit regarding things in Shared Worlds and has asked for sources to do what seemed to be 9th/10th grade sorts of reports.

Part of the name changes and threads seems to be the normal changes we all go through at that point in life. He actually seems to be a good kid.

I mainly asked about Anderson since Bard/Blair seems to actually know history but either out of confusion or design managed to mangle it out of all recognition.


This may be my first accusation of Sock Puppetry.

Quite interesting really.

How exactly does defending a not great series lead to suspicions that I might have a sock puppet?
 
Blair this reason seems a little ASB; ok alot ASB. If you want war between America and Britain, why not just start earlier and have America join the Central Powers? That would make a really fun TL and the reprecussions can lead to a really long and interesting TL.

And, incredible as it may sound, this was taken seriously in some quarters.

In Devlin's Too Proud to Fight records a bizarre exchange between President Wilson and Colonel House. The latter was concerned about Wilson's planned peace move, fearing that if the Germans accepted it and the Allies didn't, America might drift into "a sympathetic alliance with Germany" and provoke the Allies into declaring war upon her.

Wilson [probably a bit bemused] replied that they would not dare to do this, and even if they did, it wouldn't matter as they were incapable of harming the US. House disagreed, arguing that they could land troops from Japan after destroying the US fleet.

As we know, Wilson ignored House's concerns and went ahead with his peace move anyway. But it is remarkable that such a thing could even have been thought about.

PS It does not take alot of research to find a Sec. of State.

Just for the record it was Robert Lansing. I agree though that he's an easy one to forget.
 

Blair152

Banned
  1. The Destroyermen series- a none-too-well written work, where several ships that were already built or had been disposed of by OTL 1941 are ISOTed to a TL where humanity never evolved, its place being taken by several sentient races that evolved from other creatures and have a tech level several centuries behind? That belongs in ASB.
  2. As does the idea that the British would suddenly turn on their ally like that- anything other than a temporary quarantine due to a contagious disease would be a very risky and stupid thing to do- screwing around with other peoples' warships like that and/or trying to seize them is causus belli material, and right at the end of WW1, with Britain exhausted from the events of the previous 4 years, to play that sort of game would require a large number of people to become batshit-crazy morons, which would likely require an ASB to go around hitting people with the stupid stick.
  3. The Versailles Treaty only dealt with navies in terms of limiting Germany to a tiny coast-defense fleet of small and obsolete ships, and dividing up the ships of the former Kaiserlichmarine.
  4. Predreadnoughts were already obsolete- since about 1906, and worn-out by the end of WW1. Indeed, the war probably kept them around for a few years longer than they otherwise would have. By the time the WNT negotiations opened in 1921 OTL, the handful left were either waiting their turn to be auctiond off to the scrapyards, or were being used for training, depot hulks, being converted into auxiliaries, or used experimental work (i.e. remote control targets) The treaty provisions ordering them disposed of was a mere formality.
  5. To keep predreadnoughts around as combatants (if of rather limited utility barring a reconstruction of the scale of those done to battleships in the 1920s & 30s OTL) would require an alt-WNT carving out a specific niche for them, for the reasons listed in point 4.
  6. The London Naval Treaty came about in 1930, too late to have much of an effect one way or the other on the fate of predreads, as they'd be long gone by then barring something along the lines of point 5. The South Dakotas and the other ships axed under the WNT historically- either the WNT equivalent killed them, allowed some to be built, or in a no treaty world, would be built- how many and their folllow-ons depend on economics, budgets, politics, and what other people are doing.
  7. Research from sources other than a sci-fi writer's blog, even Wikipedia, as well as using the search function or going back several pages to see if the subject matter's been discussed can all help refine your 'what ifs' by fleshing out the limits of what's plausible as opposed to ASB-worthy and why that is, as well as the sort of questions that people ask and the answers given.
That's your opinion. Alternate history is mostly ASB. Why do you think alternate history always asks "what if?"
 
RCAF Brat, better give up now and spare yourself.

If you still had any doubts as to Blair152's contempt for historical accuracy, his rejection of DD951's many historical facts as opinion should have resolved them.


He doesn't comprehend the difference between 'what if the airplane was invented a few years earlier' and 'what if man had evolved with the power to fly'. What more need be said?
 
RCAF Brat, better give up now and spare yourself.

If you still had any doubts as to Blair152's contempt for historical accuracy, his rejection of DD951's many historical facts as opinion should have resolved them.


He doesn't comprehend the difference between 'what if the airplane was invented a few years earlier' and 'what if man had evolved with the power to fly'. What more need be said?

No, he doesn't. And if you try to correct him, well, you may as well start banging you head on your desk, because that'll have the same effect as watching him make the same argument over and over, no matter how many times it's been ripped apart. His not being able to tell bad fiction from reality just makes it worse.

I think that I'll just save myself another headache by putting Bard32/Blair152 on ignore.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
That's your opinion. Alternate history is mostly ASB. Why do you think alternate history always asks "what if?"
And the band played on...

facepalm 2.jpg
 
That's your opinion. Alternate history is mostly ASB. Why do you think alternate history always asks "what if?"

There's a big difference between ASB, which refers to things involving time travel, elements of sci-fi/magic/other fantasy stuff, or is so completely and utterly implausible that it would require that sort of assistance to make work, such as the unmentionable sea mammal, and the stuff more normally discussed in the other forums, which asks what if 'x' instead of 'y' happened at a given time/place.

To properly ask such a question requires a given understanding of that situation, all the variables involved including the people, the assets they had to work with, the way they thought, etc., and from that, one can find out what would need to happen differently to get 'x' instead of 'y,' and whether that change is both possible and plausible within those parameters. Assuming that your proposed change passes those tests, one can then go on to what the results of the change will be in both the short term and long term, extrapolating from the trends involved in OTL, although the farther on that goes, the less useful that becomes because of butterflies, and there is a degree of creative license involved, within reason.

Your scenario has Britain, in throwing a temper-tantrum over American reluctance to intervene militarily against the Bolsheviks, deciding to commit an act of war against the United States, which given the exhaustion of Britain following WW1, its need on American food and money, and the near certainity of ailenating most of the rest of its allies (and probably several of the Dominions- Canada would certainly be appalled) would be an act of reckless insanity of the sort only seen from some of the more colorful dictators, as many of the posters in this thread have tried to point out.

However, given your persistence in this, as well as some of your other threads, continuing the argument does not appear to be a productive use of my time, because, well.....

insanity.jpeg
 
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