Decades of Darkness

[BeyondTheBorg]

I wonder what the space race looks like, if there is one at all. Could the Manifest Destiny ethos of the *USA extend to the stars?

Also, I wonder if this world's economy is bigger or smaller than our own. My gut tells me "smaller", as giant portions of the population are barred from their own "pursuit of happiness". It also tells me the *US would eventually stagnate, and devote ever-more resources to surveillance and propaganda than they'd otherwise need to if they weren't a slave state.

Sometime in the mid-21st Century, the whole thing could collapse and balkanize in an orgy of apocalyptic violence including WMDs used on its own cities - ending up like China or South Africa from Rumsfeldia.

 

[Canaan Osborne]

I must politely (but politely) beg you to add in those couple epilogue posts into the text document someday, Jared.

Epilogue post?

 

[BeyondTheBorg]

Something just occurred to me reading this timeline again. I was expecting a historically plausible version of The Domination of the Draka, and got (more or less) a historically plausible version of CSA: Confederate States of America. Any of that film's "commercials" would not be out of place in the slightest in the *USA, aside from the odd Spanish loanword here and there. It's a pretty good portrayal of what *American culture would be like by the 2000s.

 

[xsampa]

How will Russia evolve as it incorporates even more territiry?

 

[Nevermore]

That said, even though the *US probably won't make any serious advances in medical science that the rest of the world isn't beating them to, they will probably find ways to use it as a tool of social control, and come up with a lot of splendid little crimes against humanity in the process. Once mechanization takes over agriculture and makes a lot of farm laborers redundant, expect to see a widespread sterilization program to cull the slave and peon populations. They'll try to come up with an ethnic bioweapon for much the same purpose, only to cancel it and bury all the evidence once it accidentally backfires on the white citizen population. To deal with the possibility of revolt, expect to see an alt-MKUltra, on steroids and done more or less openly, that won't necessarily produce a docile underclass like they hoped but will leave a whole lot of people driven too insane by drugs and medical torture to even consider organizing a rebellion -- so, in a sense, it could be seen as a "success" for white *America.

I suspect that lobotomies will be something that might be employed, perhaps are even an American 'innovation' ITTL, as a way to make some of the formerly enslaved more pliable (as horrific as that is to think about) and to remove any unwanted rabble rousing from peons, debt slaves, etc. in the event of their freedom; it took a long enough time for the practice to ultimately be abandoned OTL, so it's not unthinkable it's still used on certain people by the present. It may have the knockoff effect of ensuring that the practice doesn't become widespread in medical fields due to its association with the United States at least. It's ultimately the most surefire way to get the results the ruling class would want, barbarism notwithstanding.

 

[Donald Reaver]

I'm on chapter 33 right now on the Decades of Darkness website. Is chapter 87 and on all the same on both sites?

 

[Jared]

I'm on chapter 33 right now on the Decades of Darkness website. Is chapter 87 and on all the same on both sites?

Mostly the same. Minor corrections of typos and maybe other small details (can't remember every small amendment) but nothing substantially different.

E: chapter numbering is unchanged.

 

[Donald Reaver]

Thank you, hope to get to 87 in the next few days.

 

[Kevin R.]

Something just occurred to me reading this timeline again. I was expecting a historically plausible version of The Domination of the Draka, and got (more or less) a historically plausible version of CSA: Confederate States of America. Any of that film's "commercials" would not be out of place in the slightest in the *USA, aside from the odd Spanish loanword here and there. It's a pretty good portrayal of what *American culture would be like by the 2000s.

You're not the only one. I noticed it myself, and even brought it up in the "worst works of alternate history you've encountered" thread. DoD felt like a version of CSA that tried to be historically plausible, and while I have my questions about elements of it (especially once it reached the 20th century), overall I could buy into its take on an alternate American society that was dominated by the economy and worldview of the planter aristocrats of Dixie run unchecked, with the Latin American criollo elites later joining as junior partners. CSA, on the other hand, slaughtered all manner of butterflies in order to create its white supremacist US, and the lack of plausibility meant that a lot of its satire didn't land beyond a few jokes here and there.

 

[xsampa]

Has anyone wondered how Russia holds itself together as a single state, especially with the predicted annexation of North China, and the asymmetric distribution of power between Russia and other components, and how certain states have local rulers (Courland, the Khanates, Tibet). This could result in a situation where local political parties are completely different from the "national" parties and where regional coalitions e.g the Russian "Far East" of Manchuria, Xinjiang, Tibet vote as one bloc against N. China and Russia, in an alliance with Bulgaria, Wallachia, Moldavia etc.

 

[BeyondTheBorg]

DoD took the same basic premise but (arguably) stuck to plausibility, and it wound up creating a US that diverges so sharply from OTL that many readers were uncomfortable calling it such without putting an asterisk in front of it, referring to it instead as "the *US".

Heh, maybe it's just the times, but I'm not at all uncomfortable dropping the asterisk. TTL's USA may be what many of the more Southern and conservative Founding Fathers actually envisioned for their new nation, looking to the slaveholding landowner-democracies of Ancient Greece and Rome as their model.

Come to think of it, the *USA pretty much are the Draka minus the overt nihilism and BDSM tendencies. Though perhaps by the time of The Fox And The Jackal, the *USA are undergoing a darker, more fascistic and nihilistic counterpart to OTL's 1960s countercultural revolution, influenced ironically enough by New England vitalists and the works of Amber Jarett.

If the *USA are going to go atheist like the Draka, this is how. I'm picturing something like an unholy philosophical amalgamation of Nietzsche, Ragnar Redbeard, Ayn Rand, the Nazis, BDSM, New Atheism, and alt-right chan culture from OTL.

 

[xsampa]

Can we discuss other parts of the world?

 

[Vornado]

Can we discuss other parts of the world?

I am interested in what Germany decides to do with the 10's of millions of French and Italians it has just aquired during the final war. I think setting up puppet states quickly would be a must as I doubt setting them up as German citizens who vote will be popular with Germans or their subject people's.

 

[xsampa]

Portugal's granting of independence to its black colonies as Kingdoms will eventually strain US-Portuguese relations

 

[BeyondTheBorg]

I know I've been chiming in a lot lately on a bit of a DoD binge, but this old fanfic from the oneshot thread is a harrowing look at what may be this world's future come 1983. Unlike its OTL equivalent by Orwell, this dystopia has a "happy" ending where the *USA is on the verge of collapse.

 

[Dominic]

An idle thought, but it occurs to me that TTL's Neville Wood has an uncanny resemblance to OTL's very own Boris Johnson...

 

[Matt]

@Jared I'm doing some research into DoD for shits and giggles. But that has given me some questions:

1. Did you ever do Population Data out past 1900?
2. Speaking of Population Data: Aururia shows up on the map on the DoD hosted site. But it doesn't show up in any of the census data. However, a quick search through the document notes that it shows up only 3 times, first referencing a suffragette in Chapter 141b, the second as being the first state to grant the vote to women in 1898 in Chapter 149a, and the last as a foot note referring it to as one of the Rocky Mountain states in Chapter 151a. It otherwise is almost entirely absent from the text. Is this actually Colorado?
3. New Mexico is substantially more supported in the text, but doesn't show up in the official map. I suspect that it's Colorado on the map or, roughly OTL Arizona.
4. Nevada isn't on the map. Being a man of high imagination, I think I can figure out where it should be.

 

[SuperZtar64]

1. Speaking of Population Data: Aururia shows up on the map on the DoD hosted site. But it doesn't show up in any of the census data. However, a quick search through the document notes that it shows up only 3 times, first referencing a suffragette in Chapter 141b, the second as being the first state to grant the vote to women in 1898 in Chapter 149a, and the last as a foot note referring it to as one of the Rocky Mountain states in Chapter 151a. It otherwise is almost entirely absent from the text. Is this actually Colorado?
2. New Mexico is substantially more supported in the text, but doesn't show up in the official map. I suspect that it's Colorado on the map or, roughly OTL Arizona.
3. Nevada isn't on the map. Being a man of high imagination, I think I can figure out where it should be.

Throughout the writing of the TL, Jared made some adjustments as to certain things he found improbably in his initial draft, but did not change the older prose due to the massive amount of effort involved which would be involved- think of it as a retcon without the "ret."

This is the reason for the discrepencies between the maps and the prose.\

1. There is no pop data after 1900.
2. The state called Aururia in later posts and the maps corresponds to the state called Colorado in earlier posts.
3. "New Mexico" in earlier posts corresponds to the state labelled "Colorado" on the maps.
4. "Nevada" doesn't exist after the notret-retcon. In Jared's earlier maps, DoD Nevada was shown as being coterminous with the boundaries of OTL Nevada from 1864-1867, displayed in this OTL map.

 

[Matt]

Throughout the writing of the TL, Jared made some adjustments as to certain things he found improbably in his initial draft, but did not change the older prose due to the massive amount of effort involved which would be involved- think of it as a retcon without the "ret."

Thanks, I appreciate it. II did read the original run, but these are things I didn't notice back then. I think this would make it a classically defined retcon, like from the comic book world. They don't go back and pull the issues that contradict the canon, but they just functionally ignore it.

 

[xsampa]

In a Scenario where the NAW went differently, and Russia occupied China in the GW, wouldn’t the needs of occupying the ME and China force a withdrawal from China, leaving multiple govts carved from former German and a British China? Also, the idea of a war between Manchuria and former German China is interedting