Dorozhand
Banned
So, I was musing yesterday about what it would have taken for a conventional WWIII to have happened between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. As I thought about possible POD's, probing further and further back into history, I suddenly found one that caught my attention.
What if Einstein had never become a scientist, the theories of relativity and E=mc2 were never forulated, physics continued (at least for a longer while) along Newtonian lines, Nuclear technology was never developed or concieved, and nuclear weapons never created.
Everything would be about the same until WWII, when, in the absence of even a theory regarding nuclear energy, weapon scientists concentrate instead on perfecting conventional weapons. The most significant fruit of this occuring in 1945, when the US invades Japan rather than nuking it as IOTL.
I then imagined a Japan under US influence, and a united Korea under Soviet influence (the USSR manages to grab the whole thing while the US is busy invading Japan into 1946).
This intensifies cold war tensions in the east. However, no third world war occurs immediately, because even without nukes a clash of titans would result in global catastrophe. However, in the 1960's, some kind of diplomatic crisis grips the world, occuring in either Europe, Asia, or Cuba, which precipitates a war between NATO and the WP.
I thought it was kind of interesting. Should I throw Cthulhu in there for good measure?
What if Einstein had never become a scientist, the theories of relativity and E=mc2 were never forulated, physics continued (at least for a longer while) along Newtonian lines, Nuclear technology was never developed or concieved, and nuclear weapons never created.
Everything would be about the same until WWII, when, in the absence of even a theory regarding nuclear energy, weapon scientists concentrate instead on perfecting conventional weapons. The most significant fruit of this occuring in 1945, when the US invades Japan rather than nuking it as IOTL.
I then imagined a Japan under US influence, and a united Korea under Soviet influence (the USSR manages to grab the whole thing while the US is busy invading Japan into 1946).
This intensifies cold war tensions in the east. However, no third world war occurs immediately, because even without nukes a clash of titans would result in global catastrophe. However, in the 1960's, some kind of diplomatic crisis grips the world, occuring in either Europe, Asia, or Cuba, which precipitates a war between NATO and the WP.
I thought it was kind of interesting. Should I throw Cthulhu in there for good measure?