Jamusio EMP
Banned
so how far forward should I move the years to make knowledge of the Marshal Plan plausible, or should I just edit that part out?
Suppose something else happens after 1905. As we know the Curies and Becquerel were working on radioactivity. At some point, they would have discovered radium and ultimately a phenomena that seems to violate the laws of conservation of energy. Somebody would continue to pursue this mysterious energy source without an understanding of relativity. Marie Curie's second Nobel Prize was for a process to extract and collect radium. More and more researchers begin to exploit this new energy source and ultimately pursue the first atomic power plant, to produce electricity.
Something goes wrong and one big boom opens a whole in Paris, Chicago, Berlin, or London.
Uranium was hard to come by even until the 1930's, Belgium Congo being the main source (which is why it was quickly taken care of by Allies when the Low Counties got invaded). MarkE, do you mean one big boom is a chain reaction, a dirty bomb so to speak? Some one has a lot of money for that much radioactivity, perhaps an eccentric multi-millionaire enthusiast?
I recall seeing a TV documentary on Einstein, which cronicled that in 1904-5, before his theory of Relativity,
conferences commonly used the term relativity. Something was a foot.
Surely Einstein was a great simplifier and artful theorist in classical physics until 1920 when he stopped being useful
(god does not play dice with the universe, re: quantum physics can not be correct). But instead of pulling the hand brakes post 1920 trying to prove various new kids wrong, the physics elite sans Einstein might well have had more collective cohesive effort. In fact, this glue may have had a decided accellerating effect.
However, who can say? Too many variables for me. Good luck on your TL. It would pay to do some heavy research on the physics conferences of 1904-5, the one indicated in particular I think was in Northern Italy. This should help make a pretty decent and plausible narrative, even in flashback for a 1945 storyline.
Uranium was hard to come by even until the 1930's, Belgium Congo being the main source (which is why it was quickly taken care of by Allies when the Low Counties got invaded). MarkE, do you mean one big boom is a chain reaction, a dirty bomb so to speak? Some one has a lot of money for that much radioactivity, perhaps an eccentric multi-millionaire enthusiast?
This is how you could do it though:
Without einstein most scientists behind the letter are non-americans, because now they don't have a high profile figurehead its opponents manage to get it trashed because of a good dose of mistrust of foreigners.
(snip)
It is a well known fact that industry will exploit mineral technology before science fully researches the potential hazards, at least before the late sixties. Relativity was almost unique in science because the theory of conversion of matter to energy was laid down before any practice was developed, such as the commercial use of radium on clock dials. So, no Einstein lays down the framework for a one-time disaster. Fortunately, it would most likely be limited to Hiroshima-sized scope and not cripple a country completely.